This Should Say Something

I had a chat with the Yemen head project guy (YHPG), and it turns out that I will be needed in Yemen for January (all of it) and most of February. Which I’m not excited about. He said that, after that, I could come to Paris and work on it with the project manager for a few weeks, and my first thought was “forget that – I want to go home”. So that’s how much I want to get off the road for a while – I would gladly forego a few weeks in Paris, with someone else picking up the tab for me the whole time. The plus side of being here is that I could take the train over to London on a weekend or two to see Stephen, Annette, and the kids, which would be really great. But yeah…don’t know about that one.

Funny – although he had said nothing to me about how my “I must be home for Christmas” edict was an issue, I went to dinner last night with him and the project manager. When I said that my first trip would be for only two weeks, the project manager said “you can’t stay longer than two weeks?” and I said “no, I’m sorry, but that’s not possible”, then YHPG chimes in “well really, the 15^th is ten days before Christmas”, and I said “yes, but I have family coming in from out of town on the 17^th, and I’ll need to be conscious for their arrival – it’s simply not possible.” That’s only a slight exaggeration, as my grandmother is coming to visit, but she’s not staying with me and she’s arriving after the 17^th. But I didn’t feel like explaining post-Thanksgiving. I did, however, think that was a little lame – not saying anything until that moment to try to put me on the spot. But my thoughts on that are that if my schedule doesn’t work, then they can send someone else. No problem for me. One thing that is interesting is that our client hasn’t seen my CV yet, so it’s possible they might reject me, and then all of this could be a moot point anyway. Although, if that’s a real possibility then perhaps they shouldn’t be buying my plane tickets. But again – that’s not going to be my issue to sort out if that’s what comes to pass – I think they’re planning on using me anyway.

Right now I’m sitting here in the lobby of my hotel, and Mom and Dad haven’t arrived yet – apparently their flight was delayed. It seems to have been delayed considerably, so I’m not sure what’s going on, as I have no working cell phone and no internet access at the moment. I’m sure they’ll arrive soon, but it’s not a good start for them, to have their flight all messed up.

The trip back here from Hanoi was interesting – I arrived at the airport ridiculously early, because I’d already checked out of my hotel and didn’t really have anywhere to go. Since I was so early, I had to wait around for three hours before anyone would check me in, which made me super happy. I grabbed a seat near the counter, pulled out my book, and waited. Soon this enormous Vietnamese family came over and decided that they all had to sit right next to me on that bench. So, they were all cramming onto the bench, and I scooched over a little to try to be nice. The matriarch of the family was sitting next to me, and I could tell that I was the topic of some conversation. Out of nowhere, she reaches over and starts rubbing my leg as I’m reading, saying something, I s’pose, about me. Possibly how they’d be able to fit a lot more people on the bench if my big American butt weren’t occupying so much of it. Nonetheless, I kind of gave her a “what on earth do you think you’re doing, Lady?” look, and they all chuckled. I went back to reading my book, highly irritated by this time and determined that I wasn’t going to move. One of the girls, who was about school age, decided that she wanted to practice her English with me, which was unfortunate because I just wanted to read my book. So, 20 feet from a massive clock, she would ask me what time it was, then was commenting, I think, on the book I was reading. I say “I think” because I could barely understand her, but that didn’t stop her from constantly interrupting my attempts to read. Had I been less tired and/or less irritated, I probably would have been more indulgent, and as it was, I was polite, but I just didn’t have the energy to be anything more. We were finally allowed to start checking in so I lined up with what felt like several hundred other people, and was chatting idly with a nice French woman who was returning home from her vacation. I finally got up to the counter, I checked in my bags, then the girl at the counter looked at my carry-on, the same carry on that I’ve been taking with me for months on different trips, on different airplanes, all with no problem, and she said that I couldn’t take it on the plane. I said that it hadn’t been a problem to take on the way to Vietnam, from Paris to Hanoi, and she said “no, you can’t take it, it’s too big.” So she hauled it up onto the little scale and said “oh…and now you’re over your weight limit for baggage, so you’ll have to pay a fine.” To say that I was indignant doesn’t half cover it, especially when that fine turned out to be $255. Again, work should pay for it, but MAN was I hacked.

We made our way onto the plane and I settled into my seat. Vietnam Airlines is a perfectly nice airline, decent seats, and coach even has decent leg room, and I managed to get several hours of sleep, I think, so that was nice. I’m not exactly enamored of their customer service, but they’re not too bad. The flight was uneventful, but there were two strange things that happened as we came in for our landing: first, they fumigated the plane, I think because of some World Health Organization regulation, but the flight attendants were walking down the aisles with these spray cans of some anonymous substance that made me start to cough. Second, they told us that we didn’t need disembarkation cards to enter France. Well, after an hour of standing in line, it turned out that we did need those cards. Basically what happened was that they ran out and told everyone else we didn’t need them. So a group of about 30 of us were stuck – the guys at immigration wouldn’t let us through, the police, to whom they told us to speak, said that we needed to talk to Air France, and Air France said that we weren’t their problem and that they didn’t have the proper cards for us anyway. After going from place to place about 3 times, the people at Air France finally came up with an acceptable substitute. We got through immigration, and I ran to get my bags which were about to be bundled off somewhere, since they’d been circling on the carousel for about an hour or more, by that point.

I found an ATM (“s’il vous plait, ou se trouve un machine de banque?”), and found a cab, and was off to Paris, finally. My taxi driver was a very nice man – used to be a French interpreter for the Chinese government, and was offered a place in France after Tienanmen Square by the French ambassador in China, which he gladly took. So we were chatting amiably in French, and I was delighted to be heading toward my hotel, even if I’d have to move to a different hotel the next night. (The place where I was staying with my parents couldn’t take me for an extra night.) I checked in and wedged myself through the door with my absurd load of bags. After showering and beginning to feel human, I went to the office. Eventually. I got confused about the address and walked about 10 times the necessary distance to get there – which was further confused because nothing was marked – like the address or the office itself. However, I finally found it and climbed the stairs. The door was locked so I knocked on the door, and was delighted when D came to the door. We settled into her office and she and I were catching up. It was so nice to see a familiar face, but even before then, I was just so glad to be in France and walk down the street anonymously.

I made it through a full day at the office, much to my surprise, and even made it through dinner, and barely made it through a drink with D. I think it took me all of 2 seconds to fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, however.