A long windy meandering river of a post in the middle of drought

I haven’t posted for a while, sorry, went all internal there for a while. I arrived back from Vietnam 2 weeks ago today. I had the first day off, tried to get back into local time, tried not to sleep – didn’t count on the scant couple of hours sleep I’d had on the plane overnight and found myself battling zombie-like sleep deprivation at the end of the first day I got back – thought I should stay awake and not nap because I had a teleconference in the early evening for work, which I had optimistically thought would be fine to do the day I got back because ‘I can do it from home in my pjs! I can go to bed straight afterwards! I’ll have all day to prepare!’. Was a silly plan really as I completely failed to recognize that I might not actually feel like it. Do you ever do that? Forget you are a living breathing organism and will not always be feeling like doing things, even if you think they might theoretically be possible? Anyway, that was a great sleep when I finally had it. The next night too. Going back to work was ok because I’d stayed up with things via email while away so I didn’t feel overwhelmed with new info, and I kind of knew where projects were up to. Probably speaks of bad work life balance, but I made the decision to read and respond to the more urgent work emails even on my holiday week, because I thought it would just make life easier when I got back, and realistically I don’t disengage from work on a week of holiday – I just forget for bouts and then think about it at certain times anyway.
I was actually really excited coming home. That day I was beaming as I walked down my local main street to get some cat food and a coffee (Sydney coffee! The milky kind, with carefully drawn patterns on top, oh I’d missed you). I felt quite blissful as I went about my business. I went into a butcher to get some chopped meat for Cassie Cat, and beamed at the butcher and mixed up all the meat names and apologized for making him mince some tiny chunk of chicken and fell a little bit in love with him in that special way that you do when you have more than usual endorphins (internal monologue going something along the lines of ‘oh, a shaven headed Asian butcher, he looks very Zen, so peaceful.. oh he’s very kind, aren’t people wonderful’). I imagined that maybe he was a Buddhist because he told me that he only eats meat once a month (‘oh, an actual practicing Buddhist – a semi vegetarian butcher! Hark the delightful embracing of paradox!). I stopped being a little bit in love with the butcher 5 minutes later when I fell a little bit in love with everyone in the café, just because they were there sharing the moment. It’s nice when sleep deprivation and excitement combine to feel like deep joy, or your favourite drug, but maybe not so fun later when you find yourself in ‘time has slowed down and so have I and I don’t even know what I’m doing sitting here, wasn’t I meant to be doing something what’s the time anyway, can I go to bed yet, can you die from tiredness, maybe I will?’ mode.
Coming back from a trip away is also like the music stopping in musical chairs, or pens down at the end of exams. It’s like you suddenly have to take stock of what you did and didn’t get done while away and the postcards unwritten or written but not addressed, or the personal emails unopened or read and appreciated but accidentally not responded to because you ran out of internet access or got distracted or felt to pooped to write something in actual words that make sense, so you didn’t. You have post holiday follow up tasks too – I spend literally hours rearranging souvenirs on a couch in our loungeroom, trying to make colours match and make sure I hadn’t forgotten people. I love hand made things, and I love colours and I love the way that pretty things look together. And I really get a lot of pleasure from giving people things. (But I also worry about wanting to make everyone feel loved and remembered and wanting to share what I’ve enjoyed. Maybe too much. Maybe this is the last time I get presents OS because I have trouble drawing a line around a tight inner circle of friends and family, my inner circle floats around and includes whoever is there right now, everyone, and I feel too guilty when I have to rationalize and leave people out. And then I have to tell myself firmly that it absolutely doesn’t matter, that in the big scheme of things no one cares, but it feels at that point like it does and they do. This comes up in a really big way for me about my extended family and birthdays and Christmas – last count my family Christmas list was in the high twenties, and traditionally I send birthday pressies and cards to all manner of extended family. Which becomes stressful to me as I loose track of dates, and feel guilty about forgetting. Then I feel guilty about contributing to mass overconsumption of ‘stuff’ which often just ends up in landfill – so I get stuck between wanting to and not wanting to. My lovely housemate A workshopped this with me just a few days ago and encouraged me to enter a new streamlined phase and I’m inclined to agree with her. I’m thinking a collective annual gift of a goat or two to Oxfam or similar might do the trick). Anyway, so souvenirs seemed very important at that moment, and now, 2 weeks later, less important as the ‘being away’ razzle dazzle feel fades and souvenirs wait patiently in a bag in my bedroom. Photos are the same, although digital cameras make the process quicker and less painful (at least I don’t worry about finding and buying the perfect photo album system and somehow deciding on the perfect way to categorise and sequence my photos. Digital is a good medium for the indecisive and playful – you can rearrange pics in different albums, different sequences to fit the purpose. So note, holiday snap slideshow available on request. Mr T, the lovely snapdragon’s hubby, said they were like ‘album covers’, so hey, the slide show comes highly commended! (And I feel a bit tickled because I like the idea of myself as a naturally brilliant photographer unimpaired by my complete ignorance of the technology and theory, and complete disinterest in learning, but I suspect in fact that the images owe more to the ‘picturesque’ nature of Ha Noi and the megapixle and zoom features of my lovely new seemingly fool proof camera than any special skills on my part. Sadly.)
Being back at work was great, I really like the people I work with and the projects are mostly interesting*. Most importantly, I feel comfortable there, and ‘safe’ – which might seem like a strange choice of words, but it hints at this kind of hard to capture feeling I have about the place these days that includes liking the physical space of the office, having people who welcome you with smiles and interested questions, who offer to make you coffee, who seem interesting in being actual real life human beings and friends and not just polite and professional co-automatons in a corporate organism, and who have a sense of who you are – all the good and bad bits – and seem ok with that. It feels like a safe space to be myself, which it didn’t when I first started. I guess in retrospect I realise that last year was pretty hard for me, and I felt on edge and pulled fairly thinly for a lot of it. I was petrified of the new job, and felt really uneasy there for months and months. Felt like I had to present a competent and functioning persona when in fact I felt a lot of self doubt, a lot of exhaustion (I was commuting 5 hours a day – does anyone remember that?? I surprised myself the other day by remembering that, I thought – shot was that really my life?? Golly). I felt uneasy at not knowing the nuances of the job, the detail, the big picture. I don’t learn well by getting random snippets of information, I like to flesh out a whole landscape, a whole functioning ecosystem of a new environment, and am not satisfied with disconnected lists or srange half-described processes. I should know that about myself by now, but I generally forget and have to relearn it – so when I started I didn’t think ‘oh, I will probably feel uncomfortable until I get a picture mapped out of how everything fits together, but that’s ok, because it will happen eventually.’ I also learn new things quickly and am adaptable across different topic areas and types of work, which this workplace at least recognizes and has utilized, but to start with I wasn’t very good at protecting myself from extra work. I tended to just say ‘oh, ok, I’ll give it a go’. And then panic, and immerse myself and eventually create a good product, and learn a bundle, but in the mean time feel very self-doubtful about doing something that seemed quite high level in a whole new field. I felt this underlying scream of ‘holy shit!!! Can I really do this!! Fuck!!’**. That has kind of subsided, and now just emerges every now and then in my internal dialogue as a lazy question, asked with an appraising face pull, and quizzical eyebrow, rather than terror and hand waving. So that’s good.
[Hang on – was this what I meant to be writing? I thought I was telling you about my last 2 weeks, but I guess this thinking has been part of it. Meandering – I did warn you].
Yeah so work feels ok. And being home has been really nice. My housemates and I are settling into a much more familiar and cosy house relationship, 5 months in to living together. It’s a bit like a blind date moving in with new people, even if, as in this case, you’ve lived with some of them before. Each new household is a new experience, it has a particular physical space, a particular mix of personalities and the dynamics and roles that go with them, and a particular set of life characteristics and themes that you are each exploring in that time and space. It takes time to settle in and get to know each other, time to build trust, time to get beneath the surface. Which is a lovely process as it happens. Its not without its challenges, especially after living by yourself, I think I’m much less in that space of discussing issues and negotiating than they are because the process of starting a new relationship requires so much of that discourse, and living by yourself and not being in a relationship means you don’t have to scrutinize or compromise on your preferences or practices much. I’m sure living with people is ‘good for me’ in that sense, as of course I realise that those are good skills to have. Anyway, there’s been a few things lately that have just made me smile and think ‘these are good people and I’m lucky to be living with them’. Most recently when I got home late Monday night, ready to do some more work, pack and leave early next morning for Brisbane (more on that soon), and the two of them wandered out in their pj’s and sat on the couch and said ‘we were already in bed but thought we’d say hello and good luck for tomorrow’ and spent a few minutes chatting about the trip I had planned and then sleepily wandered back to bed.
It’s also been lovely catching up with friends, like after work dumplings with Aunty B (even though I still find it strange when I bump into her in the hallway at work – she is doing some contract work for us), the best brunch to linner spectrum ever with snapdragon and Mr T now that they have moved into town and just around the corner (yah!), and a beautifully synchronistic lunch with merririsa, C-chan and E-chan (synchronistic in that wonderful non-planned food coordination that works perfcctly anyway way).
It has also been an emotional couple of weeks, with big things happening to people I care about. Sparkle Cowboy’s mother passed away and I felt that awful feeling of pain once removed, when someone you love has lost someone they love, and are far away. You get that ‘oh god, what do we do in the face of death?’ stuff surfacing, and that vague floundering as you try to connect without imposing, try to extend some understanding without pretending that you can possibly share that intense feeling that they are experiencing. You feel concern and a kind of wandering homeless sadness, that makes you want to scoop people up and comfort them, but you know you can’t, and that grief just needs to run it’s mysterious course, and you remind yourself that death and dying and loss play a role in the complex and rich experience of life, and are important too even if we can’t comprehend it at the time.
My mum has been going through a rollercoaster of life stuff, after her partner’s contract was not renewed and he has yet to get a new one, so is at home struggling with feeling displaced and identity in the family, with a few financial concerns thrown in to boot. Now, just this week, it looks like they’ll have to move house in the next 2 months because the owner wants to sell. It looks like it will be ok – he has an interview tomorrow for a great role, and they are looking on the bright side re moving, but it still takes a lot of energy, especially when you are working part time and at home with a 3 year old.
Meririsa won a great job, that seems to satisfy all the criteria for fitting into her family life and also keeping up skills, job satisfaction etc. Aunty B has some exciting news and it looks like she and significant other will be having a big change in the next few months, and I hear rumoured that a certain funky inner city couple have found a place to buy in the inner west (but wont out their news till I hear it from them!).
And last but definitely not least, Mermaidgrrl and Little Mister had their first child yesterday, a healthy baby boy. I am in their kitchen right now, keeping the pets company and drinking chardonnay while they enjoy their first evening together alone as a family after what sounds like a very busy afternoon of visitors. It has been a real treat to be here and be part of it. MMG is doing remarkably well post-op; she looks great, is in high spirits, very pragmatic and optimistic about motherhood, blood pressure and blood sugars and all the medical stuff fine now, and taking to it all like a fish to water. Baby Seth is a cutie, and seems both very peaceful and a good sleeper – so far so good! LM is also looking like she’s always been a mum, bathing, holding and changing bub with finesse as well as being a supportive and doting partner. It’s very exciting time punctuated with many teary joyful moments, and being celebrated by a wide circle of friends, neighbours and relatives. (More on the hilarious night time descent of excited neighbours in dressing gowns and sporting bags of beers later).
And on that note, I bid you adieu, off to get rest so I feel spritely and in fine form tomorrow for hospital visits, sitting down and nutting out a piece of work I have to hand in tomorrow that should be straightforward and satisfying once I get started but haven’t quite yet tackled, and just maybe cooking a casserole or two for the freezer if that works out ok with whatever else that is planned for tomorrow. Which should all be lovely. And yah to my work place which so far has not sacked me or even chastised me for dashing off at a minutes notice without even asking for permission with any kind of grace or real professionalism (just stating that I would be gone and then kind of giggling nervously and grimacing in a fait accomplit kind of way).
Later, now I’m back on the blog horse (neigh! Brrwwwh!), I have an interesting book to tell you about, soccer tales to beguile you with (ahuh! I bet you thought I’d quit – not so! Indoor soccer is fun and I like even though I lack all requisite skills apart from enthusiasm and the ability to run in short bursts). I have my complete absence of a love life to update you on (oh ho! I bet you can’t wait for that one), and the general waves of existential angst and fleeting joys to share.
Till the river meets the sea.
*Well the projects are interesting on paper at least and ‘useful’ (which makes up a big part of my internal mantra about what I want to do, so useful seems to be important to me).
** My mum once said that my competence far exceeds my confidence, and I think she was right when it comes to my day job stuff. But aherm, I think maybe she is not so different.

New digs and daydreaming

Now in a new hotel, a family owned 5 story terrace building, and the rooms are great. I reckon if I was ‘posted’ (wrapped in string? If undelivered return to?) to this city for any length of time I would like to stay here. A month in a large studio flat with wooden floors, simple cane furniture, a little open kitchen with nice green and blue crockery, fresh yellow roses, windows overlooking the action on the street. There is enough distance to mute some of the noise and immediacy, but much more closeness than the lumbering monolith of the hotel I have been in. A small table, a cloth covered clothes wrack, a simple white bathroom. I could just about move in and never leave. There is something lovely about small spaces which are used well, streamlined. In reality if I lived here I would transform the simple elegance and create vibrant clutter, transform the smooth lines and create nooks and crannies. Fill the smooth quiet space with loud paintings and towering stacks of books precariously tottering, a cacophony. So, maybe it is like seeing the inside of the fridge dark – you open the door to see and it is immediately lit. You move in to immerse yourself in the smooth lines, you immediately transform it into something else. Or maybe if I had two dwellings - a little smooth hotel like apartment, an outstation to a larger lumbering, heavily rooted and deeply filled house somewhere, maybe that would work. Maybe I could move here, to Ha Noi, for no reason other than I like this street, like this room, and now have a hankering to learn the language and feel a sense of belonging while being here. I could bring my cat, he would like the balcony, and there would be lots of fresh fish and offcuts from markets to eat (say goodbye processed cat food). I could keep my day job, and just do it via the internet. Eat pho for dinner, at less than $2 a bowl. Work part time, and fly home quarterly to have meetings (there are always meetings on something or other to join in on). While here, send reports through erratically and blame the power outages for my own power outages. I could paint, all in greens and reds. And enjoy elegant silence in my room before emerging into the orchestra of street sounds daily.

Photo album

I am sitting at a bar, outside, on a high stool. I vague off slightly and let my gaze float upwards while my companions talk. There is a tall thin terrace building opposite me. On the third or fourth floor, I can’t remember, there is a small balcony which has so many bird-cages hanging from the ceiling that it is crowded with cane globes twittering. There is also a breeze up there, which I don’t feel where I am sitting, and so each cage waves, the birds inside jump around as small black dots where I am, it looks alive, the whole space looks alive. It heaves and ripples in the breeze. A man comes out onto the balcony, facing me, I am surprised, he looks down leans over – is he emptying a teapot? From the air? – he drops a bag and I see that this is his rubbish, ready for the street collections that come by on foot. He looks down, satisfied, turns and goes back inside the house.

Flowers at the markets, flowers in flat cane baskets on the back of bicycles. Flowers in bunches, each rose bud wrapped carefully in tight newspaper to protect them in transport. Splitting newsprint with crimson red peeking through.

Yellow roses – they adorn every hotel room I stay in, and I am growing fond of them.

Caged dogs spotted through the city and at points along the highway make me feel sad and responsible, like a co-conspiritor in some cruel and unlawful imprisonment. Their lack of words does not make them mute, they speak very loudly and I feel ashamed, I can’t explain to them why I will not respond and give them their liberty. To see and do nothing is a terrible feeling – to do this with witness is even worse.

If I stay here much longer my hair will dredlock, or turn into wild clumps of straw. For a humid city it sure makes my hair feel dry. Maybe it’s the pollution.

Counting culture

In a little hotel room in a province. It is clean and simple, but not quite aligned with my sense of aesthetics. It looks a little a bit insubstantial, and shiny, as if everything is designed to be able to be hosed down. The lamp has a covering of plastic on it, like it was never quite unwrapped after purchase. The ‘free hotel bathroom stuff’ is also somehow creepy, 4 cotton buds in a transparent bag, some lotion in a sachet, all shoved in a small white plastic basket hanging from the wall. The information for the room has a lot of rules, in both English and Vietnamese. It contains itemized lists of what is in the hotel room (as if somehow you would try to leave with the television) and even the specific brands (as if you would come from home and try to upgrade your television by swapping with one in the rooms). It feels like a hotel made by people who are suspiscious of people who stay in hotels like this one, and made for people unaccustomed to staying away from home. Dour and authoritarian rather than welcoming and comfortable. One outstanding feature though, and for this I forgive all manner of apricot and forest green coloured curtains, is the bed. The bed is hard, really solid, with no lumps and bumps. It, I imagine, will be like sleeping on forgiving ground of some kind. Like an even swathe of moss covered dirt, somewhere shady, somewhere safe under a tree.

Do you see what I resort to, mapping idiosynchrosies to remind me that I have a cultural reference point and am not at sea, floating adrift in a world of shiny tiles, howling wind and beeping bikes.

I can see a rainbow

On the balcony of this little room, I looked out and saw a pink sun, pink like the kind of pink that modern Thai restaurants might paint a feature wall, translucent magenta pink like some very thin sari silk lit up from the sun behind. In a murky pale grey sky with no trace of sunset. I looked several times just to make sure it was really there. I felt like I was in some movie in the future set on a Martian outstation, looking out at planets we don’t see from earth. I feel like I am on mars.

On arriving in this town, one thing that stood out for me was the colours. There is a particular aqua blue / aqua green, thick with white, painted on sturdy walls, caressing the bumps of adobe or concrete, weathered away by the hands of time absent mindedly stroking, tinged black in patches from fire or dirt or the air, which I love. I love it in Sydney, and find it mostly on terrace houses painted in the early 1960’s, and I love it here, in all its slight variations. This town also has it’s fair share of weathered mango coloured shopfronts, which is maybe my second favourite building colour, and many many unpainted concrete brown and grey coloured buildings, which are not colours I really respond to in any way, they are just there. This aqua, I track it involuntarily, as our car passes through streets, spotting it, following a path of crumbs. I wonder is it a feature here because the people decorating love it like I do, or was there some shipment of cheap paint, which happened to include this. at just the time that the town was last being spruced up? Is it the random progeny of the leftovers of white paint from the hospital, royal blue from the school and yellow from the People’s Committee offices? If I had to pick one colour to paint a row of buildings, a small village, it would be variants of this, and altogether it would look like some underwater scene, crumbling and organic, growing and calcified.

Mute

Can’t speak the language, have to rely on translators, smiling nicely and nodding, sheepish pointing and mumbling, speaking my own language to people who can only know in essence what I mean by the timing and tone, and on those people who speak both and can skip into a stilted conversation with me and then back again. I share this imperial and lazy notion of so many Australians that perhaps, hopefully, fingers crossed, that people will speak English wherever you need to go, and whenever you need to ask for something important. It is such a lazy notion, and I know I am missing out both on local knowledge and idiom and stories, but also it is very isolating. It makes your transactions with people tend to focus around commerce – people with limited English will know how to sell you something but are less likely to be able to make casual chit chat.

My work mate and I speak the same language, and also ‘speak the same language’ on many things, but it is like our shared vocabulary is work, and a few topics which radiate out from work – like study, like organizational structures, like funding arrangements for programs, like working in Asia, like where to go for food near the hotel.

Watch me typing, just to hear the sound of my own voice.

Note to self

Local beer - Just because it’s cheaper than a bottle of water does not mean that you can drink it like water and not expect to get ridiculously drunk.

Manners – apparently telling your colleague that you are wearing bathers because you ran out of clean knickers is uncouth and will result in head shaking, laughing and being labeled a dag.

Zoos – is life inside a hotel room, without the company of people you care about, without vistas, without normal hot and cold extremes, without food you have to go seek out or help prepare, without movement, without ritual, without challenge – but with the addition of no privacy, and the patronizing comments of strangers - is this the experience which brings about that deadened eye glaze of animals held captive to be stared at in zoos? (Speaking of which..)

Vegetarians – don’t eat fish, or chicken curry. I have failed at being a vegetarian on this trip.

Fatty boombah – nothing quite beats clothes shopping in SE Asia to make you feel like the hugest hulking Viking with ridiculous curvy bits which fabric wont quite accommodate. You will also feel hot and sweaty at the same time, accentuating the lumbering notion of body. Makes you half-heartedly regret the last 10 years of cumulative tim tam eating. Until you find something nice that fits, and then everything ok again.

Go to uni at Cambridge – it makes you feel kind of defensive in some completely infantile and egomaniacle way when older people who have studies overseas wax lyrical about Cambridge. Makes you feel like you are full of potential not actuated. Maybe having studied somewhere fancy would allay this feeling. (Or…)

Get over the fact that you haven’t studied at Cambridge – fairly self explanatory.

Rats – next time someone says they’ve seen a giant rat in or near the restaurant you’re in say ‘but of course, it’s good food, what do you expect – would you trust a place with skinny rats?’

Adaptation

Ok so a week in and I’m feeling a lot perkier and better adjusted to place. I am reconciled to the rhythms of life in the hotel, and get some small kick out of finding my room made up, new bottles of water in the bathroom, some note under my door telling me that my clothes have been washed and are ready to be delivered. The people in the business centre and the woman who cleans my room I know to say hi to now, and I feel a bit less like just some other random stranger, and at least like a lingering random stranger. It’s amazing what a difference familiar faces make, even if they are people you don’t actually know at all. It’s comforting to feel recognition, and to be smiled at with recognition rather than just standard issue politeness.

Workwise I am feeling less anxious about what I have to offer here, what I’m meant to be doing, and how I will interface with these new people.

I didn’t realise at the time I was packing up to go just how uncertain I felt about that. I think partly this is because I had fairly limited guidance on what my actual role here would be, - it was a ‘just come along and see what it is you can contribute’ scenario. To be fair, I did know that there would be workshops to help organize and attend, and separate to that there would negotiations with funding bodies about next steps / follow on projects, I knew there would be working with an academic to synthesise two processes conceptually so we can describe them in a conference paper and also in a guidebook that we are writing. But I didn’t know whether I was mostly here to watch and learn and eat noodles, contribute ideas, help nut things out, smile and nod and agree etc. I realise now that in a way this was impossible to know before hand – my role is emerging in response to the situation and mix of other roles, and the whole thing is a complex, multilayered and messy affair (or we could say organic and beautifully undefined). I can see that sometimes I am the ice breaker, sometimes I am the nod and agree-er, sometimes I am the clarifier, sometimes negotiator, sometimes endurer and listener to those who need listening to, sometimes minutes taker, sometimes ideas herder. And everyone else is also those things sometimes, we swap roles as needed. In practical terms I am getting more confident about piping up, I am learning which bits to jump in and help shape, and when to let other people do their negotiations without my input. I know which bits to put on my ‘tackle later’ list, and don’t try to throw all possible revisions on the table now. In short, I feel that I have been useful, and that others also think I have been useful, and in essence, I guess that is both of my core fears for the trip allayed. (ahem, apart from the falling down the drain or traffic accident thing – see below for those)

This situation has been a good reminder that I often approach new (work) situations thinking ‘oh shit, this is all terribly important sounding, maybe I will be out of my depth and have nothing to offer!’ and each time, in time, I see that in fact I have a lot to offer, and do make a valuable contribution. Somehow I am not made more confident of this fact by any of the other things I’ve done in the past that have worked out fine – and I think this is a problem, because it affects my confidence to apply my skills to the types of things I could do. It would be good to practice holding that knowledge and not having to learn this from scratch every time! So many people I have come across through work seem to have blithe confidence in their abilities, which in some cases far surpasses their actual abilities. Oh for a little blind confidence. Note to self – am capable and good at what I do, don’t panic, it will all work out fine.’

In terms of the working relationships I am also feeling better. Being thrown into a mix of people who see each other only sporadically, who come from different corners of the globe, who have complex funding - project management – subcontractor – expert advisor roles and different ideas about priorities is very interesting. It has started to feel like we are allies rather than adversaries, and there is enough good will developed to know that whatever the details we are vaguely working together for the same goals. I now have a much better idea of what is individual manner – background noise rather than key melody - so can interpret people’s tone or comments according to their personal style, and not immediately think that loud and emphatic talking means anger, or that incredulity at my admission that I’ve never read Barnes and Quigmeigle’s 1969 book on blah blah means that I am being judged as incompetent. People have standard ways of operating, when you see that for a while it makes knowing where you stand so much easier.

Now, work stuff aside, I am also adapting to the city. Sure it’s baby steps, but that’s ok. For example, I have not been even close to colliding with any kind of moving vehicle, have only fallen into a drain once (and it was a little one), have survived a ride on the back of a scooter with a stranger and felt ever so safe and excited, and have only once been ripped off mercilessly and more than leered at by a particularly unpleasant taxi driver – which in some strange way puts me more at ease (I reflect and think ok, so that was bad, but I wont let it happen again, I now know how to respond, and even that – my worst thing so far - wasn’t that bad). I can walk down the street and manouevre pecking chickens, bags of rubbish left for the hand pushed rubbish collection carts, the tiny food stalls with vendours sitting low to the ground, with small fires and tables and bowls of food all posing potential trip hazards. I can weave in and out of parked motor bikes which often take up all or at least most of the foot path, and force you to walk along the road periodically, with buses and taxis and bikes streaming past your elbow, so close and sometimes so slow you are part of the flow of traffic too. I can systematically shake my head at the cyclo drivers gesturing to the seat, and the scooter drivers, and the occasional tshirt seller, smile back at the occasional fruit vendour who makes eye contact and smiles and keep up uninterrupted conversation with my companions.

Similarly I am getting more accustomed to the flow of life through the day with it’s strange mix of trying to catch the hotel breakfast before it closes, lining up for meetings and ore meeting meetings and post meeting meetings, and then the end of day debrief, and the drinking of beer and the random meeting of other people’s social contact who are always also kind of work contacts, none of which I know, all of whose names and connections get thrown into the same pot in my memory and stirred around together until they are indecipherable, and the dance of internet access, in little bursts, opportunistically grabbed between events, and the checking of work emails from the office that seems just a distant memory, and the responding to work emails and the constant dance of who is meeting who next when and where and the getting of dinner, and trying to find vegetarian food but also not being so strict about it that I miss out on tasting every single local speciality; and then bed! My ‘work’ and ‘non-work’ time is much less well separated here than at home, the whole time is work, and woven through is socializing.

I have been reflecting that my experience here is maybe nicely metaphored (sorry for verbing yet another noun) by reference to traffic. I am gradually transitioning from the structured, neatly regulated, carefully defined operating space of the roads of Australia – with stop start, fixed lane structures, retrained use of horns, clearly defined right of way rules… to the seemingly chaotic, noisy, opportunistic, yet strangely considerate of each other and somehow collectively functional traffic system of Vietnam. Which requires I lot of faith in the unplanned and unstructured, and in other people’s judgement and cooperation, and a lot of letting go of knowing the exact ‘how’ of the route of getting from A to B.