One more sleep

Thursday September 28, 2006

Well, Mel should be sleeping nicely in Singapore right about now! Can't believe she is actually going to be here tomorrow! Yippeeeeeeee. So excited.

Got a call from Andrew this afternoon as well. He and Jasmin landed safely in Saigon and are now going to spend the next four days exploring the city before heading to Cambodia and then coming to Hanoi! It was so great to say to him "Welcome to Vietnam!".

Going to experience my first Vietnamese wedding on Sunday as well. The in-country manager for Vietnam, Hanh, is getting married and has invited all the volunteers. Should be a blast! Wonderful thing for Mel to witness as well. For those that know her, we had a laugh over the fact she just can't escape weddings. She's been a bridemaid more times than I can remember, and a guest to even more, and she comes to Vietnam and still finds herself going to one! :)

Phil is also taking us to see a version of the opera Cosi Fan Tute tomorrow night. His organisation has been working a collaboration with a Swiss and the Vietnamese opera companies , and they've adapted it to make it appealing to the younger generation. So it's culture a plenty for Mel - she'll even get to go to the Opera House here.

Saturday AFL boot festival then kicks off at 9am here - so it's definitely going to be hair of the dog after the Fly reopening. Who knows where we'll end up on Saturday night! Perhaps passed out on the couch watching DVDs?! No, don't think so.

Speaking of films, saw the most awesome and inspiring film the other night as well - V for Vendetta. It's brilliant. Not sure if it is in the cinemas in Australia at the moment - but well worth a peep. Lots of analogies with what is going on in the world as well, which made for lots of interesting conversation after the film.

Work has been going really well for me. We've won a lot of grants recently, more than half a million $US, so everything is ramping up. I've officially become Communications Manager and have a small team under me now - Hanh and Long. Hanh works more closely with me on the brand management, web, and news and media side of things, and Long is more the techie IT guy for the organisation. So it's a lot more human resource management involved, but it is just fantastic to be doing some real capacity building.

I've just finished writing and laying out the MCD newsletter as well - and we've got a new version of the website almost completed. I redesigned it and a company we've outsourced is handling all the tech side. We then have to go through the process of uploading all the info, but it is set to be bigger and better this time.

Had some good hits with a media release we put out as well. We participated in International Coastal Clean-up in Halong Bay last Saturday with a group of science students from Hanoi University. Had Vietnam News and the People's Magazine lift the release pretty much word for word. stoked!

In between all of this, we're also moving to bigger offices in November as well. Might mean a bit of a longer ride for me, but no worries! I've been really getting into riding my bike everywhere - it's such freedom. And anything is better than negotiating the horrible intersection at the top of the lake now! I hold my breath each time I have to cross it these days.

Well, signing out for the weekend. It's going to be action packed and I just can't wait! The country can really get to you at times, but then the highs are just amazing. Such is the life of a volunteer.

Oh, and Mel will finally get to see the "two dogs in the bird cage" below our loungeroom window. It just reminded me - they're going off at the moment! Poor little mites.