Everyone at the office thinks I’m pregnant
I keep forgetting to mention that one. Not that I’ve suddenly got fat or anything – I’ve just been eating a lot of green mangoes which I buy off the street with a little bag of chilli, sugar and MSG. Apparently, this is what pregnant ladies eat! And I sometimes wear smock-style tops with my sinhs. Unfortunately, Ms Noy at the office, who is pregnant and quite stylish, has a similar look going to cover up her growing baby bump.
I can’t believe everyone assumed I was pregnant! As a volunteer! Unmarried with a local boyfriend!
It always amazes me how happy everyone is that I have a Lao boyfriend, like I’m paying the whole country a compliment or something.
Marching time
Life has really settled into a routine that I couldn’t have imagined this time last year. I wake up early, go to bed at a reasonable hour, eat lunch with the Island most days, get massages most weeks, read the papers online avidly every morning, pick and choose whatever social engagements come up. Having spent last year agreeing to participate in every activity, regardless of whether, deep down, I even wanted to do it or not, these days I am a firm No Thanks girl. No more cards, or bowling, or cricket, or Don Chan Palace after midnight, or binge drinking. I’ve accepted that it’s just not me, and I’m most unlikely, on balance, to enjoy myself. It’s a blessed release.
On the flipside, unlike only few months ago, the idea of riding a bicycle around Melbourne, working at an Aussie newspaper and spending $7 on a beer is now almost completely foreign. That's not good, is it?
Down at the club
That said, I have been playing golf. The driving range, that is. There’s something soothing about golf to me – I don’t see it as a sport, even though sometimes my shoulders hurt the next day.
But let it be known right now that secretly, the reason I like golf, or rather the idea of it, is that I read in Patricia Highsmith’s biography last year that a large portion of one of her acclaimed novels was written in her hometown, in a period where she spent her mornings writing, and played golf and drank gin with her cousin in the afternoons.
Although she was a bitter nasty broad in later life, she certainly was a rakish young thing once upon a time.
One of us one of us one of us….
A few weekends ago, we drove to Tha Ngon, a river crossing about half an hour out of town, to celebrate Tim’s birthday. We ordered food and rented a boat and went on to have one of the best days I’ve had since I arrived.
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt part of a group; I stayed on longer at uni than most of my friends, and when I moved to Melbourne, I became more or less permanently displaced. But a friend here confessed to me the other day how intimidating or off-putting a group dynamic can be, especially when you’re not a part of it. I was surprised to realise that she was talking about me, and the group of people I hang out with. Mainly the people who’ve been around longer than anyone else, who have formed and reformed as people come and go, eventually becoming a sort of posse.
For me this means a dependable group of friends that I see more less every day, who I know I can turn to in a crisis, and who I know other people view as a group, of which I’m a part. I’m not sure how I feel about this, deep down.
But I do know that this particular day was just the perfect example of pure, transient happiness. A day when you know, at the time, that you have to hold on to it even as it’s happening, because it will just disappear so quickly. This weather, this mood, this group, slipping through your fingers.
Tim, the original volunteer, who was here long before we became an intimidating gang whom future groups would be warned against, wanted to hit the bars when we got back to town, but we insisted on going back to his house. He was sure this would spell out a dangerously and disappointingly early night for all, when in fact, the mood caught everyone, and we proceeded to get enormously and spontaneously drunk. The rain pelted, and the music got louder, and everyone was still going past 1am, having started drinking around midday.
My town
The stretch of Mekong in the middle of town has been so parched this year- the sand bank was wider than the water, and grass grew all over it. Last weekend, despite the heavy rain over the past week, people were still playing frisbee and volleyball out there. But this week, suddenly, we have a mighty, flowing river once more, filled with northern rains. That is to say, filled with the water flowing in from a newly-opened dam in China. But the official line, in my esteemed workplace the Vientiane Times this week, is that it was the rains. End of story.
Anyway, I’m ashamed to admit that I felt a measure of relief about the whole river thing, because I no longer need to feel anxious about the impending arrival of Brooke and Niamh, who are visiting later this year.
My first visit from friends back home. Only my family have visited so far, and I like it that way! I’m a terrible host. I get anxious even inviting friends over for beer and pizza. Anyway, ever since they told me they had booked their tickets for July, I’ve been looking at the city with new eyes. And I see scorn and derision in every open sewer, unfinished road and charmingly misspelt menu I see!
Related: I’ve started writing an article about what I see and how it makes me feel. Because basically, I have many of the same emotions about Vientiane as I did about Canberra, and one of those is a strangely fierce sort of defensiveness.
Maybe one of the reasons I never felt like I fit in when I lived in Melbourne was because it’s such a self-assured place, so objectively fabulous, that it didn’t need me to defend it.
Notes about work
Every time I feel my - by now all-too-familiar - frustration rising to choke me throughout an average day at the paper, I can’t help thinking, well, at least I feel something. It’s better than being numb and submissive and unable to imagine what might lie beyond. And that’s the other thing - I’m old enough now to realise that boredom is a state of mind, and one that I can overcome if I look hard enough for things to entertain me.
The other night, I went to a reception at a local bookstore for an exhibition of art from the Torres Strait Islands, put on by the Australian Embassy. One of the artists had been flown over to talk about it, so I brought a journalist with me. A very young, very pretty young man called Poonsab. And as I watched him whip out his little notebook and make a beeline for the artist with hunger in his eyes, I couldn’t help feeling a surge of pride that almost made me laugh out loud.
I wish now that I’d taken a photo of him, but my hands were full, what with the glass of wine, and the catalogue, and the mouthful of hors d’oeuvres, and all the witty repartee I was having. Another thing that I mentally reached out and held on to.
No photos this time, did you notice? It’s not that I’m less enamoured of this place, it’s just that I feel like I’ve got most of it on record already.
Also, ever since my friend Mel got robbed at knifepoint on her bike last week, I don’t carry my camera around as much.
Stop reading and write, dammit!
So Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance fell by the wayside about 100 pages in. Far too dull for me. Anna Karenina is also on hold, as is The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein. I read instead a couple of drossy books just to keep my mind active, along with all the newspapers and magazines I check on the net every day.
But anyway, I found a copy of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing in a second-hand bookshop in Melbourne, and chucked it in the box with all the other earnest stuff I thought I might have time to read while over here. But secretly, I never thought I would.
I’m now three quarters of the way through it, and strangely, it’s one of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read - 650 pages of teensy-weensy print and I’m loving every bit of it! I think it has to do with all the introspection and self-examination. All that “what am I doing and why” stuff- I guess it’s just all about me at the moment! It’s slow-going but I’m glad- I don’t want it to end.
There’re so many books I read as a teenager and in my early 20s that I literally don’t remember anything about, only that I’ve read them. I think it’s a waste. But this one, I think, would have left me cold five years ago.
For one thing, there’s a lot of stuff about communism, and the communist party in Britain and the US in the 50s and 60s. Fascinating stuff. I absorbed a lot of that in the biography of Jessica Mitford as well. I never really thought about the fact that most communists in those times were intellectuals, who really did envision a beautiful future under the Party. SUCH a far cry from this mess of a country we’re living in now, where the editor refuses to allow a photo of the president to appear on any page other than Page 1.
Also, the main character is a writer, which as you may have picked up by now, is something I’m inherently interested in. I’m certain that every time I read about a writer, it will inspire me enough to unlock my creative flow. A shame, then, that this book happens to be about a woman who wrote one book which was so awesome that she is still living off the royalties and feels incapable of ever writing another.
Anyway, I took up Lao lessons again this week, mainly to give myself something to focus my self-improvement-craving side on. If I can’t write, or be more disciplined, the least I can do is properly learn the language. And I’m already halfway there, I reckon. Phitsamai, my teacher who had a baby last year, was pleasantly shocked, I don’t mind admitting, at how much I have managed to retain and pick up since our last lesson, when she was a week away from giving birth, because Lao women always work until the very last minute, and I was certain her waters would break right on our living room floor!
I know all the basics, and I can carry out professional conversations and conduct social chit-chat with shopowners, tuk tuk drivers, what have you.
It’s certainly more enjoyable being able to converse with the Island’s sisters, about clothes and haircuts and those things, rather than the relative delicious-ness of the food. ("Delicious?" "Very delicious!" "This one?" "Not so delicious!") We had dinner with them last week, and I went to the night market with his sister Phonesavanh to buy some food for the evening meal. As we wove amongst all the people- I was the only foreigner there, as usual - checking out the steaming pots of awesome Lao food, piles of sticky rice and lychees- fresh, beautiful lychees!- Phonesavanh linked her arm tightly through mine. She’s with me! she was telling everyone. But the thing is, the Island would never in a million years even touch his arm against mine when we’re out in public. Because I’m a girl and he’s a boy.
I know, imagine how frustrating it would be if your own boyfriend refused to even hold your hand in public! Weep for me.
I can’t believe everyone assumed I was pregnant! As a volunteer! Unmarried with a local boyfriend!
It always amazes me how happy everyone is that I have a Lao boyfriend, like I’m paying the whole country a compliment or something.
Marching time
Life has really settled into a routine that I couldn’t have imagined this time last year. I wake up early, go to bed at a reasonable hour, eat lunch with the Island most days, get massages most weeks, read the papers online avidly every morning, pick and choose whatever social engagements come up. Having spent last year agreeing to participate in every activity, regardless of whether, deep down, I even wanted to do it or not, these days I am a firm No Thanks girl. No more cards, or bowling, or cricket, or Don Chan Palace after midnight, or binge drinking. I’ve accepted that it’s just not me, and I’m most unlikely, on balance, to enjoy myself. It’s a blessed release.
On the flipside, unlike only few months ago, the idea of riding a bicycle around Melbourne, working at an Aussie newspaper and spending $7 on a beer is now almost completely foreign. That's not good, is it?
Down at the club
That said, I have been playing golf. The driving range, that is. There’s something soothing about golf to me – I don’t see it as a sport, even though sometimes my shoulders hurt the next day.
But let it be known right now that secretly, the reason I like golf, or rather the idea of it, is that I read in Patricia Highsmith’s biography last year that a large portion of one of her acclaimed novels was written in her hometown, in a period where she spent her mornings writing, and played golf and drank gin with her cousin in the afternoons.
Although she was a bitter nasty broad in later life, she certainly was a rakish young thing once upon a time.
One of us one of us one of us….
A few weekends ago, we drove to Tha Ngon, a river crossing about half an hour out of town, to celebrate Tim’s birthday. We ordered food and rented a boat and went on to have one of the best days I’ve had since I arrived.
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt part of a group; I stayed on longer at uni than most of my friends, and when I moved to Melbourne, I became more or less permanently displaced. But a friend here confessed to me the other day how intimidating or off-putting a group dynamic can be, especially when you’re not a part of it. I was surprised to realise that she was talking about me, and the group of people I hang out with. Mainly the people who’ve been around longer than anyone else, who have formed and reformed as people come and go, eventually becoming a sort of posse.
For me this means a dependable group of friends that I see more less every day, who I know I can turn to in a crisis, and who I know other people view as a group, of which I’m a part. I’m not sure how I feel about this, deep down.
But I do know that this particular day was just the perfect example of pure, transient happiness. A day when you know, at the time, that you have to hold on to it even as it’s happening, because it will just disappear so quickly. This weather, this mood, this group, slipping through your fingers.
Tim, the original volunteer, who was here long before we became an intimidating gang whom future groups would be warned against, wanted to hit the bars when we got back to town, but we insisted on going back to his house. He was sure this would spell out a dangerously and disappointingly early night for all, when in fact, the mood caught everyone, and we proceeded to get enormously and spontaneously drunk. The rain pelted, and the music got louder, and everyone was still going past 1am, having started drinking around midday.
My town
The stretch of Mekong in the middle of town has been so parched this year- the sand bank was wider than the water, and grass grew all over it. Last weekend, despite the heavy rain over the past week, people were still playing frisbee and volleyball out there. But this week, suddenly, we have a mighty, flowing river once more, filled with northern rains. That is to say, filled with the water flowing in from a newly-opened dam in China. But the official line, in my esteemed workplace the Vientiane Times this week, is that it was the rains. End of story.
Anyway, I’m ashamed to admit that I felt a measure of relief about the whole river thing, because I no longer need to feel anxious about the impending arrival of Brooke and Niamh, who are visiting later this year.
My first visit from friends back home. Only my family have visited so far, and I like it that way! I’m a terrible host. I get anxious even inviting friends over for beer and pizza. Anyway, ever since they told me they had booked their tickets for July, I’ve been looking at the city with new eyes. And I see scorn and derision in every open sewer, unfinished road and charmingly misspelt menu I see!
Related: I’ve started writing an article about what I see and how it makes me feel. Because basically, I have many of the same emotions about Vientiane as I did about Canberra, and one of those is a strangely fierce sort of defensiveness.
Maybe one of the reasons I never felt like I fit in when I lived in Melbourne was because it’s such a self-assured place, so objectively fabulous, that it didn’t need me to defend it.
Notes about work
Every time I feel my - by now all-too-familiar - frustration rising to choke me throughout an average day at the paper, I can’t help thinking, well, at least I feel something. It’s better than being numb and submissive and unable to imagine what might lie beyond. And that’s the other thing - I’m old enough now to realise that boredom is a state of mind, and one that I can overcome if I look hard enough for things to entertain me.
The other night, I went to a reception at a local bookstore for an exhibition of art from the Torres Strait Islands, put on by the Australian Embassy. One of the artists had been flown over to talk about it, so I brought a journalist with me. A very young, very pretty young man called Poonsab. And as I watched him whip out his little notebook and make a beeline for the artist with hunger in his eyes, I couldn’t help feeling a surge of pride that almost made me laugh out loud.
I wish now that I’d taken a photo of him, but my hands were full, what with the glass of wine, and the catalogue, and the mouthful of hors d’oeuvres, and all the witty repartee I was having. Another thing that I mentally reached out and held on to.
No photos this time, did you notice? It’s not that I’m less enamoured of this place, it’s just that I feel like I’ve got most of it on record already.
Also, ever since my friend Mel got robbed at knifepoint on her bike last week, I don’t carry my camera around as much.
Stop reading and write, dammit!
So Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance fell by the wayside about 100 pages in. Far too dull for me. Anna Karenina is also on hold, as is The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein. I read instead a couple of drossy books just to keep my mind active, along with all the newspapers and magazines I check on the net every day.
But anyway, I found a copy of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing in a second-hand bookshop in Melbourne, and chucked it in the box with all the other earnest stuff I thought I might have time to read while over here. But secretly, I never thought I would.
I’m now three quarters of the way through it, and strangely, it’s one of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read - 650 pages of teensy-weensy print and I’m loving every bit of it! I think it has to do with all the introspection and self-examination. All that “what am I doing and why” stuff- I guess it’s just all about me at the moment! It’s slow-going but I’m glad- I don’t want it to end.
There’re so many books I read as a teenager and in my early 20s that I literally don’t remember anything about, only that I’ve read them. I think it’s a waste. But this one, I think, would have left me cold five years ago.
For one thing, there’s a lot of stuff about communism, and the communist party in Britain and the US in the 50s and 60s. Fascinating stuff. I absorbed a lot of that in the biography of Jessica Mitford as well. I never really thought about the fact that most communists in those times were intellectuals, who really did envision a beautiful future under the Party. SUCH a far cry from this mess of a country we’re living in now, where the editor refuses to allow a photo of the president to appear on any page other than Page 1.
Also, the main character is a writer, which as you may have picked up by now, is something I’m inherently interested in. I’m certain that every time I read about a writer, it will inspire me enough to unlock my creative flow. A shame, then, that this book happens to be about a woman who wrote one book which was so awesome that she is still living off the royalties and feels incapable of ever writing another.
Anyway, I took up Lao lessons again this week, mainly to give myself something to focus my self-improvement-craving side on. If I can’t write, or be more disciplined, the least I can do is properly learn the language. And I’m already halfway there, I reckon. Phitsamai, my teacher who had a baby last year, was pleasantly shocked, I don’t mind admitting, at how much I have managed to retain and pick up since our last lesson, when she was a week away from giving birth, because Lao women always work until the very last minute, and I was certain her waters would break right on our living room floor!
I know all the basics, and I can carry out professional conversations and conduct social chit-chat with shopowners, tuk tuk drivers, what have you.
It’s certainly more enjoyable being able to converse with the Island’s sisters, about clothes and haircuts and those things, rather than the relative delicious-ness of the food. ("Delicious?" "Very delicious!" "This one?" "Not so delicious!") We had dinner with them last week, and I went to the night market with his sister Phonesavanh to buy some food for the evening meal. As we wove amongst all the people- I was the only foreigner there, as usual - checking out the steaming pots of awesome Lao food, piles of sticky rice and lychees- fresh, beautiful lychees!- Phonesavanh linked her arm tightly through mine. She’s with me! she was telling everyone. But the thing is, the Island would never in a million years even touch his arm against mine when we’re out in public. Because I’m a girl and he’s a boy.
I know, imagine how frustrating it would be if your own boyfriend refused to even hold your hand in public! Weep for me.
posted by sarrie24 | 12:10 PM
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