Christmas Thieving

Today, I relearned the true spirit of Christmas: thieving! I spent many prelude Christmas weeks working at malls, and then shopping at malls, then home, and work again. I realize now that I spent most Christmas time busy. This is my first time away for the holidays, and to be honest, up until today, I couldn't even register that it's that time of year again.

The spirit hit me today, as we (my fellow teachers/students) went Christmas tree plucking. Climbing up a freshly exposed cliff side where the new dirt had spawned young saplings, we had our choices of Christmas trees. We yanked three, and quickly ran back to the safe haven of my friend's home. This, after all, was completely illegal. You can do a lot of things in Vietnam, from copyright infringing to riding against traffic, but cutting down a tree will get you jail time. We did it anyways. Laughing all the way back home, I realized that Christmas isn't about buying/selling/returning things, it's about taking things, and today I took home a tree and yet another unforgettable memory.

All this reaffirmed for me that most times it is simplicity that enthused the spirit and the soul. One Christmas cartoon that always reminds of this is: "A Pink Christmas." Starting a homeless Pink Panther, the story centers around his search for food and shelter in the midst of winter. Check it out:

I hope all my friends are enjoying this time of year with the simplicity of thieving love from those around them.

Merry Christmas one and all.

T(on)y

Test Riding

What do you do when you first get a new motobike? Take it over a rickety wooden bridge of course. Thanks to my cousin, Hue, for providing the near death experience. I kept flashing back to the Nintendo Super Mario Brother game; thinking if I cross this bridge I would win, and if we couldn't, it was the dragon's fault.

[Upon an attempt to upload the following video onto blogger, I got a prompt saying that the content is inappropriate for uploading. I have been officially censored. ]

But if you're willing to venture into my thoughts as I was riding across that bridge, here is the banned video anyways.

That's it, crashing like the stock market.

I've been gone in November

How the heck did I live through a whole month of November and fail to publish one blog? I guess you can say, I've been gone in November, gone in November, gone in November (I can hear the boos already....lame, just lame Tony, why, oh why are you infringing on Wyclef's intellectual property like that). But it's the truth, I have been gone in November.

I had the blessing to have friends from back home visit me here. Laila, Leia, and I, spent time in Da Lat, Saigon, Hanoi, Ha Long, then Hai Phong. It was good to be able to share Vietnam with friends. For better or for worse, they now have "Nam" stories to recount.

I realize as much as I want it so, blog writing is not journal writing. I have been writing journals lately, and although I do humbly think they make for interesting readings, I don't think the VN gov would agree. There's an honesty that I have been advised to avoid, and that sucks, because I think the underlying quality to good writing is honesty, in the emotional and philosophical sense. But don't fret, if you're willing to do some sleuthing, there will be an uncensored link eventually.

Now that November is gone, I can say with some degree of research that this tends to be the wall or hump period for vols like myself. I think the first couple of months is the honey moon period, where you're just in love with everything new, and now that the holidays are here, you become a little homesick or foodsick for things like turkey, pumpkin pies, peppered bacon, and the such. Strangely, I even miss things I remember as annoyances, like the bickering of drunken family members and getting shoved around by xmas shoppers. Luckily, you can go to any market in VN and get shoved around while you're engulfed by the sounds of drunken bickering.

That's it for now, the triple shot of rum coffee is beginning to fade away, and with it, any coherent thought as well.

More to come from December.

ngày phụ nữ

11-20-09

Today was Vietnamese National Women's (phụ nữ) Day. I had dinner with my colleagues. As with tradition this day, dinner was provided by the men for the women of the department. We, the men, chose the restaurant, headed there first, waited a bit, started drinking, started eating, started bossing the waitresses around, started to get drunk. The women came with their families. We ate together. They asked me to say a line about today. I said: I didn't know whether to wish happiness (chúc mừng) or ask for forgiveness (xin lôi)? Everybody laughed. They never actually answered my question.

Dead Duck

Survival of the Adaptable.

Da Lat is the kind of place a recluse might run away to. Hidden by the surrounding mountain peaks and trapped in by the daily deluges, you can feel J.D. Salinger isolated. It helps to sit outside, have a cigarette, and watch as the rains quickly puddle up the potholes on the streets. I've actually made it a rule: to smoke only when it rains. As isolated as you might find yourself when the rain falls, life seems to bubbles up and burst as soon as it stops; children crawl out from beneath their parents raincoat, business owners reestablish their outdoor shops, and the drumbeat of water pounding on pavement is slowly replaced by the horns of reemerging traffic. Carrying an umbrella at all times is an essential way of life here, both to shield the rain and the sun. I have learned that and many other survival techniques here. I use the term survival loosely, it's not as if I'm filming a show for Discovery about how to stay alive in the wilderness, it's just an adapting period to a new place.

In many ways, it's not even adapting. The weather in Da Lat is by far the closest of any Vietnamese town to that of San Francisco. It's probably the coldest town in Vietnam, the other being Sapa, but the locals don't seem to think of Sapa as an actual town but rather a village. I can say knowing full well my fellow volunteers stationed in different areas might find this funny (maybe jealousy provoking), but I haven't broken a sweat since my arrival. In fact, the houses here do not have air conditioning, there's no need. There's no humidity; no heat.

The days are hazed with fog (because of the weather, not the hangovers, I know what some of you are thinking already). Friends of mine living in the Sunset know how this feels. Some areas feel so much like the Sunset that I sometimes lapse into a bitter stare down the hilly street waiting frustratingly for the 28 bus to arrive. Those lapses are quickly dispelled when a bag of trash thrown from someone's balcony crashed down onto the street nearby where I'm daydreaming. Streets are not something to be proud of, in fact, they are used as both public roads and public trash dumps, and sometimes public toilets. In the mornings, however, the streets are amazingly cleaned again. I had thought this was due to an army of trash cars and street sweepers, but that turned out to be stupidly western in thinking. There are armies of street sweepers here, but they are of the laborer variety not of the mechanized cars with spinning bristle type. With brooms and wheel barrels, the mostly women workers sweep the town at night; then, transfer their loads to pick up spots where trash trucks will come blazing to the chime of “It's a small world (after all),” to clean the billowing piles. I'm not kidding. The trash collection to the tune of “It's a small world,” is enough to lure you into a magical realm even Walt Disney couldn't have imagine, but that's another blog in and of itself.

My current home is on the campus of Da Lat University. The campus itself reminds me so much of my alma mater, San Francisco State; both campuses are roughly the same in sizes, sloped downwards towards the schools' stadiums, peppered with tall trees throughout, and both are next to a golf course. My first impression was: “ wierd.” I spent many years trying to get out of that campus, and strangely feel that I haven't left it, even after traveling half way around the world. I asked around to see if there was an underground medical clinic for students hoping to make some friends like I did when I was working in an underground medical clinic for students at my campus. They laughed at all three conceptions: underground? Ha! medical clinic? Ha for students? Hahaha!

I have been teaching a two hour course three times a week to teachers in the sociology and social work department. The course is a TOEFL course, which I'm comfortable teaching, and pretty much lays out a rough lesson plan. My students are teachers who have also become my friends, and like my friends, they like to drink. It's cold when you're this high on Da Lat, so liquor is another survival technique that must be adopted. I'm a cold beer guy myself, so the transition to the local vodka/ booze/ moonshine called "ruou" hasn't been easy. My fellow teachers are well trained professionals who highly prioritize having fun before, during, and after their professionalism is required. On many occasions I have tried to investigate the symbiotic nature between professionalism and alcoholism here, only to continuously stumble upon a hazy and dizzying inconclusiveness. This is something I need to put more research into, and hopefully will have more insights on after more careful and thorough data collections. We'll save this for another blog as well.

I'll end with some pictures and a few complaints of my new home:

As you can see, I have turned this house into a home, with some much needed homely messiness. Nothing to be proud of.

Complaint: I have two queen size beds when there's room for two California king size bed.

Complaint: The stairway leads to no where.

Complaint: The fireplace is too small to practice my fire soccer skills.

Complaint: The backyard is big enough for a full-sized basketball court. Where are the basketball rims??? actually this is a real complaint.

Complaint: This hooligan lingering outside my front yard keeps giving me the evil eye.

Well that's all for now, hopefully more to come from the wilderness of Da Lat. I'll end with some quick thoughts and updates.

I think:

warm water at your convenience is something to be cherished.

a chalk to-do-list is still the only to-do-list I can stick to.

my neighbors are afraid of me

I know:

"And I also love you," is my current new favorite Vietnamese song, bumping that other one my parents listen to all the time off the list.

The Drunken Clam (fantasy football update):

team respectable: 0-2.

Destination Da Lat

I decided to do something really different this year, I decided to quit my job and move across the world to live on top of a mountain. The reasons for doing so, I'll explain later in a story. But on top of a moutain, in the city of Da Lat is where I find myself. It is an adventure that I understand very few people will ever have, or are ever willing to take. To highlight some of the raw rarest of this next year, I have decided to...[insert drumroll] start a blog.

y not? right?

I have on many occasions quivered on the mere sight of a personal blog. The idea of writing news about yourself just felt so self-centered to me. The whole approach of not even disguising the news as a fictional story about somebody else, that felt even more wrong. Well, let me be the first to warn everybody who share similiar sentiments, that this is going to be exactly like one of those self-promoting blogs. I won't promise good writing, or even grammatically correct writing (I'm here to teach English, not blog), but I will promise short sentences, lots of pictures, and a more interesting life comparatively to the one I was living before as a corporate time waster. For those that know me, this is a departure from my rambling ways, but to keep it interesting, to not waste your time nor mine, I'll keep the blogs short. Not this one though, this one is going to be long. So get your dried squid ready.

I stepped off US soil for almost two months now. For two months now, pretty much everywhere I have been, I have been a tourist. It's been fun. It always is to absorb in the newest of cultures, food, geography, everything. It's strangely comforting to find that there exist similiarities in this newest: the inebriation, the comradery, the need to survive and thrive. And it's truly humbling to know that there are places on this earth, I'll never get to see before my time is done. It's not that the earth is big, it isn't, it's small in the universal perspective, but we're so much more microscopic than we're willing to accept. Traveling allows me to see this.

First stop:

I visited Japan, and abused their rail system, and basked ontop their technologically advanced toilets. I watched an anime through a bookstore window and was able to catch a clip of two maids in a death match. Who won? They both lost when caught in eachother's fatal bear hug, their bosoms grew so large it eventually blew up the earth itself. I sat on a train and traveled so fast that the cities in my view seem collectively tilted in one direction. Most importantly, I ate some of the best sushi ever with close friends.

(Note: I don't think this song is the appropriate pace for how fast Japan moves, I was going to use Kyu Sakamoto's verison of Hound Dog but I lost that song when I blew out my harddrive in Chiang Mai.)

Second stop: Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai was just awesome. Even though, I had two weeks in Chiang Mai, I didn't have much time to record any thoughts. I joined my fellow volunteers here, and we kept ourselves busy. We explored the city on our free time and were in class the rest, training for our upcoming roles as teachers. There was much to learn, but the basic lessons which I'll take with me: "Don't panic, be prepare, pump up the AC, and talk like a British." It was necessary and comforting to meet friends who will have similiar stories of adventure and mishaps for the upcoming year.

I do remember that Chiang Mai had some of the most spectacular temples I have seen. All the temples sparkle with gold, and there are temples within walking distances almost everywhere you go.

One very cool thing about some of the temples are the offerings of trinkets you can buy and leave as permanent fixtures of the temple. You can buy these golden bells inside of most temples (cheaper to buy outside on the streets), write anything you want on them, and hang it around the temples. I hung this one at Doi Suthep:

One more thing to mention about Chiang Mai, the roti. It's truly a piece of oily, cracked-out heaven.

Third stop: Hanoi, Vietnam

Stayed in Hanoi for another two weeks. It was hot. If you're planning to do anything that requires movement, do it early. Being caught in the afternoon heat is like being in a sauna with your only refuge being a mall or a fancy hotel. The city buses will not cool you down. Besides for the heat, Hanoi has a certain charm you can't deny. The city is large and is estimated to grow larger territorially than Saigon in the next few years. There are numerous lakes that are used as cool-down spots, exercise areas, and make-out alleys for the locals. We stayed near the legendary Hoan Kiem Lake. Translated it means Lake of the Returned Sword and is the centerpiece of the country's most lengendary forklore, Emperor Le Loi. This lake was the location where the king was given a sacred sword to defend the country from Chinese invaders. Very much like the story of Excaliber and King Arthur, this is the lake where history and fable interwine. This much is true, there was a Emperor named Le Loi, there were Chinese invaders, and there still is a lake.

Interesting side note, during a radio interview I was involved with years back, a caller asked why it seems to him that the Vietnamese people as a whole were forgiving of foreigners, in particular foreigners like Americans who bombed the country and poisoned the land. I couldn't answer him. I really didn't know. I understood that his observation held some truth to it, but nothing in my study of Vietnam prepared me for that question. All wars have lingering effects, and hatred for the enemy has been passed down to subsequent generations through teachings in classroom and fairytales at home. Gruesome landmarks like bomb craters, mine fields, burial sites and prisons still make up part of the landscape in which people walk by everyday to live their lives. Even with time, war is not something that can be easily forgotten, but there is a sesne of forgiveness that permenates through Vietnam.

It was the retelling and explanation of the Le Loi folklore by our Hanoian teacher, Cho Hoa, that helped better my understanding of that question. "Forgiveness is the nature of our people, "she said. The sword that was given to Le Loi to engage in war, was given not in the name of aggression, but defense. Once the country was defended and the war was over, it [the sword] had to be returned. Our people rise to defend and fight for our country, but once the fight is over, we must seek out peace.

Steve, if you're out there, and somehow are reading this blog, there you go. That's your answer. Forgiveness is the nature of our people.

Although, it was hot, and crowded, and noisy. I do find myself missing Hanoi. It was a city full of life and history. There were a variety of delicious food. (My favorite being the Kaiser Kafe on Ba Trieu, just love the food, and the owner remembers my name after five years.) Oh. And the people there are nice. Despite what I have been told by people in the south, northerns are not evil. And lastly, another reason for missing Hanoi, Ha Long.

Destination: Da Lat

From Hanoi to Saigon via Jetstar, the cheapest way to wait five extra hours for a flight in Vietnam. You would think that flying would be different than the normal chaos of other Vietnam modes of transportation, but it's not that much different. I think we actually made a traditional Vietnamese pass of another airplane while in the sky:

After a quick stay in Saigon, where I drank too much to remember anything, it was off to Da Lat. I can't begin to describe how nice it feels, after lugging a year's supply of luggage from Kyoto to Saigon for six weeks, to finally unpack my suitcase and say: home.

Well that's all for now. The following blogs will be shorter. Whatever I feel like really, might include stories and poems, updates, and the such. Much more to come from Da Lat, as I settle down, start teaching, and start soaking in my new home. By soaking in, I mean, soaking in. Here's a video of my first moments in Da Lat after being dropped off in the middle of an afternoon storm.