What's That Sound?

That “thud, thud” sound? That’s the sound of me banging my head against the wall. I’m staying in Vietnam a few more days to overlap with someone else who’s coming to work on resettlement, and then my boss said something about “two more weeks in Pakistan”. Well…according to my calendar, I have *one* week in Pakistan. And unless they have something really useful for me to be doing, I don’t plan on changing my departure date. But I’ll have to talk to my boss about this on the phone tonight, off the record, because he’s a major player in the “reply to all” festival, so sending him an e-mail ensures that it will be eventually sent to everyone and their dog. Apart from the fact that I want to see family, spend time in London, and get back to my life at home, when my senior colleague left Pakistan, her response to my attempts to carve out a roll for myself and do substantive work was “just write that research report and enjoy the pool at the American school”. That was her “work plan” for me.

Wow – that doesn’t get any less irritating with time. I’d thought it would.

In any event, if I’m going to disrupt plans to do that, all for the purpose of placating the client, then I don’t want to be difficult, but I don’t want to do it, either. Because the report in question was busywork assigned to her by G-man which was then passed to me with her having done nothing on it, and I could do that from my desk in DC. Assuming that G-man’s replacement even knows or cares about it, which is highly doubtful, as he left no notes and no documentation of anything he’d done. (Mostly because he didn’t do much, aside from try to appear important.)

However, my boss could have just had the “two weeks” number in his head from way back when, so it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I think this should all be easier to clear up once I get the chance to talk to him, but I have no intention of launching another round of e-mails. Besides, after our conversation, I have a feeling he’ll do it for me. I’m also tempted to just not change my departure date from Karachi and feign ignorance, but I won’t do that. Not liking the assignment doesn’t justify being irresponsible, I just wish it did sometimes. However, my boss also mentioned something about the project folks in Karachi being “insistent” that I return. I also think that may be a holdover from the initial discussions about where and when I should be spending my field time. But I have an e-mail, which he hasn’t seen, from my senior colleague there who told me not to make myself crazy trying to get back there, and it wasn’t a big deal if I couldn’t. I think I might mention that to him in the “how about one week in the ‘stan?” context. Again, with the banging of the head against the wall.

In the meantime, things here are good, although I’m soon going to reach the end of what I can do without better local contacts. The thing here is that, before you can talk to anyone, you need a proper letter of introduction. People at the provincial and district levels will not work with you unless they’ve been instructed to do so from a higher level of government, and you can’t get to that higher level staff unless you have a formal letter of introduction. Well, that letter of introduction has to be in Vietnamese, and since we haven’t found a good translator yet, we have to send these things to Hanoi, which is why I’ve been waiting since Friday to get a translation of a 3 paragraph letter. (Not that it should take five days, in fact, it should take about an hour seeing as how it was e-mailed up there, but the distance and lack of ability to ride people about things that they’re sitting on doesn’t help.) So, for lack of this letter, I can’t get a meeting where I might, maybe, get local-level contacts, which is the only way I can progress beyond secondary-source data gathering.

You’re just *riveted*, aren’t you? I know. I get that a lot.

I’m trying to be a responsible computer user, and download recent virus definition files every week or two, since I’m not on our network at home and can’t get the live update. Downloading an 11MB file on a dial-up isn’t something I would wish on a lot of people, as it generally means that you have to sit there and stare at your computer for a good 30 – 40 minutes. All so I can do a virus scan and make sure that I don’t haul a very expensive paperweight back to DC with me. So far, so good.

We all went out to lunch today, which was nice. We were trading scary airline stories, and the best one I could contribute was my co-workers’ plane landing in Lahore because the wing was separating from the fuselage. But the new PM was telling us about the time he got on an Ariana flight and saw two men with very large, industrial-strength screwdrivers sitting near the door. Looked a little odd. When everyone had boarded the plane, the two men got up and screwed the door shut because there was something wrong with the locking mechanism and there was no other way it would stay closed. I guess that their attempts to use duct tape were unsuccessful. I can’t tell if that would make me feel better or worse, to be honest. Because, on a plane like that, it seems like an emergency landing would be more likely, therefore you’d want that door to work so you would have a chance of getting out once you hit the ground or the water – whichever you happened to be flying over when the plane started to drop from the sky. But if you don’t have an emergency, then it’s good if the door stays shut all the way to your destination, no? What a dilemma…

D and I just popped down to the coffee shop down the street to get some juice as a pick-me-up for the afternoon sugar crash, and I was reminded of something that I’ve noticed here. It seems virtually impossible to get something “to go” in the sense that you walk up to a counter, tell someone behind the counter what you’d like, pay them, and they hand you what you just ordered. Instead, you are flagged down by a server who takes your order, asks you sit at a table while it’s being prepared, and then brings it over to your table with the bill. Don’t get me wrong – it’s nice and customer service-y, but sometimes I just want to order my stuff and leave, ya know? Maybe I’m just becoming too antisocial for my own good. Okay, that’s highly doubtful; I suppose I’m just more accustomed to the way we do things at home. Where people in stores will ask you if you’re really going to buy something because the store is closing soon and if you’re not going to buy anything, could you just leave? Maybe we don’t have it all figured out either, eh?

What am I, Canadian? Take off, Hoser!

A post-script – just spoke to the boss, he said not to change my plans to leave Pakistan, and said that I should extend my time here longer, particularly in light of the “just write the report and enjoy the swimming pool” comment. So it now looks like I’ll be here until next Friday, returning to Karachi for just a few days to make nice. All things considered, I’m fine with that plan. It would have been nice to spend more time with the few friends I had there, but I’ll have time to take some pictures and spend a little more time at the pool. Much beyond that, I don’t think is terribly necessary as there’s not much for me to do there – at least not that I’ve been told about. So I’m very glad that my boss agrees! London, Baby!!! Yeah!!