talking to this girl (lovely lady, by the way) is sometimes a bit like getting postcards from another planet. she pops on a cd of music i've never heard before (because i don't listen to commercial radio), gets excited when i say i'm up for her pub crawl, has more clothes than i own in her bag for her friends to borrow for a night out and is the first person i've heard use the word "lesbo" in a long time.

(i was tired and drunk by this stage, but i think she interrupted my well-developed theory of the relationship between social change and economic benefit to say that it was probably a good thing that women used to be oppressed. i got sulky about that, probably unfairly.)

it just reminds me of how much of a bubble i live in mostly.

(oh, yeah. look honey, i know that my skin isn't perfect: i smoke, i drink, i don't wear much sun protection, am often under-hydrated, tend to use soap/dishwashing liquid when i can't be bothered with proper face-washing products. but i don't have wrinkles, i don't have blotches, i don't have acne scars and i don't have pores that are visible across the room. i'm not vain, but what the hell made you think i wanted your skin care advice?)

someone was reading the writing on my hand at the bus stop. i hate people even reading over my shoulder, so this was entirely out of order. but the worst part was what alerted me: the sticky lip sound as his lips moved while reading. i feel bad that i felt such disgust for someone i didn't even know.

now am writing on my hand in japanese. my japanese writing is terrible and my memory is wobbly, so i hope this is a double preventative. (although of course i did manage go-ji-ra !)

work pondering:

same place, new contract, new desk. my boss was away on my first day, and i somehow found myself shunted off my new desk and into using his office. people stuck their heads round the door to congratulate me on my meteoric rise to an office with a window.

but it also meant that i didn't really know what i was doing. and i still don't know what i'm doing, but luckily there is a nice lady sitting behind me who knows her shit and is very helpful.

i think what freaks me out most is that the project i'm working on sounds really very simple: i call 6 youth arts companies, i call arts professionals, i arrange for professionals to see performances or workshops or whatnot, i send them out forms to fill in, i make sure eveyone's happy and cosy, they send me back forms within the month if possible. ta da.

it's got to be trickier than that, surely?

i don't know if it's the nature of admin types in this place to take things very very seriously (i imagine they have to, really), but i keep hearing about this like it's a really big thing to organise. i did up a project schedule in about half an hour and spent far too much time colouring it in because it just looked too simple.

i keep wondering if i need to do a prima donna and scream that if i can put together and run a project to get 26000 museum artefacts valued, i can't see why 6 grant applications are such a headache. (but i guess that if it were no problem, i would be unemployed for this week).

oh actually, that's not the scariest thing about this job. the scary thing is that i'm now working for a well-dressed man with a yummy voice. i am trying oh-so hard not to be a dickhead.