Where's christmas?!

Well, people can be jealous of us being in hot climes over christmas, but it just isn't my thing! I don't feel at all christmassy! DB and I agreed that christmas day will probably feel like it's out anniversary or something, and we will be the only two celebrating and giving presents and taking the day off work while everything around us happens as normal. I don't like it! I want to be at home!

Another difference is that I am still working full time and I notice that slowly but surely my friends and family at home are drifting out of the realms of communication - busy with parties and shopping and travelling and finishing work for the holidays... Ahhhh. I cannot wait to take a break. Roll on the 2 Jan! I can't wait to get out of TN for a while and stop thinking about work.

Speaking of work, I have been doing very well these past few days! I got another interview with a friend on the afternoon of my last post and learnt a lot about my planned next field site, which I felt very confident about. Then the next day I arranged to meet a local academic and saw him that evening and we had a very productive meeting. He was such an archetypal Ghandian Hindu; quiet, peaceful, calm, very softly spoken. A social calamity befell me though, of immense proportions. He offered me a drink when I had been talking for a while and I had to take it, but it was in his bottle. Out here you do not touch your lips to someone else's bottle, but hold it above you mouth and pour the liquid in. This is soooo hard and I cannot do it (well, I hadn't tried yet, but just know I can't) but took the bottle out of some crazy anthropological impulse to 'fit in' (I didn't even want any water but to reject it would have been rude, don't ask me how I knew that). I poured for ages and then finally the water went into my mouth, made me choke and went all over my lap. Yes, yes, I kid you not. I choked for ages! Luckily I didn't feel to worried about it, he was a very nice man and anyway worse things happen. *Oh dear*, though. I am the most foolish PhD candidate ever I swear. Regardless, the interview was great and he has given me the name of a Very Important Lady I need to contact about a different potential field site. This has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons, because this field site would be better but is very remote, ugly, quiet... I have thought about it for a while and think I may do this site first, and then if it works out, stay there, and if not, I will go to the ther other one I thought about. I don't think DB will be very pelased, but then good things come out of the most unlikely places and we can't judge until we have been there for a bit. I think I will head down for a week to introduce myself to this lady aftet New Year, and see how it goes from there. The Academic is deeply spiritual, and I feel uncomfortable around all that because I lack any kind of spiritual impulses and feel worried they may try and convert me. I know, it is very childish.

Oh word I forgot there was more interview vileness with the Academic. Toward the end of the meeting he asked to eat please eat some snacks with him. Arg, like I hadn't had enough humiliation! So he got out his snacks, which turned out to be bombay mix - small crispy snacks of peas and teeny sticks of something. Impossible to describe! It is a mess to eat though and at parties at home I avoid it to be sociable. It sticks to your palm, doesn't go into your mouth properly, drops out of your mouth, crunches... I hate eating in stressful situations and in front of people I don't know, let alone attempting the bombay mix. And trying to talk and listen?! Crunching away so I can't hear, then talking with my mouth full. God that was awful. And the worst bit is that culturally here you can't refuse food, and you have to finish what you are given. So I was told I couldn't leave until it was all gone, and so kept ploughing through this huge pile of mix while we struggle to make small talk because I have been there for over an hour by now and, as already made clear, it is hard to work and eat bombay mix. Slowly, slowly the plate clears... But then he pours out some more for my delectation! MORE!! So I sit there eating more, making worse small talk and he is stifling a yawn and talking about deadlines... so everntually I make my excuses, gather my stuff and walk away really slowly so I don't burst into a run, fleeing his kindness. It was horrible! I hated it! But he was so nice! Ug politeness is so awful and stressful! I went out after that and had a stiff drink I tell you (free champagne cocktail at ladies' night... down the hatch!)

I will see him often so hopefully the unease will pass, and he has some great insights and thoughts about doing fieldwork and the work of humanitarianism and development. Plus a great contact or three. And is a good anchor for being here and having some intellectual guidance. That evening I was so knackered, I felt like I had completed some big assignment or something, having got my interviews done, contacts organised - oh! And I told work I was leaving at christmas because there was no Tsunami project here for me and I had to go. Phew! That was a weight off my mind too I tell you! I can't wait to not have to come here any more. I like it, but I feel like such an intruder and want to go home all the time.

I have terrible tummy ache today. Great, ill in time for the weekend. Bah! I did eat three whole Indian meals yesterday so was courting danger I suppose... This keeps happening; I eat hardly anything and lose weight but don't get ill, then think UG! Must get fatter! And get into the food, then feel ill. Bring on Goa! I am going to gorge on fry-ups and chips for the whole week, get some fat on my bonios!!

Well, am sure you lovely PhD peeps have more festive ways of procrastinating these days so wll stop my gabbling for now. Today is being spent looking up about how to translate and analyse and transcribe an interview - do I have to properly transcribe it?! With me in there and everything and with his pauses and stuff? Most of it will in inaudible anyway because he was so quiet. (yes, I got to use my dictaphone! It is now like a dangerous insect in my bag, which I daren't touch or move for fear of wiping the recording or - god forbid - having to listen to me having gobbed water all over his office.)

x J