Oh, my, what a large can of nasty we've opened here!
Could it be the real Kevin finally- you should pardon the expression- coming out?
What a terrible, terrible thing to find waiting after a 4-day ether binge...

Oh, that last isn't true, of course, but if you follow Kevin's line it would fit right in- for it seems that I don't know a damn thing and simply sweep up all my information from the floors of seedy expat bars. Sure, my site and I were perfectly fine back when Kevin (who is not and never will be a member at our site) was trying to use us to help him put out the various unquenchable fires that are raging around him, but when it comes out that I won't endorse the line of hooey he's putting forth, all of a sudden we're alcohol-addled idiots. (And he just can't be sycophantic enough over on Dave's "precious self-named site", but on MY site somehow this is a big no-no...)

What we're seeing, of course, is a ploy of dodgy Chinese schools as old as the phenomenon of dodgy Chinese schools: "If you don't like us, why, there must be something wrong with YOU!". A Labrador Retriever could see this happening, and in fact mine DID.
When confronted with their sordid practices and abuses, ALL these schools fall back on "Oh, they're just a bunch of drunken bums and cry-babies, and aren't good enough to work for us. Believe us and don't fall for all those terrible stories!" I've heard it over and over again...

What Kevin just can't seem to accept is that I have lived in Suzhou a long, long time, and I've known a lot of folks who have worked for SIFLIS (20 is a good guess. Happy now?), over a span of years continuing up to the very, very recent past. One of them is now in the States, enrolled in a joint MBA-Law program at a top American university, so of course we can write him off as a total lush. Others were themselves the very same hot babes Kevin accuses them of lusting after, so Kevin probably never even noticed their being there.
But in his desperation to defend this crappy Chinese school, our Kevin is now defaming me, whom he does not know, and dismissing a long line of former employees, some of whom he does know but doesn't know their identities, and painting a totally fraudulent and baseless picture of a long series of meetings he wasn't present for. Nice, huh?

The "too far away, too isolated" chorus isn't MY "personal mantra"; it was the personal mantra of all the people I talked to who worked there. I do know the area Kev refers to, and it has indeed built up a lot in recent years. It's got a number of Western-friendly supermarkets, several rather high-priced Western-style (gulp) restaurants and nightclubs, and a bunch of karaoke joints oriented toward the Japanese and Taiwanese who have built their bases in the western New District. Sure, it's different than it was; you can now buy cheese, get a badly-prepared steak, and get your howl on with a bunch of drunk Asian manager types...but we BOTH know that the real heart of the community, everything cool or ancient or picturesque or worthwhile in Suzhou, the quorum of both the upscale Chinese and the Western expats, is either downtown or in the eastern SIP district...far, far away from SIFLIS. The area around SIFLIS has about as much character and interest as a loaf of imported Japanese white bread.

But speaking of "personal mantras", Kevin and his various alter egos here keep chiming that I didn't work at this school myself (thank God), and that I've only talked to past employees (although some were quite recent past) rather than present ones. So:
Kevin, I want you to take the long trip into town, drive down Nanhui Lu, and find the broadcast tower for the Suzhou TV station. Climb up to the very top of it, and jump off. Sure, people who did this before had bad experiences, but unless you talk to someone jumping off right at the moment, you have nothing to fear.
Then, collect up what money you can and find an investment advisor named Bernard Madoff; invest everything you can with him. Yeah, OK, a bunch of whiny losers had bad stories to tell about him in the past, but unless you've talked to current investors with him, there's no reason to worry now.
Finally, go buy a big box of raw liver...beef, pork, lamb, it's all good. Carry it over to the Shanghai Aquarium, tie big chunks of it all around your naked body, and then jump right on into the shark tank. Don't let a bunch of drunks and lowlifes deter you with their whining about "past reputation"...have faith, and go for it!

While we're here, let's look at Kevin's little foray onto my forum...the one he now totally disses because we wouldn't be his obedient tool. I told Kevin I would post his missive verbatim- which I did- and would probably follow up with my own observations...which I also did. So, Kevin came on and told his tale, and went on about how maligned his school had become at the hands of a bunch of lying malcontents. Unfortunately, the fact that Kevin is a manager at this school, and has interests at stake in keeping this mill supplied with fresh meat, seems to have completely slipped his mind while making his testimony.
Does this not strike you as something less than forthright and honest?

So, let me put it to the gentle readers of this august forum: Regardless of anything you've heard about SIFLIS's past, seeing how this guy operates, would YOU really want to work for him at this place? Has he not unwittingly spoken eloquent volumes about what the experience must really be like?

What really pops my buttons here is not this ham-fisted, desperate spear-thrust in the darkness...that was easily predictable and is easily disposable. What really boggles is that Kevin, of ALL people, would seek out a battle of name-calling based on people's...uh...personal eccentricities, especially given that he's working with people who will pass on any old rumor from any old lush who will buy them a beer. The line between "brave" and "stupid" is pretty fine, and I'd hesitate to call which side he's on now. But perhaps his personal disclosure should have included quite a bit more. Maybe some of his past Yahoo Groups should have come up, or the word "Navels", or some play-by-play commentaries on schoolyard soccer matches that had...well...a different perspective than what you might find on ESPN?