Categories: uncategorized
Date: 18 May 2004 18:51:29
Yesterday I saw the new baby of a former flatmate - very cute, very tiny (5lbs something). Which was lovely, but also really weird. We shared several flats and houses over a number of years in the early-mid 90s, and still live reasonably near each other, but now that we go to different churches and she's married with 3 kids, our lives have gone in such different directions that it felt really strange - we know each other so well but we're now only on the peripheries of each other's lives. Does that make sense? This weekend I'm going to my godson's 2nd birthday party (never let it be said I haven't got a riveting social life), his mum was one of my closest friends from uni in the late 80s, and it's a similar thing - we lived in each other's pockets, knew each other so well, but now virtually never see each other and no longer really know what makes the other tick. I know it's inevitable as people move on and get on with their lives, but it does make me feel kind of wistful sometimes.
This evening I need to email my friends in Moldova to sort out this darned fieldwork. They've said they're really busy, and it doesn't take lots of detective work to read between the lines and realise that this is much more important to me than it is to them (even though what it means in effect is that they will be getting some free consultancy on an issue which their major donor has said is really important and currently something of a weakness). So I'm going to have to be diplomatic without sounding desperate, and try to sell it as something that will really benefit them, rather than them just doing my degree a favour which is how they seem to see it at the moment.
I'm getting closer all the time to getting my blog read in Romania and Moldova. In the last day I've had a visitor from Hungary (csokolom! egeszsegere*!), I just need to go a tad further east now. [*this was the first word I ever learnt in Hungarian. It took me hours to pronounce it properly. It means "cheers!" for those not in the know]
Today at work we had our monthly supervision, I was talking about how knackered I am and how I don't feel I'm doing either my job or my studies to the best of my ability because of being so tired all the time. I got it into my head that I would ask my manager to reduce my hours so I work 4 days instead of 5, which at the moment I could just about afford. But realistically, seeing as my lodger is looking to buy a place herself and move out, although I could cope with losing a day's wages, I couldn't manage to lose that as well as her rent, and to be honest I'd sooner work the full 5 days and not replace my lodger, rather than work 4 days and have no choice but to find someone else.