Back to work!

It felt like I was back at work this week!
On Tuesday I met with 2 of the women on the committee organising mock interviews for school leavers in poor areas of Hong Kong, mainly in the New Territories. I was tasked with producing a handout for the schools to reproduce to give to pupils. It's the kind of simple thing I did regularly when I was at work, but boy did it take me some time! I had to re-learn adding and text-wrapping illustrations and also setting margins and columns for the text. But I got there in the end and the draft has been approved. It was hard work for my rusty brain! My Cantonese lessons continue, more hard work, but I can now ( in theory anyway) ask directions to major buildings and transport facilities. Actually, whilst out with a friend on Wednesday, I did have occasion to ask where the bank was and when he told me, I was able to elaborate buy asking, "left or right?" We were en route to the Afternoon Book Group which looks like it will be fun, a nice crowd, but I will be in Scotland and will miss the first discussion. At the poetry club on Wednesday evening, one of the regulars, a several-times published poet and prose writer, asked me to look over his latest manuscript, a novel-length prose poem. That will be more work! I went to my chat group on Thursday then on for lunch. Today I really need to do some housework, but I've been putting it off as I really hate it, especially in this heat. Instead, I have been checking the UCAS status of the GHS pupils who have just had their exam results..another work-like task! Then I spent an hour looking in books and on the web for something cool to do at the weekend and had decided on a boat trip round some of the islands, but then discovered it only runs September to February, so no decisions yet for our weekly tourist outing.Tonight we will finalise our October holiday booking. We are going to Vietnam; a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City with a visit to the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi and then a day cruising on the Mekong Delta in a sampan. Unusually for us, we are going on an organised tour, albeit a very small one; we get a car and English driver/guide which is important, especially when we are going outside of the main city area. It's not for safety, it's quite safe there, it's just that we don't speak the lingo! Ok, that's another hour almost over. It's now lunchtime and I still haven't started the dusting, vacuuming or the dreaded ironing. Must go!