Saturday, June 25, 2005

Miss Saigon

Sorry, I couldn't help it...

I have arrived in Vietnam, and I can’t wait to go exploring. Today was something of a wasted day, because I got about 1 ½ hours of sleep last night, so I found the place, unpacked, and crashed for a few hours. I didn’t actually realize that I’d fallen asleep until I woke up and something totally unfamiliar was playing on TV. I’m staying in an extended stay apartment complex place, which is fine. There’s a mini-mart downstairs that I stumbled to and bought a few things to tide me over.

The flight here was pretty good, I left from Karachi at 11:30 pm, arriving in Bangkok at 6:30 am, including the two-hour time difference. The flight was only five hours, so it went fairly quickly by the time they served dinner (I’m not exactly accustomed to dinner at midnight, but I hadn’t eaten more than a piece of toast since lunch) and I watched a movie. When they served dinner, the flight attendant didn’t see my glass of water and spilled the whole thing all over me. She was so incredibly apologetic, I’m guessing that she’s run into some serious air-rage in her time. I said it was an accident, she didn’t see it, it was only water, etc. Besides, the planes are so incredibly dry that I wasn’t sitting in wet clothes for too long. I woke up in time to see us flying over the countryside around Bangkok, which was really cool. Miles and miles of right angles as we flew over rice fields. But when the plane would bank sharply right or left, the water on the fields would reflect the morning sunlight, to punctuate the fields with these brilliant mirrors. The buildings in the suburbs looked so orderly and symmetrical from the air, in contrast to the organic chaos of Karachi. The airport was fairly unremarkable, but I was incredibly relieved to get on the plane and close my eyes, even for a short while.

We landed in Vietnam, and happily, I was one of the first people off the plane and into the immigration line. However, since I had to get my visa upon arrival, I was in the wrong line. After I went through the procedures to get my visa, it seemed as though ten planes full of people had unloaded in the meantime. I got in the shortest line I could find, and as my hour-long wait ticked by, I began to have new appreciation for what my parents had to do when we were little kids and traveling all over the place. There were so many families with small children, who were acting the way small children act when they’re tired, in an unfamiliar place, and have to stand still in line, or sit quietly in their parents’ arms. Some were running around and playing, some were crying, and some were sitting there, as their parents shifted them from side to side. But sooner or later, they all got sick of being good sports, and I just felt bad for them. There was a couple from Taiwan in front of me, who had the cutest baby girl who was obviously teething, since her gums had that ridge along the top, as was visible when she smiled, and she was drooling like a champ at every available opportunity. My waiting game as I stood in line was to guess where people were from, and see if I could catch a glimpse of their passport covers to see if I was right.

Okay, so it’s not a great game, but my options were limited. It’s not like I was going to bust out Parcheesi in the immigration line.

I had been told that my cab ride should cost $4, which was good to know. I stopped at an ATM to get some Vietnamese Dong (and my wallet now has three different currencies in it), although I had some dollars in case I needed them. As soon as I got out of the airport, I was approached by someone who asked if I needed a cab, and I said yes, so he took my wheelie bag and started to walk. In these situations, whether you want to do business with the guy in question or not, you have to follow, if only to get your bag back. I told him where I was going, at which point he said “why are you staying there? Why aren’t you in the center of the city? It’s very far. Ten dollars.” I looked at him and said “I’m here on business. This is where I’m staying, it’s not that far, and I will pay you four dollars.” He said no, so I grabbed the handle on my suitcase and said that I would then find someone else. All of a sudden four dollars seemed more reasonable. I had already started to walk back to where more cab drivers were waiting, and several of them began to tell me that they knew where I needed to go. One of them decided to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and started to wheel my bag to where his cab was located, so I followed and folded myself into the backseat, grateful to be that much closer to an actual bed.

In some ways, Ho Chi Minh City reminds me of Taipei, in that the streets are clogged with people on motorcycles and scooters, sometimes entire families on one bike. I also saw women in their conical hats on bicycles, which is a very Asian sight to see, and oddly comforting to me – images from my childhood, I suppose. People weave in and out of traffic, cars, vans, bicycles, motorcycles, and scooters all sharing space. It’s true that the place where we’re staying is outside of the center city, it’s not frequented as much by tourists, but there are a lot of things I like about that. When I walk around (which I’ll do tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep), as much as I am definitely planning to make my way over to the center of the city for the sights and the shopping and the good restaurants and all of that good stuff, I like the fact that my current neighborhood is mostly regular Vietnamese people living their lives. When we get our office set up, the project manager said that he’s going to have it located in the center of the city, so we’ll have access to both areas on a daily basis.

I arrived and checked in, and they gave me my key and their best wishes for a good stay. I hauled my suitcase, which may only be carryon size, but it’s…dense, up four flights of stairs to my apartment. And my key didn’t work. I then hauled everything back down, because the only thing more irritating than having to go back and forth, would be going back and forth, only to find my suitcase missing in the end. It’s much cooler in Ho Chi Minh City than it is in Karachi these days, by at least ten degrees, if not more. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not still very hot and humid. By the time I got back down to the office, I must have started to look the way I felt, because they brought me a nice cold glass of water as I waited for the issue to be sorted out, saying that they thought I looked “tired”. I walked with the engineer back up to the apartment, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I wished fervently that someone would help me with my bag. But no such luck this time. I struggled back up the stairs for the second time, my clothes sticking to me in the heat and humidity, as the engineer calmly trotted up the stairs behind me. Fortunately, the replacement key that I was given worked, and I was able to walk in and crank the air conditioning.

Once I woke up, I wandered down to the mini mart for a few essentials. I could figure out what most things were, but unlike in Pakistan, English isn’t tremendously prevalent. Most people know some English, and there are still a bunch of signs in English, but it is definitely more of a foreign environment in that sense. I’m really happy to be here, though. I definitely stand out, as I do in Pakistan, but people don’t seem to care. Also, since the security situation here is worlds better than in Karachi, there are a lot more foreigners walking around. It was a beautiful and bright day, and as the evening approached, I saw some storm clouds start to roll in across the city. The project manager came by to suggest that we head out for some dinner, and just as I finished changing out of the clothes that I’d both traveled and slept in (ick), the storm hit. It was very, very heavy, with lots of wind, and in a most welcome change from rain in Karachi, it managed to break the heat, and the evening was cool and comfortable after that.

We went out to a restaurant in the city center, which was nice. It appeared to cater to the international crowd, and had London Underground theme. The food was good, but I started to fade quite a lot. The project manager is a very nice, very chatty German guy, who has been doing this kind of work for years. He’s actually lived up in Hanoi for quite some time, so he hasn’t spent much time in Ho Chi Minh City (which plenty of people still call Saigon, actually), but he’s quite familiar with the country and the culture. We’ve got a meeting tomorrow afternoon, but I think I’ll be spending the day up to that point at the pool or gym, and checking out my new ‘hood. I did some laundry tonight, and was a little startled to see that the hose from the laundry machine empties out onto the floor of the laundry room, instead of directly into a drain. However, it didn’t result in a flood, and I’ve got some more clean clothes, so that’s good enough for me.

The next couple of weeks are bound to be interesting, and my e-mail connection is only so-so, but this is a good break for me from life in the ‘stan. There are a lot of good things about Pakistan, but I’m glad to have a little more freedom for the time being.

Friday, June 24, 2005

I'll be off, then

Well, I'm offically packed (three weeks' worth of clothes into a carry-on. I am my father's daughter....), and I'm basically waiting around to leave for the airport. Today was insane, with meetings up the wazoo and the less-than-happy discovery that G-man completely botched things, even worse than I originally thought he had. It also looks as though, in the process, he completely took advantage of this teeny little local NGO, which is so not cool. So there's a lot of work that needs to start over, and that makes my timing for this trip not exactly great. However, since things at work had been stressing me out a lot, I am still glad to have the reprieve. Not that I'm going on vacation or anything, I'm going to do more work, but the change of scene will be good. And despite the fact that, according to weather.com, it's going to rain almost the entire time I'm there, I think it will still be a good trip. And I'll avoid wearing white shirts.

Everyone at the office has said "You are going back to America?", although it's pronounced more like "Amrica". Not yet, I'm afraid - more places to go and things to see before I head back to the land of computerized traffic and potable water. It's odd, I've had a little bout of feeling kind of schmonely and homesick lately - although it's not so much wanting to be back in DC. I mean, that's part of it, but mostly I just miss friends and family. My peeps, if you will. (I'm so "street".)

I suppose that's all for the moment - I'm mostly just killing time. However, I've still got an hour until Hamid cheerfully deposits me at the airport, and I am descended upon by men who hang out at the airport, and who will grab my luggage and to be my "porter". For a fee, of course. I've gotten very good at saying "NO, THANK YOU", so that I can politely, yet bitchily, let them know that I would prefer to handle my own luggage, thankyouverymuch.

Next stop, Ho Chi Minh City!

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Almost done for now

It’s been an interesting and frustrating day, I have to say. I had a meeting with a local NGO here, and found out that G-man has completely botched part of this project, so now we need to figure out ways to address it. Some of you probably already know this about me, but while I’m certainly happy to offer help when it’s needed and all of that stuff, I hate it when it suddenly becomes my job to clean up someone else’s mistakes. Particularly when the person in question will never, ever, in a million years, admit to a mistake. It will be anyone’s fault, including mine, my supervisor’s, and probably even my mother’s (sorry, Mom), before it will be his fault. I’m not a big fan of having to suck up to someone just because they feel entitled to it, so all this bowing and scraping is a little tough for me. I am, however, doing my best to suck it up and get over it. It’s all part of the job, blah, blah, blah. Besides, he’s officially gone from the position, so my dealings with him beyond tomorrow are likely to be about nil. I just hope that his replacement is more worried about actually doing his job than just trying to make it seem as though he’s doing his job.

After running around and scrambling to get things in order, I finally heard from the guy in Bangladesh today. It looks like my trip is definitely on, so that’s very good news. Now I just have to figure out the logistics of it. If you want to get your visa on arrival in Bangladesh, apparently you have to have tons and tons of paperwork, as well as $500. Not five hundred of whatever the currency is in Bangladesh. Five hundred dollars. To say that such a thing seems excessive to me is an understatement. I mean, $500 can probably pay the annual salary of a rural civil servant. So maybe my poor planning is helping to better serve rural areas of Bangladesh.

Let’s not bet on that.

I’m hoping that there’s a Bangladeshi consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, otherwise I don’t know quite what I’m going to do. But hey – all their paperwork says that the rules may change from time to time. Maybe they’ll let me haggle for my visa. Hmm…well, I’m bad at haggling anyway, so let’s hope not.

Hamid and I had a good and productive morning, however. We picked up my ticket to Vietnam and I picked up my coat at the tailor. I have to say, I think they did a really nice job. I also have to say that I was not looking forward to trying on my nice wool coat today. It’s been over 100 degrees for the last few days, and when I get home and turn on the air conditioner, I can’t tell if the noise I hear is the air conditioner laughing at me for expecting it to be able to make a difference, or if it’s the air conditioner crying in pain, because it’s facing an impossible task. If it could just stay on the whole time, that would probably be okay because the apartment feels much cooler on Sundays when I keep the a/c on from the time I get home on Saturday evening. However, the houseboy turns it off on the mornings that I go to work, so it has to start all over when I get home Monday through Saturday. If Sisyphus were an air conditioner...

I leave for Vietnam tomorrow – my visa letter still says “Mr. Amanda Goebel”, but I’ve been told that’s unimportant. I mostly just want to get to Vietnam and get settled into being there. It’s not that I think it’s necessarily going to be any simpler to work there than is has been to work here, but for me it might be easier to live there than here. We’ll see. In any event, the project here has been so frustrating lately that I think a breather will do me good.

I’ve told Hamid that, one day, I would like for him to take me around to take pictures of Karachi. I spend so much of my time being shuttled from one place to another that it’s been difficult to capture any of the images that make up my day. I’m going to have to set out one day with a few rolls of film and photograph some of the parts of the city with which I’ve become familiar. One thing that still strikes me as very odd is the selection of American pop culture establishments that are available here. We have McDonald’s (although, who doesn’t at this point?), Subway, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’ Donuts, KFC, etc. There’s a KFC billboard on Sharae Faisal that shows a woman wandering in the desert, looking lost and in despair, only to be greeted in the next frame by a KFC delivery guy who has just parachuted in to rescue her with a bucket of Extra Crispy. If that was what someone decided to give me if I was wandering in the desert, I don’t think I’d look quite as happy as she does. Even if I weren’t vegetarian. There are many other, and much better things for the US to be exporting around the world, why must we scrape the bottom of the culinary barrel? C’mon now – really…

By far the funniest thing I’ve seen is the Pakistani version of those Dove shampoo commercials that show women giving “real life testimonies” about how fantastic Dove shampoo is for their hair. Well, one of the women talking about the fabulousness of the shampoo is wearing a hejab. A hejab is a traditional Muslim women’s headscarf, meaning that you can’t see a single hair on her head. She could be bald under there, for all we know, and she’s in a shampoo commercial. Love it.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Exploring my 'hood

We ventured out last night to a little restaurant around the corner to get some naan. Naan is a traditional type of bread – if you like Indian food, then you’ve probably had it. In any event, we walked up to the place to find a group of men clustered around the front, with one sitting on this large stone box, and another leaning up against it, pulling balls of dough out of a basin and placing them on a stone slab. The box was actually a large and (I’m assuming) very well-insulated oven. The guy sitting nearest to the hole in the top would take a ball of dough, pat it out into a circle over the top of this square cushion, then put the cushion into the oven, and pull it right out, presumably depositing the dough in the oven to cook. When I stepped in a little closer, I saw that the circles of dough were actually sticking to the walls of the oven as they baked. He then took two very long metal implements and peeled the circles of naan off the walls of the oven, and took them out to be wrapped up for us. The whole process didn’t take more than a few minutes, and the place was literally a hole in the wall, but it was so interesting, and that was some of the best naan I’ve ever had. (Of course, I’m always a sucker for freshly baked breads and stuff like that.) If we go back, which we may well, I am definitely bringing my camera. Although, I feel a little strange doing that – these people are just living their daily life, and I don’t want to act as though I’m Marlon Perkins from an episode of “Wild Kingdom”.

No word yet on specifics for the Bangladesh trip, which is making it difficult for me and my type-A tendencies to not explode. I’m getting better at the “no problem!” way of life, but things like this still have a tendency to bug me. I should probably try to get over that. Of course, if it were that easy, I probably would have by now. Let’s think for a second about the pointlessness of being a control freak in Pakistan. You can’t control anything here, I mean, the city can’t even control its own electrical grid, as evidenced by the daily blackouts and power surges. Then there’s the fact that our cable service will switch from one lineup to another depending on the wind. So, you just have to learn to go with it and appreciate the differences. Enjoy the naan and mangos.

We’ve got a bunch of big meetings set up for tomorrow and Friday, so I’m definitely going out with a bang. I’ve really tried to be useful here and make a role for myself, even though I’m not officially on the project. It will be interesting to see how this all ends up, and what this kind of work will mean to my ability to get more of this kind of work. Que sera, sera. Of course, I get to return in a few weeks and see what has happened here in the interim. I really, really hope that some progress gets made. That will make me a much happier woman, and give me a much easier job to come back to. But it looks like we’ll be able to have people in place to keep things moving, so it’s likely that things can continue in my absence.

Now I’m off to Vietnam to work with someone who doesn’t think I can do my job! I’ll have more of a sense of humor about that once I’ve actually started to make myself useful. But as I told my boss, I don’t have any intention of meeting this guy’s low expectations of me…I’m hoping to aim a smidge higher than that. That kind of reminds me of “Office Space”. “…Well, if you want to be the kind of person who only does the minimum, that’s up to you…” I’m really excited, though – I just wrote to one of my colleagues who has spent a lot of time there, and he said that it’s perfectly fine for me to wander around the city by myself – hurrah! I’ve heard to watch out for purse-snatchers, so I’ll make sure that I’m careful and that I don’t carry anything important with me - there will be a safe in my apartment that I imagine my passport and ID will get very cozy with. As well as any other travel documents I may need. But when compared to the things that people, including the US State Department, have warned me to be careful about in Karachi, purse-snatching is nothing. HAH! Not that I’ll be all sanguine if my purse actually does get stolen – quite the contrary. But it beats the heck out of being kidnapped or blown up.

We went to a bazaar tonight after work, which was fun – I got a few pretty things for some good little boys and girls. I didn’t actually know what to expect, but it was much like the craft markets in South Africa. I am absolutely terrible at haggling, I always feel bad about arguing with someone over what ends up being a dollar or two, but that’s the way you shop here. In every place you shop, except the grocery store. Although, maybe I’m supposed to haggle there, too, I don’t know. I also saw my first anti-American demonstration today. We were sitting in the Emirates Air office waiting for our chief technical advisor to get his plane tickets sorted out, and what he said would take ten minutes took over an hour. Of just s-i-t-t-i-n-g. However, when I saw people congregating outside, waving signs and shouting, I thought that we would either need to get out of there really fast, or we should just stay inside and keep our heads down. It all disbanded before he was done fixing his ticket, and when I got back to the car, I asked Hamid what they were demonstrating about. He looked a little sheepish and said “Miss, it’s anti-America!”, which is what I had thought it might be. Earlier, on our way to the Emirates Air office, we were running late, and needed to get there before the office closed. So Hamid was told to get us there quickly. We have since decided that such power should only be used judiciously. As we whipped down the road, weaving in and out of traffic, Hamid cheerfully said “This real Pakistani driving!” Well, bravo, because we made it in time and everyone was in one piece, no problem. I’m going to vote for allowing a reasonable amount of travel time in the future.

“Accidental invention leads to chewy bagel”. That is an actual headline on Yahoo. Well, I’m sure glad that there’s nothing else to write about, like war, drought, or any of that depressing stuff. Bagels, the Michael Jackson trial, and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. That’s my definition of hard-hitting news. Well done, Yahoo.

*sigh*

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

One more stamp

Well, it appears that George Harrison and I will have something in common by the time I get back home, that being that we both will have been to Bangladesh! I’m going to try to work it so that I go there on my way back to Pakistan from Vietnam, to minimize the number of times that I’m on an airplane in rapid succession. This won’t add any time to my total time away, which is good, because I’m thinking that it would be nice to be home before Labor Day, but it will definitely be an interesting diversion. In any case, my boss approved the travel costs (since I’m not technically on the project here, the project can’t pay for me to take this trip, so my company has to), which I thought was very cool of him, so I e-mailed the guy at CARE Bangladesh back and said “So, how does July 13th work for you?” Clearly, I’ll pass along my convoluted-as-all-get-out itinerary as soon as someone can make sense of it. Amusingly enough, on all of the official documentation I read from Bangladesh concerning getting a visa, etc., the last line at the end of a long list of rules always read “Rules may change from time to time.” Good to know, I suppose.

The people at our travel office at home must hate me. I’m not one for doing things by crisis management – I like to have all my ducks in a row as far in advance as possible when it comes to things like this. Especially when there are visas required and logistics to be attended to. Doesn’t always work that way, though.

Kind of funny to think that I will have been to Pakistan and Bangladesh, both countries that used to be part of India, but I won’t have been to India. I guess I’m just skipping that bit at the moment. It certainly seems as though I could be back this way in the future. Like I’ve said before, I’m going to take advantage of all these opportunities while I have them, since I imagine that this phase of my life will, someday, draw to a close, and I’ll move on to something else. Not that I have a grand scheme, (or should I call it “a cunning plan…”?) complete with dates and times, for any of this. I don’t think I’ll ever lose my love of traveling and seeing new things and adventure and all that good stuff – but I know that the day will come where I’ll say “okay, time to be in the same country for more than a few months at a time”, and that will be cool, because it will be time for that. It’s a very “que sera, sera” approach, but it works for me. Most of the time. Besides, setting dates and schedules for things you can neither predict nor control is the fastest way to drive yourself insane or to end up settling for something that isn’t what you really want. Or both.

Today, it rained for the first time since I’ve been here. I suppose I hadn’t thought about the fact that it hadn’t rained until the skies opened up, but it’s true – not a drop since I’ve been here. Rain in an arid climate like this is a very strange thing. Unless you’re talking about an actual monsoon, and it is getting to be monsoon season, they tend to be very short and violent episodes. One minute the air was still and hot, and the next the wind was blowing palm tree branches against the house and rain was sheeting down the windows. Then ten minutes later, it’s done. It doesn’t do much to break the heat, it just seems to make it more humid. I don’t think it actually does, because I don’t think it’s actually possible, but the air is heavier.

One thing I discovered the other day that I found to be somewhat perplexing was Murree Beer. I know, you’re thinking “what’s perplexing about beer? Apart from knowing whether the cap is a twist-off or not, it’s kind of a no-brainer.” You’re not wrong about that, except for the fact that Murree Beer is brewed in Pakistan. Pakistan is an Islamic state that enacted prohibition many, many years ago. So, they’re not allowed to serve or consume alcohol, but they still produce it and sell it…? Although, as an aside, I think it’s a safe bet to say that a healthy number of people here have a private stash of some kind of alcohol. But Murree Beer is actually not half bad, which was a pleasant surprise, because it’s very light-colored stuff, and any of you who have been out with me know my opinion of any beer lighter than Sam Adams (mmm…Sam Adams…).

I’m going to guess that “quality assurance officer at Murree Brewing” is right up there with “lifeguard at the American School swimming pool” on the list of most fun/desirable jobs you can have as a local guy in Pakistan.

In any event, work has been keeping me busy this week, which is good. G-man’s successor is not yet in place, but I’m hopeful that we can get things arranged so that data gathering can take place while I’m away, and I can come back to piles of data to work with, to keep me busy for my last few weeks here. (Anything to pass the time, even if it is data entry and analysis.) Because, as nice as it would be in theory to spend my time here casually working on a report and mostly working on my tan, in reality, it would drive me nuts and make all this seem a little pointless. Given the stuff I know I’m missing out on by being here, I’d prefer not to feel like it was for nothing. The good thing is that I don’t think that will happen – good and bad, it’s been really interesting being here, and this whole thing is a unique experience. As I said, part of that “que sera, sera” philosophy is embracing those opportunities whenever they come along, so Bangladesh, here I come!

Monday, June 20, 2005

An exercise in frustration

I’m actually writing this off-line, and will see if I can hop on a little later, because the little internet gnomes have been conspiring to have me break things out of frustration tonight. Just ask my friend Michelle, with whom I’ve been trying to have a conversation tonight. I have been bounced off the internet not one, not two, but five times, for no apparent reason. Let’s think for a second just how incredibly irritating this is. Let’s also understand that this falls into the category of “Things That Bother Me More Than They Should”. (It’s actually quite a large category.) So it’s best that my nephews aren’t around, because I have a feeling that David would have had many opportunities to say “Aunt Mandy, you said a bad word!”. Although, I don’t know if he would have known all the words I was using – I kind of hope he wouldn’t have. In fact, I’m a little disappointed that I know them.

We went out to a restaurant this evening called Lal Quila, which was lovely – kind of a cross between an Indian buffet and Medieval Times. It’s this huge castle-like building, quite pretty with a moat, servers and greeters in “authentic” dress, all that good stuff. Although, I have to admit that I don’t know to what it was that they were being authentic. But it was quite fun, actually. And the food was also quite tasty. Unlike the Chinese restaurant that we tried for lunch. Our chief technical advisor is in town for a couple weeks and thought we should try something for “fun” at lunch. I think he and I have differing ideas of fun. Once again, it appears that my choice of lunch was not the best idea I’ve ever had. Being vegetarian, vegetable dishes are really the only thing I can go for. But there are some parts of the world where the safest things to eat are things that have been cooked within an inch of their life. Well, with veggies, it’s not that it’s harder to accomplish that, it’s just that it doesn’t often happen, unless you like ratatouille. So it’s a good thing that I spent my babyhood here – can you imagine how much worse it could be? My mother told me that when we got back from here, my pediatrician said that I was likely to have a lifelong immunity to most gastrointestinal disorders found here, thanks to doing things like drinking water from the garden hose. (I still don’t know how that didn’t kill me.) New York street food, here I come!!!

Maybe not.

Work is interesting – I’m still caught up in trying to address things with some projects back home that JUST WON’T DIE. Let me tell you how much I don’t like checking work e-mail at 10 pm and having five new messages, when I just checked a few hours ago. I know it’s because of the time difference, but still, it remains one more thing to worry about. There are a few things I’m trying to iron out which essentially involve people doing things that don’t make sense. It’s awesome. Especially when they get indignant when I ask for an explanation. At this point, I don’t care if someone thinks I’m an idiot, I just want them to give me a straight answer to a straight question.

Maybe I should pretend to have a lousy internet connection in Vietnam? No, no – I wouldn’t feel right about that. Although, for all I know, I might have a lousy internet connection in Vietnam, I don’t quite know what to expect. I read a really interesting article from Sojourners about Vietnam and how they’re expressing their capitalist tendencies more in recent years, and how it’s resulted in an outbreak of “keeping up with the Joneses”, particularly in urban areas. I believe they called it the “I want my iPod and I want it now” syndrome. It’s still a very poor country, but because of how their economic situation is changing, there is more affluence to be seen in cities, primarily. And it’s resulting in some of the uglier expressions of human nature. The article, though, profiled a woman who was educated through government assistance programs and came back to Vietnam to work in poor communities. Very interesting – I can’t wait to go.

I think, however, that it’s going to be a busy week getting ready to go. There are a lot of things I’d like to get set up before I go, so we’ll see how that “to do” list goes. Depending on many, many things, I may also take a side trip to Bangladesh to look at a program that CARE International is doing that’s quite similar to some of the work we’re hoping to do here. I don’t know that it will happen because someone still has to pay for my time and travel, but the very nice project manager from CARE said they’d be happy to host a trip for someone from our team. I can’t say Bangladesh has been at the top of my “must see” list, but I certainly wouldn’t turn down the opportunity – I think it would be fascinating. But we’re coming up on monsoon season, aren’t we? Hmm…and I thought that eating out in Karachi was tempting fate.

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Heh...now I've seen everything....

Yesterday, Hamid and I were driving somewhere, and we stopped at an intersection near the house. Whenever you stop at an intersection here, your car is immediately descended upon by any number of people. It’s usually people begging for money or people selling things like the IKEA catalog, some obscure magazine, or toy cell phones. But yesterday, I looked as my window was being tapped on and saw something I really wasn’t expecting. A man in drag. I said to Hamid “Is that a man?”, because it was honestly just something I never thought I’d see here. He said “No is man, no is woman! You have in America?” and I said yes, I had seen plenty of them in America, and we chuckled a little. I figured that it would be too complicated to explain that most of my male friends in college were gay, and when I would go out dancing with them, drag queens were the main event at some of the places we’d go to. I mean, he was wearing a lovely salwar kameez, but he clearly needed more practice wearing heels – he almost fell off his little wedge sandals. And his manicure could have used some work. No self-respecting drag queen (he may have just been a transvestite, actually – don’t know if he was an executive transvestite, though…) would go out in public in the US without knowing how to walk in a fierce set of heels, and without making sure her manicure was impeccable.

Another Sunday, another day at the pool (have I said that before?) My swimming continues to improve, so that’s fun – I respond well to goals. Not that I have a specific goal in mind, I suppose, other than “get better”. So…mission accomplished! My Sundays here are a major contrast to Sundays at home. Here, I sleep until I wake up, futz around a little, go to the pool for a few hours, come home and do a little washing, maybe watch a movie, check e-mail, do some reading. Stuff like that. At home, if I’m not at church early to help out with something, I’m still there, and then from there the day manages to fill up fairly consistently. It’s all good stuff, I get to spend time with people I care about, whether it’s friends or family or both, but it’s always a full day. Here…not so much. I don’t like to plan things for Sundays, because that’s the only day we don’t work, and that’s the only full day that Hamid can spend with his family, so I don’t want to drag him out here just because I feel like going shopping or something. I know it’s his job, and he has always said that if I need anything it’s “no problem”, and I’m sure it would be no problem, but he’s got four kids, so if I were him, I know I’d appreciate a day with them. I dunno. It’s also kind of nice for me, because then I can be as lazy or industrious as I want. It’s about 5:30 right now, and I really couldn’t tell you where the day went. How often do I get to say that?

I leave for Vietnam on Friday, and I’ve got a little over two weeks there, then I come back for my last month here. I don’t quite know what to expect there, but I’m really looking forward to it. Who would have thought that I’d get this many stamps in my passport off of just one trip? Certainly not me. I think I’ve figured out what makes this okay, though. If I have a place where I can cook, and a place where I can do my own laundry, it’s easier to settle in a bit and feel normal. As pretty much all of you know, I love to cook, and I think I’m a fairly decent at it (fortunately), so I like not having to go out for every meal – that makes any trip seem longer. Little things about that, too. I can have breakfast right after my morning workout, as I’m cooling down. I don’t think too many restaurants would let me in wearing a sports bra and yoga pants, and really – I think it’s best that way. Especially around here. (Captain Obvious just decided to pay a visit there…) So it’s nice to be able to have some cereal, watch BBC World News, and then hop in the shower without having to worry about whether or not I’m appropriately dressed or if I have enough money on me. The place in Vietnam is going to be like that, too, and I think that’s going to be a criterion for me for future assignments, wherever possible. (Clearly, if I’m working in Liberia or something and there’s no guesthouse/extended stay apartment available, I’ll suck it up. Because I’ll be in Liberia, and it’s probably not going to be a good idea to be picky. But I’m talking about preferences here.)

The guy who owns the house I’m staying in, who is also the Executive Director of the company we’re working with here, is such a nice man. He came by with his family yesterday afternoon to pick a few things up out of a storage room they have here, and he asked if I liked to watch movies. I said yes, I did – anything but horror movies. He said “well, we have a lot at home. I’ll bring some over for you to watch.” I said that was very nice of him, which it was. Well, last night, he brought over about 20 DVDs. I mean, my goodness, I almost hope I don’t have enough sitting-on-my-butt time to watch all of them (only five of which I’ve seen before), but let’s face it – I have a lot of sitting-on-my-butt time. Ah well. He also brought over a book he thought I’d like, which I’m looking forward to picking up after I’m done with my current selection. Once again – people here are so nice and hospitable, they really, really are.

Sorry this has been a bit rambling today – all of my doing nothing has, apparently, worn me out quite a bit, so my tendency to blabber on and on is more pronounced. Fortunately, my talkativeness shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you. I think I’m going to try to make it an early night, at any rate.