Where are we?

Well, hello US! I'm back! For now.

In my work contract I'm given a free ticket back to the US once a year, so this year I saved all my vacation days and took about 10 days off, and split the time between the ROC and Buffalo.

The Rochester leg was a bit of a bust, since I was really sick the first two days, but I was able to see Irene and Jessica, who stopped by Kelsey Grange on their way to Buffalo for a reunion-- quite a few people were in town for Andy Capp night and Thanksgiving. That was the much vaunted "Harpie Reunion" and "Harpies Descend", featured on FB. The girls brought me wine (they know me well) and we hung out for a few hours just talking. I loaded them with swag from the Kultura part of the department store, and they seemed like they liked it well enough. The bummer is that I wasn't feeling better- I was having a hard time keeping up with the conversation as I felt like an animated corpse the entire time.

Sat/ Sun/ Monday I just hung out and did little, but Monday however, I met up with a fellow ex pat who's repatriated recently-- this kid Trip (super preppy abbreviation for a III) who worked for my company and who quit and moved back to our hometown about 2 months ago. It was delightful to gossip about work and commiserate about the challenge of hanging out with "civilians"-- either people who've traveled very little, only as tourists, or only worked in places like London, or Toronto. (First world English speaking cities, in other words). It's not that I don't love my friends, miss them terribly, and love hanging out with them, but in general people tend to sort of think it's either doing Red Cross work in Haiti, or a white sand bungalow vacation every day. Which it sort of is an unholy combination of both that takes a longggg time to explain to those that aren't there. It's hard to catch someone up on 2.5 years of cultural immersion in 3 hours.

Anyway, we went to this place:

http://www.highland-park-diner.com/

which has amazing food and a great atmosphere and is easy to get to. Trip looked great, healthy and sassy, and talking about going to Columbia to work there with the company again, and of course be with his fiance, who lives there.

Tuesday my friend Adam from Buffalo picked me up and we tooled out to Buffalo for three days of fun! Actually it was like 2 and some change, since we don't count days that were mostly made of travel, but anways! Upon arrival, Adam and I fixed ourselves several bourbon and waters and spent like 5 hours just talking. Then off to the nicely appointed guest bedroom for me, where I slept like a baby.

 

 

We got up early and went to Betty's, pictured above, which has always had the most amazing brekkers food ever and is open early. After that, we tooled off to Target so I could buy socks and torture Adam by slowly browsing the "undergarments" aisle, and then off to the AmVets so I could buy Kent (the guy I'm seeing) a tee shirt. Kent is a truly cosmopolitan man of the world who prides himself on being well traveled, liberal, and knowledgeable politically. Naturally I immediately hit on the perfect gift, described below.

I threatened him "I am going to get you the most offensively jingoistic pro America tee shirt I can find. It's going to be like, red white and blue camo, with Playboy trucker girlie silouettes on it and it's going to say "Amurrrica! Love it or leave it!" or something equally awful! We were in stiches laughing about it, as it was tickling both of our funny bones picturing him wearing this monstrosity.

Well, apparently those of us who buy those type of shirts wear them to rags or keep them under glass, because the best I could find was a "Proud American blood donor" shirt with a flag waving on the back-pretty good, but a far cry from the horribleness I wanted. I WAS able to get him this shirt (below), however. It's gonna look so rad on an Indian:

 

I got myself a similar shirt (716 area code pride), but that was on day 2, so back to day 1.

 

After AmVets we called Todd Gibney, my old manager from the collections shop, and we tooled out to North Tonawanda to meet him at work. He was on an 11-8 so he couldn't get out for lunch with us, but we sat and talked for a bit, and it felt great to see him. As always, he was a melencholy Buddah, with a warmth and charm that hid (not very well) an iron hand and a sense of sadness that makes one both admire and pity him. I also saw a former immamorta, this kid Tony, and thouroughly enjoyed scaring him a little by taking his number (he left his long term girlfriend for me for a bit, and now that I was back in town he took pains to tell me that things were back on with the GF and it was all going well, etc.) and watching his face flicker between attraction and happiness at his luck in running into me and fear that I would come back and blow up his life again, all for nothing, just like the first time. But of course I was just twitting him, and enjoying it a bit too much. Heh.

 

Then it was off to lunch, and then home. I foolishly fell asleep at like 2 PM and couldn't really rouse myself, so it was a super early day. I went to bed at like 7 PM.

 

 

The next day we toddled off to Spot Coffee for breakfast (in what would be a long string of eating adventures, it was like I did all the eating for the entire trip in this one day), and then hurried over to Sarah's in Williamsville to pick out an engagement ring for Joann, Adam's soon to be fiance. I also got the aforementioned teeshirts on Elmwood and took some pics for FB.

 

 Then it was off to lunch at the newly and gorgeously renovated Hotel Lafayette. I met Sarah Hansen and Christine (the Silver Fox) and we had lunch at the staid, but perfectly acceptable, Pan American Grill:

 

This picture does not really do full justice to this amazing space, most of which was just opened and redone in the last year: https://www.facebook.com/HotelLafayetteBuffalo

It is incredible. It makes me really long for Buffalo- it's things like this that made me love living there and made me so full of hopes and wants for something more, if only it weren't just out of my reach.

After this, we zipped back home to change, then off to my old boss's new office (my old boss is Chris, Adam's best friend in Buffalo), where he and the rest of my former co workers were just wrapping up the work day. Interested workers not so subtley eavesdropped as I chatted with my former coworker Bill Childs, who was an excellent listener and asked all the right questions, and then Chris swept me and Adam down to Witter's Bar and Grill

a little hole in the wall where the Buffalo Chicken Wings are only 35c. (Nothing's too good for our out of town friends! Heh.) Chris and his wife Megan have set up call centers overseas, in Russia, so they were able to compare and discuss the ins and outs of setting up the biz and they were both very gratifyingly excited to see me and happy I was doing well.

Then off to the newly renovated "Blue Monk" for dinner (Duck Fat Frites with special dips like Thai Ginger Melon Ketchup and Black Truffle Ketchup that were to die for!) where I met Amy, a Buffalo friend who follows my blog!!

 We had a nice dinner, and hopefully she'll be able to come on out to meet me in Thailand, Singapore, or Japan this next year (2013 is officially Asia travel year for me).

Well, that's pretty much all I did- a few things of course I wasn't able to get to or didn't mention (Weggies with my mom, a few phone calls to some other friends, etc, but on the whole, this is it), and next edition will be: I know what you DID, now how did you FIND IT? More later....



Back to the USSR

It really is true: the minute you swear off men and dating forever, a really good prospect arrives on the scene.

The scene: after several smaller and one large heartbreak(s), our heroine has decided that dating in Asia just isn't cutting it. Reasons:

1) Local men are generally either already married or in a serious relationship, and if they aren't, there's a damn good reason why they're single.

2) Ex pats (American/ European) are here to date 18 year old, 4'9", 87 pound girls who speak almost no English and won't give them any lip when they play their iPod at dinner (seen it!).

3) "Other ex pats" (ie, Indians) have given me a million laughs, and a million headaches. (Enter Ant, who I broke up and got back together with about 4 times in 5 months). So they're out.

There's a lot of other reasons, but the big one:

4) I genuinely don't want a BF at this time-- it's a lot of work, trouble, and risk for something that may or may not work out. I see a serious relationship almost like a part time job, and since my full time job and my part time job of trying to f--ing make it in a 3rd world country without losing my mind keep me pretty occupied, I kind of gave up.

Well, I have a stable of "Chapsticks"-- eligible, friendly men (Haresh, Pree, etc) who can squire me around, and who look good in a sports coat and jeans; but who don't try to give me "the business" in their every spare moment. So my life isn't man- free, per se.

It was at Internations, with one of the aforementioned Chaps, that I met "him". I was sitting on a bench with Preetam, who is a magnet for other people (I can choose my Chaps- everyone I've brought to Internations is one of those naturally attractive souls that radiates good will) and this cheerful, pudgy dude comes up.

This is Anuj, who looks like Pooh Bear with a tan and glasses. Anuj is holding forth on business (pretty much the only topic Indians want to talk about, other than the quality of women they see, have known, or are about to hit on), and Pree is as happy as a cricket on the hearth. ( I sold him on going to the event not by talking about the free wine, the hot white chicks, or the chance to get out of the house. Nope. I mentioned "It's a great chance to network." I had him at "network".)

Now, Anuj is part of a large group of men, who have arrived rather late in the game and are roaming around as a whole. He beckons them over and my mother is proven right (she pegged me as "surrounded by a group of men at any given party" in her fashion type quiz) as within a few minutes I'm swarmed by a group of *very interested* Indians, all trying to be cool, yet studly, all while being visibly torn between the prospect of hitting on a heretofore unknown white girl, and talking business with a heretofore unknown businessman.

Heh.

In the crowd is Allwyn. Allwyn makes no bones about his intentions and (wisely, as it later turns out), forgets all about trying to network and sits down next to me, chatting me up and getting my number. Allwyn has a significant leg up over the other men, as he has a lush, jet black Van Dyke goatee, which suits his face perfectly, and glasses, which gives him the air of being a very tan, hipster Dr. Freud. In contrast to his fashionable exterior, he is extremely earthy- you know those people you meet who are very human but somehow possess a very animal side as well? That's him. His family are coffee growers, and everything about him is warm and dark, like coffee.

In a very gratifying show of interest, Allwyn follows up later, while our two parties have gone our separate ways (him and his group to a club and me and mine to a speakeasy), and he invites me to join him at his club. I'm in the middle of a drawn out, intimate, candle lit discussion with Pree and Haresh about [something or other, this was about 5 cocktails into the night], and I have no intention of dropping everything to rush off to be with a guy I just met. So I offer up "recovery breakfast tomorrow?" He's in for the next day, but he's scheduled to do some damned volcano trek, so it will have to be dinner.

Well, the next day we meet up at 9 for dinner. We have dinner and coffee, then go back to my place to talk and only at 4am, do we reluctantly part ways, having talked through a movie that we finally just turned off to talk uninterrupted.
I had decided to just treat him as a friend, but keep the slightly flirtatious angle and rigorously check for red flags. Marriage/ kids minded? Nope. Into drugs/ heavy drinking? Nope. Sexist jerk? Nope. Local Yokel who has never been outside of his home town and the current location? This is someone who *voluntarily* went camping in Mongolia, people.

Anyway, long story short, he's boyfriend material. I've never really experienced something like this- the light hear-ted flow of talking to a friend, not walking that "don't say the wrong thing" tightrope while trying to read a man's mind and tell him what you think he wants to hear. And yet, I still felt a strong spark of chemistry with this guy, it wasn't like the "friend window" was now closed and we were suddenly dude bros.

So we met up for lunch a few days later, and then had after- work drinks on Sat night. So Sat night we had a little chat, where I really laid my cards on the table and spelled it out. "I'm theoretically OK with Friends Plus, but I have tried it and for me, it's just not going to work. If I'm going to be intimate with someone, it means something to me, and it doesn't have to be dead serious from Day One, but it has to be headed in the direction of commitment."

For me, I want a man who likes and respects me enough to say "I want her all for myself and long term." In general, and in my experience, when a man really likes a girl, he wants her all to himself and wants to make it serious. I've actually had men outright tell me (in the process of trying to date me) "I want you to be my GF!"

He told me (and I believe him) "I knew from talking to you that you weren't someone who plays around, and I asked for your number and asked you out knowing this. I can't be Mr. Romantic, texting you all the time and that, but I want to be with you, and I want to see what happens. And I don't want anyone else."

So that's it, I'm seeing him and while I won't say it's "serious", neither would I entertain offers from other men. He's a handful anyway.

 Basically, I've done a lot of thinking about this, and I have decided that for my purposes (a drama free life), it's either really just friends, or a traditional dating set up, where both of you are interested in finding a long term partner. I don't want to waste time "hooking up" with men who aren't quite right for me, and furthermore, having "question mark" men in my life leaves the field cluttered and crowded, shooing off quality men who are looking for a "girl who doesn't play around."

I have never had a man say that to me, which means that I have internalized this way of thinking and reorganized my life to the point where it's visible through my body language and my choice of words: "Serious Customers Only. No Looky- Loos." Nice.

We'll see. If it works out, great. But if for some reason it fizzles, of course I'll be disappointed but I won't be devastated, since it's really a plus, not a raison d'etre. And people, he's adorable.