Today is a holiday here in PNG. I “traded” my Friday off for today and went into work this morning. The debate students have been busy with final exams and this is the first day they could meet. It was good to take a long weekend because I had just been in such a funk all week. I just couldn’t be bothered with anything – work, social crap, whatever. I just was stewing in circles of pissiness and self-loathing… I needed time away to read a trashy book and vegetate.
So, this weekend, I got just that. I read a book, sat in the sun, floated around in circles. It took me two days to come down from the cusp of insanity, but I managed…. Screw work, screw my upcoming contract renewal, screw the consult job, and screw the lady that keeps messing with my flight tickets… I just needed….zen.
Well, I didn’t find zen so I thought I’d go for the next best thing – a haircut. Wrong decision. The lady that cut my hair, who was trained by Edna, cut my hair alright. WTF. I just asked her to trim off the long layer on the back. As she tried to make it straight, it got shorter and shorter. I now have even, but short hair, that flips up instead of under. I didn’t ask her to fix it for fear it would get even worse. Now I just keep pulling at it thinking that somehow it will magically grow overnight to where I can stick it in a pony tail again… nope.
Okay, I can deal. I have a bad haircut. That’s not an omen that things will sour. No, I’m on the upswing…
So, with a newfound attitude of a long weekend, forgetting for just a bit that my hair looks, well, less than desirable, I went to work this morning. I walked into my office……and see…. a flood. FML. Apparently the pipes backed up onto my carpet, all through my office, into the training room, and down the stairs. It was a soggy mess. Oh, yippee…
I texted Lucy and she was there within an hour. She’s been living near uni in some crappy housing, so she’s pretty much been spending extra time on campus and in our office. Eh, it’s fine. I’m just hoping the housing department gets her on-campus accommodation soon.
Anyway, I had one debater come and tell me that he’s now taking a short course and can’t participate. Okay. Then I had my student coordinator come and tell me that his friend was shot and killed and he’s going back over to the haus cri that’s being held. Another shooting… at least this wasn’t on campus or related to uni. He said it was Saturday night about 1 am and the student was out trying to get beer. I don’t want to know and I told him to just go….
So, after sloshing around in my office and calling security to send a plumber and pulling crap off the floor, I finally had our first official debate team practice. Oh, crap. It wasn’t great. But, then again, the first one last year wasn’t all that successful either. It’s just I’m missing a few of my key debaters and the debate is literally less than one week away.
I prepped them as much as I could, giving them arguments and prompting them on the order of what to present. We did a few full practice run-throughs, but they don’t have enough content yet to fill the time. Oh well. I’m slammed with so much other crap that I just can’t magically do their work for them, too. If they want it, they’ll have to work for it.
So, my CBF (can’t be f’d) attitude is back… with a vengeance. This isn’t good. I have work to do. I have a flooded office, an ill-prepared debate team, a slew of people from all over PNG flying in on Sunday for the debates, job applications to review, training to coordinate, the consulting job a’lingering, and the paperwork project from hell that I’ve been avoiding. Crap. And I need to call the travel agent again.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Fuck it. It’s a holiday. I’m calling it a day and going fishing. Maybe I’ll catch my zen….
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