It looks like Faith, but it's not

Whirligig

This past week has been extremely busy. All the work (and for anyone who has done themselves up and dragged themselves to an event they really didn’t want to go to knows it really is work) of the past few months is starting to pay off!

New friends!

Attending the otherwise sleepy late February American Women’s Club morning coffee yielded a very good prospect: a late 20- early 30- something gal from England named Martha who, upon spotting me, lost no time in getting to know me (women our age in the Philippines are very, very rare. Most are much older). She mentioned the mahjong group that I went to last week, so she expanded my social group by about 20 people, no lie.

Among the mahjong people were a few “repeats”—one from the women’s club and a few from a book group that I had attended a couple months ago, so I felt a bit more at home than I may have otherwise.
The mahjong group also overlapped with another event, so now I’m starting to see the same people in large, overlapping Venn diagrams. I still have 3 or 4 loose social groups, 5 if you count work friends as another, rather than one large group of “people I went to grammar school, high school and college with” – which seems to be the case with about 50% of my friends.

I’m one of those people who shoot first and lets God sort them out when it comes to friends, and I’m also one of those people who considers someone a friend until proven otherwise, both pretty handy traits when it comes to moving to a new country all by yourself.

So! The week:
Sunday: 
 Brunch with Nimmi and 2 new buddies!! New girls were Zizi, a Latina from Miami who works for Royal Caribbean, and Birthe, a Dutch woman working for Shell Oil. Zizi was the more outgoing of the two, but Birthe was a close second, she was just naturally more dry and reserved by nature, but still friendly, funny, and nice. We exchanged FB information and I yielded a few invitations from that one day, making it pay off very nicely in terms of cost benefit analysis.

Tuesday: trivia night at Howzat with the Australian and New Zealander’s club. This would have been a wash in terms of friend-making, had it not been for the fortuitous presence of Alison and her husband Stewart, freshly back from their respective vacations. They waved me over and I joined their table. At our table, which was pleasantly disposed to come in 3rd place, we had a married straight guy who not only correctly identified Philip Tracy as a milliner, but also knew that the most expensive epic movie produced in the 1960’s was “Cleopatra”. (!!!)

He also handily filled out a “visual jeopardy” round of Asian country flags nearly single- handedly, while the rest of us misidentified Pakistan’s green background with yellow crescent and sickle as “Iran” and called it a night. I mean, this guy got Burma right!

Wed:
 first, it was an early bugle call to go to &#($&Q#)*ing immigration office to be photographed and fingerprinted like a convict as we have to do every year, and, as so often happens, they round up as many ex pats as they can find that are coming due and herd them together on the same mission. In this case, I thought it was just me, and didn’t even register the odd presence of another ex pat in the office at an unusual hour until he fell into step with me walking with the “fixer” they sent to help us.

“Is this guy coming with us?” I asked the fixer. “Yes”--- “this guy” answered.

His name was Makesh, and like every Indian I’ve ever met, he has a sense of humor that falls pretty far on the “vinegar” side, since when I asked first “Which account do you work for?” “Not really any, all of them, I guess.” I gave it my first guess- if he’s not assigned to an account, he’s in “support”, and usually the only people they’ll “import” for support are technical and communications help: “Oh, do you work for GTI? [internal technical support]”
He responded “What, you think I’m technically inclined since I’m Indian?”—with that one- sided killer smile that these guys do so well. Actually, it just seemed most likely since he was clearly not an exec, as he was a) young and b) wearing jeans, but all things considered, most of our Indians are here on the technical side of things, so it was a fair bet.

I just gave him a look and he tittered, and admitted he was in sales something or other. Thus a beautiful hour- long friendship was born. He got in as many zingers as possible during this time—you know how some people are: they just love to tease brand- new acquaintances just to razz them. This sometimes drives me nuts and other times I like it (usually directly proportional to how hot the razzer is; in this case the answer was “pretty damn hot”), and since I had fun teasing him too, it was okay.
This type of set up, where I’m stuck on a row boat with another ex- pat, is how I met one of my very close friends here, Govind, so who knows, maybe this new one will become a good friend too. (For the 3rd and hopefully final time I have sworn off even attempting to make it work with Mother India’s finest—so he’s not even in the shooting range for dating).

Then it was off to Clark, my old hunting grounds, to meet with some teams there who weren’t giving me the information I was asking for over email so it was time to bring out the big guns. And by big guns I mean me. Heh.
In a side note, faithful readers may recall my sort of ill fated romance with a guy who worked in the next compound over, Ankit, and how although it didn’t end on bad terms, it didn’t really “end” either (he was one of those that takes a few tries to break up with before it “takes”—the same reason for this is the reason I had to break it off in the first place: he wasn’t really all that focused on the relationship, let’s say, to the point where he failed to notice my break up. )
Well, Ankit and I stayed in touch, with him texting me once in a while, and he just texted me recently that contrary to what I had thought, he really WAS serious about “it” while “it” was going on but you know, somehow time got away from him. Heh. No shit? Tell that to all the other confused, disgruntled Indian dudes I had to break up with after I had enough of “time getting away from them.” So he told me that next time I was in, please come see him.

Knowing him, I tried to find out what would be the circumstance, but I decided to just roll the dice: he picked me up from work --he borrowed a car- this is what’s so infuriatingly half good about him- he knew I would be tired and thought ahead, and then on the half bad side, when he got back from work at 6 AM, bounced into the room wanting to talk, listen to horrible sitar music, watch “The Rock” on mute and drink beer. Ugh. He is the working definition of “mixed bag”. I think he’s been living as a bachelor for too long, as the total lack of artwork or anything other than the most functional leather furniture kind of testified to. “I don’t need pictures or sceneries or any of that. What do I need that for? When am I home?” He had a point.
Typical conversation: (We’re gossiping about a 3rd party who was a terrible host on an evening out)

Me: “He just committed all the sins possible that night, you know. Terrible. Ogling girls, speaking vernacular with other guys, watching cricket, not wanting to leave for hours, etc.”


Ankit: “All the sins of a bad host?” (visibly worried this story is taking a turn he won’t like)


Me: “Well, not limited to those sins, but yes, to me personally he committed every possible HOST sin.”

Ankit: “I see.”(Relieved)


Thursday 
AM I took the bus back to Manila and went straight to work. I was missing my monthly book club by sleeping in, but I was so tired from the 16 hour day from the day before I just let it go. However, Thursday night I had dinner plans with Nimmi, Birthe, and Zizi, and Nimmi brought another person named Stewart (actually also from Australia, but not married to my friend Alison, another, different dude.) The venue was L’Opera, an Italian place right near where I work.

Stewart was the only person I didn’t know, and he was pretty friendly- one of those “Wow, I won the lottery” types that just loooovvveesss the Philippines and is looking for ways to stay here forever. He’s friendly and seems nice, but let’s just say he’s not one of nature’s philosophers—he kind of likes to party and have fun, and that’s about it.
By the end of dinner I was really exhausted, but I powered through, mostly because I really didn’t want to turn down an invitation of any kind, and because I had already committed and I just hate when people say yes and then do the last minute flake out.

Friday: 
Mahjong day, with all new people! There were a few more younger women there, but mostly it was an older crowd. I only won once, but that’s enough for me. It was just as much fun this time around as last time- although last time we played with the book and this time we only played Chinese style, no book. I won’t bore you to death with all the details of the play, but it went pretty fast and I was able to pick up a few more things this time around.

Sat:
 Internations Irish Ball at 7. Zizi and Nimmi both said they would go, although Nimmi begged off to do some kind of charity race thing the next day, so she needed her rest.
It was a pretty typical crowd, although it was jammed with people, much more so than usual. I saw Kelvin, this guy named Doug from Troy, NY, Zizi, and a few other people I know, but not many. Kelvin was at a table with two morose Eastern Europeans who got up to wander off, leaving a seat free for the world’s most attractive man: Fatih. “It looks like Faith but it’s not.” He smiles.

Fatih is an I would guess late- 40- something (he has two children, one 14, one 9, so I’m thinking at least 40 here) Turk from Turkey, who looks like Dustin Hoffman by way of the Levant, and is extremely attractive, in that melancholy, intellectual European way.

He was wearing his clothes and jewelry with complete insouciance, as if he were born in them: a deep V neck white tee, jeans, and a blazer, and a lovely ring that was a wide, almost inch wide braid of silver – unusual and artistic. He is an architect and had a wonderful mix of that continental nihilism mixed with interest that sets such men apart. He listened eagerly to what I was saying and took notes on his phone about the best places to shop; all while smoking the world’s thinnest cigarette and mournfully nodding about how hard it is to date- but encouraging me not to give up.

As I pointed out sadly to my coworker, most men don’t give women they think are cute advice on dating, unless that advice is “date me”. Heh. So I think we have a fail here. But where there is one there is more! Right? Please?

If you think Javier Bardem is hot, with those hound-dog eyes and crow’s feet around them, combined with that European sensuality and brains, you would go nutz for this guy. And his HAIR. Richard Gere hair—thick, wavy locks of black and silver that cascaded down to his jaw line in the most natural way possible- hair you could feature in a hair commercial.

Fatih means “conqueror.”

And then home, to sleep all the next day. Long week. Many new comers. All good.