Never do I feel like more of a guest in this country than when I have a run in with a taxi driver and need to have someone else speak for me.
Taxi drivers are the bane of my existence. I could list for you the multitude of reasons why I usually hate them, but I won’t.
Instead I will tell you the most recent reason that I hate them…and how I ended up an indignant, quivering and slightly ashamed mess. Continue reading
I have many of them…they manifest themselves in many different ways and they all usually come out when I’m left alone.
Singing loud showtunes is one of them. So is plucking out every hair I can possibly find with a pair of tweezers.
Insanely I mutter to myself and occasionally have outright conversations with myself.
When I was a tween (ok probably as late as 14) I used to dress up in my mothers sheets and pretend I was in Rome. I was always a Roman Princess. And insanely fabulous I’m sure.
This afternoon I had my dinner at 4.30pm…and it was pancakes…and it was good. Pancakes are awesome, but pancakes at inappropriate times of the day are even better.
It’s not that Reece will deny me pancakes at any time of the day…rather that when you have an audience sometimes your dirty little secrets can be rather shameful.
So fess up…any dirty little secrets you want to share?
I have had to adjust to many things over here…too many to mention really…and not having a career has been a big one. It has been a great opportunity so far to step back and re-evaluate where I am heading and what I really want. I had an interesting year last year…lots of ups and downs and decisions made and then abandoned as I tried to work out what I really want. I knew I was tired but wasn’t really sure what I was tired of.
This post is not about what I want to do with my future but rather a revelation that came upon me just this morning.
The thing that made me tired was office politics. Or more explicitly those personalities that make you dread going to work in the morning. We’ve all had them…the whinger, the nay-sayer, the lazy person, the bitch, the attention seeker and the silent assassin. There will always be one person in your office that rubs you the wrong way and that you have to work to be around.
Office politics invaded my little office-free Manila sanctuary this morning and I’m cranky about it. Just from one email I could feel my blood rise…but most of all I’m just over it, over the pettiness, over the bitchiness and over the adolescent posturing that happens in any office. Can’t we all just grow up and do our best to get along?
I’m not ready to go back to that world yet, Im not ready for how draining it is. Give me another 12 months or so and maybe I will have forgotten. And for fucks sake, in the mean time, keep your petty world back in Sydney and leave me alone.
So I’m taking inventory for our impending Manila move and am pondering to myself how I ever managed to get through life without knowing how much a good queen sized bed costs.
For thos of you who are astute, you will realise that I have never parted with my hard earned cash for something so monotonous as a bed.
Now the baking goods and pots and pans section I could name down to pretty much the last dollar.
I’m like the Carrie of baking goods…I’ll never be able to put a deposit on a house because I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars outfitting my kitchen and absolutely no money on mundane things like bookshelves.
*Image from Thousand Hobbies*
***Disclaimer. Despite what you are about to read, I can actually be trusted with expensive pieces of jewellery. Please don’t confiscate my shiny ring…***
FUCK! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
It was like that scene from Four Weddings and a Funeral, only slightly less British. Only it wasn’t a movie, this was me at 7.15am this morning as I tore the house apart looking for my engagement ring.
Utterly convinced that it was gone for good, I rang my mother in a fit of despair. I woud have rung Reece, only it was 5.15am in Manila and something told me that he wouldn’t have been all that happy with that wake up call.
So the situation was this…
I arrived home on Sunday afternoon and timed it perfectly with the brief but intense hail storm in the afternoon. I was going to wait it out in the car, however I realised that every single window and door in my house was open and I panicked and dashed across the street to close them.
The issue is that my ring is perfectly sized in Manila, when my fingers swell with the heat, however in Australia, when I am soaking wet, the ring is loose, like very loose, like could fall off my finger loose.
At this stage, with the last time I saw the ring flashing through my mind I was convinced that it was gone for good.
Cue breakdown on the phone with my mother. (She said to me tonight that she wishes she was there so she could have slapped me to snap me out of it.) “Go outside and check the garden,” she said. “I’m not wearing any clothes,” I sob. (I had only just gotten out of bed!)
So after much posturing I finally managed to get dressed and comb the front garden and sidewalk on my hands and knees. Still no ring.
By this time I was inconsolable.
I came inside to call my boss to tell her that I was going to be late and something flashing in the corner of my living room caught my eye.
It was my ring! It would seem that when I was shedding my soaking we clothes the day before it had gotten caught and flicked off.
Moral of the story…I probably can’t be trusted with shiny, expensive things, and the second I get back from Manila I’m getting the little fucker resized.
Sorry Reece.
mamacita mahns 
