Slept in despite the heat and light streaming in my window and despite the builders being in*. Meant to be working on my essay today but haven't committed to a topic yet - 'does aid work' or 'assessing the impacts of structural adjustment on one or more of the following..", meanwhile assignments 2 and 3 for other subject loom. in 3 weeks it's all over, have to get them all in by then. For other subject am meant to be doing interviews with representatives from a poor comunity on issues to do with self-help and their interface with the authorities, effectiveness of government programs etc. Somehow wishing I was tackling it in a country I understood in a language I speak and know my way around. Not to mention having time to do it. argh, the whining mature age (note - mature age, not actually mature) student mantra goes on.

So, in the office to get some peace and quiet and blissful time alone. So hot in here in the middle of the day wuithout the air con. When I first walked in it was remeniscent of some scie fi after the blast type movie - clean lines of neat laminex furniture, no people, dark, stuffy and hot, like the defences of civilisation againts the climate finally came to some choking end. What to do but fire up the air con and head back down for a coffee while the whole thing chills back to arctic and I can function in it.

Took my BYO coffee mug with lid, the guys downstairs think it's such a novelty. I am a novelty. In an office block complex of thousands of people I would likely be one of a handful of regulars who come from some colder clime than here. I'll talk some more another time about the ethnic mix here and 'foreigners' and how different it is to Oz, but not now. Today the bum fluff guy was gone and replaced by swanky Indian guy, quite dashing, who flashes me his 'I'm interested' smile but I don't rise to the bait but sit and read the Sun like a local and tsk at local news and marvel at the gall of mahathir and and and and. Then my coffee arives and the smile again and I try and figure out whether it's about tips or tits and come to no conclusion (but do wonder at the marvels of my grossly oversized 'I've been to singapore too' style T and utilitarian sparseness of the pulled back plait if this indeed confers one with pulling power in this country) but of course I'm living cloistered and nun-like so there is no room for flirting, no time, no privacy, no point, heaven forbid I get into some sticky situation with a local that could lead only to furtive encounters that my extended family here would be appalled by (especially if I picked the wrong racial group, oh how gossip worthy that would be, how i would sink in their estimations) or serious relationship and dating that I would be appalled by; or, if s/he was Muslim maybe a run in with the religious police, now that would be a story for back home... No I settle for the coffee, leave no tip and head back upstairs to dive into the cool abstract world of my journal articles, leaving the pressing heat of the day and inflamed bodies behind for another time.









* When I say builders being in I don't mean that in some tacky ye olde worlde veiled reference to my menstrual cycle, but literally, two guys and power tools, constructing white built-in cupboards in the kids bedroom.