sabato, luglio 21, 2012

Going outback blues

Has it only been a week since the last entry? Paris feels a world away, which of course it is, me now being in Singapore, lounging in the business class lounge and waiting to flat-bed my way to Australia. Fuck, do I love being upper middle class. I'm enjoying the last few months of that; once the baby comes out I don't anticipate spoiling myself much anymore, or spending accrued airmiles on anything except trips to Canada to socialize my poor Australian infant with some people who can say two syllables in a row without their voices going like thiiiis?

At some point in the last week or so, probably because Singapore's a big old shopping mall and now that I'm enormous most of my tropical perambulating is in air conditioned places like shopping malls, I hit some sort of wall with how shitty quality things are aggressively sold to expectant parents and have decided to treat the kid's early infancy as an experiment in simultaneous luxury and parsimoniousness. Which isn't really going to be a stretch, I don't think. It's how I've lived my own life to date. I'll let you know how it goes.

So . . . this second trimester last-kick-at-the-carefree-(almost because pregnant so not smoking or drinking)-travel is just about over. It's not the travelling being over that distresses me, it's the going back to Australia. For years. And years. And years. In the last two months, I've spent no time alone, and during the time in Europe I was always with people I had a deep affection or love for, train travel time excepted. Dozens of them. Now I'm heading back to Australia where the people I love and have a deep affection for are not nearly so numerous. Obviously one of them is my old man and he takes precedence. But he doesn't really want to be there either once his studies are over. Another will be my child, and my child is portable. I've been porting it all over Asia and Europe for the last two months.

My boss was trying to think of ways out for us and his favourite idea was us moving to Taipei. Actually, that doesn't sound like it'd be too bad. I think the next time we go to Europe we'll take a few days transferring and adjusting in Taipei, feeling it out. Give me a chance to learn Chinese for real, give the kid a chance to learn Chinese, it's not as dirty as Shanghai, and you know - once you're in Asia, you're back in the world. You're back where things happen and people know about each other. I also have a particular soft spot for Taiwan because of all its unorthodox economists. Well, we'll see. 

lunedì, luglio 16, 2012

Tu detestes Paris, Paris

Leaving Europe, which sucks. You know what makes that easier? Leaving it from Paris. This place is a dump and Charles de Gaulle aeroport is a worse dump. It makes Heathrow look like Changi. I don't think I'll come back unless business or transit calls as the one good friend I have still living here is happy to meet me elsewhere and as everything vaunted as awesome about this place is much more awesome elsewhere. Its cultural life is over and its natives are a passel of miserable, angry, ugly, dead-eyed, bored and boring people. Also it smells really bad.

Oh well - on to Singapore and finally home. It's been great, but I suspect I've been partly wasting my second trimester by not spending more of it banging my old man. I shudder to think what will become of our bedroom life after I squeeze a baby out and then as we take care of it. Will have to hope for the best. 

domenica, luglio 15, 2012

Can't tell me anything sometimes

If I want advice, I have a mother, Google, a midwife, pre-natal yoga and how-not-to-kill-the-baby classes, parents who I know well and admire, and the ability to ask specific questions in search of a specific answer. If I wanted to sign on to a predetermined philosophy of parenting, I would have specialized in babies at school, instead of the best way to invade other people's countries.

Absolutely flabbergasted at how spontaneous advisors feel like their experiences or abstract notions of parenthood are universalizable to all parents. Already bloody sick of it and not quite at month six. To all my friend with babies who read this blog, if I've ever done this to you, I apologize whole-heartedly and thank you for not slapping me, as you were no doubt sorely tempted to do. Please enjoy some schadenfreude as compensation. 

Rant over. I need to get out of France. The advice here is handed out almost as liberally as the second-hand smoke. And Paris is a fucking dump. Snarl.