She said she had a few questions in response to my last post. (She also said she enjoyed reading the
posts so I should please keep sending them. And that I should take some
time out away from the work for reflection and writing of your own. So how can
I not answer the woman?)
1) Have you been doing some cooking?
I believe this question was prompted by my vehement
declarations that I was going to start cooking again when I got back to
Indonesia because it makes me happy and relaxes me. And my answer is, sort of.
I made spring rolls and peanut sauce, put together some Mexican-ish dishes
supplemented by the maid’s yellow rice, made pesto and threw together a couple
variations on penne pasta with it, and made a tofu squash thing with couscous
for dinner with my roommate. But it’s a month since I’m back so with just that,
my batting average is kinda low. Maybe this weekend. … What I really need to do is figure out a way to learn to
cook some Indonesian stuff. Hmmm…
2) Have you had a chance to take the Kopaja to
see the ice cream parlor, or in other words, have you had a chance to do some
touristy-type stuff exploring, or has it been solid work 24/7 since you got
back?
No on the first part but also no on the second part. A few
slip ups aside I’ve been keeping more or less human hours at work and while I
did work one weekend, am taking a day off to make up for it (well, haven’t yet
but plan to at some vague point in the future). I still have some report
editing hanging over my head from my old contract so there’s that to fit in…
but one can only do so much with the brain cells one has.
My evenings and weekends have been spent otherwise on
·
Boxing lessons
·
Brunches
·
Grocery shopping and little window shoe shopping
·
Sitting by a pool
·
Pedicure
·
Movie nights
·
Coffee dates
·
Drinking in bars (also, randomly, eating some
amazing Afghan lamb in one)
·
Reading in a café
·
Chatting with my uncle
·
Hosting dinner
·
Playing with the cat
·
Talking to a few friends back home
·
Pizza party
·
Bowling
·
Margarita night with a bunch of Australian women
·
Staying in with a friend, drinking wine and
ordering in and watching the 18-month-old’s bathtime
3) What do you do when things go wrong in the
house?
4) Do you have a handy person to call?
5) And is that part of your expense, or the
owner's expense?
Mainly I make the most of it until the maid comes in. She
has a handy man on call. Although he seems to be MIA due to landlord health
issues (not totally clear on the connection but that’s the story we’re
getting.) I think my roommates aka my immediate landlords pay for stuff they
shouldn’t to avoid the hassle of dealing with the actual owner of the house. So
now that that’s been established as the pattern if I take over the lease that’s
probably what will keep happening. (Notice the “if”? – yeah, that’s a whole
story. For later.)
6)
You talked
quite a bit about the expat experience. I wondered what you were
referring to in your background where the expat was looked down upon?
Other than backpacking/straight tourism, every previous
experience living abroad prior to Indonesia I have been surrounded by, well,
expats for lack of a better term, who were immersed or trying to be in “the
local culture” and who looked down on the people who plopped in w/o any
interest or at least effort in that regard. (I’m realizing in my wisdom of old age and different
circumstances it’s not quite that black and white of course; see my previous
post.)
7)
What do
you mean by good kind of work? (in reference to a facebook post)
God only knows what specifically I was talking about but
probably it was because I was talking about working on the weekend, which in
principle is bad, but to have hours of totally uninterrupted time to sit and
check things off the to do list feels like a real treat sometimes. My weeks
otherwise lately have been one meeting after another with brief times in
between to get halfway through writing an email or halfway through making a
plan or budget decision or halfway through writing a job description or halfway
through lunch.
The meetings are mainly good meetings by which I mean
substantive and useful. Lately primarily they are consultations with people for
the main project I’m working on – so basically I get to sit back and learn from
people about a topic that interests me -- though also we are interviewing
candidates for another project as well as working through some stuff together
in my main project team. Like
today we almost got our field work plans for the end of the month solidified, and I also got the
pleasure of meeting one on one with my team members to check in and hear what’s
working and what’s not.
But still what would be
really good is some time to hear myself think about what
direction this project is going and respond to the inner alarm bells about
needing to start putting some of what we’re learning into writing. I’ve got Monday and Tuesday blocked off for planning the writing
process and starting a draft – on my “details shared” calendar nonetheless,
testing the theory that saying a plan out loud to someone increases commitment.
At the very least it will make my team remind me not to meet with then. Although I'll probably end up with outside meetings on there anyway.
I’m sure now Mom will have additional questions about my
responses. Fire away Mama.
xox
M
