Day One

My first thought at the moment is that it is freezing in here. As in – my nails are turning blue, and I’m really glad I didn’t wear the skirt I was going to wear today. The temperature outside is nice and comfortably warm, but this office is truly frigid. Yowza. Mental note – I probably won’t need all the sleeveless tops I brought while I’m not in the field. Although, since the guy I’m currently sharing this office with, C, just stepped out, I turned the a/c way down, so that circulation can return to my extremities. Unfortunately, he just returned and has re-cranked the a/c. Clearly, we’ll have to find a happy medium.

My second thought is that I really should have availed myself of the free breakfast offered by the hotel this morning, as I’m starving. I’ll try to be a little more prompt tomorrow, but I got sucked into watching my DVDs of Alias: Season One this morning. Man, that show kicks butt. And, incidentally, my Altec-Lansing USB-powered speakers? Some of the best money I’ve ever spent. They rock.

But back to less vapid things. C is on his way out, so he and I have a week of overlap, in which he must turn all his responsibilities over to me. Apparently, I have some big, fancy title on this project. Ooh… But don’t worry, I’ll try not to let it get to my head. It looks like the things I’ll have to do are fairly straightforward, and there’s a substantial precedent for them, so this should actually be a good learning experience. I’ll try not to completely botch it.

My attempt to take a small nap yesterday turned into a not-so-small nap. Just call me an overachiever. I managed to sleep for a few hours last night, but I think it’s going to be an interesting week while I adjust. If I recall correctly, last time it took about a week and a half, which was accompanied by some schmoneliness (this is actually a documented side-effect of jetlag, although I think that it’s technically referred to as “low-grade depression” or something, since “schmonely” isn’t a term that’s really taken hold in the world of psychology. Yet.), bizarre-o swings in appetite, and insomnia. At the time, I think that I attributed those things to some overwrought emotional state – turns out it was just jetlag! Fortunately, the neighborhood around my hotel seems to be both interesting and lovely, so I’m quite keen to explore it, and activities and diversions are always helpful things for staving off those feelings of “meah”. It doesn’t look like our office is near much of anything except perhaps other government buildings, but I could be wrong about that. I’ve only been here for two hours, I expect that there’s a lot I don’t know yet.

I just heard from one of my friends in Pakistan – she’s fine. I don’t think the earthquake extended down through Karachi anyway, but I wanted to check in nonetheless. Apparently, Lois was playing tennis at the time and didn’t feel a thing, thank goodness. But it’s sort of like on September 11^th, when I was calling friends on Long Island and in DC suburbs, even people who had no business being in Manhattan or anyhwere near the Pentagon, just to make sure. A colleague of mine who I quite like is in Islamabad, and I’ve asked if anyone has heard whether or not he’s okay. Even if he is, I suspect that it might be a while before we can confirm it. But that was a brutal earthquake, so it’s been on my mind a lot.

We ate lunch at the cafeteria downstairs, and it’s a lot easier eating here as a meat-eater, I have to say. For those of you who may not have known (and there’s really no reason you should have – it’s not as though I took out an ad in the Post), a few weeks ago, I started getting cravings for chicken. Not just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill cravings, but I was thinking about chicken with the frequency with which I’ve heard teenage boys think about girls, and the things they’d like to do with them. Since I’d never been a terribly self-righteous vegetarian, and had always said “well, if I wanted to eat meat, I’d eat meat”, I took said cravings as some part of me wanting to eat meat, so I did. I don’t necessarily see myself turning into a hardcore carnivore any time soon, and I’ve yet to try anything other than poultry and seafood, but since virtually everything in Vietnam is made with fish and/or pork, I think life here will be much easier with my new/old dietary habits. So now I don’t really ask what I’m eating, I just eat it. I’m trying to avoid chicken, what with the bird flu thing, but since two baby chickens were plopped on my plate at lunch, I tried them. As a side note, I find that I do better when what I’m eating doesn’t look so much like what it was.

“As a side note”. Hah! Like this whole thing isn’t a side note.

Oh wow – the sleepiness is starting to hit me. A really lot. And I’m at my office – not the right time for a nap. Just need to make it another 3 ½ hours or so. Oy. You know what you shouldn’t give someone adjusting to an 11-hour time difference? Reports to read, that’s what. I mean, it’s standard fare, and fairly interesting, but I am so not in a reading place at the moment.

I will, however, make it to the end of the day, and the next two days will be spent in the field (and therefore, incommunicado), so that will be nice. I’ve got to buy more film, but I’ve got at least one roll with me, that should suffice for this trip. Our next jaunt out to the field, at the end of the month, is going to be far more substantial (a couple of weeks – yeeshk!), so plan on radio silence then, as well.

Okay, more report reading for me. Then back to the hotel for some running and more Alias tonight. Stupid addictive TV show. (Not that I didn’t already know that.)