Just wondering, how do you answer your phone (be it work or home or mobile)?
People in my company are all BlackBerried, so their work/personal mobile phones are basically one and the same. And they seem to answer their phones as one of:
"Hello, this is [name]."
"[name]" (without anything else)
"Hello?"
I step into a random restaurant on rue Mouffetard in Paris on Valentine's Day evening, and am seated beside an American couple. I make eye contact perhaps just once (and unintentionally), but I have the pleasure of eavesdropping on their chat.
"Oh, this [escargots bourgogne] is so delicious. I love this sauce."
"You wanna marry it?", she asks without much emotion.
"No, honey, I'm going to marry you. You got dibs."
"I'm going to have an affair with this sauce, though."
I got home about 30 minutes ago, and found an envelope taped to my door, with "EN URGENT" handwritten on it. I opened it up and saw a letter:
Je suis Fabienne Xxx, votre voisine "en dessous". Ce matin at 6h30, j'ai trouve une fuite au dessous de l'evier. Le symdec est prevenu et le plombier m'a signale que la fuite, en partie, venait de chez vous. Auriez-vous l'amabilite de me telephoner au 01xx62xx34 pour prevoir une visite du plombier et eviter que les degats ne persistent. D'avance, je vous en remercie.
I'm Fabienne Xxx, your neighbor "below". This morning at 6:30 am, I found a leak below the sink. The [symdec] is accused and the plumber has said that the leak, in part, came from your place. Would you please call me at 01xx62xx34 to predict a visit by the plumber and avoid the damage that can persist. Thank you in advance."
Hi.
It's been a while since I've blogged about anything. And it's not for lack of anything to write about. Rather, it's a lack of motivation to write about that stuff.
Sorry.
It's not you, it's me.
Really.
I'll get around to blogging again, when I finally sort out everything in my head. In the meantime, know that I do still keep up with yours.
I'm in Hong Kong right now.
See that furry white ball there?
That's a typhoon, Typhoon Nuri.
It has decided to park its ass directly on HK.
My head is in the windy wet ass of a typhoon.
Travel plans all amuck.
I'm applying for a Chinese entry visa (again), so that means my passport and everything is sitting in some visa processing office. ETA is tomorrow afternoon, so then I can hop on my flight tomorrow night and go home for the weekend (before hitting Shanghai on Monday morning).
The Hong Kong weather folks have issued a T1 signal because of Typhoon Nuri. According to Hong Kong's Tropical Cyclone warning signals, a T1 signal apparently means that it can still be sunny outside and completely devoid of any resemblance to a breeze. But it also means everyone should be on standby for a real doozy of a typhoon.
It also means that, if the typhoon gets really bad tomorrow, I can't get my visa (and passport) back by tomorrow -- it would then be processed by Monday instead. And that means I can't go anywhere for the weekend: if I get my visa after the weekend, I have to stay in HK this weekend and fly straight out to Shanghai again on Monday.
This is not good.
I want to go home!
I still tear up when I think about how my mom missed my wedding, and how much she was really looking forward to it before her life ended abruptly.
In the middle of watching The Mummy 3, there was a medium-sappy moment between Brendan Fraser's character and his son. I thought about my mom, my dad, and how much I miss them (in different ways). And I lost it: I started crying quietly to myself in the middle of the theatre.
I find that my emotions are bubbling just beneath my surface, waiting to fill my eyes with more tears. There's still a lot of hurt inside me that needs to be released. I just hope the trigger isn't at an inopportune time.
