Keystone Cops Situation

In quite a number of countries around the world, particularly Asia, the process of schools and teachers getting all the right approvals and permits can be a lengthy one. Quite often a teacher has to start working before they are strictly 'legal'.

Yesterday a rather comedic situation developed at my school. We have about half dozen new teachers whose work/residence permits, called KITAS in Indonesia, have not been fully processed as yet.

Some officials from one of governement agencies arrived (I don't know which one). A message was sent to the few teachers without the KITAS and they had to go and hide in the staff housing behind the school.

Then the officials found a phone list of various teachers and their internal extension numbers, so wanted to know who the missing teachers were and where they were......

so the office staff have also been running around hiding so they don't have to answer questions!

**someone told me I should video this, speed it up 3x and then play benny hill music in the background! :) **

The officials remained in the reception area for a number of hours, turns out that they wanted to speak to our head principal (for a hand out, no doubt) .

Last year some guys arrived and demanded an amount of money (special tax for foreigners workign at our school) - according to them we had 40 odd foreigners working, we said no, how did you get that number? They had merely counted all the white faces in the department photos on the wall not realising that a number of staff were counted twice because they teach in more than one department......

I guess our white faces all look the same! haha

Need a workman...part 2

As a follow up.

They did come, they looked at it and went "Ooooh"

I suppose that's a bit of a warning sign.

Then they asked me if I had a step ladder? WTF ? Didn't they come prepared? silly me! They arrived on a motorcycle. 2 technicians one motorcyc - I guess not much room for tools to do the job.

anyways, they poked around abit, asked me to sign a report saying they had seen it and they'll check with the owner again .....

and left.

Need a workman...

In general, getting a homehandy man or repairer around in Asia is much easier and quicker, not to say cheaper than in Western countries.

However, it can have some difficulties also, the 2nd floor bathroom has been leaking water through the ceiling into the living room, I discovered this wednesday evening.

So I asked one of the secretaries at work to ring to get it fixed the next day, a numpty came out looked at it and said broken pipe in the wall.

No shit sherlock - fix it will ya?

He decided they'll fix it Monday - no - i need it fixed now.

So eventually we arrange them to arrive 8.00am Saturday morning - cos i'm going out later to watch the rugby.

8.00am I get a call - what time do i want them to come over. NOW, I says, oh umm ok the technicians will be there at 9.00

9.15 i get a call - the technicians will be there after lunch

Not good enough i said come now!

The water is dripping through an electric light. The ceiling has a metre sized wet patch around the light - i don't want it collapsing in.

anyway - they said they'll call back in 10 mins.....

hmmmmmmmmm.

still waiting.

They did call back, 40 minutes later, this time the technicians will be there, umm, err (I'm sure she is just making up a time from the top of her head) maybe about 11.00am

Is this ok?

Now i wanted to scream and shout and say "NO, it is not ok, whatever happened to 8.00am?"

but that would only have a negative effect.

So I politely sigh and say yes.

She apologised about the times.

Lets see what happens now.....

Hobbies...

Hobbies.....

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Well, more of a project really. As a kid I used to love making plastic model air planes and tanks etc.... I used to always say I'd love to make a wooden model ship one day. And so, one day my wife bought me a kit for my birthday. I have been working on it for years ..... . drilling, hammering, gluing, sculpting etc. I find that I work on it in short bursts.... and other times don't touch it.

Apart from some of the metal pieces, I pretty much need to build, cut to length and shape and generally construct everything.....

Really enjoy it - and it looks good (IMO)

Anyway - last week or two I've been excited again about it - so thought I'd post some piccies. (dont have them all from the beginning tho....)

here is the oldest pic I have - the hull has been completed (internal ribs plus 2 layers of planks) - some pieces on the decking have been built and added.Building the masts.....
building and adding the spars to the rear-most mastan action shot.... me working on the boat.I've been working on the rigging and netting .....will add more as I go, but dont hold your breathe ...haha - this is already a 4 year project!

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some updated pics, i've added the sails for the backmast,

and now began to fashion all of the remaining cross mast pieces!

Be careful with Language

My school is currently looking at implementing a new house system and part of that involves naming the various houses. The teachers involved have decided to allow the students to choose the house names eg Indonesian Islands, Indonesian folk heroes, etc.

The student bulletin this morning there was a note from said teachers that said some of their best entries so far are related to birds, 'Garuda', 'Cendrawasih' and 'Burung Enggang'.

What they did not realise is that Burung is also Indonesian slang for 'penis' ........

I think that is 1 point to the students and 0 points to the expat teachers.