A dull week and a past life

Well, in trying to come up with anything reasonably interesting that happened this week, all I could muster was that I broke a hair clip thingie. You know what I mean. One of those things that you use to clip your out-of-control hair in after you’re twisted it into a pony tail.

Theoretically, it’s easier on your hair than an elastic band. I wear those when I work out because I’d dent my head doing the exercises with the big plastic clip in it, but they tend to strip my hair. (Yeah, I know this is boring information, but like I said, this is the most interesting thing that I could come up with this week. Bear with me.)

As it is, I haven’t had a haircut since I’ve been here, and I think since September. Combined with the damage the little elastic thing does to my hair, I really can barely get a comb through it. Except it’s so darn limp and fine, it’s a rat’s nest.

But getting a haircut here is tough. I have absolutely no language skills, and my hair is remarkably different than the locals’ locks. I cannot even convey “please weigh these potatoes,” so trying to explain “take off five inches, re-layer it and feather the bangs” isn’t going to be in my vocabulary for the next couple of years.

Which means the hair clip thingie really is a great loss. I have three others, but they are quite inferior. They came in a set of three, and one’s a really ugly green color. I use that one to clip my MP3 onto my sleeve while I work out, what since the MP3 ($25 at Wal-mart; spared no expense on that one) clip broke.

I was just trying to yank back my hair and all of a sudden, something snapped and the clip broke. And I’m sad. Not because I loved it or anything, but because it was one of the few things I have left from my time in Morocco.

I’d bought it at the souk, paying down 2 dirhams for it, which is about a quarter. I really don’t have much else from Morocco, and even less with me and that was just a little token that I could keep close. Now it’s gone.

Morocco seems like a long, long time ago. I guess it was. I turned 40 there and now I’m 45. I still remember it and miss it, but all things related to it are fading. I’ve no idea how my host mom, EC and all my kids are doing. And no way to know.

It’s a whole different world going on over there, like some kind of parallel universe. I know it’s there, but I cannot access it.

For all intents and purposes, it’s as gone as the hair clip. It makes me sad.

Much of my life is spent chopping garlic

This has been one of the more boring weekends of my life, which is kind of saying something. I had two things to do and have been procrastinating on both, so I’ve done precious little.

Next month, I’m going to the Philippines and I’m hoping to learn how to dive. I have the class lined up and have some materials the guy gave me. They’re mostly YouTube videos, and sadly, I don’t learn that way. I need to study the material, and this is kind of sciency stuff – I just don’t get it.

So I meant to make a better stab at that this weekend but haven’t really made much progress. Maybe at lunch. I just wish I could find the book online instead of videos that may or may not be the right ones. The guy sent me a Dropbox link but I don’t have Dropbox and do not have room on this computer to download it. So I’m just doing YouTube searches and trying to find the right ones to research.

The other thing I need to do is write my part of the evaluation. I still haven’t done that and the deadline is looming. Sigh.

But I’ve stayed very busy this weekend putting off both of those tasks. I had a couple of movies going (“Hugo” and “City Slickers”) and have played, but not really watched, the second season of “Cheers.”

There’s been little productivity, although I did realize there’s a built-in shelf behind my sofa that fits all my non-TV DVDs. I have enough room to buy about 10 more, max, and one of those came in this week: “Gone Baby Gone.”

And then there’s my usual: working out, laundry and cooking for the week.

The workout routine is the same: about 65 minutes on the elliptical, four reps on all the machines and then 35 minutes on the bike. I am a pool of sweat after and, if the scales are true, lose .6 pounds during the hour-plus. But I drink it right back, quaffing God knows how much tea over the weekend.

On weekdays, I do the little routine right after work, but on weekends I wake up at my normal time, and get down there at 6:30 a.m., which enables me to be done, showered, laundry thrown in and be crawling back into bed by 8:30.

And, by 10 a.m., I wake up again and the tired and tingly feet are just a foggy memory. (Really, I am going to have to go see the podiatrist again. There is no way what my feet’s reaction to that elliptical is normal.)

After that, I do the pancake thing and maybe Skype and do emails, but honestly, until Sunday evening, I have nothing really set. But after going to the grocery store, I cook for the week.

So I take out my carrots, onion and garlic and start prepping. When I think back on it, I have spent a good portion of my life since PC peeling garlic. It’s the same rice concoction I made almost weekly in Jakarta, too.

I put a whole head in each week and as a result, it’s very pungent. Right now, when I open my fridge, it’s completely overpowering.

But because it’s garlic, that’s a good thing.

Birthday bowling in Bangladesh

Back from two days of leave! Had a great time visiting a friend. It was a quickie trip, as mine usually are, but lots of fun.

Never looked better.

I hadn’t taken any leave since September, when I started, and figured I was due around my birthday. So, after pricing flights and being astounded at how much it cost to fly to places within China, I headed out.

And I ended up painting the town red. Or, as the case turned out to be, the town wound up painting me.

After arriving on Saturday, I helped out a friend of my friend on Sunday morning, which is a work day in Bangladesh. We went to a school in the slums (keep in mind this is Bangladesh slums, not American slums) and gave an apple and a banana to each of the kids. I went into three of the classes and entertained the kids wholly.

First class, I asked them to sing a song in English and suggested “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Next class, I asked a little girl to pick a song and they went into some song about an astronaut that was in English, but I’d never heard it before.

The third class was math, so I taught them a theater warm-up from Peace Corps where you count down from 8 to 4 to 2 to 1 on your right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot. They loved it.

On Monday, I signed up for a tour of Old Dhaka. The city is 400 years old, and the Old Dhaka part is pretty congested with a good percentage of the city’s 16 million residence. Many arrive into the city by boat from some other town across the river and cross by ferry.

The docks were the first stop on my little tour and man, it smelled. Overall, Jakarta reminded me of a combination of Jakarta, Morocco, India (that part was traffic) and Cambodia. The people were really friendly, too.

My tour guide and I went onto one of the ferries, which could hold over a thousand people. Granted, this wasn’t a sweet ride. There were no chairs and it would have been standing room only over several levels. I went on and it was empty, save for the random worker, sleeping on the floor or benches.

From the top deck, I could watch the little boats ferry passengers back and forth across a pretty dank looking river. There was trash everywhere, but the recycling program was pretty effective. Crude (as in trash pickers) but effective. And plastic bags are outlawed.

Pretty much all weekend (including the flight) was almost all men. It had just occurred to me on the docks that I hadn’t seen a single female when I spotted this little girl, maybe 7 or 8, who was taking flak but holding her own with some boys. We bonded and I asked the tour guide what her likely story was. He said she was probably a street kid, which was really depressing.

We also went to a market, where I saw a ton of coconuts among other things, the parliament building and their equivalent of the White House, only it was salmon colored.

But the weirdest thing was at some random street, where there was a party going on.

There is some Hindu holiday on March 17 and although I have no idea what it means, it prompts kids up to young adult to go into the street and party as they’re having dye squirted at them. It was completely bizarre. I watched for awhile and my tour guide asked if I minded getting wet and, well, no, I didn’t.

So I waded into the throng, which delighted the kids. I didn’t dance but did get squirted. My guide assured me it would come out, but it didn’t. Ah, well. Thrift store finds anyway. Well, not the bra, which now looks tie-dyed, too.

But it was incredibly fun, and definitely something I won’t experience again, especially on my birthday.

Later in the evening, I went bowling with some of my friend’s colleagues, which was also a ton of fun I do stink at bowling but that’s not the point. I almost cracked triple digits!

All in all, it was a fabulous way to spend birthday No. 45.

CoMe and Gone

I’ve finally ended four weeks of just hectic, hectic stuff at work. I had been looking forward to this weekend for a month. There was nothing special planned but a little road trip with office folks, but just the idea of this weekend arriving and me not being totally whipped was a good one.

At this point, I don’t even remember what started the frantic pace, but we did have this kind of audit team a few weeks ago; maybe that was it. Then my supervisor got sick, which added to the chaos.

But the big thing was this past week. It was the office’s grand opening. Granted, the move to the new building from several different locations about town had been over the summer, but it took this long to get the VIP people in to do the whole ribbon-cutting dog-and-pony show.

I love dogs. I love ponies. I love shows. But dog-and-pony shows are just not my thing, but that’s my world from here on out.

Somehow, I volunteered to coordinate volunteers, which will look great on my evaluation but holy God, it stunk. But it turned out just fine, and, thanks to having the right person in charge of being the catering liaison, I got to spend Monday evening tasting the foods we’d serve on Wednesday.

Wednesday was The Day, and fortunately it went fairly all right. I did have a few takeaways, such as, if you’re planning a lunch for VIPs, make sure the lunch place will be open and able to deliver in time for your event.

Also, don’t prepare early. I learned this the hard way. We had all kinds of stuff in one room and the one before mine was done, I went in to set up mine. I had little name tags for the VIPs and arranged them in protocol order.

Then, when I went in right before the event was to start, I discovered the cleaning crew had thrown them all away. Just one panic attack.

I was also “X,” the person who taped down name tags where the 10 VIPs would stand on the balcony to cut the ribbon. I did this early because the room where the balcony came off of was booked that day and I didn’t want to interrupt.

But I learned that when there are clean sheets of paper taped to a balcony floor, people can’t help but step on them. Now, granted, the whole purpose of the sheets were to be stepped on, but you can’t display a white tag with a footprint for a Chinese VIP. It’s offensive.

So I had to get another copy and tape it down. I did so, trying really hard to sneak in and out of a room that had meetings, coffees and lunches going on.

And then, I had to do it AGAIN. And, God as my witness, just as I was finishing up on No. 10, I looked up and two of the biggest wigs had come out for a dry run and had stomped on them again.

At that point, I just waited until the event started, when they were down on the stage giving speeches. I went out and re-taped all 10 things, stopping to stand during the color guard and pausing during the moment of silence. But other than those two things, I hustled as fast as I could.

I was later told that I, as the lone person on the balcony as everyone else was eating those tasty snacks, had the media camera trained on me. Joy. One of the bosses pulled me aside and said I really should have done that earlier.

Gee, why hadn’t I thought of that. [/sarcasm off.] GRR!! I laid those suckers out FOUR TIMES. And it was for PR and good host relations – can’t have Chinese people be offended by footprints.

The US big wigs wouldn’t have cared less, honestly. And really, we had about as big as Guangzhou will have.

This post is a hidden gem and until we start to shine a little more, DC just doesn’t know about us. It took months to get a high-level visitor to open it, but boy, the one we did was awesome.

The person in the position known as “M” arrived – the director of management for the bureau. And as high on the totem pole as M is, he’s cool as can be.

The whole entourage (there were several other high-level people in, but the single-letter office is as big as it gets) did their tour of the office, and at our stop (and likely every one), M went around, shaking hands.

I was completely thrown off, because I had gotten caught outside of my workspace. I had run over to get some info from someone and the whole group came in as I was making my way back to my desk, which is right inside the main door. No way could I slink back unnoticed, so I stood pretty much as the first person in sight.

As a result, this man stuck his hand out and said, “Hi, I’m Pat Kennedy.”

Um…yes. I knew that. But I think of you as “M.” You displaced my world for a week and a half as I worked to coordinate volunteers, but more than that, six months ago, you swore me in. How can I not know you?

I was just totally thrown because I was trying to remember what the protocol was, like if I was supposed to introduce myself or what, but I don’t even remember what I did. I still have my job, so I suppose I did all right.

I ran into him and the group several other times during the two-day visit, and he was very nice and accommodating each time. At the second meeting, I told him he had sworn me in six months ago and I’d been sitting in the front row. He laughed and joked that he always remembered the redheads. Very human person – and man, so good at what he does.

However, going through after the week and a half prior, I must say that I was really happy to collect the ribbon-cutting scissors back from him (I wear many hats) and watch the whole group head down to the parking area and get in a car and head to the airport. Game over.

After all the planning, it was over without too much drama and, relatively speaking, with little fanfare. They came, they met, they left.

And then, at 4:45, I sat down at my desk, exhausted.

And I thought, “Wow, what do I do now?”

Don't put metal in the science oven!

Finally getting around to posting the photos of Macau. The lobby of the MGM Grand was just fantastic. It had this whole “Finding Nemo” theme that was utterly calming. I just don’t have that kind of creative vision.

The ruins were really interesting, too. The church had, at some point, burned down, and only the façade remained. Next door to the church was an old fort.

I really liked it and, like I said, I had thought Macau would be a one-and-done trip but I definitely could see going back.

So far, I’ve left “the country” three times since I’ve been here. Hong Kong, since it’s an autonomous region, counts. I left for Macau from Hong Kong so I am only counting that weekend once, but in a couple of weeks I leave town for Bangladesh for a couple of days. In April, I’ve decided to go to the Philippines. I have delusions of learning how to dive, but we’ll see how that pans out. I did buy the plane ticket, though, so I’m at least headed to the beach.

But after that, except for three-day weekends, I will have to cool it. My department has a “no leave” policy from May to September or something like that.

But there are ample three-day weekends. There’s one in April, May, June and July. August doesn’t have one, but September has two. May also has a random day off on a Thursday. We are allowed to take that Friday for a super long weekend off but I’m not going to.

I’ll have to look at nearby China for the three-days. As in, not as far as Beijing. That’s $600 by air or 20 hours by train – neither of those is happening any time soon.

But, as demonstrated last weekend, there is a lot of stuff around here. Next weekend, we have another field trip, this time to a strawberry picking place and some hot springs. It’s three hours north, so I’m going in different directions. But I’m tucked here in the corner of the country, so it’s an effort to get out and see the rest of it. Like the wall. I am not leaving China without seeing the wall.

Meanwhile, I’ve been amusing myself unpacking my boat shipment. It was really quite disappointing to receive. First, I got a box or two that’s clearly marked “long-term,” which was the stuff that was supposed to be socked away until retirement.

Second, I thought I had a lot of pots and pans, at least judging by the labels on the boxes. I didn’t remember having so many, so when I undid the first box and found a whole bunch of bathroom stuff, I was only quasi-surprised.

My packers did a TERRIBLE job labeling boxes. One very, very large box marked “shoes” had several layers of other stuff before unearthing a couple pairs of Chacos at the dead bottom. Another “pots and pans” had a pillow and snow boots.

So live and learn. I was overall pleased with it, especially when the guy had showed me the list of what he said he had downstairs and that list included all the “retirement” boxes, as well as furniture. I had about 15 minutes of freak out until I looked at the weight of the shipment (694 pounds) and realized no way could Mimi’s furniture have been included.

But very little of the stuff is useable here. I had hoped my pots and pans (there really were some) would be operable on my induction oven, but no dice. Actually, out of all those kitchen boxes, I pulled out measuring spoons and cups and my ulu, plus the tagine, rice cooker and crock pot. I haven’t tried to see if the tagine will work – it’s metal. It might not.

I did completely forget I threw in some cans of root beer, which was a nice surprise. I’ve cut back on carbonated beverages, though, and had mine for the weekend on Friday night at the Marine party, so I can’t drink one until Monday.

 

I have been eating a ton of WintOgreen lifesavers, though. I’m actually feeling kind of sick from those.

Speaking of, my supervisor had food poisoning this week. I felt so bad for him. He lost 13 pounds in ONE DAY. That is so very bad. Eighteen in two, although he said he’d gained back .8 pounds on Friday.

Anyway, today is Saturday and I’m supposed to be gathering information for my own “ABC report” (See post Dec. 22.) I haven’t been. I got up with good intentions, hitting the gym by 6:30 so I was done around 8:30. I took a shower, ate breakfast and was back in bed by 9.

My big project today has thus far been going through my DVDs. I don’t have shelf space, though, so all I did was pull out the TV series ones and put them on the one shelf I have and then watch “In & Out,” “As Good As It Gets” and started on the “Star Wars” trilogy. So not really productive.

I have missed having movies available at my beck and call. I really do like movies but, unlike Daddy, have to be doing something else while they’re on. I can’t just sit and veg.

The next trip I make to Hong Kong, I will almost certainly see another movie. I’m 2-for-2 now and absolutely would make a trip over there to just spend a day at the theater.

“American Hustle” was pretty awesome, I must say, but there are a lot of others I’d like to see. I still haven’t seen “Gravity.”

I had my own “science oven” near-catastrophe this week, too. When I cooked on Sunday, I guess I wasn’t as liberal as I thought with the rice and had a couple of small meals this week. To supplement one of them, I heated up kind of a Ramen noodle cup thing.

Well, the lid, for whatever odd reason, had foil on it and even thought I know not to put metal in the science oven, there must have been a little bit that I didn’t peel off.

I put the little cup in there for two minutes and when it was done, I thought it smelled a little burnt. When I opened the microwave door, I figured out why. The lip of the cup on one side had turned to ash.

Don’t put metal in the science oven.

Road trip!

Got on a bus yesterday with about 60 colleagues, spouses and kids and went to a city called Kaiping, which is about three hours southwest-ish from here.

It’s a UNESCO site and really fascinating. The architecture not what I think of when I think of Chinese, but what do I know?

The buildings were concrete, a lot like Morocco. They also use their flat roofs for socializing, but unlike Morocco, the buildings were pretty tall. They had multiple stories and we went up into one that was six.

It had been owned by a guy who had emigrated to the US and owned restaurants in Chicago. It was really interesting – he had a bust of himself on one floor -- but at the same time dank.

They had kitchens on each floor, and we were told that was because the village was in a low area and when it flooded, the families would move upstairs and having a kitchen on each floor allowed them to still cook.

There were no bathrooms. I guess they used chamber pots. Zippy would never have survived.

The weather was a tad chilly, but not too bad. We had two buses pretty much full. It was a nice little road trip. I look forward to doing more around the area and in China in general.

I’ve asked off for two days and March and three in April to try to go places, but right now the flights to destinations in China are outrageous, like $600 to Beijing.

In March, I decided to go to Bangladesh and meet a friend who started at work the same time I did. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a long shot, but I could wind up in that position in two years, so this is sort of a scouting trip, too.

Honestly, I have no idea where I will wind up in two years and that makes vacation planning awkward, especially when flight prices are so high. I could shell out $850 to fly to Burma, but it’s entirely plausible that I could wind up there four, six or eight years from now. Sigh.

Anyway, right now, the Philippines are in the lead for April, but I don’t know for sure yet. Like when you go to Greece, there’s a lot of pressure to pick an island without having a lot of information on the options and not having enough time to research.

The past two weeks have just been so busy. I had to work in a different office last week after the week before had been brutal. Next week, hopefully, is a reprieve before another busy one. But soon after that is my trip to Dhaka, so my eyes are on that for now.

My Motown presentation was this past week. When I signed up many moons ago, I had no idea it would happen to fall during the week I was in a different office and staying late every night. In the end, I got about 11 hours of OT.

The presentation went really well, although I had the expected bumps since I had to downgrade from PowerPoint 2010 to 2003. Some of my animations didn’t work right. I had, for example, “Let the Good Times Roll” set to play as little blurbs about the blues popped up during the song. Since I didn’t have the video or the lyrics, it gave people more to do to than just listen. But the animations had to run through before I could play the song, which was really weird since I’d timed them sporadically. Essentially, the slide lasted about two minutes longer than it should have, but it worked. Anytime you close with “Billie Jean” it works.

I was really proud of myself that I got the crowd to play along with the “call and response.” I had been told they’d be really reserved and not want to do anything demonstrative. They were reserved, but with some coaxing, I did get them to do the response in one song, and then I discussed how we still use “call and response” here and there, like when a pastor calls out “can I get an amen?”

I got them to do that, too, and made them shout it. It was really impressive, especially since, at random times during the presentation, I did it and again and they played along.

Amen!

Flip flops in February

The overcast weather continues, but who cares? I had a little spate earlier this week (meaning last week; I know it’s Monday now but I was out of town and it’s still my weekend so there) when it was chilly and necessitated socks, but for the most part, the weather here is fabulous. At least temperature-wise, I mean. Yes, I can’t see the top of my tower, but I can wear flip flops in February. That is so much a bonus.

I skipped town again this weekend to go to Hong Kong. The onus, like last time, was an appointment with the podiatrist to pick up my insoles, which, BTW, Blue Cross Blue Shield did NOT consider important enough to cover. Grr.

Last time, the getting there was harder than it should have been, so this time I just got up and did my thing on Saturday, which included doing my taxes, and then took the subway up to the train station. I didn’t buy my ticket in advance because I didn’t want to pay the service charge and corner myself into a particular time and fortunately, had no problems getting on an earlier train than I’d done last time. And since, once there, I already knew the drill, I got to the hostel – same as before – a bit earlier.

My original plan had been to do Disney, but based on the overcast weather and slight chill, I drew up a Plan B, which involved movies. I obsessed over the times and strategized to figure out how many I could see on Sunday, thinking I could knock down my Netflix list.

Neflix does deliver here, but it takes a single movie six weeks to get from there to here and back. I’m only paying $5 a month, so it’s worth it, I guess, but I will not see the movies in my queue for many moons. So any attempts to see current films are welcome.

We have theaters here, but reading the listings is a problem. I think some of them are in English with subtitles, but I can’t figure out what’s showing where and when. That’s a problem.

Anyway, after deciding on three, figuring it out and being me, I totally changed my mind again. When I’d ruled out Disney, I had pondered going to Macau and forget why the movies moved up in the lineup, but somehow they did.

But when I realized “Frozen” was only offered in 3D (“Bring your own glasses or buy a pair!”) and I didn’t think I wanted to sit for a three-hour movie, I decided to just see “American Hustle” and then hope the ferry to Macau, which is what I did.

Honestly, I’d heard Macau was a Vegas, and it is but I spent very little time in that part. I went to the older city and could have sworn I was in Lisbon. It was so cool. I really thought an afternoon in Macau would suit me for the two years I’m here, but nope. That was too cool, and I will be back.

I will post photos of Macau, but since that was my second trip to Hong Kong, I’m posting those pictures first.

It’s a lot of malls. It’s a lot more than that, but so far that’s what I’ve seen.

I got a kick out of the “I Should’ve Been a Cowboy” sign in the store and wondered if there’s a little copyright infringement going on there.

Macau is only an hour by ferry from Hong Kong. I can take a train there, too, but I figured it was right there and I might as well. Again, I’ll be here two years so I figure I’ll have ample opportunity to do them both again.

The next time I go to either, I really hope it’s just a straight weekend off and not in conjunction with a doctor’s appointment.

And now it’s back to work tomorrow. Last week was pretty rough and this week is going to be fairly intense, too. My Motown presentation is Thursday evening and I’m really freaked out over it. The PowerPoint is totally kick-butt – I’ve spent over 20 hours on it – but I do have to speak in front of about 20 people so I am just freaked.

If I can make it through Thursday – and the thing won’t end until about 10 p.m., so when I say Thursday, I mean all of Thursday – I’m fine.

And we have an office field trip on Saturday. It’s not really a field trip but a road trip we were invited to. I don’t know the name of the city, but it’s a UNESCO site about three hours southwest-ish from me.

I’m really excited about going. First, if I make it there, it means I got through the week, which is no small thing. Second, I really, really want to explore China. I have ZERO language skills and am a little intimidated to travel to smaller towns – real China – alone and unable to communicate.

So this trip, which small and close to home, is a cool opportunity and I am looking forward to it.