Thread: Walen School of Thai -- any experiences?

Originally Posted by Parker Chase

That is not very nice. Maybe when something bad happens to you, people will make jokes about it.

Probably, this is TD and not the anally retentive TV, we take the piss out of most things

Originally Posted by Dragonfly94

Originally Posted by Parker Chase

That is not very nice. Maybe when something bad happens to you, people will make jokes about it.

Probably, this is TD and not the anally retentive TV, we take the piss out of most things

Speaking of TVF, wasn't Walden a steady and lucrative underwriter of theirs some time back [dating from the original OP].......or perhaps, still is???

don't know, he made a mint though from the ed visa biz

Originally Posted by Dragonfly94

He vacated the offices on the ist floor at times sq and moved to cheaper upstairs.

Little bit of bad info there Dragonfly94.

He closed the 3rd floor of his Time's Square Branch, but he's ALWAYS had half the 24th floor there as a school. (He kept the 24th floor, mostly to meet the square meter per enrolled student requirement).

Surprisingly he does have some qualified teachers BUT they can't do anything in his school except read out of the book. I know a few of them who teach privately as well and they're more than competent once they're not shackled to an asinine methodology.

At one time, his schools had more foreigners on ED visas than all the other private thai language schools and the students enrolled in international programs at real universities combined!

Mac raked in millions of dollars off his cunning use of the thai ED visa extension system as it used to be. At one time he was the biggest contributing sponsor of the T/V forum (bought the most ad space).. I dunno about now. Not too shabby for a guy with nothing more than a good idea and a degree in welding!

never the third floor ist or 2nd depending how you count the ground floor

Okay, if you say so, I'm just going by what number you press in the elevator to get to that floor and surprisingly its a number 3..

I count the ground floor as floor as the 1st floor. You go up two escalators to get to the floor with access to the sky-bridge to Robinson's the BTS/MTR etc. Any way you count it that's the 3rd floor..

You're not another successful learner from walen are you? How's your thai comin' along? Were you in his "earn while you learn program" too? Can you parrot out the sentence, "Did you know Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world?" in thai? Funny in the 9+ years since I've been studying thai I've NEVER had the occasion to say that to a thai!

While I rarely mention it, I too attended the walen school 'o thai. It was WAY back when they were still translating the Callan english books into thai. I was in the first group of students who took their thai class. We'd show up for the class and they'd hand out copies of the stuff they'd just finished translating! That's how new the program was back then.

My hat's off to Mac's business acumen and his ability to downsize without a second thought when the gravy train ended. Super smart business man, who just this last year got his thai Permanent Residency too..