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.