Weathered

Hanoi is finally hitting its humid straps and I noticed something coming at me this morning through the rising heat. I now know it was a worst case scenario.

Step 1. 

As I got dressed for work today I realised that they are shrinking my clothes. Everything is progressively getting tighter and smaller. They are shinking them at the laundry, they are shrinking them in my washing machine. I don't know how they did it but they even managed to shrink my belt when I wasn't looking. Shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. I feel like the British Empire. 

So I am wearing uncomfortably tight clothes. The relevance of this will soon become apparent.

Step 2

My job is business dress so I wear a long-sleeved shirt and a tie to work. This doubles the ill effects of all heat and humidity. The relevance of this will soon become apparent.

Step 3

When I wake up I am supposed to put on my apartment air conditioner, so that I can dry down appropriately before work. I forgot to do it this morning and left the apartment a tad moist. Nothing visible, but still teetering on the edge of sweaty.

Step 4

The local breakfast. I meet up with R and we drive to the local streetstall. It's pretty full so we need to crouch on a short plastic stool at a table by the dusty road in this hot weather with tight pants and no more than 20cm off the ground. By the dusty road means that my back is about 50 cm from various car and motorbike tyres ... it's a challenge.

Step 5

I put too much chilli in my soup. This starts me sweating even more. Combined with the dust from the road, I am sweating, coughing and sniffling. The dust soaks up some of the sweat in the short term, but before long the dam walls burst and my shirt is quite soaked around the middle. I grab some serviettes and do my best to mop up my brow and eyes. I roll up my shirt sleeves but it's too late: the sweat has already started to pool around my elbows. My plastic chair is contributing to the sweaty mêlée by sticking to my pants and am thankful that they are black: hopefully no one will think I've had a granny accident when I stand up.

Step 6

I finish my meal and go to get up off my plastic stool. It gives a little bit, my wet hand slips on the edge, and I take a little tumble into the dirt. I fall onto my hand and shin, but luckiliy the fall is broken when they land on a bed of discarded limes and paper serviettes; descendents from customers past. I ask R to go up and pay as I steady myself and peel a lime off my forearm.

Step 7

I walk back to my motorbike and stupidly check myself in the rear view mirror. My shirt is now completely soaked in the middle, my face (apart from looking miserable) is dripping with sweat and I'm making the final attempts to brush wet dirt away from the obvious spots on my pants. This is not the styling of a fresh office worker doing his final glance in the mirror before heading out at 8:15. And I do appreciate that I'm a potato and I'm in Hanoi and it's summer and all that ... but sweet baby Jesus come on!

Step 8

So on goes the helmet and I start up the bike. It's parked in a bit of wet dirt, which cakes around my shoes and refuses to do anything but move slowly upwards. As I go to turn onto oncoming traffic my laptop bag tips off its spot without warning and falls into the dirt. I suspect a suicide attempt or at the very least, a cry for help.

I rescue my bag, wedge it between my knees and head off into the traffic. The stand is down so I need to stop embarrassingly in front of "my local" as I hold up a road full of noisy traffic. Their horns alert all diners that I'm in awkward trouble, just in case no one noticed. Just to complete the scene, I lurch and stall as I attempt to make a hasty exit.

If this was Austria they would all be lying on the floor laughing by now. I think of this and am thankful for the sea of gormless looks that is my audience.

The drive to work is relatively uneventful. I take on a couple of potatoes, somewhat successfully. There is no feeling more triumphant than overtaking a potato in traffic and none more humiliating than the opposite. There can be no worthier road death.

While it's still very hot and humid, the exhaust-scented breeze is helpful and I dry off a bit on the trip to work. I pull into the basement carpark and queue for my ticket with the other motorbikes. I imagine that I'm still looking like shit, but somewhat recovered. The carpark is like an oven and the longer I sit there in the queue the worse it gets. A couple of long transactions occur ahead of me in the queue and this adds at least 5 minutes to my wait.  I feel my granny patch returning and my shirt is replenishing its reserves. The dam walls are cracking. I pay the attendant, park illegally near the lift and pull of my helmet. A wave of heat pours off my head and I feel like one of those deep sea divers as they are pulled back onto the boat. My hair is completely wet and matted to my scalp.

The elevator takes forever to arrive. It is not so much broken as refusing to come to me. It knows.

So I take the stairs and as I emerge onto my floor get a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Shirt sleeves are crumpled and messy and unfurled ... like a paper bag which has decided it no longer wants to hold onto the sausage roll. My hair is appalling (and I mean toddler-at-a-swimming-pool appalling). Black pants are still hiding the sweat but showing every grain of dirt. The mid section of my shirt (not my best section) is completely drenched and transparent through the patches which are sticking to my skin. There are other islands of sweat in mysterious little places like the left shoulder . There is mud caked around my shoes and inexplicably, a little piece has worked its way up onto one of my knees. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to dry. So I walk in through the automatic glass doors and greet our receptionist, Linh, who is visibly shocked by what she sees. She quickly gets up and opens the door for me: a gesture of kindness in stark contrast to the climate.

There is no remaining spring in my step. In fact I feel somewhat surreal as I limp along past the rows of desks. Some colleagues notice me as I pass them and have a look of guilty relief on their faces. I recognise this as the face I pull when reacting to someone else's bad news. 

This is not the entrance I had planned.

This is not a fresh, well-dressed young manager arriving to work ready to inspire and impress. This is not even Melanie Griffith, allowing her miniskirt to ride up suggestively as she takes off her sandshoes. This is the final scene of a spaghetti western and I am halfway through my twenty paces.