Just spent some time perusing the blogs of other expats, mostly foreign service officers. I'm not a foreign service officer; however I am a citizen diplomat and representative of my country, like or not. In general I accept the role especially in a country where meeting foreign service officers is not easy given all of the security considerations. However, there are days when I don't like that role.
There are days when being calm and accepting just don't seem to cut it. The worse days are when things just go wrong, really wrong. We all suffer from these days and it's hard not to be angry and really give loose to the torrent of words and expressions that one feels the situation deserves.
A few weeks ago I nearly got hit by a car. The driver intentionally acclerated his vehicle to make me run across the street. I could feel the brush of metal on my skirt - that's how close he got. Fortunately he had a speed bump to slow him down.
Did I mention that I have always liked speed bumps? When I was a teenager I learned to do a cool squealy with my tires by putting the front part of my back tires to the start of the bump and then gunning it. My father actually mentioned this to me, so I tried it and it worked. Later he reprimanded me because he said that practice wears down tires fast. No wonder I got flats fairly quickly and as much as my father tried to help me learn I was not good at changing tires.
Anyway, I really love speed bumps now.
On days like that I really don't want to be a citizen diplomat. On days like that one I would love to have ready some darts or some other items that would result in getting the offending driver's car flat tires. Yeah, definitely on days like that, I don't want to be a diplomat or a representative of my country, but I have to be. So I just look for those speed bumps in life to help out.
I'm keeping mine clean. In fact I think they need a bit of sprucing up!
