NEW ALBANY — Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend of mine about the worst day of work we had ever had.
One stood out in my mind that cannot compare with any other first days. It happened a few years ago when I went to Hong Kong to become principal of an international high school.
I arrived two weeks prior to my official first day of work to get our school-provided flat in order and livable. It was on the first floor of a six-flat block of flats.
It had two bedrooms, a study, dining room and kitchen. The living room and bedroom furniture had been acquired from the United States Embassy from the school owners for absolutely nothing. The Diang family — false name to protect their idiocy — was notoriously cheap.
My first day of work was the first Monday for the fourth week of July. I had been in Hong Kong a month earlier for the graduation ceremony to meet my faculty and the outgoing principal, Stan, the man I was replacing. He was Australian and a great guy with a terrific sense of humor. He was real evasive about why he was leaving.
After two weeks of settling in, it came time for me to go to work. In Stan’s haste to get home to Australia, he left the office a total mess. My task for the next couple of days was to make this office my own.
I only met Stan over a couple of days but I found him to have a wicked sense of humor, and I think I would have enjoyed working with him. As I began working to clear the mess on, in, and under the desk, I found a large bulging envelope with my name on it.
Under my name was a phrase “you may need this.” There was a p.s. “for backup, check the file marked school song.”
The envelope was from Stan. I carefully opened the envelope and inside I found a very realistic .45-caliber pistol. As instructed on the envelope, I opened my file drawer, under the file “school song,” and found another bulging envelope with, you guessed it, another toy .45-caliber pistol.
Inside this envelope I found a note from Stan. “Dear Tim, I couldn’t begin to tell you this in person at school the other day, but you have entered a bizarre organization. All you can do is survive through the term of your contract and get out as fast as you can. Enjoy and explore Hong Kong, and mark your time. It’s the only way you will stay sane, Stan.”
Wow, first the conversation with Dr. Li and now this. I didn’t mention any of this to anyone else in the building, as I didn’t know where anyone else stood regarding the Diangs or Dr. Li. In later weeks, I would also learn the joke behind Stan placing one of the envelopes under the file “school song.”
I eventually discovered why Stan had located his instructions under the file school song. The principal of the middle school believed that his middle-school students should be grateful for attending our school and show proper enthusiasm. Each morning, he assembled his entire faculty and student body in the auditorium for daily announcements.
At the conclusion of announcements, he made them all sing the school song. If he did not hear proper enthusiasm, he made them sing it repeatedly until he could hear rejoicing in their voices to be at our school.
The thought of making a group of kids sing a school song until they sounded happy and grateful was absolutely absurd. This guy ran an extremely tight ship and expected his faculty to be equally enthusiastic about singing the school song.
Watching them all there in the assembly hall trying to be enthusiastic reminded me of the news reels from the 1930s of the torchlight processions honoring the Fuhrer and the Third Reich.
These kids had nothing to rejoice about. There they were, standing in ridiculous uniforms — red jacket, blue slacks, white shirt, blue tie — singing about a school they couldn’t care less about and cursing their parents for placing them in Stalag International School.
I had two years to fulfill on my contract with the school, and if this was day one, what did the next two years have in store for me.
Tim McDonald can be reached at timothy.mcdonald@agsfaculty.indwes.edu
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