Sailing

Right now, my stomach is creaking like a ship. Unfortunately, the resulting smells do not bear any resemblance to a warm, gentle sea breeze.

Opening Doors

Once upon a time last summer, I opened a lot of car doors for Esther while we were in Northern Ireland. She thought it to be very chivalrous until I explained that since her mother's car didn't have power locks, it just made sense for me to use the key to unlock it and since I was doing that I might as well open it. Luckily for me, she still pretended it was chivalry. I did warn her though that if she wanted me to continue being chivalrous, then she should conspire to make sure we never get a car with power locks. Most of this is an aside though, my main point is that I opened doors.

It is probably about that you are thinking to yourself, Phil is going no where fast, yet again but I promise you that I really do have a plan this time! You see, one of the things that I find joy and beauty in while I'm in Bangladesh is Esther. Not just because she is awesome, which she most definitely is, but because she opens doors for me. You see, she breaks down so many of the cultural barriers that exist for me here. As a single male, it is inappropriate for me to relate to a large swath of people here and another large portion of people have a hard time relating to me. Most men my age in Bangladesh are married with children, married and thinking about children, or soon to be married. Before I met Esther, I was in none of those groups which just made normal relationships difficult as I just couldn't fit the culture in a natural way. Now that Esther and I are engaged, everyone at work treats her as if she is already my wife and the doors have been flung wide open. The staff relate to me in a whole new way and I thoroughly enjoy it. It is nice to be moving into to circles after 3 years of partial isolation to them. It's even comforting if I do say so myself. It just feels good to have doors open for you even if there isn't any chivalry involved.

Ode to a Mother

Facebook Message #1: "hello?"

I'm thinking to myself, 'awe, my mother misses me.' I should totally  get in touch with her but I'm really incredibly swamped right now as this is the busiest time of the year. Heck, I haven't even had a chance to call my brothers since Christmas.

Facebook Message #2: "Check out WFRN.com under Jim Carter's section. He's in Dhaka right now. I think with Compassion Int."

I'm thinking to myself, 'fair enough that is perfectly relevant.'

Facebook Message #3: "I am home today.Meaning, I am home Friday, which is today."

I'm thinking, 'CRAP!, my goose is cooked, I've got no time to call her like she hopes I'll do...and life is already stressful enough without having to worry about this.'

Facebook Message #4: "So what do you know?"

 

I know that I'm being a terrible son right now and it is bothering you!

Facebook Message #5: "Phillip?"

 

Trembles in fear...or maybe it's from lack of sleep... it is hard to tell the difference.

Moral of the story: I'm a terrible son but I still love my mother. I hope she can forgive me.

Also, I'm a bit paranoid that I can't tell whether I'm loosing my hair or not. The idea of going bald doesn't scare me at all but the idea of not knowing if I am is freaking me out a bit. I know, that is random and totally unrelated to the rest of the story but when have I ever been about sticking to the story.

A rather sad acheivement

I did something yesterday for the very first time in all my 26 years. I joined some friends to play softball in the morning before church. I had a great time despite our team getting obliterated. After the game, there was still about an hour to go until I needed to head to church, so I hung around with some friends and watched the next game. While we were chatting we started up a conversation with a lady who was managing the team playing after us. The conversation was about my brother Steven's favorite stomach bug giardhia (sp?). During the course of the conversation she talked about the fact that her husband and her are here with Chevron and the worker care they do for their employees. That morphed into a conversation about what they are doing with Chevron and that they had to work over Christmas because of a project. Then she said some words that I have never heard before. She said, "Working Christmas wasn't too big of a deal with us because we're Jewish."

I now for the first time ever in my life, know a Jewish person.


I feel like that is really pathetic to say at 26, but the truth of the matter is I grew up in rural Indiana and went to University in rural Ohio before coming to live in rural Bangladesh. There are very few Jewish people in any of those locations. I'm not surprised at all that she is just a normal person. I just wish I could remember her name!

Musings on Soup and Life.

I'm finally coming down from the high that was Christmas and I'm finding that my patience is shorter than I would like at this point. It always saddens me a bit to realize that. Last night it was potato soup that threw me over the edge. Yes, that is right, potato soup. I love potato soup and was making a batch last night. I blend a portion of it to make the soup creamy and thick. I blended up the soup and when I picked up the container to pour it back in it all come pouring out the bottom. It went all over the blender, all over the counter, and all over the floor. It wasted a ton of my precious soup! Bear in mind that this stuff is thick and a pain to clean up. I was immediately very angry and did a bit of yelling at the soup while figuring out what I should do. I was angry at the house help (why would you not reattach the bottom to the blender after cleaning!) and myself (why would you be yelling at potato soup it was just an accident!). I took some time to cool down by eating what turned out to be some very mediocre potato soup. I went back and cleaned up which made me angry again but at something new. This time it was at old school engineers. You know the ones back in the day that made kitchen appliances really durable but did it without talking to their wives about what you actually need in a blender. There was a ton of vent holes on the blender that all of the soup had run down into (who doesn't plan on stuff falling down on the base of a blender!!!).

Ordinarily, I would blame this all on stress from my new role at work but I realized something that made me change my mind as I was reflecting afterwards. I've been in Bangladesh for 6 straight months now. If you recall, I have figured out that I start losing patience after about 5 months in Bangladesh. There is nothing in particular about Bangladesh that does this too me. After 3 years of acclimation to the environment, I am pretty used to most things and quite capable of handling them. Regardless, I've reached that point and the result is that I have to focus very hard on being me until I get a that needed break. It is coming up in February when I will be going to Nepal.

In the mean time, I saw something promising today. I was walking on the street and I saw a little boy that gave me hope for the future of Bangladesh. Instead of peeing on the wall like all the older men you see, he was peeing in a sewage drain! That is change that I can believe in!

Do you ever?

Do you ever sit back and realize that your life has gotten a bit out of control? I find myself dealing with this lately. I got so busy this past month that I wasn't able to function in a way that I think does who I strive to be justice. I notice this in all areas of my life. Imbalance in my experience is rarely limited to one area of our lives. I've been very functional at most things I've done this past month but my heart and soul weren't truly fully there in my actions and thoughts. Without these being present, life becomes nothing more than a pale shadow of what it might be. I become a pale shadow of who I might be. In response to this, I'm trying to slow down and be the real me again. I guess you could call that my New Year's resolution but it is purely coincidence that it falls at this time and I'm actually starting a few days too early for that to be true.

Do you ever get the desire to do something? Every year, I have a very strong desire to play basketball at two points in the year. At the beginning of college basketball season and during March madness. Hearing me talk about this strong desire, one of my friends bought me a basketball for Christmas. I went out and shot hoops today by myself. Yeah it isn't as cool as doing it in a group but I didn't do it entirely alone. There was a group of teenage Bengali boys using the basketball court as a cricket field. We shared and chit chatted during breaks a bit. In other news, I'm really terrible at shooting now. I shot 100 free throws and only made 42 of them. It is a sad day when I'm unable to hit free throws at a rate better than Shaq used to.

Do you ever go to bed at 9 pm? That's what I'm about to do! Goodnight!

Christmas tree

It may not seem like much but it is still better than Charlie Brown's...