surely you wouldn’t expect it to be a good day when the burgler alarm in your building goes off at 6am (you ignore it because it’s just some idiot who hasn’t disarmed it before stepping out the door, most likely those horrible noisy people from downstairs), and then when you finally do seriously wake up half an hour later and stretch, your foot goes into a cramp. oh and also, it’s forecast to hit 34°.
it doesn’t seem so bad at first because you’re stuck at your desk post-tea-and-plum-jammed-crumpets, and you’ve got the fan plugged in, and edie brickell and the jayhawks playing, and the fan causing all these sheets and sheets of proofs you have all over the room to flutter in a most reassuring and soothing manner.
directory job #2 is due at the printers today and you’re on the homestretch. so close you could lick it. you could be done by just after lunch, and then you could go outside, a place you haven’t been to in such a while that it seems magical and mystical.
and then the calls and emails start. the ones that say “we left a whole bunch of listings out of january… can you insert those?”, and “oh, it seems there was a glitch in the spreadsheet that led you to believe a quarter page ad goes on this page, when it’s actually a half page ad”, and so on. and then when in defiance of last minute hiccups it’s finally been burned to CD, just past lunchtime as anticipated, “can you email us PDFs of all the pages with ads on them so we can check them?”.
o if such care with checking had been unleashed earlier. so hours and hours and megabytes (32!) later, it washes over you like cold sick that directory job #2 will not be so obliging as to leave you in peace this evening. crap.
+ + +
the entry below was interrupted by the arrival of text to lay out. what i meant to say was, if you have a blender and you chuck in a tin of jackfruit with half the syrup and a handful of ice cubes, you end up with a pretty tasty approximation of a vietnamese fruit shake. at the main market in ho chi minh city you can get a soursop-strawberry shake that’s tangy like a strawberry yoghurt smoothie, but the best ones are from a hole-in-the-wall cafe along the main drag in hue. you will see a sign outside that says “the best fruit shakes in hue” and you will be sceptical but only until the shop lady puts in front of you an icy, glistening orange thing. o papaya shake, i miss you so.
