Hello lovelies.
I flew out to New York on Father’s Day and back on Midsummer’s. The quick trips are the hardest ones. There’s no time to adjust to the time zone, and the ratio of plane time to ground time is less than ideal. Even so, I’m going to miss all the travel when it ends. Continue reading “The Sunday Review: Your Private New York Edition”
Hello, lovelies.
I spent the last week in Warsaw, Poland and Sofia, Bulgaria, observing operations at various call centers. It’s amazing how exhausting it is to concentrate intently for a long period of time. By the time we wrapped up around 7 or 8 each night, we were wiped. I managed to steal a bit of time to see both cities, although not nearly enough. When Z’s big enough, I’d like to spend 2-3 weeks touring Eastern Europe by train. Continue reading “The Sunday Review – Ministry of Culture Edition”
Hello, lovelies.
It was a rough winter; I didn’t realize how much of a hermit I’d turned into until the weather got nice and I started spending most of my day outside again. I’m going to try to make the weekly roundup a thing again, although I’ve said that before! Let me know in the comments or with the like button if you’re enjoying these, as that’s prime motivation to keep it happening.
1. Flight of whimsy. I bought a plane ticket to go to Hong Kong in September. By myself. For a week. This terrifies me, because it’s adventurous, impractical, and falls solidly in the “things I don’t do” category.
2. #metoo Amanda Palmer and Jasmine Power dropped a new song, Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now. It didn’t hit me nearly as hard as I thought it would, and I’m ok with that.
3. Black is the new green. After six months of feeling guilty every time I put vegetable peels and leftover food in the trash, I bought a compost tumbler. The last one took me six weeks to put together, this one took three hours. Now on my wishlist for the holidays: a proper cordless drill.
4. Not a box. Z has been asking me to take her rock climbing for months. I got the gear during the big REI sale, then went to the gym and took the “intro class” so I could belay her. When I took her a few days later, she went straight for the bouldering section and proceeded to climb up and down the “ladder” for an hour. It felt eerily like spending lots of money on a birthday gift that your child ignores in favor of the box.
5. One of the trees in the back turned out to be a plum tree, and they are thisclose to ripe. Who’s got plum recipes?
Links and Things
This article solidifies my cynicism around donating money to political campaigns: What Happened to Jill Stein’s Recount Millions. As someone who donated a measly $5, I’d like an answer.
I learned to take photos on my dad’s old Canon, which just sold its last film camera. I still miss the magic of immersing the photo paper in the developer and watching the picture appear (less so wrangling the film into the spool in the dark).
A tongue-in-cheek and a more useful guide to indoor plants.
I did what everyone’s saying you should do and read (ok, skimmed) the most recent “we’ve updated our privacy policy” email I received and what do you know, it had two helpful links for opting out of online ads.
I’ve more or less gotten to the point where time zone shifts don’t bother me. Another week, another city. I tell myself where and when I am and hold to it. Flying to the East Coast and back every few weeks isn’t crazy; it’s what I do.
It didn’t occur to me until after the fact that I might have hit my limit last week.
***
I planned to go to New York the week of the 10th for some much needed face time with my team. Passover was on Monday, though, which meant I’d fly in Tuesday and leave Saturday. Easy.
The day after I bought my ticket, plans changed – I had to be in Dallas on Wednesday the 12th for an all day meeting. Less easy, but manageable. I changed flights around, flying into Dallas Tuesday and New York Wednesday evening.
Friday of that week, plans changed again – I now had to be in DC for a meeting on Wednesday the 19th. Any other weekend I’d have stayed on the East Coast. Easter and Christmas are the two holidays that firmly belong to my psuedo-sister, though, and while she’d have forgiven me if I missed it, I wouldn’t have. So I changed my Saturday evening flight home to a morning flight (to maximize Z time over the weekend) and booked an in-Tuesday out-Wednesday trip to D.C.
Monday the 17th, our Wednesday meeting got moved to afternoon, late enough that I’d miss the last flight out of both National and Dulles Wednesday evening and would have to fly home Thursday.
***
After a while, pretty much anything acclimates to normal. I expect the last minute travel, the meetings that change times and dates half a dozen times. I never plan on taking the flight home that I booked – I’m almost always catching something earlier or later. So while I was a bit frustrated by the time I got on the plane to D.C., it was mostly because I had very much wanted to come home Wednesday night.
It was when my paralegals emailed me a simple question Thursday afternoon, and I replied that I’d been through four cities and five time zones in the last 10 days and could they PLEASE JUST HANDLE IT WITHOUT ME, that the full force of how insane the prior two weeks had been came crashing down on me.
***
I fell into How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful on the plane ride home from D.C. Headphones on and the album on repeat, wondering how I’d waited so damn long to listen to it. Except that the music always finds me when I need it. This one wouldn’t have resonated the way it does now if I’d listened to it when it came out two years ago. I’m still breathing it in, letting it play over and through me, waiting to get to the point where it’s inked into my memory.
***
Lately, I’ve been trying to make more time for connections. Looking at where I am in the world and who’s nearby. Reaching out to one or two people in a city rather than doing the blast email trying to see everyone and failing thing. I’m happier for it, seeing and talking to the people I want to spend time with.
February is Letter Month, and I always mean to do it then never do. Too much time on planes, on hikes with Z, juggling bedtime and dishes and laundry and the jungle-that-is-our-yard. I miss it, though, miss the quiet silence of ink and paper, miss the tangled rush of thoughts into sentences. I miss the summer my best friend and I spent writing to each other, miss the long notes I used to write, the ones that rambled and meandered.
So. If you’d like a letter, let me know in the comments or by text or whatever.
I’m in Manila this week, somewhere between 3 and 15 hours out of sync. This part of the city is concrete jungle, Starbucks across from the hotel and McDonald’s down the block. On first glance, it could be any large American city: neon billboards for American brands, road signs and taxi markings in English.
The similarity stops at the surface. It is hot here, humid. Gulf coast humid. Like walking into a wet towel humid. Despite this, the sidewalks are clogged with pedestrian traffic, especially at shift change. Traffic on the streets is worse, a never ending tangle of beeping horns and weaving lane changes. It’s perpetually rush hour here. People ride three to a motorcycle or pack so tightly into Jeepneys that they hang off the back and cling to the roof. Women wear polo shirts or t-shirts – the only people I’ve seen in tank tops are tourists – and men and women alike use umbrellas to shade from the sun.
I’m here because Manila is one of the call center capitals of the world. It also happens to be in the time zone exactly opposite New York. The call centers run 24 hours, but their busiest shift is 9 pm to 5 am. The breakfast buffet at my hotel offers everything from bacon and eggs to salad to sliced meats and cheese to soup to chafing dish dinner entrees. I thought at first Philippine culture didn’t do breakfast; I realized later it was to accommodate the night shift.
I am 15 hours ahead of California, working New York hours. The call center is like any other office building: florescent lights, over eager air conditioning, constant hum of conversion in the background. It is a shock each time I pass a window – shades drawn – and see night sky though the crack between shade and glass. I am upside down, with no idea when I should be asleep or awake, half convinced that the top is still spinning.