Don't ask 'Why?'.

Marni and I went out on our date-night, last night. A great little Turkish place up the road. Actual, Turkish...not a doner kebab! Anyway, a nice couple sat down beside us and we got to talking. Turns out, the man was a Principal at a local, Indonesian public school. To make things better, he was Canadian! From BC, mind you, but still Canadian.

He was soon to return to Canada to do some recruiting and he asked Marni and I what he should include in a presentation about teaching in Jakarta. Our answer, "Don't ask why anything is the way it is." That question could drive you crazy.

A couple examples, recently. The manpower department has recently decided that they need to have all of our teachers university transcripts in order to renew their work permits. It doesn't matter that all of these teachers have already received work permits and are simply renewing them. They had been approved in the past, but now they government does not believe itself. That may seem easy to overcome, except our Principal has been teaching for 30 years and her college doesn't exist anymore.

Another teacher had taken a number of history modules in her last year of University. The module names: Sorcery and Witchcraft, Hollywood, just to name a few. It may be tough to sell yourself as a teacher when those are the modules the Indonesian government will see. One of the other wonderful things is that all the transcripts needed to be translated into Indonesian. I am certain that will happen smoothly .

Another thing we find around here is the number of restaurants that are out of food. Why? Don't ask. KFC with no chicken, McDonalds with no hamburgers, Bars with no beer. There is a restaurant across the street that has many liquor bottles along their bar. They are all empty. You ask for Scotch- none, wine- not today, Meester. But, decorations....they have many.

We have no gym equipment at our school. Over the last few years much of it has been stolen, kicked over the fence, etc. We were to make a large order from a company in Australia. One of our Indonesian teachers mentioned to me that we could simply get that stuff locally. When I asked "Why don't we go and buy some equipment, then?" I received the standard 'deer in headlights' look. Silly me for asking why.

Looking at this topic I guess many questions have simple answers:

Why do the buses not have doors? Duh, to get in and out while the bus is still moving.

Regardless of whose fault a car accident is, why does the car owner always pay for the scooter driver? Duh, because the car is bigger. You should have known the scooter would run into your back bumper.

Why are there stoplights? That is a good question. Apparently, 98% of Indonesians are colourblind, anyway.

Why is there a Saskatchewan Roughriders Jersey in the outlet store across the street? Because no one at home will buy it.

Why is that man strapped to a palm tree? How else would he get it home on his scooter.