Oh, I had someone try to be a Giordan in one school here in China. He was the incumbent foreign teacher and when three new foreign teachers were hired he tried to ingratiate himself with us (badly: more on that later) on the one side, offering to act as the conduit between management and the foreign teachers.

Unfortunately for Leslie (for that was his name), I had enough experience in tech firms and the social service to recognize his type. So while to his face I agreed, I opened my own conduit to the foreign affairs office as well. (Being able to speak the language somewhat helped.) And sure enough, the FA would say something reasonable and our wannabe “conduit” would transmit it with a twist that made it sound horrible and unjust and abusive and such, then he would reassure us that he would “straighten things out”. To the FA he would say the foreigners are very angry and very unreasonable, but he calmed us down and blah blah blah.

Only of course it didn’t work because the FA dean was talking to me, so I played back what he’d told us about the FA’s statement. So he wasn’t the conduit very quickly, and wasn’t really welcome in the FA’s office either.

The guy was a real piece of work. He claimed to be Australian. He had an American passport. He spoke with an American accent. He expressed American ideals. But he was Australian. And he kept that up until a couple of Aussies joined the crowd and one of them, after hearing enough of his “Australian” bullshit, tore a major strip out of him in front of all the other expats. After that he kept to himself.