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.