One area us Hashis tend to make sacrifices in is our social lives. We often don't feel up to plastering on a fake smile to face the world/cocktail hour and exchange equally fake pleasantries/downright lies about how we are doing with a bunch of people who have no idea what it's like to be us. We figured out a long time ago that most people are just not interested in how we really are doing so we fake it. It doesn't take long for that to get old and we start questioning ourselves, "Are these people really my friends?" "If I didn't turn up, would most of them even notice I'm not there?" As we who have weathered this storm and become wise know, the answers to these questions are, No! and No! So we stop turning up.
What we try to do is maintain a small inner circle of people who seem to be our real friends. Now this is when things start to turn unfortunate. A lot of us Hashis become somewhat unreliable friends. We make plans to meet up only to break them at the last minute because the aliens put their great energy sapping machine over our heads and sucked all the energy out of us in order to power their ships (I hope you are at least smiling and not reaching for the funny farm phone number). Anyway, due to some kind of energy crisis, we cancel late, we don't turn up, or we do turn up when we really should not have inflicted ourselves on good people. We've become one of those friends, which is when things get interesting/sad. We stop getting invites to things, people don't ask us over for dinner as often or they are always busy when we want to have them over. Soon, we are out of the loop and then, if we aren't careful, we won't even be able to find the bloody loop.
All this preamble is leading me into the main point of today's entry. My social life has not exactly been sizzling since I moved to Phnom Penh. It's gone from rather luke-warm in HCMC to an unlit mound of damp kindling here. So, when a socialising opportunity raised itself after work on Thursday night, I thought "What the hey, why not?" instead of the usual "No, you'll be a train wreck in the morning." I socialised, I ate a massive chicken liver salad and quaffed several glasses of rose. I felt like a train wreck in the morning. Almost the same thing happened on Friday during my long break between classes sans alcohol, and then yesterday (Sat), I had already arranged to meet a colleague to do some planning for our next year long course over a nice bottle of rose. After that the shackles came off and the inner wine and cheese hussy experienced several hours of unfettered freedom with more rose, a nice wedge of brie and a French stick.
The net result of these shenanigans is zero weight loss and zero waist loss for the week. So I'll get back on the diet horse immediately and then what? Not turn up next time? Turn up but drink soda water and make the others feel uncomfortable? Question the validity of their friendship/companionship? Wish I'd never bothered in the first place as it's all too hard to balance and retreat behind closed doors? Knowing myself, the latter but I really should try the soda water option because the place everyone goes to after work on Thursdays has really great salads.
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