Not What I Expected

Today ended up a little differently than I thought it would – I ended up playing darts with a Russian, a few Aussies, and some Americans at the American Club tonight.

But my day actually started with me waking up on my own around 6:15 am – I went to sleep really early, figuring that the morning announcements (6:30 on Saturday for whatever reason) would be less irritating if I woke up on my own, instead of being woken up by them. It’s a mostly accurate theory – but I still wish I knew what they were saying, because there’s no way I can’t hear them.

After a slow morning, during which I took a nap (if it helps, I remarked to myself about my pathetic laziness), I decided to set out for a nice, long walk around town, that would include lunch at the Italian place I went to last week. It’s still lovely, by the way. I walked past our office, which took me past the ancient citadel of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, the Presidential Palace, and some other landmark-y things. It was a nice, long walk, but I have to admit that my tolerance for being harangued by motorbike taxis is waning quickly. I couldn’t go more than ten minutes, usually five, without someone yelling, frantically waving his arms, and/or almost causing an accident, just to get my attention. And a simple “no” wasn’t enough – at least four of them said “where are you going?” to which I responded “I want to walk” with increasing frostiness. The first few times, I can deal with it with relatively good humor, but the number of times I was approached today easily made its way well into double digits, so it got old. Vietnamese people are never similarly pestered, it’s just people who look like me. I can even be out walking with Itsy Bitsy and Teeny Weeny, sometimes we’ve just gotten out of our car and someone will come up to me and say “motorbike, miss??” I know they have to earn a living, but I just want to walk down the street and be left alone sometimes.

In any event, I had a nice walk, covering a lot of the city. Took some pictures that will, I hope, turn out nicely. I stopped in a place that I’d heard about to get a drink, and sipped some fresh pineapple juice while reading my book. The place is called the Kangaroo Café, and it’s an Australian-owned and operated pub, which is notable for their tours of places like SaPa (the mountains in the north) and Halong Bay. So, note to self for my next trip here – I should book a tour with them, as they have a good reputation. I wandered for about another hour, and made my way over to The Spotted Cow, (another Aussie-run pub) for a beer. As I was sitting there, reading my book, I started chatting with two other guys sitting at the bar, an American guy named Eric and a Russian guy named Vladimir. After some more chit-chat, they mentioned that they were heading to the American Club next door, and would I like to come along and play some darts? I said sure, since I didn’t actually have anything planned for the rest of the evening. The Club itself was nothing special, which I remember being the case with the one in Karachi as well. Nonetheless, it was fun. I was about the only white women there; it was mostly expat guys and their Vietnamese wives. I was primarily chatting with Vlad and Eric, but everyone was really friendly – I think I also got invited to some formal Embassy thing at the Daewoo Hotel on Saturday…I don’t think I’ll be going, though. Even though I can get something made to wear, I don’t really have appropriate footwear, so I’ll give it a pass. As isn’t too surprising, I suppose, there were a lot of people there who were either from DC or who had lived there at some point. (It was mostly Embassy folks, a lot of State Department and/or military types.) There were a lot of Aussies there as well, and generally a nice, genial crowd, with freely flowing beer. And darts. What a combo…

No one was injured by an errant dart, however, so happy times all around. I actually made it to the second round of the tournament before Vlad took me out, but his insistence on never letting my beer mug stay empty for more than a few minutes meant that I was actually relieved to be out of the tournament, so that I could call it a night. I’m actually not too bad at darts, but I’m always amazed when I actually hit something I’m aiming for, since a little thing like “aim” has never really been my strong suit. The surprise is also pretty clearly written on my face.

In any event, it was a fun night, I packed it in around 10 pm and went down the street to get some food, since I hadn’t had much to eat since lunch, which had been getting increasingly further away as the clock kept ticking. Had to get something into my stomach to soak up all that Tiger Beer (a Singapore brew which is very popular in Vietnam – it’s kind of like…well, kind of like Bud, I think – but it’s what they had and it’s what was bought for me). After a suitably greasy dinner, I got into a cab and made my way back to the hotel. And got ripped off again. I have a very negative view of cabs in Hanoi thus far, I have to say.

One of my co-workers said that her daughter would like to meet me, so I am now spending tomorrow afternoon being shown around Hanoi by two 16-year-old girls, since she asked if she could bring a friend. I don’t know enough about the city to know what I’d like to see beyond what I have already seen, so when she called me and asked me what I’d like to see, I didn’t really have a good answer, as I’d already seen a lot of the big tourist-y things today. Honestly, I kind of wish I could get out of it, but I don’t see how I possibly could without hurting someone’s feelings, which I don’t want to do. So we’ll go, I’m sure it will be fun, and then I’ve got to spend tomorrow night packing for the upcoming trip this week to Ha Tinh province.

I keep seeing things on the news about the Kashmir earthquake – the amount of destruction there is just unbelievable. And of all the places – this is an area where people are so poor, they just have no capacity to recover from something like this. Apparently, international aid is lagging far behind what was promised, and winter is setting in, it’s going to get very, very bad there, and people will continue to die in huge numbers. Whatever my experiences were in Pakistan, I think that it’s just so tragic, and it honestly bothers me that aid has lagged so far behind what they need. If a natural disaster happens in a place that isn’t an international resort destination, do we just not care as much? I’d like to be less cynical than that, and I know that the logistics of getting aid to people in these remote areas are so incredibly difficult, but are we just on natural disaster overload, as some news commentators have said?

Okay – that’s enough of that for one day. I’d best be getting to bed, anyway.

No Real Reason

I woke up at 5 am today on my own (and trust me, that doesn’t happen often), and I have no idea why I couldn’t go back to sleep – it’s not jetlag, I’ve been over that for a few weeks now. I have a few things to take back to the tailor (the second one was good, I’m not too happy with the third one, but I still haven’t found one that I really luuurve – too late to keep shopping around, though) because they’re not quite right. But as soon as I woke up, my head was buzzing about the things I needed to get fixed – now why on earth would something as unimportant as clothing keep me up? It makes no sense. As fun as custom-made clothes are, and as much as I joke about being shallow for getting excited about it – it really is just clothing. It’s got to be other stuff, like maybe the probability that I’ll be sent to Yemen and the possibility of southern Sudan.

In an effort to at least get one difficult conversation out of the way, I spoke to one of the guys in our DC office who is running the domestic projects I was working on to let him know that I have been told that I’ll be spending some quality time in Yemen. He thanked me for telling him and said that they’d have plenty for me to do when I knew what my schedule was going to be and/or it was more open. He’s very understanding about this kind of stuff in a fatherly sort of way, which I appreciate because he could really be a jerk about it, or just say “well, we can’t work with you because you’re not reliable”. He’d be within his rights to choose that route, so I’m glad that he’s opting not to. (And I have a feeling that’s going to be an expensive phone call. Oh well – business call = I’m not the one paying for it.)

Kudos to Dan “Don’t mess with The Family” Rolfs for digging up the following for me:

 http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30345 

On the advice of my boss, I casually mentioned to our Senior VP in Paris that I could start in Yemen after they had a project manager in place, since the old one had to be chucked for being, apparently, useless. I’ll go there to work, but I’m not going there by myself. Talk about making things harder than they need to be. From all accounts, Yemen makes Pakistan look like a bastion of liberalism, as it’s one of the more (most?) conservative countries in the Muslim world. I’m also going to insist on having a female interpreter available – which shouldn’t be considered an unreasonable request. But clearly we haven’t gotten to that part yet. I would like more specifics, or at least copies of the project documentation that they have so far, so I can get some idea of what I’ll be doing.

D has confirmed that she will, indeed, be in Paris by the time I get there in two weeks, so that’s very happy news. I’ve got a few meetings and some work to do while I’m there, but I’m happy that she and I will have the chance to hang out. And that we’ll be similarly jetlagged, since she only gets back to Paris from Saigon two days before me. R, her boss, with whom I worked here for a little while, also said that he’d take me to a good place for croissants that’s close to the office. Mmm…

We’re off to the rural areas again next week, although different rural areas from the last trip. What I know so far is that it will involve a LOT of driving, as this province is 350 km away. Itsy Bitsy and PM are coming, Teeny Weeny and Eye Patch are staying behind in Hanoi, but somehow we still have seven people going. If we have another SUV into which we have to cram eight people, I think I’m going to cry. Or laugh hysterically at the absurdity of it all – I haven’t decided yet. But hopefully we’ll have a minibus, and all will be well. (Does anyone know what a Mercedes Sprinter is? Because that’s what we’re taking, apparently.)

It’s been good to be back in Hanoi this week, but I’m also looking forward to this upcoming trip. Then, once we get back it’s workworkwork to get the Second Annual Report done. I don’t think I’m going to have the opportunity to go to Halong Bay on this trip, I just don’t think I’ll have time. But hopefully, people will like my work on this project enough so that I’ll be able to come back to work on it next fall as well. Regardless of the less fun aspects of this trip (ants in the suitcase, communist bunkers, ants in the bed, eating Vietnamese jumping snails, ants in general, etc.), it’s been a really good trip, and it’s nice to feel useful in my profession. And as I’ve mentioned, I quite like Vietnam – besides, if I come back next fall, maybe I’ll be able to save up enough time and money by then to go over to Australia to see my family. Wouldn’t *that* be fun?

The Only Thing That Doesn't Change is Change...

For some reason I remember that unspeakably cheesy line from a school play when I was younger – I can’t remember which one, though (“Let George Do It”, perhaps?). In any event – little blast from the past there.

So, it seems that people are willing to work with my schedule for the Yemen project. I have mixed feelings about that, to be honest. But I need to kind of push those aside for the moment. I told them that the best I could do would be to turn around and leave for Yemen on the 28^th of November (yes, that’s the day after I return home from Paris, giving me exactly enough time to pack, hopefully enough time to do laundry, and not much else), but that the first trip could only be for a couple of weeks, returning mid-December, and then leaving again shortly after Christmas. (Sarah – please forgive me, I know I’m already on the December tech schedule!! This isn’t definite yet, though!) It should go without saying that this isn’t what I really *want* to be doing, despite the major mileage that I’d be racking up, now that I’ve gotten over that whole “find me the cheapest flight possible” thing – forget that, I need to at least be getting some frequent flyer miles out of this or something. Besides, I don’t think too many other people worry about it when they book their travel. But as has been emphasized to me, they’re desperate, and well…that’s about it. The Senior VP in our Paris office said that he’d be happy to meet with me about this when I’m there, but that everyone has already agreed that this should be a top priority for me (??) so he doesn’t understand what these “overlapping commitments” could be, or why they’re important. Well, they’re domestic division projects, which may be why he doesn’t understand.

As I was just saying in an e-mail to my mom, I’m already feeling a little burned out with this whole “being on the other side of the world by myself” thing, so I don’t know for how many more years I can keep this up. I need a break to come up, and I just got another e-mail about a project in southern Sudan. My boss said that if we end up going, he’d ensure that none of us had to be there for too long. There are people who can just do this non-stop, but it’s clear to me that I’m just not one of them. I miss my life!

I’ve been trying to find something on the “appropriate dress” for Yemen – something my male colleagues never have to think about. I came across the following from a tour company that offers tours to Yemen. “Women can visit Yemen without a male partner, but feministic ideas are unheard of. You are advised to dress appropriately and act modestly. If you smile at men or even make direct eye contact, you could invite harassment. Yemen is not dangerous in this respect; it's simply that you should respect the country’s local culture.”

Things like this make me think some very unfriendly thoughts. Because clearly, making eye contact with a man means that I’m some kind of whore. Why is it, again, that people think I should be sent to countries like this?

I should change the subject, because I’m not likely to get more chipper about what I've been reading. Like how, showing my ankles and making eye contact with men means that I obviously don't respect myself, and it's an invitation for them to treat me inappropriately.

(deep, cleansing breath)

I need to focus on the fact that the actual work I would be doing would be really interesting, and good experience. I need to reserve judgment, because I haven't actually been there.

And I think I need to get myself a fake wedding ring.

Typhoon, Anyone?

Since my family managed to go two years in Taiwan without a typhoon, which is supposed to be an annual occurrence there (if not multiple times throughout the season), I suppose it’s only fair that I should encounter one at some point. That point would be today. These aren’t your typical rainy season-type rains, these are hard-core, you-never-thought-you’d-see-this-much-rain-at-one-time-in-your-life kind of rains. I don’t remember the name they’ve assigned to this particular storm, and I think it’s slowed down enough so that it may not officially be considered a typhoon anymore (the winds have to be above 120 kph), but it caused people to have to be evacuated from Da Nang and all kinds of other things like that – the coast took kind of a pounding. Nothing like what’s been going on with the Atlantic hurricanes, thank goodness, but it was still pretty intense. Here in Hanoi, it appears to be just rain, rain, and tons more rain. It’s a good thing that my hotel is slightly elevated…

There’s a building across the street from my hotel, and I’ve always been curious as to what it was, because there are a few Vietnamese Army guys stationed out front, with their fingers resting casually on the triggers of their automatic weapons. I can’t tell you what kind of guns they are, since I’ve never really been a “Guns and Ammo” kind of girl, but they’re big. It turns out that it’s the UNDP office (United Nations Development Program). Who would think that they’d need armed guards outside in Vietnam? Huh…interesting. Well, whatever the reason, someone apparently thinks that they need armed guards outside. It’s been a while since I’ve seen men with machine guns right outside my walls – not since Pakistan. It’s a weird feeling, but I don’t usually think much of it unless I’m looking right at them.

I’m sure that I am condemning myself to a relapse, but my plan to beat my cold into submission appears to have worked for the time being. I’m still a little congested and light-headed, but overall, I’m feeling better. Here’s hoping the trend continues! (I’ve been eating lots of fruit and trying to get some exercise in, maybe that helped a little?) Since I’m feeling more lively, I may take myself out to dinner again tonight, assuming that the storm subsides by the time I need to be getting out of here. It appears to have passed, mostly, but sometimes these things come in waves…? I have to go pick up some clothes from the second tailor tonight, so here’s hoping that they turned out well! I still haven’t brought anyone anything I had from home, so again, it’s nothing that can’t be replaced, but I hope they did a good job – although, like I said, I have more confidence in this place than the last. (I’ll find out in a few hours whether or not that confidence was misplaced…)

While I have enough perspective to realize that I’m lucky to have any telephone at all, and that I’m even luckier to have e-mail capacity and all those good things, I am so frustrated with my mobile phone here. First of all, apparently some people are having difficulty calling me – they get a message that says the number doesn’t exist. Yay. Second of all, international long distance is so incredibly expensive that whenever I “recharge” my phone with money, it’s all used up after a short phone call, because I can only use this annoying pre-paid cell phone. A call to my bank last night that got more complicated than I’d expected cost 500,000 dong (about $30), and got cut off, leaving me with almost nothing left on my phone – and the bank didn’t call me back like they said they would. And I can’t make any more calls until I put even *more* money on my phone. Given the fact that I don’t permanently live and work here, I need some better phone access, because I’ve also been trying to make business calls, and that’s been an exercise in frustration as well.

Of course, I’ve also heard stories from my parents about having to schedule a time for a long distance call in Pakistan, and then hope that the line worked when it was their turn. So really, this isn’t too bad, I suppose.

I just talked to the guy about the Yemen project, and by “urgent”, they mean…in two weeks. So, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll end up being drafted for the project, unless they’re really that desperate. (Which they might be, who knows?) But I said I absolutely couldn’t leave for Yemen before November 28^th, and I had to be back here for Christmas, although I referred to that as “personal family obligations”. There is, however, no way that I’m spending Christmas alone in Yemen, I don’t care how interesting the project is. The timing is unfortunate, because I think it’s interesting work, and I know it’s stuff I could do, but if they need someone in the next two weeks, I’m not right for the project. It’s funny, though, how I feel very strange saying “no” to any kind of project – I almost feel obligated to say yes. I’m not, technically, but still. I also have this stupid competitive streak, where, if someone else gets offered a project that I don’t even want, after I’ve said I probably can’t do it, I think “hey! I haven’t definitely said ‘no’ yet!”. Things I don’t understand about myself. At least I’ve got the presence of mind to realize that the last part is just my stupid competitive streak, so I keep it to myself. I think part of it is that I know I’m not at a place yet in my career where my experience will speak for itself. My experience doesn’t speak for a whole lot yet, so I’m torn between trying to carefully preserve my actual life, and trying to build my career, when there are a lot of people with competitive streaks in this business. (Not that I think such traits are unique to this business, by any means.) But, of course, much as I like a lot of things about my job, I never want to confuse my job with my life – I just need to remind myself of that from time to time.

So, maybe I’m not going to Yemen after all.

Perhaps Not Quite as Nice as I'd Hoped...

I was heading for my room, when I saw something skitter across the hallway in front of my room, and dart out of sight. It was either a small rat or a large mouse. Neither option makes me feel great, but I suppose that’s life. If I see one in my room, then the management and I are going to have some words, but for the moment, there’s nothing to be done about it. However, presently it’s just one (and I know full well that if you see one it means that there could easily be 100 that you can’t see – let’s ignore that for the time being), and it’s not in my room. That I know of.

I got up early this morning to work out, figuring that if my cold isn’t going to go away quietly, then I will just have to beat it into submission. I think it actually helped, as I’m feeling a bit better today. Still fuzzy-headed, but better. I finished up a report last night after I got back from dinner, so that’s good. I decided to re-read it in the cold light of day and make sure it sounded coherent before I submitted it, but it’s good to have it out of the way. I am all about the multitasking these days. I’m trying to do preliminary work on a domestic project on which I’d be working if I were home. But in an effort to prove that I am, in fact, reliable, despite my somewhat unreliable schedule, I have offered to complete a few assignments for other projects while I’m here. I’m hoping that this will be good in that “developing professional relationships” sense – because I’m kinda getting tired of falling asleep in front of my laptop.

Okay, I’m trying to be positive about this whole Yemen thing, since my boss sent me an e-mail saying I was urgently needed there. This is frustrating for several reasons, chief amongst them being that I am trying to develop more work for myself with the domestic division, and I can’t bail out on commitments that I’ve made – although my boss has made it clear to me that, as far as he’s concerned, my international work comes first. I’m still not clear as to how much I can turn down projects or not – I don’t really feel like I’m at the point in my career where I can say “thanks, but no thanks”. But I’d like to actually try being home for a while; it feels like I’ve been gone a lot for the past six months or so. Probably because I have been gone a lot for the past six months or so.

If I do end up having to go, and it’s not for short trips, then I will also be stopping somewhere interesting on the way home, as is rapidly becoming a tradition for me. A quick glance at airfares shows that two options I could have are Paris or Frankfurt. Hmm…I’ve never been to Germany, and more time in Paris is never a bad thing. From a neutral perspective, if I didn’t have other commitments, the project sounds like it would be really good professional experience, fascinating work, but I’m also thinking of what life was like in Pakistan, and the whole “house arrest” thing isn’t too appealing. However, it’s entirely possible that this project will be set up differently, with more support and such. I don’t really know, and Yemen has a healthy-sized entry on the State Department’s Travel Warnings website, so regardless of how the project is being run, I’m not likely to be able to head down to the market by myself if I want to. I’m not likely to be able to do a whole lot by myself if it involves going outside my residence, in fact.

It’s funny, but even re-reading what I’ve written over the last few days, it is so clear to me that I still have no idea what I want my life to look like in all but the most abstract terms. I want to be home, to spend time with my friends and family, to be involved in my community and not just be a visitor in my own life. But at the same time, I’m talking about possibly moving to Europe for a few years. If I’m really, really honest – I’d love to have the chance to do all of those things, and I suppose there’s nothing that really says they’re mutually exclusive desires, but they’ll have to go in a sequence, since I can’t be home and abroad all at once. Then it’s a matter of trade-offs, as most things are in life. So where does that leave me? Sitting in bed, ready to go to sleep at 9 pm, and rambling. I’m going to chalk it up to the head cold.

Look! A Shiny Object!

(First of all - Happy birthday, Pete!)

I’m a little distracted today, and my cold is definitely progressing, which is both good and bad, I suppose. Good in that the faster it starts, the faster it will be gone, but bad in that…well, it kind of sucks having a cold. So that’s not likely to be helping my concentration, either! Ah well.

I stayed up later and did some work last night, so I’m glad I got some of that out of the way. I’m having a hard time getting started on my trip report from the last field trips, but I think once I really get going on it, it won’t be too bad. It’s just a matter of getting going, as it is with so many things! It was a good trip, but there’s so much to talk about, I’m not sure where to start.

I get the feeling that TW and IB, but mostly TW, feel like I need to be scheduled more. TW came into the office on Friday and announced that the driver would be arriving shortly to take me to lunch. I was a little surprised and said “oh, we’re going out to lunch?” and she said “no, just you.” I told her that I appreciated the offer, but I didn’t feel like going out to lunch by myself and would just grab something downstairs. Ten minutes later she came back and announced that IB would go with me. This was not my point. We went to lunch and it was nice and lovely and all of that, but it felt very strange – I hadn’t indicated that I wanted to go anywhere, but she just decided that I would be going out that day, and then when I declined, roped IB into keeping me company – poor girl. I don’t particularly like being fussed over most of the time, and it feels strange to think that they see me as needing to be babysat – I can’t imagine what I would have done to give that impression. Of course, the communication difficulties don’t really help the situation at all, either. Plus, I don’t want to be rude, and I think that my desire to just be left on my own sometimes might be perceived that way, so I try to suppress it.

We went out to a really fun Vietnamese place for lunch today, one of those little hole-in-the-wall places that I see lining the streets, where you sit on little plastic stools at little plastic tables. The food was delicious (a soup with chunks of freshly roasted pork, to which you add noodles and veggies as you like), but the stool would have been a more appropriate size for my nephew John. John is three. The table, however, was a proportional size to the stool, so it was an interesting experience, and I think it resembled how my parents must have felt at parent-teacher nights when I was in kindergarten, and they had to sit in the little chairs.

I told them I needed to get to an ATM, and they said they’d have the driver take me to one on the way home – very nice of them. Then IB came in and announced that I wouldn’t be able to withdraw any cash, so what did I want to do? I was a little puzzled, and she said that Vietcom Bank will only let their own customers use their ATMs or something like that. I said that my bank let me use any ATM, and that I was sure I could find a Citibank or HSBC branch around here. She looked unsure, but I said I’d find something, and it took me approximately 2 minutes to find the location of one on the internet. It was kind of like when PM told me in the airport that I needed to make sure that I didn’t leave anything valuable in the outside pockets of my suitcase, which weren’t locked. Well, *duh*. I have actually done this before, after all. Nonetheless, I said thanks and I hadn't left anything valuable there - although I may have also said something to the effect of "this isn't exactly the first time I've traveled..." People have been telling me that I look younger than I am quite a lot lately (I’ve never given it much thought – once I got past the age where people kept assuming I was older because of my height, I have tended to just think I look the way I look) – maybe by “young”, they mean “dumb”, I don’t know. I appreciate that they’re all trying to be helpful and considerate, but it goes back to the “I don’t like being babied” thing. I suppose it’s better than completely being chucked in the deep end, but I have gotten better at swimming.

Or maybe I just need to be less of a cranky bee-yotch. I think that's probably part of it, too...

Hurrah for Taking A Day Off

No public broadcasts to wake me up this morning, thank goodness, so that was very happy for me. I woke up on my own slightly before 7 am, but I’m going to attribute that to going to bed relatively early. When I’m away from home, sometimes it’s a lot easier to get to sleep at a reasonable hour, because…well, because there’s not as much to do. I opted for both the unspeakably bad movie on HBO and my book, which is still very good (Carter Beats the Devil, in case you feel like picking up some new reading material).

I’ve got a rough plan of action outlined for today, a couple places that I want to see, that kind of thing. When I travel somewhere, or have people traveling to see me, I don’t necessarily like to have a military-style plan of action (“at 08:00 hours, we will get breakfast at the diner. At 08:45, we will depart for the Old Treasury Building…”), but I like to have a list of options, a list of places and times, so that I have plans for things that I could do, if I have the time and inclination. That way I don’t wake up in the morning and waste half of the day figuring out what I want to do, because I don’t know what the possibilities are.

Mission (mostly) accomplished for today. I made it to the place I wanted to find for lunch, it’s a chain that I’d been to in Saigon, and it just has standard Western fare, but it’s well done, and I was looking for something a little relaxed and familiar. The Australian manager and I were chatting for a bit, he came out here a year ago with his wife and kids, seems like a very nice guy. It was also nice to be able to have a normal-speed conversation with someone in English. Ever since Itsy Bitsy said that she and Teeny Weeny couldn’t understand about half of what I said when I first arrived, but were now up to about 80%, I’ve been trying to speak a little more slowly, annunciate better, etc. I’m happy to do it, and even if they’re interpreters, English still isn’t their first language. If they had Vietnamese English teachers, which they both did, then I’m not surprised that they don’t expect me to pronounce some things the way I do. But still…it was nice to not have to think about the way I’m speaking so much and just speak.

I took a walk down to a market about 2 kilometers south of the lake, the one that T and I went to a few weeks ago. It’s supposed to be one of the best places in the city to buy fabric, and as with last time, the selection is mind-numbing. I was hoping to find the same fabric that I bought for a shirt that got destroyed by the first tailor I went to, but it was nowhere to be found. And trust me, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I was actually quite disappointed, because I really liked it, but I found a few other things to console me. On my way to the market, I saw two things that made me wish I had someone to laugh at them with, instead of just chuckling to myself on the street. One was a store called “I’m A Girl!!” which sounds as though it caters to the post-op transsexual, and the other was a mannequin that looked exactly like Paris Hilton, standing outside a store called “Free Love”. Indeed.

The weather here has turned cooler, but by “cooler”, I mean low 70s – upper 60s if I’m really being generous, but I honestly don’t think it’s that cold. It’s really funny, though, to see people dressed up like Nanuk of the North, with fur-trimmed, quilted parkas, hats, gloves, scarves, etc. I, on the other hand, am walking around quite comfortably in jeans, flip-flops, a tank top, and my light rain coat, because it’s another heavily overcast day. In fact, I’ve been a touch warm at times. The looks I get from people are akin to the looks I’d cast toward the guys I’d see walking around Madison, Wisconsin in January, wearing shorts and a fleece. The term “cold” is relative, you see.

After an afternoon of walking around, during which I’m sure I covered at least a few miles, I was heading back to the hotel and decided to pop into the bakery across the street for a treat. Excellent idea, I must say. I have an idea for where I’m going to go tonight, it’s also recommended by my guide book, and since I was so heartily in agreement with it about the place I went to last night, I figure I can trust its judgment once again. It’s also about two blocks from the hotel, so that’s good, since I’m a little tired and I think I’m getting a cold. Nothing major, the same thing happened last time, but I should probably try not to exert myself – just drink lots and lots of water and rest.

Speaking of resting, I feel a nap coming on…

I love naps. I really, really love naps. I so rarely get to take them, so it feels like a real treat when I can sneak one in. (Another benefit to life on the road – the opportunities are more plentiful, because it’s rare that there’s someone waiting for me somewhere.) Dinner was nice, very filling. In fact, a little too filling, which is really the same as saying I ate too much. Which I did. They were showing the World Series on TV, which reminds me of my last trip here, when they were showing last year’s Wimbledon tournament as the 2005 one was going on. The series is over, and people who would like to know about it, already know how it turned out, but still – I suppose it makes for good background television. I am working my way through my book, and getting good at taking myself out for dinner.

It’s almost 10 pm, and I’ve got a little work to do (well, actually a lot of work), but I’m also getting a little tired. Tonight’s debate is whether I should be responsible and do some work, or whether I should just go to sleep. Hmm…