I understand why I am writing these so infrequently. I am so used to the amount of insanity that surrounds me in this country that I forget to write it down.
Our school has been building a beautiful addition to the property. It is a four story secondary and administration building. The project has been going since last July. Actually, with people that use very little in terms of modern tools, the building is stunning and was erected very quickly. Yes, yes I did just use the word erected.
Here are a few issues we have had to deal with:
Firstly, the building was supposed to be done over Xmas holidays. Considering the size of the project that does not surprise me that they were late. Even now that the building is 99% complete and teachers have moved in we are still waiting for the power company to hook things up. It turns out that they need to shut the power down to the entire neighbourhood to hook up our power. But, when talking to others, the only time the power company needs to do that is if they are upgrading the entire system to the entire neighbourhood. Turns out, they are trying to make our school pay for upgrades they need to make anyway. What?! Corruption in this country?! No! (insert sarcasm, here) So, as of yesterday, the school does not have enough electricity to power the whole school. My A/C crapped out over lunch and my room was a sauna for the afternoon. In fact, even Zoe wouldn't come in because she said it smelled like sweat.
We have wheelchair accessability, now. Unfortunately, when they connected the new buiding to the old one they did not measure the height differences. So, our wheelchair ramp comes with a 1.5 metre drop off at the end. But, just to keep everyone feeling equal, the stairs have the same drop off. Look on the bright side, we are the first school with cross-country running facilities on campus.
Because we have been building so many different buildings on the campus, we have been subjected to constant flooding. Classrooms, cafeterias, assembly halls have all been washed out with the rains. In fact, the temporary wall in our assembly hall has almost rotted through.
To bring up the safety regulations in the new building, we have installed a fire extinguishing system. Brilliantly, they designed a pump that would use the pool water in case of any fire emergency. Not a bad idea considering traffic and fire-fighting facilities in Jakarta. Anyway, there are these enormous pipes that run down the side of the property, hanging from the cement walls that divide up the properties. As well, the pipes begin in the shallow end of the swimming pool. However, I don't think the designers understand how much water weighs. It is clear to me that if they fill those pipes with water they will tear off the wall and bend. But, what do I know?
Also, because the pipes begin in the shallow end of the pool there is no way they have access to all of the water in the pool. Hopefully, if there is a fire, it is a small one. Also, hope there are no small children in the pool so they don't get sucked into the pipes.
We had a worker cut himself on a piece of broken glass recently. Our Principal got him all fixed up and the bleeding stopped. He then proceeded to go and pick up more glass and almost cut his thumb off. I am unsure if he went back to work after that incident.
