I am not employed in the diplomatic corp for the same reason that Ghengis Khan was not employed as a kindergarten teacher. I am genetically unsuited to any task involving international affairs.

Several years ago, my brother and I went to France for a week-- 'Daryl & Daryl Go To Paree'-- or as the embassy folks called it: 'International Incident'.

Now, my boss informs me that I'll be needing my passport again, to travel to Indonesia to see a customer of ours. Great. If I was out of my league in a country that has a Disney park, I can only imagine the world of trouble awaiting me in a country that has dog on the menu.

At least I've learned to learn from my mistakes. I've learned that what might be considered a common, inoffensive gesture in America can elsewhere be interpreted as a degrading reference to motherhood or body parts.

I've learned that just because a word is translated as 'steak' doesn't guarantee that it came from a cow.

I've learned that other cultures don't use ketchup in quite as many ways as we do. When using ketchup abroad, watch for the reactions of other diners. If they are staring at you as you would stare at someone who was covering their peas with whipped cream, you are probably using ketchup in an inappropriate manner.

If my Indonesian bathroom has a bidet, I will have a much clearer understanding of how it is used-- and NOT used-- than I did in France. Hopefully, this knowledge will help me to avoid the difficult and embarrassing task of trying to purchase a cat-box scooper in a foreign language.

And speaking of a foreign language, I've learned that I should learn a bit of it before, rather than during, my trip.

I checked the "Learn To Speak Indonesian" audio tape out of the library and played it in the car on the way home.

My stereotype of Southeast Asian languages was that they all sounded like cymbals and soup cans being thrown down a stairwell, but that is not the case with Indonesian. Indonesian is a lovely, lilting language-- with rolling 'R's and an abundance of vowels. It bears a closer resemblance to Hindi and Polynesian than to the hard, staccato of Mandarin or Vietnamese.

"Salamat Pagi!", said the instructor.

"Salamat Pagi!", I repeated, parroting the Indonesian phrase for 'Good Morning.' By the time I pulled into the driveway, we were practicing how to ask if the bus goes downtown, ("Apakhah ada bis dah kota?")

I practiced for three weeks and was feeling fairly confident. It wasn't until I returned the tape to the library and boarded the plane for the other side of the world that doubt began grow.

It occurred to me that every syllable I had learned would be useful only if Indonesians spent all of their waking hours saying 'Good Morning', asking directions to the museum or ordering tea in restaurants. When the real conversation began, I feared that I would be swept away in an incomprehensible torrent of lilting vowels and rolling 'R's.

My other-- and admittedly more paranoid fear-- was that the people who recorded the audio tape were malicious frauds who knew absolutely nothing about Indonesian, but knew they could get away with it because anyone who purchased such a product wouldn't know the difference.

Did 'Salamat Pagi' really mean 'Good Morning'? Or did it mean, 'I have a mackerel down my shorts.'? Was I really asking if the bus went downtown, or was I asking where they kept the flying elephants? Was I asking one's name, or saying, "I spit on your ancestors", "Come pet my goat", or "Show me your luscious thighs"?

My Indonesian counterpart, a young engineer named Sudarro, met me at the gate. Within moments, I realized that my linguistic fears had been only half-justified. When I greeted him with 'Salamat Malam! Apa Kabarrr?', (a phrase I had been lead to believe meant, 'Good Evening. How are you?'), he did not react with shock or try to punch me in the head. He replied pleasantly... but at supersonic speed.

While I had spent the last three weeks learning Indonesian-for-tourists, Sudarro had spent the past nine months trying to learn English. He was frustrated. He had questions.

" 'I' before 'e' ?", he asked.

"Yes", I replied, "except after 'c'."

"Why?"

" 'Y' ?", I answered, thinking he meant the letter, "Yes, and sometimes 'w'." My response left him looking even more perplexed that he had been before.

"Your language make no sense, sometimes!", he exclaimed. "Why you make so many words to mean same thing? Why 'go', 'gone', 'went'? Why not just 'go'? 'I go store, yesterday.' What wrong with THAT?"

He had a point. Indonesian is comparatively straight-forward. They have a few prefixes and suffixes that can imply past tense or change nouns into verbs, (turning 'use' into 'used' or 'automobile' into 'drive'), but that's as complicated as it gets-- and the root words never change. Indonesian has no past-perfect tense, no articles, no contractions, no possessives. No wonder he was confused.

"Explain please: 'see', 'saw', 'seen'.", he said. "Same bad thing as 'go', only worse! Now, not only have three words to mean same thing, but all they mean different things too! Word 'see' also mean 'ocean' and also mean third letter of alphabet! 'Saw' mean 'see already' and also mean something to cut wood with! Do you mean 'seen with own eyes' or 'scene of crime'? And what is meaning of word, 'see-saw'? Explain, please.

"Explain English grammar?", I thought. I didn't think there WAS any explaination for our goofy, arbitrary, improbable rules and if there were, it certainly wouldn't be a rational one.

"Sudarro, my friend,", I began, "Not many non-English speakers know the true story of English, but I will share it with you now."

"English was born early in the Middle Ages when a tribe called The Saxons invaded an island that would eventually come to be know as England."

"The islander's native tongue was a simple and sensible one-- not unlike Indonesian-- that was as pleasing to the ear as the sound of flowing water and songbirds in the springtime."

"The Saxons found such beauty and simplicity to be highly offensive. As punishment, they locked the native chieftain in a stone tower, where he was forced to live on fermented goat curd and was not premitted to leave until he had concocted a new, difficult and less-offensive language. The goat curd caused the chief to suffer severe tremors and terrifying hallucinations."

"Four months later he reappeared-- possessed by demons, apparently-- frothing and screaming about past-participles, future-perfect tenses and non-sensical rules with irrational exceptions."

"Like, 'i before e'?", asked Sudarro.

"Except after 'c'.", I added.

"Yes.", he agreed, "except after 'c'. It all makes sense to me now."