24 July 2009

hodgepodge

It's mid-year review season in UNICEF.

Which basically means all of the following:
- overtime
- barely any reading or blogging time
- numbers swimming in my head
- me as a possible victim of deep vein thrombosis because I hardly stand up from my desk anymore
- endless presentation slides

And all this eventually leads to death by PowerPoint.

So to de-stress, I will do some very quick blogging here. My officemate Tito recently came back from Istanbul and gave me pasalubong (souvenir gift). It was a traditional Turkish evil eye amulet which, he explained, is believed to protect people from harm.

I thought it was very pretty (albeit slightly creepy), and hung it over my desk in the hopes that I would be protected from all sorts of bad stuff.

Although I think the evil eye's currently not working, because I feel extra stressed these days, and well, stress is bad stuff in my book. But the amulet looks charming and mysterious and otherworldly, so it gets points in the aesthetics department.

Looking at it right now, I am reminded of how much I want to visit Turkey and Greece someday. All that history and Old World charm.

And speaking of Turkey, I have been forever stuck in Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, a story set in sixteenth-century Istanbul. Currently in chapter 19 (out of 59, I think). It's not that the novel's boring; I just haven't found time to finish it in two or three sittings. And so the momentum's kinda lost. Bought it more than a year ago, and I've managed to read several books in between. Argh.

I'm waiting until I reach the exciting part, so I can finish it in a matter of hours.

2 comments:

  1. Ay... I so don't miss number crunching in UNICEF! Hahaha! Sorry nalang, Gins. Joke. :)

    I miss the soulful part of the work too and the folks like Tito. I used to call him Mister Tito. Haha.

    Hang in there! Then treat yourself to a good massage or run (not!) after.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha, i inherited your number crunching responsibilities! Ugh.

    Although it's now Tintin who's doing the fdp requests and reports. I was so glad to have those out of my hands. i don't miss fdp!!

    ReplyDelete