The Chinese consul, in a rage of charity, decided to give the population of Curaçao a valuable and educational gift. Of course, we must take the Chinese culture into account because they are very sensitive when it comes to etiquette.
She decided to give our National Library 500 books, including the necessary racks.
The library now has a problem, because they don't know if the books are in Mandarin, Cantonese or if they are instruction books on how to make Dim Sum, or how to kill our King Willem Alexander with chopsticks!
Maybe they're Chinese porn stories or how to repair the start engine of a Ford Pinto.
Those books need to be registered by title, name of the author, and a short synopsis of the content on its cover so that somebody knows what the book is all about. The knowledge of the bookworms in the library does not get any further than "Saté ku batata" (Kebab and fries) and “Nasigoreng,” so that does not help much either.
To return the books would be an offense and somewhere we are supposed to do something like that as a counter gesture, sending 500 books (in Papiamento) to Hong Kong and sending a wanderlust union leader or politician along to help them set it up and help with the translation of the books and to set up the catalogue so that we can get rid of that one.
Very often I find situations like that on this rock and they make my day and again and again; they make me laugh my butt off!
Arthur Donker
