okay.... soooo.... friday. friday i finished the college advocacy kit. finished is a loose term, there is always more that could be said, of course i haven't thought of it yet, so for now it is done. when i came home friday i sat down to my spinach salad dinner (so confusing to the family i stay with) and had a heart to heart with the domestic worker. she makes less than 1/2 of what i pay in rent for every month, and never gets a day off. to boot she has to pay the employment agency 7 months salary just for getting her the job. she feels isolated and alone and the lady of the house is always quarreling with her. if angela seems happy she gets yelled at, and she isn't really supposed to talk to the tenants. the 10 year old boy (jerry) seems to be severely autistic and she is supposed to care for him without any training, which is bad for everyone. i walked away from the dinner table feeling heartbroken, desperately wanting to fight the injustice occurring right under my nose, but at the same time being terrified because in the end i have to live here. this is where ethics gets tricky.
saturday i assisted claudia, my supervisor with an event at the local college. we had plenty of down time so i told her about "our help" (to be perfectly honest it feels dirty to let this woman do anything for me, but i can't convince her not to sweep my floor). anyway, claudia informed me that the situation was more than normal, that there have been "suicide" cases of domestic workers all throughout singapore and the abuse is well known, and socially acceptable. she said it did seem to be rooted in some kind of jealousy. she also said there was an organization that may be able to be of some assistance and that i should ask one of our co-workers for her advice. i don't know if i feel worse that it is happening where i live or that it is so much worse all over this small island country. after the event i helped claudia home and the cab driver was very free with his advice. i am not to drink pepsi or eat any american foods while i am here, i should not go to the pub, i should sent $100 to my parents every month just to make them happy, i need to set two alarms every morning, i cannot jumprope on the top floor-only on the ground floor, the only thing i can spend my money on is a stapler to staple my mouth shut so that i do not offend the people i am living with (he had no words for him they offend my sense of social justice). claudia and i spent some time talking in her house. i very much enjoy her company, and her fiance invited me to cambodia at the end of oct. he is going with a bunch of scientist from all over the world. i am pretty excited. we will be going to the temples at akor wat for about 2 and a half days. they are infamous, but to be honest i am avoiding pictures so that i can have my breath stolen in a very genuine way. eventually i pulled myself away from claudia's company to go skating. it took me almost an hr to get to where i wanted to go (and i still didnt find the right park). by the time i got anywhere it was dark so i skated along the first stretch of land i found. it felt great to put skaty and skate dogg back on my feet! how i have missed the feeling! i skated for about an hour, and covered about 1 3/4 miles. which was not so bad considering i was skating back and forth the same little block. not to mention i was starving. eventually i pulled myself away from skating and walked to the nearest thai restaurant i could find. after a painfully long wait to be asked what i might want to eat i ordered marigolds and rice. it was super good, but the service was TERRIBLE. by this time is was close to 10pm and it took me almost another hour to get home. unfortunately commute time will limit my ability to skate to saturdays. this saturday i plan to find the park i initially set out to find last saturday.
sunday i woke up and chatted with mom. afterwards i went to yoga, which ended up being a private lesson again (score!) i really like my yoga teacher, she makes me work for it but is easy to talk to. i would call her a friend, although i doubt she feels the same way (perhaps in a few more months). i spent the afternoon exploring china town. my plan had been to find moon cakes, but i failed (although im sure they were ALLLL around me). i did however succeed in finding a chinese pharmacy or seven, and they were amazing. i had no idea what ginsing looked like... its ugly. they also had jar upon jar of shark fins and one even had seahorses, but no one would tell me why. in fact, i think the guy was offended by my curiosity. on the way home a very kind gentleman gave me a tour of the street in his broken english. most of what he told me i already knew, but i was grateful all the same. in a place where being an expat is the norm, kindness from a singaporean is always welcome. the best part is they all think i am from london.
monday it was back to work. i had an extremely productive day (makes up for today where i had a terrible time focusing). i have convinced my supervisor that we need to be running an agressive advocacy/fundrasing campaign in the west in order to start a serious social marketing campaign in cambodia and any other country we are working in. i am trying to get a movement started on colberts website, on top of some npr coverage and perhaps someone like jack black as our spokesperson. the communication and advocacy side of wto is being threatened and the only way to save it is to make it the most profitable part of the organization. i also really want the money for my soap opera and mass media campaign. i did take break mid-morning from my productiveness to hunt the wild roosters who live behind our office. it was a massive failure, however one came down to visit while we ate lunch!! he was very small, nothing compared to mike tyson (the rooster i killed). i am curious to know if they are all that small or if he was particularly young. monday afternoon it started raining and i got very excited because i had set up a rain gauge and couldn't wait to see how much rain we got. much to my dismay it was missing! it had appeared that it had been moved when the lawn way mowed...they stole my science!! while looking for it i found the largest land snails i have ever seen! i would eat those before the wild rooster, more meat per kilowatt of energy. over dinner i finally met the malaysian girl who lives here. she is a year younger than i am, so i think we could be friends. its very relieving to feel like i have some possible friend opportunities. at the very least, it wont be strange living next door to her.
tuesday i woke up in the best of all possible moods for no real reason. i recovered my rain gauge (i think it had gotten tossed out of the way when they were mowing the grass) and put it in a patch of dirt, hoping it would be left alone there. i left work early to try and attain my visa. i am so close! only one more visit to one more office to pick up my foreigners card. le sigh. i spent about an hour exploring before i settled in a coffee shop where i did some sanitation reading. the literature was also pushing for a mass media campaign to drive the desire for sanitation and hygiene products which was fantastic affirmation for my soap opera project. i also wondered if you could run capacity building with the heifer model. i.e. is it possible to say give someone start up capital and the know how to make the concreate fixtures on the condition that when his business becomes profitable he teaches someone to do the same and gives him the start up capital needed after the apprenticeship. im not sure i am satisfied with that as a solution yet, but i am going to keep playing around with it because i think it might work. after finishing my americano i headed to the grocery store. all the while i felt fantastic. best tuesday i have ever had. when i got home i went swimming. i have gotten much faster, but my stamina still sucks and i can only swim about one full lap before i need to take a breather. the people here make me look like a person who grew up in the desert where there is no water or something. angela made too much dinner so she shared some with me, it was quite good. i did some light yoga stretching, watched a few ted talks, did some pleasure reading and went to bed.
today it poured! i was the most unfocused i have ever been. i couldnt wait for work to be done. i finished my internal soap opera proposal, but i didnt feel like doing anything. i came home super excited to check my rain gauge only to discover that the rain had knocked it over! failed science again! there was still rain on the ground so i was able to easily identify a high spot and set it up again. third times the charm right?! i went swimming again this evening and was able to do 5 laps in about 15 minutes including pausing between them. i think its time i start doing 7.5 laps... and wearing ear plugs the water in my ears is killing me! i think that is all the amazingness that has happened since i was writing faithfully. i will try to be better about this so that it isnt life summaries but more interesting musings.
love and miss you all.
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