Message in a bottle

ie another post from 'away'.

Today I left the hotel! Whopedee do dah! It was momentus, because it meant I took a decent break, went for a wander and got some sun (locals thought I was bonkers for not having a hat on, and told me so, kindly, in Vietnamese and concerned body language) but I was just deliriously happy to be part of the day and the weather and the world outside buildings.

Oh before I go on let me preface this by explaining that I have neither head space, internet time, nor non-work time to luxuriate over a considered post so this will be a random spilling ('sheesh, yeah, just for a change... and there's always some excuse for your cruddy spelling and typos' I hear you say) without any decent point or story. Don't look for the point, or, better, if you find one, can you let me know what it is - it might be clearer to you than me.

Today was a creeping sense of physical pain as tension crept up my back and between my shoulder blades and into my neck. I wish I was dramatising for the sake of a story, but not so. Fuck I've felt stressed the last couple of days. At first I was relieved when the interviews out of town I was going to do were cancelled (read - never quite organised properly, but nothing to do with me) because I knew I could do with the extra time here to work on docs with my colleague, and to be honest, I find that kind of thing very exhausting, so many things to consider in how and what you ask and so many interpretations and politenesses to be kept in mind - let alone keeping up with the content, when all the acronyms etc are not first nature yet. So, woo hoo, no interviews. However this did not feel better yesterday when I realised that this meant my next 7 days were to be in this one hotel, working long days and really never leaving. It began to dawn on me that this is kind of like being in the office, except where your home doesn't exist, and the bed is 2 feet from your desk, and you have 3 mega deadlines and no admin back up. Hmmm. In fact my hotel was starting to feel a bit like a prison cell; sure, a clean, spacious and daily tidied prison cell, but still overly familiar and stuffy.

Then, and you'll love this, I heard yesterday that my colleague back in Oz who was working with us on deadline #2 project (in fact doing a significant chunk) was not just 'down with a flu' as of the start of this week, but HAS DENGUE FEVER, possibly related to her last trip here and to another SE Asian country on her way home. Poor thing, I can only imagine how exhausting and physically revolting that must be, as I've heard from others that it is draining and painfully achey like you can't imagine. Meanwhile here, I found my stress levels nudging the ceiling of my 7th floor room, as I realised that there was a chunk more work to now be done from here. Shit shit shit.

And no, the deadlines can't get nudged. And yes the clients are all ones that we're also here talking to about nexts stages of work so don't want to piss off.

But, there is a bunch of great stuff too, little things so far, but hey, they'll do...!

Like today buying the biggest bunch of long stem yellow roses from a woman on a bike with a basket at the back, and bringing them back, wrapped in newspaper and ending up with two women from housekeeping in my room and me working on the group project of taking leaves off and arranging in vases and also carefully taking off the sticky tape wrapped around each bud to stop them opening too quickly in the heat. It was fun doing that, and they seemed happy to help and I felt cheerier with greenery and colour in my room. Oh and a huge bunch of those little scaly fruit that I bought at the market on my outside walk today too. I figure if I can't get out much I can at least make my room feel a bit more alive.

And I had some nice mango icecream, the teensiest scoop with the teensiest spoon, at the bakery around the corner.

And I didn't fall down a drain or get run over! And I'm not even scared of the traffic this time around, and much less worried about people staring at me (mostly they're friendly or curious, not hostile or lecherous stares).

And tonight I'm going out for dinner down the street to a cool thai place with alfresco stool and low table arrangement that I love. And we've renegotiated if not the deadline then at least the quality (ie complete draft, not final draft) for one project, and I think #3 will be ok.. so it might just all work.

Phew. I think I need a drink.