Another day, another dime

Oh wait. I'm not getting paid. Hah. The irony.

Nothing has been happening - it's business as usual. We still have no water in our house. Rumour has it: September is the date. That's a long time with no water.

It's starting to chill off a bit. It's annoying because I haven't even got to make any of the pretty dresses that I bought patterns for. We had a chilly day not too long ago and we thought it was just a chilly day. But it's been chilly ever since. Bugger. The sun is setting at about 8:30pm and it's getting earlier. Night times almost require a coat and day times are pretty dress, boots and a wool cardigan weather.


My yellow nails are looking a bit worse for wear. They look pretty scabby actually. I'll get a different colour put on tomorrow I think. Nail polish doesn't last very long! Even the good stuff, which is apparently what this is.


My workmate, Urnaa, went to Australia for a mining conference. She stayed with my housemates in Brisbane and had a wonderful time. You should have seen the smile on her face yesterday when she returned.
"Everyone is SO nice in Australia. Everyone is SO friendly. People walk past and smile at you. And if you get lost, you just ask and someone helps you and says follow me, I'll show you"
And she LOVED my housemates. Of course she did, they're amazing. But I think she believes me more now.

I've been wearing my 'new' clothes that I picked up from a volunteer that is leaving tomorrow. I have a green skirt and a blue skirt and two new shirts that are white and the other is zebra print.

I talked earlier this week to our 'in country manager' (ICM) who is in charge of ensuring our safety and sanity and auditing our work to make sure it's working. Or not. Mine is clearly not. I'm willing to take some blame for it. I honestly haven't done much to make it work. It certainly hasn't been handed to me on a platter though. And since it's become a bit more clear what my role should be, I'm even less interested. There's one thing I want to do - the seed database thing. But that's only because I've got some great contacts to help me with it.

So anyway. Our ICM was unimpressed with me/my work and how much my role has changed without her knowing. It's not my fault - my job is a trial for future projects in this area and it's not working that well. My skillset is quite obviously not what they need. And the fact they employed me on my 'policy development' skills makes it trickier because I don't have any experience. They thought my 'Policy Research Officer' position at Australian Pork Limited meant I developed policy. But I didn't. I researched cool pig diseases and developed lists of people to call when some bad pig diseases threaten Australia.

The moral to that story is that our ICM said that if half of my work plan can't be done because things have been cancelled, then maybe we need to look at shortening my assignment.

I don't know whether I'm a quitter or not but all I know was that when I lived in Canada I had a terrible time and quit early because I wanted to come home. And that's what I want to do now! Quit early to come home. It feels so naughty, and I could encourage the early end to my assignment. I'm going to subtly encourage an early end to my assignment. That way I haven't outright pushed. It would be quitting but - maybe I should just learn that living away from my friends and family and everything that I love about Australia is just silly and that I should just holiday overseas and go home to what I love to call home. It would only be a couple of months earlier than my 12 months anyway. And it's only a possibility. But it's fun to dream!