Indonesian Repairs Are Ridiculous

Exhibit A: The hook that holds our shower head on the wall is screwed to the wall through a small piece of wood.  The wood piece broke in half one day and, instead of replacing the piece of wood entirely, the guy that works at our bungalow took a smaller piece of wood and used that to hold the two broken pieces of wood together and nail it back up again.

Exhibit B: The bicycle I bought for $50 is held together by random pieces of wire.  Yesterday I was pedaling along and my pedal fell off.  This was the third time the pedal fell off.  The first time a nice guy in the street screwed the pedal back on for me, the second time the pedal actually broke and was dangling off but not off entirely... I took it to the bike repair "shop" where the guy replaced it... the very next day it fell off for the 3rd time.  I was standing beside my bike holding the pedal and joking with some friends here about how crappy my bike is, when, as if on cue, the basket fell off!  I'm not even joking!  I walked home that night and when I got back to Blue Marlin (the dive shop) I saw that the basket was tied on with a bit of twine.  Later that day, I went back to the repair shop and he replaced the pedal which had no threads on it (no wonder it fell off) and put two old rusty nuts onto the bolts that are supposed to hold the basket on.  I pedaled about 30 feet away and THE PEDAL FELL OFF AGAIN!  I took it back and he put a bunch of grease in it and screwed it back in again.  I'm sure it will fall off any day now.  Most of the bikes on the island look as though they are on their 50th reincarnation and are held together by bits of wire, chewing gum, and shoelaces.

Exhibit C: The lock on our patio door is missing the bolt so our "bolt" is a rusty nail :)

Exhibit D: This one is actually kind of ingenious...  The place where we are staying had an old water tank on concrete "stilts".  The guys that work here took it down by hand, then broke it all up into concrete rubble by hand, then dug holes in the street and buried all the rubble.  This happened over about 2 weeks with a different 5' deep hole in the street every day.  These holes were large enough to trap a bear and Chrissy and I joked that we would be biking home one evening and fall into a hole.  They always had them filled in by the time night fell and a new hole was dug the next day.  This was ingenious because when it rains here, the streets don't drain and the water gets ankle or deeper.  The guys thought that besides getting rid of the rubble this method would help the street to drain.

I see some little silly thing every day that makes me laugh.