Waiting

I finished my research methodology section yesterday and sent it to my boss for comments, so here’s hoping he doesn’t think it’s a disaster. I don’t think he’ll necessarily think it’s really a disaster, but I haven’t done this kind of thing before, so I’m trying to keep my expectations low-ish. We’ll see what happens! This means, however, that I’ve got to wait around a little. There are project related things to do, but they’re not going to take up the whole day, that’s for sure. That kind of stuff should definitely pick up in the next day or two, giving me lots to do next week. I think I’ll be staying here all next week, returning to Karachi on the 18^th, and then after that…who knows? I should still be leaving on August 10^th, spending a week in London with family there (all of whom are safe and sound, thank God), then coming back to the US on the 17^th. I’ve also booked a trip to Boston for the weekend of August 27^th, about which I’m really excited. There’s a good chance that I’ll be coming back here in the fall – at least, I hope there is. It’s all good experience for me, so I certainly won’t object, despite the reality of being away so long hitting me over the past few weeks. Besides, I’m not a big fan of winter, so I won’t mind skipping part of it this year! (The unfortunate part is that I love fall. Ah well, I don’t envision living somewhere without four seasons on a permanent basis any time soon, so I’ll have plenty of other chances to experience it.) It’s funny, the things that don’t always occur to me. The highway engineer on our project is in her 40s and she’s never seen snow, which I can’t conceive of. I’ve had a few pairs of wool pants made, and when I told them I wanted them completely lined, they looked at me as though I had three heads and politely informed me that it was very heavy material. However, since I live in a country with winter, it’ll come in handy. Besides, it’s wool – I would foresee scratchy chafing-type issues without lining.

And that’s really all I want to say on the subject of chafing.

We’ve scrapped our trip for the weekend, which is actually fine with me. I’m caught up (I think) on what I need to do here, and I’d like the chance to relax over the weekend with nothing to do. Not that being here has been particularly stressful, maybe I’m just used to having lots of “Mandy Time”, like I do in the ‘stan. I probably shouldn’t get used to it, though, because I’ll get back to my real life eventually!

I’ve almost been run over by a wide array of vehicles over the past few days, the closest of which came from a taxi cab that made a very sharp corner and almost took me with it. The thing that’s tricky is that the traffic lights and walk signals rarely provide sufficient direction as to when it’s safe to walk. At some point, I’m sure I’ll stop remarking on the nature of traffic in Vietnam, but for the time being, it still continues to fascinate me. For example, today I saw a guy driving down a city road today with a 15-foot steel beam strapped to his scooter. It kept dinging against the surface of the road, sending up little sparks whenever it did so, and making it see-saw along the side, which perpetuated the dinging. But the driver didn’t even seem to notice, he just kept calmly puttering down the road. I suppose that if you have to transport a 15-foot steel beam across town and your scooter is the only way it’s going to happen, an all-encompassing sense of calm is a distinct advantage. I just wouldn’t have wanted to see him in one of the massive traffic circles that are inevitable around here. I don’t need to see anyone get clotheslined by a steel beam. If I thought that kind of stuff was cool, I’d probably also watch those Ultimate Fighting Champion matches and Muy Thai boxing or something.

In a complete non sequitur, I’ve been reading a lot about poverty in Vietnam, and it’s staggering to imagine. I still think that it’s a different order of magnitude as compared to Pakistan, but it’s a huge problem here, too. I don’t know why poverty seems worse in Pakistan, it just does. Maybe there are more support resources here, maybe the climate is more forgiving, I don’t know. But the people I’ve seen here who are dirt poor still seem to have an easier time than in Pakistan, and they don’t have it easy here, by any stretch. I think part of it has to do with the systems in place. Many, if not most, parts of rural Pakistan are still under a feudal system, where the “benevolent” landlord allows haris to work his land in exchange for some of the profits from what the land produces. The problem is that benevolent landlords are few and far between, and unless a miracle occurs, haris spend their lives becoming more and more indebted to the landlord, and end up with nothing, not even wages, in some cases. Social systems in place to help the destitute are riddled with corruption, and the money they disburse rarely, if ever, makes it to the neediest people. The root causes of poverty in Pakistan are not only rooted in scarcity, but they’re also very structural in nature, and will require a huge cultural overhaul if anything is ever really going to change. However, the people in power want to stay in power, and the majority of the poor are so disenfranchised and disempowered that I can’t imagine they’d be able to marshal the resources to stand up for themselves and really effect change. This isn’t a unique scenario, it plays out to greater and lesser degrees all over the world. But that doesn’t make it any easier to witness.

I don’t know enough about how the socialist system works here in Vietnam to really comment on it, but I can’t imagine a system that would be worse for its participants than what Pakistani haris have to deal with. It feels as though there are more safety nets in place here, and while corruption is also a problem, I don’t think it’s on the same scale. I could be wrong about that, clearly, but that’s my first impression here. But poverty here is still staggering, and it's strange to see poverty in a land of such abundance. Driving through the agricultural lands, you see nothing but lush crops, and it seems unthinkable that anyone here could go hungry. However, it happens, just as it does in the US.

I'll be off, then. I got up early to go running this morning, which was good, but now I'm tired. So I think it's time for me to go veg out.

Things Are Looking Up

Nothing major has happened, but I think that my e-mail woes are resolving themselves, slowly but surely. I was finally able to get into my work e-mail account last night, which was both good and bad. It was good because I was able to finally check all of my messages. It was bad, because the number of messages I had extended well into the double digits. I know that I’m not that important, but I guess that’s what happens after almost a week off e-mail. I also heard from one of my colleagues in Pakistan last night, apparently some massive cable in the ‘stan was destroyed, so no one can get e-mail out of the country, or something bizarre like that. I don’t claim to fully understand what the heck he’s talking about, as it sounds a little “the dog ate my homework”-ish, but the upshot of that is that I might have a week or so of radio silence once I return on Monday. I will, however, have a functioning cell phone again, so that will be good. Plusses and minuses, I suppose. I never really realized how important e-mail and internet access were to me here until I didn’t have them – it felt really isolating. Weird, no?

Things here are picking up, and all of a sudden, I feel like the most popular girl at the party. They want me back to the ‘stan as soon as possible, but we’re in a staffing crunch here and I’ve been told to stretch my time here as long as possible. So, everyone seems to want me to work on their project – flattering, no? It’s good, though, I like to feel useful. Plus, since I just found out that I got the raise I asked for, I’m not only stunned, but feeling kind of warm and fuzzy about work these days. It’s good times. It also means a teeny bit less financial stress, so I’m very grateful for that as well.

But back to the relevant part here. I have no idea what I’m going to do about my time over the next few weeks, it’s getting crunched. There is some mandatory time that I’ll need at home, starting in late August and going through the end of September, because I want to see friends and family, and people are having babies and getting married and all of those things that I’m not going to miss. Plus, the fact that I would just kind of like to be home for a bit. But then after that, maybe it’s back here? I don’t know. Maybe it’s here for a couple weeks after the ‘stan? Options abound, and I’m not sure how I feel about all of them just yet. I have told the relevant people that I need to be home for at least a month for personal reasons, and my boss said that was fine, so I’m hanging onto that e-mail for proof after I book my plane tickets. It’s good, though – he’s been quick about getting back to me about this kind of thing, which I appreciate. Even if he doesn’t have finalfinal say, he can help and/or act as a buffer if needed.

Although, really, if everyone could just postpone the having of babies and getting married stuff until it’s more convenient for me, that would be best. Can you guys look into that? Thanks.

The daily rainstorm came at night tonight, and I noticed something funny. Since rainstorms are so frequent in the wet season (it’s not just a clever name), most people have plastic ponchos that they carry around. When the skies open up, people whip them out of the storage compartments of their scooters and keep on with life, which makes perfect sense. What doesn’t make as much sense is people draping the front of their ponchos over the front of their scooter. Covering their headlight. It’s not a big deal if the poncho in question is clear, but the vast majority are some sort of color, with varying degrees of opacity. This unfortunately renders them virtually useless - more like mood lighting than a safety device. One wonders why the traffic fatalities here aren’t higher. I mean, they’re high, but they should be higher.

I just spent a brief amount of time online, getting disconnected every two minutes, so I’m going to have to post this tomorrow.

Workin' 9 to 5

We’re in our office these days, and I’ve got a brand-new desk to sit at, a brand-new chair to sit in, and lots of work to do in the next three days. I can, however, do stuff over this weekend – that’s fine. To be honest, I’ve had several very light days, so working the weekend now wouldn’t bother me too much. The PM had suggested all of us go to this little island and spend the weekend at the beach, or go up to the mountains, which would be really fun. However, the beach place he had in mind is full, and as much as I’d love to spend a weekend checking out other places and other parts of the country, I think I could stand to put in some more hours here. Besides, if I do a good job now, I am more likely to be asked to continue on the project, which will allow more time for checking out other parts of the country eventually. My company also does quite a bit of work in Vietnam, so this isn’t likely to be my only chance to be here for as long as I have this job.

There is a guy who is helping us set up everything for the office, which is really helpful as neither the PM nor I speak Vietnamese. However, listening to the PM trying to explain to this guy what he wants is hilarious. Part of it is because he has this very thick German accent that’s almost like a stereotype, and the logistics guy has an extremely thick Vietnamese accent as well, and English is the only language they have in common. The PM sounds kind of like the voice of the caterpillar in “A Bug’s Life”, if you’ve ever seen the movie. If he ever busts out with “I am a bee-yoo-tee-ful butterfly!” I will never stop laughing. Fortunately, I think that’s unlikely. At least, I sincerely hope that’s unlikely. He usually says things more along the line of “vhot iss diss rrrubbish?” In any event, to hear the conversation moving in fits and starts between him and the beleaguered logistics guy who has a decent, yet limited, grasp of English, is quite the treat. I, of course, have to pretend that I hear nothing, in order to continue with my work and prevent an attack of the giggles.

Since all of our furniture and such things are brand new, they have that “new plastic” smell, which can also be referred to as “toxic”. We’ve given it a few days with the veranda doors thrown open and the fans on high, so that helps considerably. I decided to undertake the task of unwrapping my office chair this morning. This should not have been difficult. However, the chair was wrapped in three layers of plastic that had all been attached before the final assembly – I don’t know if this is the way it’s done everywhere, but I now have developed a deep-seated dislike for this practice. It took me a good 30 minutes, if not more, to unwrap the chair. This thing was wrapped to survive nuclear holocaust. I tore through the first layer easily enough, only to find that there was more to peel through. It was like those little Russian dolls, where each doll opens up to reveal a slightly smaller one inside. Every piece of plastic seemed determined to stick where it was, demonstrating both remarkable elasticity and tensile strength, and I began to mutter under my breath – it was all PG-rated, but this is generally the beginning of the end for me losing my temper over something stupid. Fortunately, the PM handed me a blade so I could hack through the last few layers of plastic sticking around screws, the arms, and other seams. This is one of those areas where my anal-retentive tendencies tend to work against me, I was determined that I was going to unwrap that freaking chair. I probably should have just let it go. And yet…I didn’t. Raise your hand if you’re surprised. What…no one? That’s what I thought.

I’m writing up some research methodology today, so that I can have some concrete things I will have contributed by the time I leave here. I have no idea whether or not the PM still thinks I’m incompetent. I hope not, but one never knows – we haven’t produced much of anything yet. He thinks I’m a nice person, which is swell, but I’ll be curious to hear his professional opinion of my work on this project. That’s the thing about my company – in my experience, feedback is rare unless someone thinks you’re a waste of skin. In those cases, you get more feedback than you can shake a stick at. But hearing when you’ve done a good job? That’s rare. My boss tries to be good about that, which I appreciate, but it’s not that I need someone to tell me I’m fabulous all the time, I would just like to know if there are things I could be doing better, or things that I should keep doing, because I’ve already got the right idea.

I just tried to get back into Blogger, and was unsuccessful – now I’m downloading virus updates from Symantec. Downloading an 11 MB file on a dial-up is interesting. Only 35 minutes left to go – yee haw! Like lightning, I tell you. I do, however, hope that it helps. I type in a complete web address and the search engine or whatever starts looking for the address with all different kinds of suffixes, like “blogger.com.com”, “blogger.com.net”, and “blogger.com.org”. It’s so strange.

We just installed our water cooler in the office – essential equipment to a smoothly functioning office. It’s funny to read the instructions and “Attention!” section. It says that the machine must be connected with an “earthed” socket, by which I can only assume they mean “grounded”. But my favorite is precaution #7:

You’d better clean this machine when using for the first time or reusing after a long time.

Is it just me, or does it almost sound like a threat? As though Bobby the Fish or Vinnie the Hammer is going to come and break your kneecaps if you don’t properly clean your water cooler. I almost expected to see “hey – we know guys who know guys” or “we’d hate for your water cooler to meet with an accident” at the end of that one. I swear, I can amuse myself for hours at a time with this stuff, kids. I realize that my sense of humor can sometimes be a bit of a head-scratcher, though.

I am noticing a very serious problem with my formerly hermetically sealed office chair. It’s hard as a rock and my rear end is completely falling asleep. It looks as though it would have some cushioning, but I can tell you that’s a complete lie. An illusion. Yeeowch. If I come back here, I’m going to have to think of something to do about this. Assuming that I wind up at the same desk, with the same chair, I suppose. Another odd thing about these chairs – they all tilt to the right. Every single one of them. This can’t be good for the human body, and it’s just odd that it’s all of them that are like that. The PM warned me about it, so perhaps this is something that’s just common to Vietnamese-made office chairs? Of course, there’s no logical reason for such a thing, but “logic” and “reason” don’t necessarily need to factor into things.

It’s getting to be about 6 pm, but I don’t want to be the one to suggest going home. I have actually been doing work and I’ve gotten some things written (besides this), and I’ve read some things I needed to read. But I’m ready to call it quits, to be honest. I’m more productive in evening hours, though, so maybe I should try to marshal some of that productivity and burn through this methodology section.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

I FINALLY have been able to get back into the blog, so I've put up the last couple posts that I'd written. Happy times. Of course, I did that before something like deciding to check my work e-mail...priorities? What priorities?

Right.

I'll write more later, but I just wanted to share my happy dance at being better able to communicate with the outside world again!

F-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-o-n

I haven’t been able to access the Blogger website for four days now, which is really getting annoying (as you can tell, it’s finally started to work, for whatever reason, since I’m posting this and you’re reading it). I also am having major problems accessing my work e-mail, Hotmail, and sometimes Yahoo – although Yahoo is the most reliable of all of them by far. I hereby take back what I previously said about my internet connection here being reliable. Something is definitely wrong, as almost every single site I try to view comes up with “This Page Cannot Be Displayed”, and I have no idea why. Re-connecting doesn’t help, reloading doesn’t help, and banging my hand against my desk doesn’t help, either. Unless you count a bruised hand as helpful, which it really isn’t. Although, it has stopped me from smashing my laptop out of frustration, so I suppose that’s helpful. If anyone has insights, I’d love them. Of course, I can’t post this entry now, so by the time anyone who might be able to help reads it, the problem is likely to be solved, I guess. I hope it’s not a virus – I don’t even know if this is the kind of thing a virus could do. I think it's just Internet connection lameness.

I’ve tried to alert the people from whom I’m expecting things for work that I need to do all correspondence through my Yahoo account, and I haven’t heard anything, so my instinct is that they’re just sitting in their rear ends. Or not thinking about the stuff they owe me, at any rate. I realize that I’m a type-A personality, but I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to expect a timely answer when I ask a time-sensitive question, and I loathe having to chase people down for a simple answer. I don’t think it’s okay for someone to, for example, just not respond when I ask things like “can you assure me that you can arrange for a Bangladeshi visa before I arrive?” or “please confirm that these proposed travel dates for my return trip home are acceptable”. If you don’t have the answer, or it’s going to take you a while to get it to me, that’s fine, just tell me that so I know that I’m not being ignored. Argh. So if I don’t hear something very substantive and informative from the guy at CARE by the end of the day tomorrow, I’m going to postpone the trip, since Bangladesh only sometimes allows for a visa upon arrival, depending on the day and the mood of the immigration officer to whom you happen to be speaking, and the less time there is to arrange such things, the less confident I am that it will work. I’m also telling our travel office to go ahead and book my return tickets, and then I’m going to ask my cousin in London to see if we can get tickets to see Ewan McGregor in Guys and Dolls in the West End! (I luuuuurve Ewan McGregor.)

The project manager’s wife arrived the other day, a very nice Ethiopian woman, just a few years older than me. He is, as you might imagine, delighted to have her here. It’s funny to see people you work with around their friends or family, sometimes you really see a different side of them. That’s not the case with everyone or every situation, but it’s still interesting. I think that I’m generally the same person all the time, but I know that there are also people who have a “work persona” and a “rest of their life persona” – that sounds exhausting to me, and I wouldn’t want to have to keep track of when I had to be fake and when I was allowed to be real. Perhaps I’m just lazy.

The PM’s wife ran to a nearby supermarket for us to buy a few small things for the office, like paper towels, toilet paper, cups, plates, etc. She also stopped at a little bakery on her way back to get some snacks, which were greatly appreciated. The bakery? It’s called Bimbo. I am not making this up. The full name, from what I can tell, is Banh mi Phap Bimbo, but “Bimbo” has its own line and is in bigger type, so I’m guessing it’s a key word. Heh. They do, however, make some very yummy little things with coconut, so hurrah for Bimbo.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that, since motorcycles are so prevalent here, it’s easy to forget that whole “Wild One”, “Easy Rider”, motorcycles-are-so-super-cool thing. Once you’ve seen everyone from someone’s little baby sister to someone’s grandmother with their own motorcycle, the mystique is lost and the badass factor dissipates. I was, however, quite impressed to see the desks for our office being delivered on the back of motorcycles. They got some bungee cords and strapped them to the back, then the guy drove with one hand, and tried to steady the desk behind him with the other. It was certainly impressive, so well done to him, but it was the balance and coordination that were impressive, not the bike.

I’m off to run some errands and grab some dinner. We’re mostly done for the day, so it’s time to pack up and head out. I have no idea what the plan is for tonight, but I’m sure we’ll come up with something. I haven’t done a ton of grocery shopping, because I knew I wasn’t going to be here for very long, but maybe I’ll make some dinner for myself tonight. I found a “gourmet” market, which is basically lots of imported foods, and I think it’s the most I’ve ever seen anyone charge for Old El Paso Salsa, which I’m not inclined to consider “gourmet”. But it’s really not bad with some rice and cheese. Seriously – that was my dinner last night, and it was darn tasty. I’m fine with that.