Hello there, well I haven’t been in touch for a bit which I guess is a sign that things have settled down into something of a routine. Going to work does that to you.

Work has been something of a revelation, and the UN bureaucracy is stunning. Luckily for me UNAIDS is a much smaller agency that seems more nimble and focussed, and whilst I still don't understand great chunks of it, it is becoming less opaque. There are meetings that I sit in that feel a bit like an episode of West Wing, and others that make me laugh. The strangest thing of all is having come from a culture where mininmising cost and spending was paramount, and cash flow management a fine art I am now in a culture where we have to spend more and spend faster, and spend it all by year end. I kind of get why, but it is a very very alien concept, and I am still not sure that the why makes sense.

I spent a lot of June asking people if it got any hotter in the hope that someone would say no. I now understand why none of them did, as the heat continued to climb, and with it the humidity, which I am reliably informed hits 85% some days. Not only does this reek havoc with my hair, but meant that it was difficult to get enthusiastic about doing anything outside for a bit. But it is cooling down, and there are some incredible downpours every now again, when the roads flood, and flip flops come in to their own.

I visited Ho Chi Minh City – aka Saigon – for a few days last month where I stayed with another Volunteer Tanya. It was strikingly different from Hanoi. The humidity was less, the streets wider, and people could understand my accent when I spoke the few words of Vietnamese that I have. We went for street food one evening, and decided to have a hot pot. Very luckily for us there was a menu where parts were translated into English, and we could see that we had a choice of goat or penis. We took the goat.

It struck me though that I missed Hanoi after a few days, and I guess that that is a good sign. I love the charm of the city and the vibrancy. Now that I am daring to go back outside I have taken to walking around districts in the hope that the eventually I will understand how to get from A to B, and I am also taking the brave step of getting a bicycle – though I am not convinced yet how much I will use it given that I have only cycled once in the last 17 years and the state of the traffic. Not sure that they’re ready for me yet.