Homesickness Strikes

I miss home. It's not that the Philippines is bad, but it's missing a lot of the things I'm accustomed to. Also, I miss my friends. When people ask me what I'd like to do, I realized that 90% of what I like to do, I like because it is with friends. I know I can talk about nerdy things and they will know what I'm talking about. I went out with co-workers last night, but I realized I had nothing to say and I felt very boring. It was one of those "alone in a crowded room" moments. Also, being in a strange environment, it's not easy to know what's appropriate, so I found myself often feeling very awkward. We were out playing pool, and I went to bathroom at one point in the night, but there was no toilet seat and no toilet paper. Was I supposed to squat? How was I supposed to clean up? I didn't know what to do, so I just held it. I didn't need to go that bad I guess. But I sure felt awkward.

 My coworkers are very nice, but I'm not really comfortable around them yet. It takes me a while to really feel comfortable. I keep feeling like I'm doing or saying something strange and I'm often afraid to ask for things since I don't want to be a burden or put others out. So I'm a little uncomfortable around my coworkers and lonely when I'm alone. And there are so many little things that just throw me off a little bit. For instance, I was in a grocery store earlier and someone was advertising for a particular brand in the aisle. They were just standing there saying, "I hope you will buy this brand." It was a weird shopping experience. Also, when we were playing pool, they had someone stand there the whole time, for hours, just so they could set up the balls between games. Our group was in a room by ourselves, so this was one person just for our pool table alone. He just stood there doing nothing almost the whole time.

 The guy at pool house is a good example of something I've been noticing the whole time I've been here, which is how cheap labor is. This pool hall was not high end. The pool tables were all a little beat up. The bathroom, as I said before, was confusing. The whole place was a little run down, but they had ample staff. In one sense, it feels like you're really being pampered to have someone waiting on you like that, but when the rest of the place is clearly not high end, it undercuts the effect. An analogy might be if a cheap fast food place in America with rips in the seats and needing a new coat of paint was also serving the food on fine china. You would have to assume they got the china for really cheap and you might think it was a fake knock off or something. In other words, you would think it must not really be that nice. I'm trying to find the right words to describe this, and it isn't coming easy. It's like having over the top service in a run down place actually cheapens the service and makes you think less of it. I don't want that to come off wrong, but I do feel like people and their labor isn't really valued. It's such a change from America where people's labor is one of the most highly valued things. We would love extra headcount at my work. A full service gas station would be extravagant. We would never have so many mall guards. Here, you never have to wait in line for an available register. In America, it would be cheaper to accept that some items will be stolen than it would be to hire a guard to prevent shoplifting. I have to say, I don't like how cheap people's time feels over here. It feels like people are not as valued and I don't like that feeling. I know that's why we have Manila offices in the first place. It's because our job still needs to be performed by people (instead of machines), and it's pretty clear that people are cheaper here.