Honey, honey, it's her!

Last night we played cards at our landlady’s house next door, until 11pm. For the past five days, their front yard has been filled with people and laughter and music. The driveway is lined with incredibly bright fluorescent lights and people are coming and going all day long.
It wasn’t until we saw the big wedding cake of a coffin being carried out on the back of a truck on Sunday that we realised it was a funeral.
No matter how many times I hear it, I forget that death here is always associated with celebrations- togetherness and new beginnings.
Late on Sunday night, Kate and I were peering out of the kitchen window into their backyard, at the boys playing cards, trying to spot a familiar face, when we realised the shaved head with his back to us was Tom, the astonishingly handsome older son, whose hair I have always admired- one of those cool quiffy ‘dos. Gone. The younger son had done the same thing. This meant a close family member had died- all the male relatives shave their heads when that happens.
We went over straight away- Tom was playing cards with his friends, drinking copious amounts of Pepsi and watching DVDs on the TV set up in the yard. He hadn’t slept for two nights, he told, as his role was to keep vigil over the coffin, and make sure the incense never burned out. It was his uncle who had died- a 38-year-old with a wife and baby adopted just two days before his death- from a nasty case of alcoholism.
So this post is dedicated, firstly, to Tom next door, who has lost his hair and hasn’t slept in four nights. He has also lost a lot of money playing cards.

Okay, okay, I'll do it
This post is also dedicated to Michel and Christine, the French-Canadian couple who accosted me at Sengdara yesterday and basically shamed me into updating this blog quick-smart.
It seems that, six weeks ago, when they were getting ready to move here, the only ‘useful’ material about Vientiane that turned up on their Google searches was yours truly- me and my blog. So helpful, they said, and we worried about you when you had your fall.
They even saw me on the street not long ago and debated whether or not to approach me.
I’m a celebrity! Hilarious. Also, I must look the same as that silly photo I’ve put up on the front page- the one where I discover the camera in my phone for the first time.
Mortifying.

I’m writing this post from the office today, for the simple reason that I can’t seem to achieve anything when I’m at home. There’s always too much going on.
For one thing, I spend my precious hours before work in exactly the same way I have for years: going to the gym, drinking coffee, reading the news. It’s amazing, I just haven’t changed a bit.
And really, as if I could possibly come home and go straight to my laptop and start talking about my day, which has usually been tiresome enough. AS IF I’m not going to do all sorts of other things, like eat dinner, go to a bar, watch DVDs or read.
Basically, what I’m saying is that the reason I haven’t updated in a couple of months is because life is just falling around too fast to gather it all up, like a box of paperclips, the contents of which you’ll find lodged in the carpet or between the floorboards for weeks to come.
So I’ll just gather up a few paperclips for you.

I’ve finished work early today, as I have every day in the past week. I decided that if I can’t teach the staff a single thing, the least I can make them do is write a story each before lunch. Innovative, no? Everyone seems to be happier, although I’m not sure about the new desk arrangements. We are all facing each other at the moment, which means I have to keep my facial expressions under control- not easy when I come across sentences like this:

“Furthermore two sides have exchanged the range issue concerning about the jointly of establishing the various festivals such as the advertisement to disseminate the natural and historical tourism sites of two nations for visitor from domestic and foreign countries.”

Anyway, this new ‘actual work before lunch’ policy came about during a meeting last Tuesday morning. I learnt early on that it is considered offensive and sloppy not to be speak when asked during a meeting, never mind that the meetings are almost always in Lao, and I can’t understand a single word. Or that when it is my turn to speak, I literally say the same thing every time.
But I have learnt, also, that this is the Lao way. That it is perfectly natural to have to tell people the same thing day in day out, to no effect. Make sure you use a person’s surname. Explain an abbreviation the first time around. Convert money into US dollars. Simple things. Easy things. Aren’t they tired of my voice saying the same thing, over and over again?
Apparently not.

[Here’s another good example of the strange way people have here of processing information.
At least a dozen times a day, the phone in my office rings. I can’t answer it because my Lao isn’t good enough, so usually someone else saunters over to pick it up. Here is exactly what happens each time: the phone will ring three times, and then stop. The person moving to answer it will reach the phone about half a second after the last ring. The phone falls silent. The person frowns, looks around, elects to pick up the phone. “’allo? ‘allo? ‘allo?” they will say, puzzled but unfussed. Then they will replace the phone in the receiver and announce, to nobody in particular “I think it’s fax”.
Yes, but you see, exactly. Because the phone is also a fax machine. And the fax picks up after three rings. Always.
ALWAYS you morons!! If you don’t answer before the third ring, it will switch over! It happens at least 12 times a day! Why can’t you get used to this? We never even get faxes anymore! Just emails! Don’t you think that’s weird? DON’T YOU???]

So now, it’s Sally’s turn to speak. Again. To tell them again.
Not about the phone. I tried that, and just couldn’t bring myself to say it again.

The worst of the lot
A woman from the Indochina Memorial Media Foundation in Bangkok named Sarah McLean contacted me last week. Among other things, the organisation runs a training course each year, and she was concerned that none of the KPL journos are ever successful in their applications. She said they know nothing and their English is crap.
I met with her at a coffee shop to talk about what I’m doing, and she brought me a copy of the IMMF training manual. A really good, simple, comprehensive, well-written book that I wish I’d read some time ago, or at least when I first arrived here. I told her this, and she was puzzled. The editor of KPL has a copy, she said, and he has completed the training course.
She also told me that about three years ago, the American Embassy organised to have the book translated into Lao, and planned to launch it to coincide with the opening of the new America Centre in Vientiane. It was all printed and ready to go, but the Ministry of Information and Culture got wind of it and stopped the launch, as the Embassy had failed to get a licence to translate the book into Lao.
Copies of the book have been sitting in boxes at the America Centre ever since, and no one seems remotely concerned about it, least of all my editor.

I asked him why he had never given me the manual. It’s a really useful resource, I said, written specifically for Asian journalists. I could have really used it to help your staff.
Well, it’s at home, he said, with all my other journalism textbooks and training resources from the dozens of workshops and courses I have done all over the world.
Well, why don’t you bring all these books into the office for the other journalists to use? I asked.
Oh, no, they would pick them up and read them and use them, he said.

It’s simple: knowledge here is power, and something you don’t ever share. You just rack up your ‘qualifications’ so as to get a promotion, while exploiting the aid programs of countries like Australia to bring in people like me to deal with the mess.

Anyway, that’s just a hint of what I’m dealing with.
I admit to feeling very sheepish after speaking with this woman, and not just because she reminded me heaps of Penelope Keith from The Good Life. She told me all sorts of things about Vientiane that I should have found out myself by now, had I not been so consumed with frustration and panic that my work is going nowhere.
She also assured me that Laos is by far the worst of the lot when it comes to apathy and persistent, ingrained self-censorship. In Burma, for example, not only are the people educated of mind and fiery of spirit, but journalists actively fight censorship every day. They write, and then get censored.
Here, no one seems aware that journalism has any role beyond reprinting the government’s propaganda. Or rather, they see no point in trying to do it any other way.

It’s things like this that just make the frustration flare up, like a nasty infection.

Most of the time, I feel happy and privileged to be living in this culture, to have adjusted to it as well as I can. My language is picking up, and I’m starting to understand the way people think. I love our neighbours and their crappy taste in music. I love seeing monks everywhere, and that everyone, even young people, have Buddhist philosophies ingrained in them (see Tom-Next-Door, above). I love the fact that we called the kitchen gas supplier at 8pm the other night and he came straight over with a refill. And that when I ran out of petrol on the way to work this morning, the guy at the nearest mechanic siphoned some petrol out of his own bike for me so I wouldn’t have to push my bike to the nearest station.

But putting it all into a political and developmental context is when it all becomes bitter. And people like my editor who should know better, criticise me for not understanding the benefits of the communist political system, accusing me of ignoring the fact that the country is at peace, and the newspapers are not filled with people complaining about their government, the way they are in Australia.
It’s all too complex.

So anyway, apart from actual work, things are pretty good. Like a real Vientiane lady, I’m wearing my sinhs and clacky kitten heels ($3.50 from Lao ITECC, that bastion of glittering commerce) to work every day.
I’m going out too much and spending too much money. It poured with rain this afternoon and flooded the road outside work, right up to the front door.
Tonight, I’m enjoying a relatively low-profile evening after a week or two of constant socialising. People are coming and going, celebrating birthdays, moving house. New bands are playing. For the first time in my life, I am rarely bored.
The trouble is, the very nature of place like Vientiane very almost defeats the purpose of going out in the first place. I remember, back in Melbs, which seems so long ago now, I used to go out usually to a) meet new people, or b) catch up with friends I hadn’t seen in a while. Both are rarely possible here. Sophie says this must be what it’s like to live in a country town. And, like Tom said, we go to parties where the same food is served up, the same band plays, and you leave at the same time as the last one. It’s settled: we have officially become Lao.

I do get sad about people leaving, but you get used to that as well. Everything is so small and sped up here, it’s easy to form intense friendships, lasting several months, where you spend inordinate amounts of time with the same few people. Then suddenly, one or two or all of them are gone.

I’m gonna have to get used to it, because I’ve just signed on to stay another year. I’m defecting to the Other Paper across the street, and I no longer feel guilty about it, even. The project is for two years, ostensibly, but god knows how long I’ll *actually* last.

Jobs keep coming up, too- English-speaking journos are so hot right now. In Asia, that is. In Melbourne I just didn’t cut it. But, fun and love and parties aside, I really do feel like giving it another shot. I’m only just getting used to the language, and I think I’ll be more productive across the road. I just have a feeling this is where it’s meant to be for me, right now.

I didn’t feel like that by the time I left Canberra, nor when I left Melbourne at the end of last year. I felt I was being pushed out. Here, I feel compelled to stay awhile.