I’ve recently started following another expat Kiwi in London’s blog and her post last night, entitled “deep breath“, struck a real chord with me. The situation, for me, is completely different but the sentiment expressed – that I might not be good enough – is something I well understand.

She writes:

“I have been playing chess with this fear for the best part of 30 years. And in a weird way I am thankful for it. It has pushed me forward and given me a defiant courage to do it all anyway. I have spent years living on my own, paying my own way, being responsible only for me. I have affirmed to myself every single day that all of these things are evidence of my independence, strength, capability. This is the me I promised myself I would be when I knew there was no going back. And while mostly serving me well, this self-suficiency has also created a dark and twisty me, the one that thinks letting go somehow equals weakness.

I want to keep growing, experiencing and metamorphosing. And this involves allowing myself to be still for a while, to be really here.”

I guess I’m re-posting this because I know that these are feelings many of us have over the course of our lifetimes and sharing in it sometimes, realising we’re not the only ones to feel like this, can be so incredibly helpful. I thoroughly recommend you read her entire post, from start to finish, if nothing else it is a lesson in honesty.

Having a little blogishness catch-up with myself on this fine sunny London morning and have provided a few more “Blogs I Read” links as well as another VSO blog. I (clearly) recommend all of them but well worth having a flick through and seeing if there’s any you’re interested in following too.

Right, that’s all . . .

Over a week ago, I blogged about my exciting adventure to A&E, followed by an appendectomy.

While things have greatly improved, there is still quite clearly a wound (as opposed to a nice neat scar) and it’s causing all sorts of fun. Today’s particular adventure involved conversations with nurses and doctors regarding why the wound appeared to have opened up a little in two places and, more worryingly, why green pus appeared to be oozing from said places. Delightful! I do hope you’re not reading this on a full stomach . . .

As I continue to rest (mostly) tucked up in bed, you would think I’d be blogging like crazy but in fact the very opposite is true. I watch tv. I read. I sleep. I drink water and eat vegetables (sometimes). I am incredibly bored but seem to be better at blogging when I am at last vaguely busy. My mind works better when there is more to think about than one thing at a time – a luxury I am “enjoying” at the moment.

But things are steadily improving, we hope, and I vainly hope I’ll be back at work next week for a couple of days before Tim and I head off to Santorini. Failing all else, surely some relaxing in the Greek Islands will do wonders.

So part of this blog is my attempt to document the whole VSO process from beginning to end. As such you are now about to be subjected to a short post of my first proper conversation with my volunteer placement advisor (VPA) at VSO. 

It took so long for the two of us to be in the same country and therefore able to talk to each other that I was going to be damned if I let my recovery get in the way of the first real discussion about the lay of the land with placements and such and so it finally happened last Friday.

Much of it was an information-provision exercise on her part and for a lot of that I’d already gleaned what I needed to know from the scarily comprehensive handbook. She was, however, able to shed light on some very important things.

1) My CV and profile are on the big all-powerful VSO database

2) It’s hoped we’ll find a suitable placement in the participation and governance field for me in time for the September/October 09 leaving dates.

3) It is, however, possible I will not be leaving until February (that feels like a really LONG time away right now), should a placement not be found as quickly as hoped.

4) At this point, it is my job to sit tight and wait. I could be fundraising but I think that might be easier once I have a placement (any advice from current volunteers on that?).

All good stuff.

So as I sit and wait for a suitable placement summary, I shall entertain you with ramblings about UK politics and, of course, my exploits on the sunny Greek island of Santorini (Thira) in two weeks time for Tim’s birthday.

A week and a half ago I dashed (attempting to faint on the way as I walked myself there) to A&E with massive stomach cramps and this quite-literal gut-wrenching pain below my tummy button. I’d been in pain since 4:30am and had managed to convince myself to attempt to wait it out until about 7:30am when, after a quick conversation with the doctor-professional parental-unit, I walked the two blocks to UCL hospital. After 3 and a half hours I was sent home with pain meds after the docs were more than a little unsure about what the problem was and having actually fainted (luckily in the hospital).

The long and short of it is that I reappeared back in A&E that evening (thanks be to Tim for convincing me that giving the docs another go was a good plan) and after another agonising four hour wait was shifted into a ward to have blood tests, which were shortly (although I did get to sleep in between briefly) followed by the removal of my offending appendix and a general investigation and thorough cleaning of my insides. Delightful.

Somewhat understandably, I have spent the last week and a half off work with a dressing covering one side of my tummy. Rather than key hole surgery, they went for the long deep cut-her-in-half route and so the scar is already quite impressive. Bruising is incredible and my first attempt at changing the dressing involved me lying down for a long period of time to get over the shock and horror at how awful it looked.

I am, however, recovering and am more awake every day – that said I have slept most of the day. It’s been good weather for getting better in though, and now that the political situation here is really hotting up I’m quite enjoying having the time (and necessity) to not do much and read a lot.

Library school is heavily based in group projects. You might hear that this is what “real life” is like. I think that transferring dynamics and principles of group work from an academic context to a professional one is stretching it somewhat, but nevertheless, you do pick up some practical skills.

Continue reading for some practical advice:

Group Project Advice:

1) Keep groups small. Sometimes you won’t get to choose but if you have a choice, less is easier to coordinate.

2) Be upfront about your strengths. If someone identifies a strength that could be useful for a project, the onus is on them to then follow through with that strength.

3) Be upfront about your weaknesses. You should know your work habits by now and you should already recognize areas you need improvement in (or should be trying to). Don’t let your team know too late that you can be late delivering work (and could use some deadline reminders), or that you get email fatigue easily (and FB message is a much better way to reach you) etc. It’s not like you are going to be able to hide your shortcomings anyways. It’s much better for everyone to know the score right off the bat and it shows at least that you are self aware and not in denial.

4) Be shrewd about being a team leader. One classmate once commented to me that in library school when you show even the slightest initiative, everyone else scales back. It’s been my experience that when you take a step forward, everyone steps forward with you, but now I’ve been in situations where everyone retreats! Remember, our profession tends to attract people who want to help in the background. This is a warning: don’t expect others to meet you in terms of your degree of motivation and effort. And be realisitic: if everyone just wants to “get it over with” and you don’t think you can motivate others, set your expectations accordingly and do the best you can.

5) Make a schedule with lots of buffer time. Set your due dates well in advance to accomodate life. Most people in library school are not fresh grads. Most have worked for some time and many are part time. People have jobs, kids, and they’re dealing with things you have no idea about i.e. life. Schedule around life and living, not the other way around!

6) Agree on a main channel of communication. Consensus on this is critical. Don’t bend over backwards just because one person doesn’t want to register for GoogleDocs. The best projects I worked on stuck with one main area to coordinate work (e.g. a wiki, GoogleDocs etc.) and supplemented that with phone and email.

Common Challenges:

The idea below is not to criticize others, but to recognize in yourself, elements in your manner of working in group projects that might be problematic.

1) The AWOL member. They have an inflexible schedule and can’t make it to any meetings. They don’t respond to emails and you have no idea if they’re being read. Their cell phone is their pager.

2) The Flakey member/The Dropout member. They appear to take on a lot of responsibilities but they ultimately flake out without warning or they decide halfway through to drop the course. Suddenly you have a pile of tasks to redistribute and less than 24 hours to get your project together.

3) The Micromanaging member. They’re a perfectionist and expect you to be one too. They redo team members’ contributions and they’d do it all themselves if they could get away with it. You need to gain their approval to move forward with even minor details.

4) The How-Did-You-Get-Into-Library-School-?! member. They cannot summarize a paper. They never cite their sources. Their wiki skills = epic fail. They simply don’t meet the basic academic requirements for doing your project.

5) The Stress-Bunny member. They’re not coping well with their obligations, and are constantly high strung. Just speaking to them makes you feel more anxious and jittery. Talking about their stress just worsens their emotional state.

6) The Leech member. They let you do all the work and try to massage the project report to take more credit than what they have contributed. Their work is poor due to lack of effort rather than ability. They know the other members care too much about the project grade and will pick up the slack.

Anyways, there is no blanket solution for these commonalities that I’ve witnessed over and over again. All I can say is to try your best to understand where the other person is coming from, and consider factors like length of project, grade weighting, likelihood of constructive dialogue/conflict resolution etc. and base your actions on your situational context. Know when to cut your losses.

Also, try not to think of someone as merely a “problem” needs to be managed/placated/minimized; it is insulting for any adult. Nobody’s perfect and being professional doesn’t come easily to everyone. You don’t have to get to know someone well to treat them with genuine compassion and empathy. If you can’t find that within yourself, it’s time to stop and reflect. You might be too stressed to muster an empathetic perspective, or you might reacting too quickly.

I have got excessively used to having a working computer at home and at work. I watch tv, I read articles, I listen to music, I write posts for my blog…I enjoy the noise of typing. I even quite like having an overly bright screen to stare at much of the time. The internet allows me to connect to vast numbers of people all over the world with the greatest of ease and I love that. I volunteer for TakingItGlobal with the Action Tools team and would be completely incapable of doing this without my little lappie and decent internet access.

For the past three working days, we’ve had a complete computer shut down after the work hard drive corrupted (by all accounts – as yet unconfirmed) and the backup appears to have had issues as well. Oh dear. I have spent most of three work days reading books at my desk, staring at a blank screen and wondering what I’m missing…and it’s been difficult. I get my news from the internet.  The internet tells me that two sets of my friends got engaged today/yesterday. Congrats on that by the way guys!

Maybe it’s been that I was bored (i.e actually had very little else I could do) but it also made me realise I might be a little too used to having computer access.

One of my requests with VSO is that I be, if at all possible, based in a town or city, where I can get the large amount of human contact I need to stop myself from getting lonely and depressed. I’m not someone who copes well by myself, although I thoroughly enjoy my alone time when I want/need it.

For me it’s also important I can somehow connect with the rest of the world on a fairly regular basis and I know this will be both possible, and theoretically easy given the types of roles I’m likely to take on.

But I do need to seperate myself from my computer more often I think…so that when things fail and systems crash, as they inevitably do, I have a book to read and am not left feeling quite so lost.

Tim Little has written a fascinating post on how the VSO experience has changed him. It’s an insight into some of the things you learn, and ways you grow as a volunteer, and it’s particularly interesting for me as someone at the beginning of the process (Tim is nearing the end of his adventures). Some of my favourite bits are copied below for those who can’t be bothered clicking the link (I know you exist).

“I feel happier about myself generally and more willing to believe that people like me. I feel I’ve coped with a challenge that many don’t even attempt and some who do fail at…”

“I’ve learned to let go and go with the flow, not to fight the unalterable. I hope I’m a bit more patient. I’ve also learned about myself. I’m not as tolerant as I thought, but I’m happy with the fact that there are people I actually dislike. I don’t need to like everyone, and it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything wrong with the other person…”

“I’ll miss the life, the chaos and the vibrancy of Ghana. The colours, smells and sounds that scream for your attention without subtlety or the gloss of marketing. But slowly that will fade, as will my righteous anger.”

Cargo firms delivering aid also involved in arms trafficking, says report [this doesn't surprise me greatly, tragically]

Poverty from the perspective of a native Canadian [A VSOer writes - "I am definitely homesick, and Cameroon has taken its toll on me, but that isn’t why I wrote this. I am not complaining, or trying to be condescending toward the people here...My request is that you stop thinking about how lucky you are, and give some thought to how unlucky a large part of the world population is."]

International Development – A Bibliography [A good idea and I'm tempted to republish it in full, with a few additions of my own - but another day]

Somehow it had completely escaped my notice that you can’t grow passion fruit in England, which does rather explain the lack of it in the supermarket.  I miss passion fruit fresh off the vine now…

Passion fruit

There’s lots of things to sort out before fleeing the country and one such thing is phones, contracts and all things communication related.

Somewhat conveniently my 18-month contract with O2 ended on Sunday and in the name of making my life simpler over the next few months, and in preparation for leaving, I’ve now changed onto one of their Simplicity plans – one of those month-by-month deals. I guess I could have changed provider or found a better prepaid (pay-as-you-go) deal but since I could do the whole changeover on the internet in the space of an hour I went with the easy solution.

When I leave…well I haven’t really thought about that. It all depends on where I go…everything depends on where I go and since that’s very much an unknown at this point, it’s a little hard to plan for.

It’s just the beginning . . . I really need to get onto VSO and find out what’s happening but for now I am, very slowly, getting my life in order for leaving the country.  When will it feel real? Right now I’m doing these things on autopilot but with almost no real sense that this is happening. Maybe getting a placement will help?!

This was supposed to be a post about Fiji but then I came across these letters that Guardian readers wrote to their 16-year-old selves. I’ve pasted some of my favourites below but please go and check out the full article it’s full of wise words.

Note to self:

Last week in G2, Stephen Fry wrote a heartfelt letter to himself, aged 16. Hundreds responded with their own letters to their teenage selves.

Just a quick note to say that the vegetarian thing didn’t work out in the end. You might as well cave in now, rather than spend the next 15 years longingly sniffing other people’s dinners.
BatteredSausage

No matter what you do, think or wear, some people will dislike you, and some will be mean – it’s honestly no reflection on your character that you don’t delight everyone. When it comes to friendship, quality always trumps quantity.Also, stop smoking. And men make plenty of passes at bookish girls in glasses.
Tree76

I know you’re currently in the loathsome grip of clinical depression after that nervous breakdown you had last year. Life is not very fun for you and I wish I could go back in time to meet you and give you a great big hug. The bad news – five years later you will still have depression and you will still have ME. The good news – you may never get well, but you will definitely get better. Chin up, kid, you’ll make it.
queenofpratfalls

1. Get over her. She doesn’t fancy you, barely notices you and she isn’t half as pretty or intelligent as you think once you get to know her. Listen to the people who know her – are they impressed? 2. Lavish a little more attention on the prim goody-two-shoes girl from the English class instead. 3. Insist to mum that the BBC Micro computer is moved from your older brother’s bedroom to somewhere you can all use it. He’s hogging it but he doesn’t really know how to use it for anything more than playing Jetpack Willy and Frag. 4. Don’t take career advice from your parents. Unfortunately their advice is provided on a “well it worked for me” basis, which was only really useful 30 years previously. 5. Read more and dance more. They are both indulgent and rather embarrassing pastimes for you right now, but they are both extremely good for you.
ColonelSanders

Please do not get too hung up on Mum’s and Dad’s divorce. Shit invariably happens. Try not to rise to Mum’s grief and scornful outbursts against Dad, but always remember to tell her how much you love her regularly. If not, the pressure of the situation will completely mess up your college and uni years and you will be going back to study (as I am now) when every one of your real friends is settled down with a mortgage, kids and appears to have every happiness. Oh, and one more thing, using drugs really isn’t a good escape. The same issues will be there tomorrow. The rest of the family will find out and you don’t need me to tell you how narrow-minded they can be.
vintagevinylkid

Don’t be so frightened of the risk of failure. You will eventually realise that people screw up and make fools of themselves all the time, and life goes on much the same. Mistakes and embarrassments are usually quickly forgotten, so it’s worth taking some risk in life, as the benefits hugely outweigh the downside. Argue vociferously to take a gap year before going to university (get a job, fund it yourself) – you need to experience a bit of life and develop some self-confidence before heading into that world, otherwise you’ll spend your entire first year feeling like a tadpole in an ocean, and miss out on a whole bunch of opportunities. Spend more time with your grandpa. He’ll not be around for ever, and you’ll regret not being around him more once he’s gone. And you still don’t have that Ferrari.
MaxZorin

In the next six months or so, I’m going to trade London and my job as a policy assistant with the Church Commissioners for the life of a VSO volunteer.

I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’ll be doing. I’ve received my medical clearance though so that’s a plus. I haven’t had any vaccinations yet and the length of that particular list amuses me. There are days when I can’t imagine anything better and days when I am petrified of leaving my little comfort zone.

I’m already an expat. I moved to London from New Zealand over 2 and a half years ago to study, and I stayed. I love living here. I have two homes, 12,000 miles apart, family all over the place and many friends that I count as family. I enjoy challenges.

Welcome to my world and my adventures.

Money: I will have no income for a year and I currently have a wee bit of debt. I need to clear the debt and have a bit in savings before I go. This should be manageable [29/04/09 - particularly if I keep to my new budget].

Accommodation & Costs: VSO sort the difficult bits and give a monthly stipend which should cover some percentage of living costs but I don’t know how much. [29/04/09 - Most volunteers seem to find that the monthly stipend covers all their costs although some, in major cities, may need a little more sometimes.]