Back To Brown

I’ve been back here only a week and already I feel suffocated. Literally, sometimes by the dust that floats everywhere, and figuratively, by the sameness that characterizes each and every day.

It’s a small, small world that I now live in. In the week that was I got up to speed on work I left at the office, so that’s done. I met the same set of people, just a few new faces. I’ve been to the PX, the gym, the dining halls, the boardwalk.  I’ve revisited the bunkers several times, morning and night. And I’m back to wearing the same old clothes, back to eating the under seasoned food, back to talking about mostly the same old stuff.

There is only so much monotony I can take. In attempts to break the sameness of days, I step out from the brown box that is my office and take a short, aimless walk outside. There is the rock-paved ground underfoot, the dust billowing upwards to meet my face. When I raise my eyes to the sky I see the same brown of the horizon and the same hue covers almost every surface, as far as one can see.

Sometimes it feels as though I live in a huge movie set, circa 1940s, setup in a fictional location deep in the belly of the beast that is war. And then I am jolted back to the reality—oh right, I am here—in the midst of a war.

Turning Turtle

When I arrived here, a place I have never been, the mountains still had snow. Capped in white, they rose like a jagged wall above a horizon that unfolded into rough, monotonous terrain; a land of dust and dryness. Everything seemed beige, brown, gray. It was a world in camouflage, a place that was in perpetual hiding.

It drizzled the afternoon that I arrived; something, they said, that has not happened for weeks. I was walked by Security down a concrete path that connected several rectangular buildings. Every one of them looked exactly the same from the outside. We went into one building, and I was given a room there.  A box within a box.

In one of the scant briefings for this gig, I was told to pack for a week, to bring sturdy hiking shoes, the bare minimum of luxuries.  I packed just two books. I should have brought more.

I was issued army-style clothes, shoes, a flashlight, a vest, and a helmet. The helmet was a heavy thing. When turned over, it looked like a turtle—all quiet and unmoving—blending right in. Me thinks I should do the same.

Job Stats: Current Count

Loafer’s paradise, or mocking photo for the intrepid, yet so far luck-challenged jobseeker? These days, for me, that photo is more of a mockery.

It’s now 21 days since I was last gainfully employed. I was just daydreaming yesterday, as I went about my lack of business, that I could get used to this. I mean, I could go on with this kind of life—the waking up with not much purpose to one’s day. The 2PM lunches. The unmindful dawdling over coffee. The slow descent into madness.

But before plunging into all that, here are my current job search stats:

34 applications sent through JobStreet

9 applications sent through JobsDB

12 new applications (no views as yet)

5 applications under consideration

5 applications in process

5 applications kept for reference

5 applications with no updates

2 applications withdrawn (unsuccessful)

1 interview in person, still no call

1 phone interview that did not push through (who does these things, anyway?)

8 applications sent directly to companies through their career sites

3 networking efforts (sending resumes to kind folks who promise to pass them on)

I still hang out at the mall, go to internet places, seek out networking possibilities, obsess over grocery shopping. Right now, the adverts for cheap passage into Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. get more and more attractive as each day passes. How I wish I am financially set up to be able to just drop everything (kids, rent, responsibilities), and travel aimlessly for 6 months. I could do that. I think I can.

Away and Now Back

I’m back from a vacation in the south of Negros, where I am from. It was hot, humid, and in many many ways, tempestuous. It stands to reason why we usually go away on vacation only once a year.

Getting away from it all can actually remind you why you went away in the first place.