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July 30, 2004
Job Crisis Continued
Friend 2 forwarded me the email he sent to the Furball and to the Furball’s boss. Though almost neutral, he’s urging for me to be kept on, stressing how key I am to his team’s performance. Having worked closely with his team since last May, if any work is to be carried out for his team, he wants it to be done by me, and not to have to relive the endless hours if not days spent in meetings explaining how his team works and what they produce. He had spent several months waiting while his industry software languished in the hands of IT before he raised it with me in March; even since I started campaigning on his behalf after that, the Furball hasn’t been able to take him seriously, much less give him a straight answer when needed. Matt has no experience of the team’s work, and although yesterday’s hour-long meeting was specifically about the data Friend 2’s team produces, the Furball did not bother to check a single spreadsheet or prepare in any way.
Friend 1’s boss’s boss spoke to the Furball’s boss, who was told I had three weeks to go, which is admittedly generous given my contract runs out on Monday. Developments today have made her team all the more desperate for me to work for them, which continues to invalidate the Party Line that my contract’s not being renewed due to the lack of work. I have about 2-3 months’ work ahead of me, it’s just being strangleholded at this stage. And it’s all urgent, which means that poor Matt can’t be released from his current system to fulfill them, however that might fit into current plans.
I’ve told very few colleagues: Matt, Jenny, the two managers who would be most affected by my departure due to imminent work and obligations, and a friend from my early days on this Project. The rest of my team – the half-person (part-time, that is) and our secretary were informed in our team meeting yesterday – the Furball spent ten minutes announcing my departure – and I spent much of this morning emailing our secretary about it. Our umbrella team meeting was cancelled today, otherwise another three teams would know by now. I should notify the managers affected by my other databases, but I guess I’m waiting to hear a confirmed end date or feedback on the Friends’ manipulations.
Without a doubt, this is the longest I’ve ever held down a job – by more than a year – but it seems to have a unique character hard to replicate. Bearing in mind how many other companies I’ve worked for, I’ve never found such a close-knit work community; when we were divided into four offices at the end of last June, two outside of London, the best analogy I could find was to describe us all as children of a divorce, divided between four different relatives. Although that has been dissipated due to the intense pressure most of us have been under, the Project for some reason does still command fierce loyalty, both to itself and to its staff. As an originally semi-independent project, we were virtually a separate company in our own right, with our own HR team, for example, and with few obvious links to HQ. Of course that’s changed, but to an extent, the culture has remained.
As a result, it’s hard to explain to friends and most importantly, to parents, why it’s so hard to leave. For two months, I’ve been considering leaving, but my work obligations and my adoration of my salary override that every time. Even when I have a small window of extension – and of course, I don’t know how long that will be, which complicates even jobhunting – my priority is to the people I support, and wanting tosee my work for them completed before I go. Both of my parents are in agreement that I should just go, and let the Project suffer the consequences of not renewing my contract. Back in May – even before I flew out for the job interview in Indiana – my primary commitment was to Friend 2, and to seeing his team with a functional system before I could leave. Due to ongoing problems with the IT team, I will have to wait a few more weeks before I can start to do any relevant work, but it’s still something which matters a lot to me, as does sorting out some issues for a team I’ve worked with closely since I joined.
It doesn’t help, knowing that much of the work I do voluntarily is probably outside of my job remit, and won’t be continued after I go. I still think it’s crucial to the role of our team, but then, we’ve all developed our own priorities as the Project has progressed. But as the Knowledge Group, it will be embarrassing to say the least to have gaping knowledge gaps due to indifference. Indifference caused by our isolation from the work being carried out, maybe, but still detrimental.
An analogy might be from when I used to work on excavations. Citing one in particular, we all stayed on a campsite, so we woke together, breakfasted together, worked together, cleaned up together, ate together and hung out together till bedtime; the only time we had apart from each other was when we were asleep. The atmosphere on that dig was similar to, if more incestuous, than on the Project.
Also to contradict The Verdict, I’ve been rushed off my feet for the last two days, in contrast to the last five and a half weeks of mind-numbing tedium. None of it has been ‘oh my god you’re leaving’ work, either. The Furball produced a list of what was supposedly my outstanding work to be completed before I leave; unfortunately, I’d done most of it, and it didn’t actually include any of my real outstanding work. Unfortunately for me, and my sanity, two pieces of work are being delayed pending the Furball’s boss’s approval (i.e. work for the two Friends), and another pending I have no idea what. The Furball asked me to type up the actions from yesterday’s meeting – Friend 2 asked if that was okay with me, then later asked after the very dirty look I gave him - but I have yet to see anything with the Furball’s scrawl on it.
I’ll be interested to hear the Furball’s boss’s feedback on learning that actually I have a lot of work to do, I just have to spend a little time waiting for it to start. I still don’t know whether I’d be happy to stay – every time the Furball hacks up a hairball or opens his mouth, I’m thrilled to be out of there soon – or if I should focus on getting out of there as soon as possible before I do indeed fall off the career ladder altogether. I just want the uncertainty of the last few days to be resolved, to know where I stand and what to plan for.
It’s extremely touching, especially given how few colleagues I’ve broken the news to, how much they’ve rallied around me, and how several are campaigning to have me kept on. Therefore, it’s all the more frustrating to have to explain to others why I don’t feel I can leave in good conscience having left the environmental reports unresolved, the risk team till stranded without a functional system, or the possessions team at the mercy of someone who thinks he can program without repercussions. Having been strongly committed to the Project and my colleagues since joining, I can’t stop considering how my absence will affect their needs and workloads.
It’s now way past my bedtime, and editing this is about the best I can do. I’ve spent about an hour and a half on the phone to a couple of friends who are moving to Fuerteventura in October, fingers crossed, and bearing in mind how low my commitment is to database work these days, there’s not a whole lot stopping me from joining them. Lynn’s a designer. John’s a salesman. Give me a laptop and I’ll have a database and website ready for them within days.
Posted by chantal at 12:30 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 28, 2004
Imminent Joblessness
I went on holiday a few weeks ago to decide what to do. I’d been jobsearching until then, but wanted to be certain about what I wanted to do and where.
While waiting in the airport, I decided that the best way of choosing where to end up would be by scanning the list of destinations; I chose France and Spain in a heartbeat. But once I got to Fuerteventura, and realised for all that I babbled endlessly in Spanish, my Spanish was out of sync with everyone else’s, I got profoundly homesick for Mexico and Central America. Without even thinking about it, I knew I had to leave my job, for my sanity if nothing else.
It’s been nearly two weeks since I returned, and I’ve spent that time either chasing my rucksack or in my usual sleep-deprived haze, so although I’ve jobsearched, I’ve been reluctant to commit to anything.
Then today. Today I was told that my contract would not be renewed, and that although it could be extended by a few weeks, that would be the most that I could expect. A smoking buddy has been wanting to poach me for a few months now, so as soon as she finished listening to me ramble on, fighting off last night’s sleeping pill (which mutated into a migraine), she had a meeting with her boss to discuss the possible addition of me to their team. He was last heard of raising it with his boss. She was prepared to approach the director, if that’s what it would take.
Soon after I was told about my imminent loss of contract, we had to endure a team meeting; straight afterwards, I emailed another manager who would be severely affected by my departure; he is horrified and concerned, to say the least, and is petitioning for my extension or transfer too; unfortunately, he’s on leave for the next week and a half. The only real work commitment I have is to his team, so it’s sad he might miss his chance through his much-needed holiday; his team has recently downsized by nearly half, and he’s had no assurances that he’ll be able to replace the absent staff.
So that’s what’s been happening today. After five and a half weeks of no work, today was frantically busy; three meetings eating up most of the day, and not even having time to go to the gym. A database corrupted on me, taking nearly an hour to resolve, after which the Furball shouted at me for prioritising that over finding out we’ve been pinning our hopes on someone who can’t even help us on a not-hugely-critical situation. But that’s how the Furball works. Regardless of how we work best, he prefers to flap and chuck random mundane tasks at us, making us lose our concentration and place, making it all the harder to pick up what we were doing when we get the chance to return to it. Worse still, Matt and I are specifically Database Programmers. Any extranet, network or security issues are completely outside of our remit, however much he rants or how many furballs he hacks up in the process. (Matt is lucky; as a poorly-disguised secretary, I get pretty much stuck with the lot). The Critical Situation involves an industry package Friend 2 has been trying to get installed all year. IT are physically and intellectually incapable of complying. Once it’s up, someone will need to upload two years’ worth of data (around 265 spreadsheets), only we don’t know how, as nobody actually has it installed or uses it. The one person we were counting on – Furball was planning a delegation to this person’s desk, but I preempted him by returning five mugs to the kitchen and ‘accidentally’ bumping into him as his desk is nearby – doesn’t use the add-on we’ll be needing. I had argued – and when it concerns the Furball, it’s always arguing – that it’s more logical to assess the data load and quality first, then approach this person about how to install it, as opposed to approaching him without a clue about which data needs to be matched to the current infrastructure.
So I’ve been jobhunting. When Aileen left in April, I was heartbroken, and couldn’t conceive of having to leave all of my good friends here at work. She kept beating herself up over being ‘such a woman’, for being so upset; I realised I’d be far worse with the sheer number of friends I’d have to leave forever. I couldn’t do that to myself. But then my mother phoned me within a few hours with a job interview in the States, and in the next few weeks, I started to accept how dead-end my job has become, how little future or prospects it offers, and how the only rational move is to leave as soon as possible before I fall off the career ladder altogether.
I started to write a piece about a week ago called ‘Furballed’. Furball is what we call my boss, due to the alarming number of hairballs he hacks up on a daily basis. Jenny came up with the term, and not only has it stuck, it’s spread. (Which is almost as revolting an image as the memory of any given furball). I’ve extended the term now to become a verb, meaning anything he says, basically; ‘bullshitting’ is too non-specific. Though there’s another person and a half in our team, I seem to be the only one who argues with him when he talks bollocks, when he tries to teach us to suck too many eggs, when he mistakes me for being his secretary simply because I’m female and nearby. The others certainly complain a lot, but somehow manage to bite their tongues around him. They compsensate with emails; though the partition between me and the Furball may be low, I’ve still mastered leaning far enough down that he can’t see me silently split my sides laughing at the latest email about him. Approximately once a week we pool ideas for doing away with him altogether.
I have no illusions about not being English. From what I’ve heard, American culture would be best suited to me, only I managed to break out in a migraine in May simply contemplating living there. I could never, ever live there – and stay sane. But I refuse to tolerate stupidity, inefficiency or incompetence, and my boss represents the lot. It may be common practice to accept this as the norm, but I view that if someone in IT screws up, they sacrifice their job; if the Furball stubbornly refuses to learn anything about how our Project works, much less what it is called, then ditto. There is no excuse for failure. I have worked for enough people to know that the Furball’s level of ignorance is uncommon (thank God!), and that on the whole, managers tend to understand and have experience of what their team does. Also, it’s unlikely they’ll have a hairball condition. Not only do we have to battle with the root of all ignorance which is our IT department, which the Furball avidly courts, but we also have to contend with a highly non-technical boss who assumes he’s a genius. He’s twice provided specifications for me on certain databases, and both times I’ve had to bite my tongue so as not to say ‘I quit.’ Having not had any database work in a while, I’ve settled for the odd spat over the partition. Matt has just received the Furball’s proudest work, a new set of specs (which the Furball poured his heart and soul into while producing), and he all but packed up and quit on Friday. Over the weekend, I realised that if another database comes my way, I’ll be in the same situation, and I will quit. So it would make more sense to quit beforehand, and avoid the suffering.
It’s sad, though, that a job I’ve been so strongly committed too and which I have so many roots to, has become so much of an endurance test. Enduring staying sane for nearly six weeks with no work, after being completely flat out for nearly a year and a half (working about 13 hours a day for the first few months). A year of tolerating a boss who isn’t capable of doing any job but a secretary’s, but who is happy to see me as his own. Having been fiercely sociable for about the first year on this job, I’ve begun to retreat, and though I’m saddened by the loss of friendships, I can’t summon the will to regain them. I’m ready to leave, but because the Furball is such a key figure in my dissatisfaction, it would be hard to imagine working on the project away from him. Joining Friend 1 would mean staying in the same office, but moving to the other side (no window, so my mini-rainforest would sob); joining Friend 2, though less likely, would result in moving to another office, where many of my friends are based. (Having typed that, I just phoned one of them and left her a lengthy voicemail.)
The excuse I was given was a combination of cost-cutting and insufficient work, although I figure that in the next few weeks, I’ll have up to three months’ work, if not more. I’ve been told it will be passed onto my colleague, but he will be too busy and complacent to be able to action it in the timeframes needed. I currently support about seven databases which I’ve built (one corrupted today), and, having been involved in a lot of data maintenance, am more aware of the live info which he seems to ignore as it’s not relevant to whichever database he’s currently building. A former colleague visited today for some meetings; we had had a meeting months ago when he had told me that I was crucial to the Project because of the historial information I held. As our boss remains allergic to anything resembling information or knowledge, I shouldn’t feel too much remorse in them being stuck with the extant databases and no supplementary data which would actually be of use. We’ve always known that the Knowledge Manager role is an oxymoron; at least I won’t be around to deflect that opinion.
When Aileen left, she told me that she’d assumed six months to find a job, but was fortunate to be offered one much sooner. Given that I want to emigrate above all other options, I decided yesterday that I should do the same, set myself a similar timeframe. So today’s news was a complete pain, that either I might have to postpone emigrating – which I had already done in accepting this job – or grab the first thing I could find, which would slightly defeat the purpose. Bad enough to suffer the inevitable pay drop, and although there can’t be that many managers out there like the Furball, and that any job would be a significant technical improvement on this one, I’d rather hold out for a Good Job than the first one I can find. Wherever it may be.
Of course, a similar plan might be to drop out altogether. I’ve lost more skills than I’ve ever gained on thisjob, wholly due to mismanagement. Till the Furball joined, Matt and I were essentially independent, our boss too busy to do more than supervise us vaguely on a monthly basis. Though he himself did not command much respect on the project, it doesn’t start to compare with the open dislike universally aimed at the Furball.
Life is too short to put up with this crap.Two years ago, I trained in a database system I haven’t gotten my hands on since, and having encountered the utter muppetry which is our IT department, and the general IT staff, I’m not certain it’s something I’m willing to subject myself to long-term. A friend would like me to be his PA in Fuerteventura. I had told him I’d pour his coffee on his head if that happened – I’m not servile enough to be a convincing secretary or PA, nor blonde enough – but that’s one option, as is recovering my harp from Richmond and flying back there with it. I may have given up the musician lifestyle for good, but it’s still a marketable skill. Or I can translate. Or interpret – for all the tourists and expats too hapless to consider learning Spanish. Or settle for any job I can find, and if there’s a database involved, it’ll be a bonus. But at this point, I’m not sure I’d even bother to be choosy.
I’ve dedicated the last year to trying to get my boss fired. Though I never expected I would be the first to go, I always knew I wouldn’t be able to stand more than a few more weeks of him. That’s a shame. We’re really going to have to work on our Furballcidal plans now, we don’t have much time left.
Posted by chantal at 11:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 17, 2004
Sod Off Spammers
I'm not a guy. I'm very happily single. Why on earth would I want Viagra?
I know that spammers too may have targets to meet, but posting comments on here is beyond pathetic.
SOD OFF!!!
Posted by chantal at 06:40 PM | TrackBack
July 16, 2004
Flood Control
Hi there.
As you'll have noticed, I've uploaded 21 pieces today, which means the front page looks a bit scary. It doesn't look like I can post according to the original date of each piece, so I'll try incorporating that in the titles and reduce each piece to an initial segment.
Off for a Chinese takeaway now...
Posted by chantal at 07:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 11, 2004
Alternate Reality
Bupa was standing outside the airport.
He was pleased but nonchalant when he saw me, as though I’d only been gone for a few days, not three and a half months. Was I coming back to play again, how long would I be staying for this time, implying that hopefully it’d be longer than the week I was booked in for. He told me he was waiting for his daughter and ten friends. I was waiting for a friend who would be meeting me (once his pizza had arrived).
I was the last onto the plane. Easy to draw comparisons with the previous flight, back in March. I had been under so much pressure then, both at work and in preparation for the music festival, also I think I wasn’t sleeping much in those days either. It wasn’t until nearly at the end of the four-hour flight, when we started banking over Lanzarote, that I had finally started feeling excited and thrilled at last. Neither feeling would apply to finding that I would be spending the next four hours surrounded by eleven teenage girls old enough to drink. I’d only had about three hours’ sleep the night before, followed by a foul half-day at work, and seeing them brought back flashbacks of the RAF men’s rugby team on my last flight out of England, and the RAF women’s rugby team on the way back.
Again, as the flight came to an end, the girls started to get excited – apparently Maya (sitting behind me) was the one bringing them over – and asking lots of questions about what the island was like, what the nightlife was like. I had asked hopefully how long they’d be staying for, realising almost as soon as the plane took off that I might be stuck returning with them too. For them, a week in Fuerteventura was up there with Paradise; for me, it meant not being able to return to Guatemala or Mexico for at least two more months, and simply somewhere I could sleep and relax. And catch up with friends.
Being met at the aiport is something extremely important to me, chiefly because it only happens when I go back to Guatemala, and because I hate returning to England at the best of times. I think Garry was a bit taken aback by my disbelief at his offer to meet me there, but bumping into a friend as soon as I stepped outside of the airport made this island – which I’d only visited for three days previously – feel instantly like home. Like more than home, or at least London. I hadn’t known what to expect, as my previous trip had ended badly, leaving me wanting to never return; I’d half-expected others might be feeling the same too.
Similarly, when it emerged that neither Garry or I knew where my hotel-for-the-night was (I’d booked into a five star hotel as my hotel of choice, Oasis Papagayo, or Parrot, had apparently been full), and that the directions I’d been given by a shopkeeper had made no sense at all, I suggested we drive over to Papagayo so I could ask there, and for a map, as I’d be staying there for the rest of the week anyway. The man on reception’s reaction was much the same as Bupa’s – ‘Oh hi there, so you’re back, where’s your harp, how are you?’ – again leaving me glowing that he would remember me and recognise me despite all the tourists passing through. At Imagine, Eric smiled and pulled happy faces at me when I walked in; when I returned from chatting with some friends at the bar, as soon as he finished his current song, he came over to chat to me. All throughout, I was battling against text messages and phone calls from friends I’d made on or through this island.
Compare this to London. Apart from my final years of living with my mother in Hampstead, when I knew so many of the locals and local staff it could be excruciating going to the High Street, after four years in New Cross, I essentially know one neighbour and five shopkeepers. Four of the shopkeepers are recent friends/acquaintances, as are the top-floor neighbours, and a recent reacquaintance next door. There’s nothing I can do to improve on that. I took a friend drinking in New Cross one night – I’d been too tired to trust myself anywhere near public transport – and a woman picked a fight with me. When I return from any trip, the older Indian man at the newspaper stand at the train station waves and pulls a face at my rucksack, but that’s all the greeting I get. A year and a half ago, when I was severely and chronically ill, between him and my Christian then-flatmate, he was the only one who would talk to me. At times I worry that if anything happened to me, nobody’d know, nobody’d notice; and that’s after four years of living in this area. If anything, they’d only notice when my garden would start to die.
So back to Fuerteventura. Every day I’ve wanted to start writing this piece, and now it’s my fourth day, and I’m waiting for Garry to stop watching the Grand Prix and come over.
My initial plans, on booking this holiday, had been to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep, write, catch up with the sun and with a number of friends. Because of the friends, though, it looks like none of the rest will be happening, except by fluke. My sleeping problem in London is due to my body clock and its preference for going to sleep at 2 or 3 am despite having to get up at 7; I’m now getting to bed around 7. I don’t stand a chance. I was meant to spend all day yesterday with Kate, today with Garry, Tuesday with Kate so she can show me how the non-tourists live, and tonight’s my only night (depending on Garry’s plans) which I don’t have booked up, though Laura, the Colombian cleaner (who also gave me a huge welcome after fighting to get into my room) wants to meet up one night.
Returning to my previous trip, my plans then had been to see (from a distance if need be) Eric, a former good friend of mine, and to play my harp at a dratted music festival to be held at his piano bar. I’d arranged it through Bruce, a friend of his, and actually, by the time I arrived, there were what seemed to be a lot of people primed and excited to meet me, but yet specifically in connection with the festival.
This time, I’m proud to be able to say I’m meeting up with friends who have no connection with Eric or his bar, and also that I’m also not some desperate groupie flying thousands of miles to get my fix of him. When I’m in his bar, I’m more likely to be chatting to the locals and trying to gauge their feelings about living here and the tourism, or, in the case of last night, being subjected to a Galician’s trauma about his Mexican girlfriend breaking up with him (and repeatedly texing ‘Help!’ to Garry throughout).
For all that I’m thrilled that there are these people, whether locals, tourists or expats who remember a harper of fuzzy background or who I’ve gotten to know since, the fundamental aspects of this holiday remain. For all that I feel I can’t leave Eric’s bar, Imagine, before everyone starts wrapping up (around 5.30 am last night I told them they were all vampires and as I wasn’t, good night), such late nights mean too much suffering the next day (especially as Laura tends to wake me while cleaning the apartment next to mine around 10.30 am). Spending hours trying to wake means certainly I can lie by the pool, but not be capable of thinking coherently about the other pressing issue, whether or not to quit my job, or indeed do much else. By the time I’ve sunbathed and waterbathed, it’s about time to perch outside to wait for a friend, and then that’s it for the day.
It’s perhaps not a good idea to be here when I’m in so much turmoil over my job. At least if I was in Guatemala, for all I want to return there incessantly, I have no illusions left about living there; here, the seduction of the welcomes, the friendliness of all makes me want to look for work as a translator or interpreter (my chatting to a local last night was greeted by stares and silence from the female expats), just so I can return as soon as possible and stay indefinitely.
But I keep reminding myself of Antigua, Guatemala, and how seductive it is for similar reasons, and how the illusions don’t match the realities of living there. Kate and James manage to live here by burrowing themselves in a touristfree enclave; Eric depends on the tourists to survive, and although Garry’s wife Julie is fully seduced, at least Garry is objective enough to see the island in terms of how it can sustain and support him financially. I know that most of the friendships I have here are superficial, and that they aren’t sufficient to maintain me here, although the feeling of Being Home might last for at least a little while.
Yesterday I looked for a local mobile phone. Not only would it salvage what was left of my phone bill before I go, but given I’m looking for work in Spain anyway, and that my mother could use it whenever she next returns to Barcelona, it seemed a fully practical and justifiable idea. Garry had told me of the good deal he got on his phone, so I fully expected to be able to find the same. I guess I also fully expected to be able to buy one and still be smiling when I returned.
Another seduction of being here is being able to speak or babble in Spanish to my heart’s content. The only other time I can do that is when I’m back in Guatemala, which isn’t nearly frequent enough for my liking. My translations back in London are few, so no matter how many websearches I do for my Fuerteventura friends, there’s nothing like being able to chat incessantly in Spanish. As a lot of my accent derives from when I worked in Honduras and Panamá, I know it’s at times painful for others, and also that the dialects can be significantly different. Most of the time here, though, none of this has been an issue. Only yesterday – and the day before, when I finally got through to a friend’s hotel to confirm his reservation – did men start speaking to me in English, or say outright that my Spanish sucked. Okay, so my accent and vocabulary may be wrong, but for me, so is theirs. The winds may be oppressively high these days, but at least it means a constant aroma of oleander on the twenty-minute walk into town. But for all I love oleanders (besides the twelve in my London garden, I have two at the foot of the bed here and another in the living room), the landscape beyond them is arid, and not even a mirage of the rainforest I crave. Even if only to propagate the seduction.
Yesterday, too, was the first day I’d seen Corralejo by daylight. Eric’s bar opens at 9 pm, yet I’m hard-pressed to make it there before midnight, which is when it officially closes. Last time, I never made it before 11 pm. I love cities and towns by night, and Corralejo by night is a very Spanish and cosmopolitan cross between Playa del Carmen in Mexico, and Panajachel in Guatemala. (Caleta del Fuste, by comparison, seems to be no more than a sprawling version of the nightclub zone outside San José, Costa Rica). By day it is not only infested with tourists, but also with tourist shops. A friend has asked me to buy her a specific keyring, and I can’t face so much as going into one of the shops, as it would mean becoming yet another English tourist. At least in Antigua, I can blank out the tourists and not so much as notice them, much in the same way I don’t hear Americans when they speak. But when the streets are filled with them, the supermarkets are filled with them, and the shopkeepers expect you to to be English before any other nationality, it doesn’t seem somewhere anyone could build a meaningful lifestyle, unless, like Kate and James, you manage to escape it outright, but at the cost of viewing Corralejo as a no-go zone.
It also doesn’t help that this seems to be a halfway place between London and Guatemala. Its levels of tourism at times obscures its European basis, but it only makes me all the more homesick for Central America – I talk of little else while here, though at least a little of Kazakhstan – as it’s so nearly there, just not quite.
Eric acknowledged last night how he knows me, if not the friendship we had after that.
And the expression on Maya’s face when I told her, at the airport, that I knew her father, was priceless.
Posted by chantal at 03:01 PM | TrackBack
July 06, 2004
Drat
I have absolutely nothing to do. I haven’t had anything to do for nearly two weeks now. All of a sudden, nobody wants any new databases, and mine all seem to behaving perfectly for the first time in their misbegotten lives.
Apart from the fact that I only slept 4 hours last night, and that I’ve got a chronic headache, I thought of two things I could do to while away the next four hours:
1. write something for this website.
2. post all the archived stuff from my previous mdnstudio page.
I can’t remember the login details, and can’t get into Hotmail to check.
Drat drat drat.
Posted by chantal at 12:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack