Shedding a Little Light

I heard from my boss that me not returning (maybe) has nothing to do with my job performance here (big sigh of relief), it has to do with the fact that I wasn’t on the original proposal and the client is being particular. Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t be coming back here *at all*, it just means that I’m not likely to be back here for several months in the fall. So…I don’t get to be Eloise after all. *sigh* Ah well, maybe some other time.

Another team member got here today – a very cool French girl who is about the same age as me, we’ve hit it off well, so that’s really fun. She works for my company in the Paris office and has promised to give me a list of fun places that I have to see when I’m there in November. Her English is excellent, but we’ve also talked in French some – it’s good practice for me. In any case, it’s the first time that I’ve been able to talk to someone my age that I can relate to since I left DC! I guess I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it, but we’ve been able to talk almost incessantly. Hurrah for that!

It’s so funny to see how quickly things here change; where I’m going, how it’s going to go, what I’m going to be doing. In some ways it’s interesting, in some ways frustrating, but it’s certainly never boring.

I am definitely getting sick, but I do think it’s only allergies. Nevertheless, I ended up staying in last night because I felt completely exhausted. I made myself get up this morning and go running, and almost felt like I would need to use the “Emergency Stop” button on the treadmill (intentionally this time), but managed to make it through. Yay Mandy! When you’re in a place, however, when it’s 85 degrees and 100% humidity by the time you go for your 6 am run, it is *amazing* how quickly your body heats up, and how long it takes to really cool down. The gym has an air conditioner, but I don’t think anyone has ever used it, so mostly you just melt on the treadmill. There’s one guy who also gets up to workout early in the morning who has figured out a way to deal with that problem. He goes downstairs after his workout, strips down to his shorts, and goes swimming for a while.

I hope they use a lot of chlorine in that pool.

We went to a meeting yesterday and one today, both of which were very productive, and both of which were conducted almost entirely in Vietnamese. It was fine, it provided some zoning out time, and I managed to get some of the guys to ask a few questions I needed to have answered, but…yeah. Don’t know that it was the best use of my time – a good way to meet people we’ll have to work with, though. But to be at a meeting like that without the benefit of an interpreter is an odd experience. People are talking a mile a minute, occasionally laughing, nodding, looking at me as they’re saying something. I’m smiling serenely, trying to get “Does Your Mama Know?” by ABBA out of my head (it was on a TV show last night, for some inexplicable reason). Of course, now that I mentioned it, it’s back. Dang it.

It’s funny to have so many people in the office now – for such a long time it was just the PM and me. But now we’re at the point of ordering more desks (wonder if they’ll all be delivered on the back of a motorcycle?) and chairs and computers, so it looks like it’s really coming together.

I have been sleeping really poorly lately, for reasons I don’t fully understand. So this means that my body is looking for other appropriate times and places to catch up on sleep. Like now. It’s unfortunate, though, that “now” is 4:00 pm, as I sit here, stationed at my desk. Bad luck, I suppose. I’m in “waiting” mode at the moment, so I don’t have any urgent tasks to attend to, and therefore no sense of urgency to keep me on my toes. Although, the good thing is that I’ve managed to get done what I have needed to get done, so no one is waiting on work from me. (Wow, I guess I deserve a gold star or something.) The benefits of showing up early. I get to turn my draft in first, and have the most time for comments and revisions. Hopefully, they won’t be extensive, but I’ve got another week and a half to fix it if they are.

Now that my return to Vietnam is highly questionable, I’ve got to do a little mental re-adjustment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy to have the time at home and be back in my life, and I think it’s going to be great to spend autumn in DC. But there’s still a bit of mental recalibration involved. I won’t have time this trip to do the extra traveling I wanted to do around Vietnam, which is disappointing. However, with the amount of business that we do here, I’d be surprised if the opportunity to return never presented itself. Besides, now that I’ve been here and have come to like the place, I can certainly think about returning on my own time. Not any time terribly soon, mind you, as I’ve got other travel plans for the near future. But some time – I’d definitely like to come back.