Life in the sauna
Firstly - THANK YOU to everyone who has sent me an email since I started the blog. I have not replied because life has become more complicated since we got back from Hoi An.
At 5.30am in the morning we booked into our new hotel and by lunchtime I was realising we were no longer in a tourist zone. Since we moved here no one has tried to sell me anything. The opium dens which pass for internet cafes are slow, smokey and full of kids playing computer games and loud music. Censorship is also evident in that I can't access things like hotmail or my blog.
The hotel provides internet in the room. Its taken me a week to get it set up and the technically minded will appreciate my problem when I say it connects at 37kb ps. For the non-technical that is SLOW!
So I have not replied to any emails of late, though I have been reading them between time outs.
I started work this week. Work is a really friendly place and operates like a small business. Hence costs are an issue, so there is limited internet access at work and the economy drive extends to not using the aircon unless it is really hot. Tim (my yoga teacher) always says "sweat is good" I hope he is right 'cause I'm producing lots.
I had a sureal Boots moment when the subject of clean desk policies came up at the weekly team meeting and much debate took place about the time lost clearing up each day.
My honeymoon lasted three days where I just read papers and talked to people, partly because that is what I was supposed to do and partly because Work have organised a major concert this weekend - 600 in the audience but in true vietnamese fashion the invitations only went out on Monday! Everyone is running round like headless chickens and working late. No one wanted to talk to me. Even the finance manager was deep in month end reports (its only the 19th! even Fran didn't get that caught up)
However that all ended this morning, the director and my boss asked for a meeting and then explained that work was part of a group with a project funded by the US Government. There was a meeting on Monday next (two working days away) of the 22 organisations involved in the programme and a presentation was required on the progress of work's part of the programme. She could not go, the presentation had to be in English, no one on the staff was good enough to deliver it in 5 minutes - guess what is coming - so could I do it. Here are the project files, a colleague will support me to prepare the flashy powerpoint stuff and I'm presenting about 11am on Monday. Hmmmm. We then discussed the English expression "in at the deep end"
In the afternoon, my mind swimming with project documents, we went out to meet people who actually have HIV and AIDS. These are all performers at the concert on Saturday, drawn from performance arts groups set up as part of work's projects. They were great and soon opened up to tell me (through an interpreter) exactly what they thought of anything and everything. I got a few quotes for the presentation and then it was back to the office to work with one of the translators until 6.30pm. So we have tomorrow to do the presentation and then do it on Monday. Should be fun.
I'm going to close now as the internet will time out any minute. It may be weeks before I get the blog working properly so please bear with me. Oh - about prestidigitation. Its a French word for conjuring. The relevance being that Saturdays concert will include a guy who will conjure with condoms. My life is so full these days.....
At 5.30am in the morning we booked into our new hotel and by lunchtime I was realising we were no longer in a tourist zone. Since we moved here no one has tried to sell me anything. The opium dens which pass for internet cafes are slow, smokey and full of kids playing computer games and loud music. Censorship is also evident in that I can't access things like hotmail or my blog.
The hotel provides internet in the room. Its taken me a week to get it set up and the technically minded will appreciate my problem when I say it connects at 37kb ps. For the non-technical that is SLOW!
So I have not replied to any emails of late, though I have been reading them between time outs.
I started work this week. Work is a really friendly place and operates like a small business. Hence costs are an issue, so there is limited internet access at work and the economy drive extends to not using the aircon unless it is really hot. Tim (my yoga teacher) always says "sweat is good" I hope he is right 'cause I'm producing lots.
I had a sureal Boots moment when the subject of clean desk policies came up at the weekly team meeting and much debate took place about the time lost clearing up each day.
My honeymoon lasted three days where I just read papers and talked to people, partly because that is what I was supposed to do and partly because Work have organised a major concert this weekend - 600 in the audience but in true vietnamese fashion the invitations only went out on Monday! Everyone is running round like headless chickens and working late. No one wanted to talk to me. Even the finance manager was deep in month end reports (its only the 19th! even Fran didn't get that caught up)
However that all ended this morning, the director and my boss asked for a meeting and then explained that work was part of a group with a project funded by the US Government. There was a meeting on Monday next (two working days away) of the 22 organisations involved in the programme and a presentation was required on the progress of work's part of the programme. She could not go, the presentation had to be in English, no one on the staff was good enough to deliver it in 5 minutes - guess what is coming - so could I do it. Here are the project files, a colleague will support me to prepare the flashy powerpoint stuff and I'm presenting about 11am on Monday. Hmmmm. We then discussed the English expression "in at the deep end"
In the afternoon, my mind swimming with project documents, we went out to meet people who actually have HIV and AIDS. These are all performers at the concert on Saturday, drawn from performance arts groups set up as part of work's projects. They were great and soon opened up to tell me (through an interpreter) exactly what they thought of anything and everything. I got a few quotes for the presentation and then it was back to the office to work with one of the translators until 6.30pm. So we have tomorrow to do the presentation and then do it on Monday. Should be fun.
I'm going to close now as the internet will time out any minute. It may be weeks before I get the blog working properly so please bear with me. Oh - about prestidigitation. Its a French word for conjuring. The relevance being that Saturdays concert will include a guy who will conjure with condoms. My life is so full these days.....
posted by Marvin.. at Thursday, June 22, 2006
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