Juggle struggle

I feel like a juggler, trying to get all sorts of things done, which is why I think this photo of a basketball cake my mum and I made last week is really apropos for what I am writing about today.

The last two weeks have been madly busy - I've been baking, I suppose that much is obvious from the picture. Besides this cake, between my mother and I, we made dozens of coffee cupcakes, vanilla cupcakes, sticky toffee cupcakes and a coffee cake. The main reason for this increased demand was the Muslim festival of Eid. This Eid - Eid ul Fitr - is also called Meethi Eid in Pakistan. Meethi means sweet in Urdu so everyone wanted cakes and cupcakes. (The next Eid - to be celebrated roughly 40 days from now - will be Eid ul Azha and that is the one where goats, cows, sheep and in some cases even camels will be slaughtered.)

A couple of weeks ago a former employer of mine - a drug rehab project of the Church of Pakistan - asked me to do some translation work. They were celebrating their 28th year of helping people recover from all manner of addictions but mainly heroin addiction (which is a MASSIVE problem in Pakistan) and needed some stuff translated from Urdu to English. A few months ago, while I was writing about them for the church newsletter, I had emailed them and said something to the effect that if they ever needed my help, I was only a phone call away. Well they took me up on that! I didn't mind really, I enjoy translation work and was happy to help but it just came in an already busy week.

Then, around about the same time, a friend of mine put up a message on Facebook saying she was looking for a freelance scriptwriter to work on scripting a corporate documentary for a large local dairy foods company here in Pakistan. I've been thinking of expanding my writing portfolio for a while and since I worked as a scriptwriter on a daily morning show back in 2007, I sent in my resume for the project. The company liked what they saw and asked me to redo one of their scripts as a sample... I did it thinking they probably wouldn't call me back. But guess what, they did and I am now officially a freelance scriptwriter. Of course I had to clear it all with my editor at work but she didn't mind. We've only just started working on the actual documentary itself so there is pages of stuff to read through and then compress into 2.5 minutes (!!!) but I am excited about it.

Anyway, this stuff (and of course work!) is what's been keeping me busy and away from blipping. Not sure how regular I will be in the next few weeks but I will visit from time to time to see what is going on. Just want to say a special thank you to Honeycombebeach who checked in a couple of times to say hello to me in my absence - I was quite touched by her kindness and concern.

PS. Almost forgot to mention I have also been having long chats with my travel agent trying to plan my vacation to Europe in April. I might change the destination from Greece to Italy but I still have to make up my mind about that. I am super excited as I have never been to Europe before and thinking of gelato, pasta, pizza and espresso is already making me swoon! Anyway, ciao for now.