In the original spirit of this blog, I'm not sorry. The idea for the blog was to use it as a device to appear busy while I was working a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad job. That job ended. I wrote about half a dozen more posts and then realized, Hey! I don't have to be sitting at this desk pretending to look busy because no one gives a shit! I'm unemployed muthafuckas!
People looked at me like I was crazy when I told them I both quit my job AND had no real prospects for the future. Conversations with my American friends tended to go something like this:
Them: What are you up to?
Me: Nothing. I quit my job in March
Them: Why??
Me: Because I hated it
Them: Are you looking for a new job?
Me: No. I'm kind of enjoying doing nothing. Plus, we're going diving in Bali in two weeks, so there's no real point in looking for something now.
Them: (confused silence)
It took me months to shake off the feeling that my life was turning into some kind of waste. There wasn't any one moment that changed my mind. It was just a creeping feeling that I was actually living a life I enjoyed. Fun actually doesn't have to cost anything. You don't have to pay some awful price or work a soul sucking job to justify having a good time. The feeling went from being worried about waking up in the morning and having nothing to do to being excited about waking up in the morning with an entirely unplanned day ahead. The notion that sitting on the couch and reading a book for nine hours was not a wasted day, but rather a day spent doing what I want to do. What a notion.
In March of this year, Reyna interviewed for a job at The American School in Vietnam. All signs pointed to her being hired -especially when they called a week after the interview and asked her to fill an emergency position in the middle school. She went to talk to the head of school, and twenty minutes later my phone rang. They wanted to talk to ME about filling the emergency position. And that is how I became a middle school math teacher. It's true. Your tattooed, underdressed, foul-mouthed and perpetually sweaty vegetarian friend became a shaper of young minds. For three full months I convinced students between the ages of 12 and 14, and apparently a fair number of teachers and administrators, that I know things about math. I put on a tie for the first time in more than ten years. And dig this: I actually liked it. I can't remember ever being so busy, or so tired. I fell asleep at a dinner party like some kind of nodding junkie. I had actual stuff to contribute to the conversation when we went out with our teacher friends beyond things like, "huh" and "that must suck." I HAVE THINGS THAT SUCK! I HAVE BEEFS WITH ADMINISTRATION AND LOW PAY AND THE STATUS OF OUR IN-SCHOOL DRINKING WATER!
Discussions began about me returning for the next year. I started an application to enroll in a teaching certification program. THINGS WERE HAPPENING. However... things are not always as fabulous as they appear in the beginning.
Here's an excerpt from an email I sent by the end of the year...
In this play "Garth" is the head of primary. "Katherine" is the head of the middle and high school.
I started working at TAS and Reyna was forgotten. She never received so much as an email, much less a contract from the school despite nearly a dozen follow ups with Garth. As for me, Katherine wanted to offer me the full time math position for next year. In a meeting with the three of us, Garth said he thought I would be a good fit. Then a week later rescinded his verbal commitment to me by telling management he had concerns about my "math background." This is obviously a ridiculous claim, since I've spent the last 15 years of my career both in education and architecture applying the skills I have been teaching the students. When I finally confronted him about this he took back what he'd said [about my math background], but then told me that there were no math positions available for next year. A blatant lie, since there was (and still is) a middle school math position listed on a job search website (TIE online). The person running the school is not an educator, and frankly has no business running a school. He knows NOTHING about what any student needs in the classroom. Moreover, he neither wants nor cares to locate proper resources to fully understand why certain students math scores are so low. His only objective is to keep people coming back and paying tuition as long as possible. Education be damned. Make no mistake: TAS is a money-making venture for the owner and upper management and nothing more. It's been on full and stunning display since my arrival at TAS. In hindsight, it was a blessing that I was not offered a job for next year.
The day after I wrote that email, Katherine was fired and Garth took over her position. The following week I went back to being unemployed with no job prospects and no future plans beyond (maybe?) working on a teaching certification.
Meanwhile, Reyna was contacted by a school in Rio de Janeiro. She was offered a job right around the time I was realizing that things might not be as rosy as I'd originally thought at TAS. The day she received the offer, I left school and met her at the bar. Over a couple beers we agreed that it was time for her career to guide our decisions about where we were going to live. She'd clearly earned that right and it wasn't a difficult decision. She accepted the job and we started making preparations to move to Brazil.
That was two months ago. Now I'm sitting by myself in a hotel room in Dubai....
Apparently I haven't done a very good job selling visiting Vietnam to people. I guess I've written about too many near death experiences and tough times. I believe I'm safe saying that nearly all the tough times written about in this blog have been created by non-Vietnamese, so that's something. I thought about this and spent all of last week making a list of things I really love about Vietnam.
The Force Field
If you've watched any of my videos on Vimeo, or read certain portions of this blog, then you know that traffic can be insane. Traffic is most insane at rush hour, just like in any major city. However, unlike many major cities, people don't necessarily use crosswalks when crossing the street. This means they simply wade into the river of buses, cars and motorbikes trusting that the vehicles will avoid them as they cross. There is a certain philosophy of street crossing which states "DO NOT STOP." You cross in a steady and predictable way and you will reach the opposite side of the street unharmed. In order to make yourself more visible to the vehicles, you hold up your hand, or your hat, or a rag. We call this the The Force Field. It's as if we believe that by holding up a hand, we are creating some kind of impenetrable barrier between us and the buses, cars and motorbikes. It's not uncommon to see a tiny, hunched over lady, who is barely taller than the handlebars of a bike holding up a wrinkled hand to generate The Force Field to protect a much younger woman walking with or carrying a small child. One of the most beautiful things about The Force Field is that it is used almost exclusively to protect a person who is crossing with you. You walk arm in arm with one person creating The Force Field while traffic approaches on their side, then the other person takes over when traffic changes direction.
Street Vendors*
We didn't know when we moved to Thao Dien (District 2 to the uninitiated) that we would be dealing with street vendors like we do. You see our house, as well as everyone else's house is made from brick and concrete beams. There is no insulation, so things happening on the street might as well be happening inside your house. The first morning in our new house back in 2010, we were awakened by a woman riding a bicycle shouting "BANH MI HEEEEY!" every five seconds as she rode up and down every street in the neighborhood. Next it was the"MAAAAAAAI BAHN - MAAAAAAI BAHN...." call of the recycling ladies. Then the "Hai Choo, Bang Gia" guy, which eventually learned means "Two Kinds of Cake." Soon we learned to discern between the call of the Banh Mi lady, the recycling lady, the rat catcher, the vegetable seller, the ice cream lady, the non-ice cream dessert lady, the cake seller and the broom seller. All either call or have a megaphone strapped to their bicycle or motorbike that repeats a recording as they pass through our neighborhood. Some come more often than others. When I returned to the states I found that I missed the call of the morning street vendors. It was all too clean, too quiet. Everything felt way too remote.
While on vacation in the US, I watched my father shred mail in the paper shredder and tear this and that up in case someone decided to go through their trash. They do not have their trash picked up, mind you, but take it to the dump themselves. So in order for someone to actually acquire their personal information, a thief would have to sift through an enormous dumpster inside a guarded lot filled with identical blue garbage bags and somehow find theirs.
Here, strangers sift through our trash every day. And it would be strange if they didn't. They aren't looking for personal information, however, just things that can be reused, resold or recycled. In America this would be viewed as disgusting at least and an invasion of privacy at worst. Here it's enterprise. I like that.
A local magazine for expats called The Word wrote a wonderful piece about the Recycling Ladies that you can read here. It's on page 65.
*I'm certain I've gotten every single Vietnamese word in this section wrong. I don't pretend to know any Vietnamese at all and have just written the way it sounds here. So relax, haters. I know all of this is horribly wrong.
Multiculturalism
It's not just that we live in Vietnam, so we are surrounded by Vietnamese people. We are, but it's so much bigger than that. Everywhere we go, we find ourselves surrounded by people from other countries. For example, I ride bikes with a group of guys. Depending on the day, I ride with guys from England, France, Germany, Japan, Lebanon, Korea, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand. For most of them, Vietnam is not the only foreign country they've lived in. For most, Vietnam is their second or third stop since they left their country of origin. And that's just the people I ride bikes with. We have friends from Spain, Norway, Kenya and loads of other places I can't think of right this minute. It's a wonderful mixture of cultures and ethnicities. And because the expat community in HCM is fairly small (about 20,000 people) you know most everyone, or you know someone that knows someone. We are very diverse, but are also very connected which makes the whole experience feel more special.
Feeling Alive
There's a two things that happen whenever you leave the house. First, if you're on a motorbike, you're taking a risk. You put yourself in actual danger getting from Point A to Point B, which seems to give everything more significance than it would normally have. It's easy to forget because we are so used to it. Like if you had to jump out of an airplane to get to work every day, you probably wouldn't think much about it, but others would be amazed. This makes those videos I posted on Vimeo much more fun. There is very little in any of them where I thought, "what I'm doing right now is crazy. I am in danger." But then when I went back and watched the final cuts of the videos, I see how nuts it actually is. It's all about perception.
Second, everyone else is also on a motorbike, so you're close to them. People On Motorbikes is a community in Vietnam, waging an unspoken war with cars, trucks and buses. Before we moved to Vietnam, I had never been physically touched by a stranger in another vehicle. Here it happens all the time. We will be sitting at a stop light and a total stranger will grab my arm and turn it over to look at my tattoos. They smile, or give the thumbs up or ask me where I'm from. We have a five second friendly interaction, then the light turns green and they're gone. At first I thought it was weird. Now I've come to enjoy it. This close proximity also creates friendlier drivers. You would probably think twice about giving the finger to the asshole driver next to you if at the next light that driver could reach over and punch you in the face, right?
Yesterday I rode my bike with a friend. There is a stretch coming back into town where we try to go as fast as possible. I was a little faster yesterday for one reason or another, so I stopped at the turn off for a minute to wait for him. I was beat. It was hot, so I was breathing hard and pouring sweat. I must have looked like I was about to keel over. A woman walked past me on the street side, rather than on the sidewalk. She was dressed in all black with a conical hat and face mask on. As she passed she reached out and squeezed my hand. I looked up at her and she smiled with her eyes, then walked on. I have no idea why she did it, but it made me feel less tired.
I have more, but you're probably tired of me going on and on. I'll write some more this week. This really is a great place to live.
The other day I was writing in my journal, like I do and I wrote something about a girl seeing her father cry. This brought up a memory of the first time I saw my father cry. I won't go into details about that, but the thing that resonated with me is that when he had this moment of vulnerability he was lying on the couch.
This is the only memory I have of my father ever lying on a couch.
It got me thinking about the fathers I've known in my life, and across the spectrum, all those fathers had chairs. A special chair, one that is clearly HIS. You can walk into any house with a father and within ten seconds spot where Dad sits when Dad is relaxing. Generally speaking it's the chair that appears out of place in the room. Or it's the one that looks like it's been sat in an excessive amount. A modern day throne for a modern day castle.
My Dad's chair has gone through a number of iterations, mainly increasing in size as I've gotten older. First it was a chair that was one of a pair. It wasn't a particularly attractive chair, a kind of green-gold velvet with a low back. It rocked, so he would lean it as far back as it would go while he watched television. I always found it odd that he rarely used the ottoman that went with it. Ottomans are not especially popular in my family for some reason. Sometimes I would sit in it, but it was clear that Dad's chair was to immediately vacated when Dad entered the room, often with a plate of cheese and crackers and a glass of iced tea. Now that he's retired, the chair is enormous -a Brown Monster. It's a chair you can get lost in, and in fact, he has been known to get lost in it from time to time. The new chair induces a narcoleptic response that is difficult to describe. We'll be sitting in our chairs having a pleasant conversation, me, my brother and my father and we'll address him only to find him unconscious in his chair*. I suppose these are the pleasures that come with retirement.
*My brother tells a story about one time when he visited my parents and my mother made lunch. Afterwards, my brother retired to the Brown Monster to watch television or read a magazine or something. The next thing he knew, my mother was shaking him so he could come eat dinner. He'd just taken an unintentional five hour nap. "I wasn't even tired when I sat down..." he told me later, "that chair does something to you."
And as I thought of that, I rewound my mind to earlier days. My Dad's Dad had a chair as well. When I was really little it was a leather chair with a low back and a seldom-used ottoman, not unlike the one my father sat in years before he got the Brown Monster he has now. I only carry faded memories of that chair - it was tan and worn. What I do remember is the chair that replaced it. A large, blue, velvety La-Z-Boy. He smoked a pipe, keeping them and the associated accouterments in an adjacent side table. There are very few smells in the world that I find more comforting than Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco smoke. I clearly remember the smell of that chair, and the sour stink of his "reserve" pipes held in the drawer of that side table. The drawer was difficult to open. It was easier to pull the handle and slide the entire table than to ease the drawer open to examine the old pipes. We always bothered my grandfather to tell us why he no longer used certain pipes -ones that we found to be significantly more interesting than his standard straight pipe. He would tell us that this one was too heavy and hurt his teeth, or that one didn't sit right in his shirt pocket causing the tobacco to dump out when he bent over. There was a lot to think about when selecting the ideal pipe.
When my grandfather died in 1991, the Blue Chair and side table appeared in our living room. For years afterward whenever I opened the drawer of the side table, which had long been cleared of pipes, there was still the tiniest whiff of stale smoke. In the few months after he died I would bury my face in the Blue Chair and travel back in time.
My Mother's Dad was an eccentric. I think if he had been born 80 years later he would have lived under the yoke of "diagnosis." It's never been confirmed that he was mildly autistic or had Asperger Syndrome, and it's better that way. He was what I would describe as pleasantly anti-social, a tinkerer -a closet genius. It was clear from a young age that my grandfather and I would not have a normal relationship. He didn't appear to have time for children, which was odd because he'd had three of his own. People were not his thing; he preferred the company of automobiles. It was generally good practice to let him do his thing and do your best to stay out of his way.
And he had a chair too. His chair reflected his singular nature. It wasn't an overstuffed La-Z-Boy "Dad Chair." It was a collapsible chaise lounge (emphasis on collapsible) that looked like it had been rescued off the deck of a derelict cruise ship. It's wood was worn from what appeared to be weather, but was likely worn from use. It creaked ominously when it was burdened with so much as falling wisp of pine straw. Most strange was when my grandfather wanted to sit down, he had to assemble the chair. To my child's eyes, it had about 12,000 moving parts that had to be painstakingly adjusted. The chair was a chaos of bolts, wing-nuts, pinch points and splinters all draped with a flimsy piece of green fabric with red and white stripes. It seemed it took about 30 minutes of grunting, sweating and adjusting to get the chair to a place where it could be enjoyed as a chair. Then another few minutes of actually positioning your body in the chair in a way that it would not injure you. Once the proper position was attained, it was best to refrain from moving. Once he was done "relaxing" he would then have to spend another 20 minutes breaking the chair down and returning it to it's place in the garage. You see, once the chair was assembled for sitting it could not even be MOVED to a new location. So if you needed to, say, back the car out to go to the grocery store, you had to wait for the chair to be disassembled and returned to storage before leaving. It was best to let him know that you intended to leave the house via vehicle before he left to "relax." Even at the tender age of eight I could tell that this was unusual.
I was warned from the time I was old enough to stand that I was, under no circumstances, to sit in the chair. It was best if I didn't touch, or even approach the chair. It might as well have been an electric fence. And what was especially odd to me was that in order to occupy the chair, my grandfather had to retire to their driveway, behind the car port.
As soon as I remembered this chair, I texted my brother in Florida to see if he remembered it. Here's how the exchange went:
Me: Here's a random question. Do you remember that old chaise lounge Gramps used to assemble and lie on in their driveway?
Him: Yep. It would pinch the fuck out of you.
Me: I feel like we weren't allowed to touch it. That it was somehow dangerous. Why would anyone sit in a chair that pinches the fuck out of you?
Him: Only if you moved wrong.
I then called him on Skype and we talked for over an hour -brought together by the chairs our grandfathers relaxed in.
The Blue Chair and the Collapsible Chaise Lounge are both enjoying their own retirements in my parent's basement. It's impossible to look at them and not think of the men who occupied them. Each is special in that it perfectly reflects the nature of the man who occupied it for the majority of its life. You can't throw things like that away.
Sometimes super amazing things happen and I'm too lazy to write. I think about the post and I'm all "Damn, I need to write about that.... right after I lay on the couch and watch this nine hour Hillbilly Handfishin'* marathon." Sure it's only nine in the morning, but who knows when it'll be on again! I'm sure that Hillbilly Handfishin' has a massive Asian following too -right up there with Discovery Channel's destruction lineup**. I didn't actually know it was possible to write Vietnamese subtitles for the things that Skipper and Trent say while they're neck deep in muddy river water with their hand in a hole. I feel that the subtlety of meaning and insouciance is lost once it's converted to subtitles.
*I kid. Not about the marathons, but the Hillbilly Handfishin' marathon. Oh sure, it's on here, but I've never watched it on purpose. I had to look up Skipper and Trent's names on Wikipedia -it also took me three tries to figure out how to spell Hillbilly. Even a minimally employed Tatveg has to have standards. There's a certain point below which I will not sink. Well...not so far.
**Seriously people. Can someone tell me what the difference is between Rampage, Destroyed in Seconds, What Happened Next? and Seconds From Disaster? They're the same show. Reyna and I have taken to yelling, "and then it was destroyed in seconds!!" at each other randomly. I'm going to write a strongly worded letter to Discovery asking them to replace all those shows with Mythbusters and Locked Up Abroad. Who's with me?
This is really a roundabout way to say that I've kept everyone waiting for a fairly monumental moment in my Vietnamese life. Specifically that I'm now the excessively proud owner of this:
Incredibly I didn't have to venture into the fiery pits of Mount Doom to get it either. I didn't steal it out from under the nose of a snoozing taxi driver at the witching hour either. I bought it at Metro. It was all rather underwhelming to be honest. Reyna and I were shopping -well let's rephrase that -Reyna was shopping and accomplishing something constructive. I was wandering around looking at all the silly shit they sell at Metro.
You can't buy peanut oil there, but they do have 37 different types of rice cooker and a faux leather replacement seat with "Gucci" tooling for your motorbike -not a seat cover, mind you, an entire seat. There are times there when you think to yourself, "Someone honestly thought they could make money manufacturing that thing. And worse, they SOLD IT TO SOMEONE ELSE who thought it was something worth selling in one of the largest retailers in Asia. It totally reminds me of this.
That clip reminds me of this blog too, come to think of it...
Anyway we were wandering through Metro. Reyna was hunting for something -I don't know what but it was apparently in the vicinity of the "Auto Parts" section. The Auto Parts section is markedly different from the same section at, say, Walmart because they don't sell things like touch up paint and motor oil. Nope. They sell helmets and half-finger gloves and whole bunch of other things you would never associate with driving. It was then that my eye fell on our friend.
Time stood still.
"There it is!" I screeched.
We stood and stared. We gaped. I think Reyna was as surprised to see it as I was. Moments later I was holding it in my hand. This particular Hennessy Cannon was not in the best shape. It's clear plastic housing was cracked and had been reassembled using packing tape. It was like holding an abandoned puppy at the animal shelter, and with trembling hands I turned to Reyna and said, "I'm buying this." To this day I have no qualms about spending $5 on a hunk of plastic that will never actually be used for it's intended purpose.
And what might that be, you ask? It's an air freshener. Kind of a let down after all the hypothesizing I'd done for the last two years. And I learned some things that day. That the cannon does not utilize the iconic Hennessy bottle. It's a clever knock-off known as Napoleon, which probably explains why I could never find one on the Internets. A Hennessy air freshener does exist, but not in cannon form. It's a much classier looking clear plastic "piece" that holds the Hennessy bottle at almost the exact same angle. I did manage to learn that much, what I didn't learn is if the Hennessy air freshener smells like Hennessy. I couldn't bring myself to a.) spend six additional dollars on my little obsession; or b.) actually open it and smell it in my own home. I don't think people who like Hennessy want their home to smell like it.
*I told you it was classier...
I think one of the stranger lessons of this whole episode was that it had never occurred to me until that moment that the Hennessy Cannon is something that can be purchased in a store. Consequently it had never occurred to me to shop for one. I'd always just looked for them in passing cars. The idea of having a Hennessy Cannon of my very own was one that was as the Vietnamese spoken by the taxi drivers who own its brothers (and sisters I guess -I tend to think of a cannon as being unarguably male...). I never thought of it as something that could be owned, more like something you encountered -like the Mona Lisa or the Hope Diamond, only with a shorter line.
So now it sits in our house. In some ways it's like a time bomb, because I live in fear that it will be jostled off a table and crack open. Then we'll be stuck with an Asian interpretation of whatever a 17th century French emperor's cognac smelled like. And I don't think anyone wants that. I don't think it's a coincidence that every car I've ever seen containing a Henny Cannon has it's windows rolled down. If it broke, I would be left without my very own (and very first) cannon air freshener, and stuck with a weird smelling house.
In some ways I feel like we can move away from Vietnam. I don't particularly want to, but at least if we do leave, I will not go to my grave wondering about the origins of the Hennessy Cannon. Turns out they sell them at the store. Who would have thought?
Two people -independently of each other -have mentioned this here blog to me this week. So, I guess it's time I got up off my minimally-employed ass and made an effort. Because, as much as I want to believe that I don't care if anyone reads what I write here, the simple truth is that I do care. I want to know you're out there.
Anyway.
Here's a story about something terrible. Terrible and kind of hilarious if it didn't happen to you.
I enjoy playing golf. It fits right into my whole I-really-like-being-good-at-things-that-make-no-sense-to-republicans chip on my shoulder. There's little in this world I like more than handing a 20-stroke beat down to a stranger wearing crisp khakis and a TW polo while I look more like I belong at a biker rally than a golf course.
But that's only part of what I enjoy about playing golf. It's something that I do with my father. I'm confident that my high school years were passed in relative harmony because my dad and I (and my math teacher) played golf two to four times a month from the time I was 12 until I graduated high school. Then, when I moved out of the house, we played together whenever we saw each other. I think the reason the tradition has weathered so well is because my father is a good golfer. In April he turned 72 years old, and it's only been since he hit his eighth decade that I've been able to beat him with any kind of regularity. He's always maintained that he doesn't pay attention to who wins, or that he doesn't feel any pressure of competition, but I always have. I was in Georgia in May, and we hit the links like we've done for the last 25 years.
I wasn't playing well. Probably something to do with only getting to play for 7-10 days per year. Even though he's my father, it's not fun to have your ass handed to you by a man in his seventies when you're fit and in the prime of your life. But this was how I found myself as we mounted the ninth hole at Jennings Mill Country Club*.
*This is a fairly recent development. In the days when I lived at home with Mom and Dad there is no way we would have EVER played at JMCC. That's where the doctors played when I was a kid. The course hosted pro events and was so far out of reach for me it was laughable to even dream of playing there. It was quite the boon when Dad phoned me to tell me he'd joined.
The ninth hole is hard. Most people take a short iron off the tee so they can set themselves up for a long second shot over water. But, if you're fit and in the prime of your life, it's fun to try and drive the ball over the water and go for the green in two. I'd been doing this all week. On this particular round, I decided it would be better to lay up. Like I said, I hadn't been playing well. I hit my iron off the tee and up close to the water. As I approached my ball, I paid little attention to the geese hanging out by the water.
I weighed my options. I decided that if I could hit a good fairway wood from where I was, I would then have an easy chip onto the green and a par. Par on the ninth hole would be a small consolation after the lousy round I'd just endured. I grabbed my 5-wood and lined up the shot.
I swung.
The ball shot off the club, but I hadn't hit it well; a low line drive. A low line drive that frightened the geese just a few yards in front of me, causing them to take to wing. Just as one spread his wings to fly, my ball struck it directly in the neck. The bird fell to the ground, but much to my horror, did not immediately die. It writhed around with roughly four inches of neck and head dragging on the ground. It struggled to get to it's feet, but could not stand with this odd new neck hinge.
I gaped. My father walked over and stood next to me. Together we watched the Greek tragedy unfolding before us. Other geese had noticed and waddled over to assess the condition of their downed comrade; honking and leering like chorus singers. Baby goose chicks scuttled around his body peeping with what could only be described as stunned confusion.
"Oh my god... I just fucking snapped the neck of a goose*!" I'm sure this exclamation came right in the middle of my dad's backswing.
*It should be noted that while the use of the word "fuck" in front of my father is acceptable on the golf course, it is not something that enters into our usual banter. I mean come on. Cursing loudly while playing golf is as critical to the game as a putter or throwing a club down the fairway after hitting an easy approach fat and turning a chance for birdie into a double bogie. Just ask Tiger Woods.
"It's not dead!" I stammered. "what do I do?"
"Well, you've got a club, you could go put it out of it's misery." my father replied. I could detect that he couldn't help but laugh at the bizarre scene unfolding before us.
"I don't think I can do that." is what I said out loud, but inside I was saying I can't believe I'm a vegetarian and I just killed a fucking goose. The irony was palpable.
As I was making the decision as to whether I would have to add blunt-force trauma to the cause of death, the bird stopped squirming. After a what-do-we-do-now pause, my father turned and walked to the cart.
"Come on, get in. There's nothing you can do about it now." He laughed nervously.
"I'm finished. I'll walk to the clubhouse and tell them."
I couldn't bring myself to ride in the cart. It felt a little too much like a getaway car at that moment. A sad, pathetic and strange getaway car, but these are the things that go through one's mind after unintentionally taking a life. So with my head down and my golf glove deflated and bouncing loosely in my back pocket, I walked the final 400 yards to the clubhouse.
"Hey man, how can I help you?" The pro said amicably as I felt the air conditioning whoosh through the door. He was standing behind the register chatting with the drop dead gorgeous drink girl we'd bought Powerades from earlier in the round.. Because of course he was. These sorts of humiliations must be witnessed by un-involved parties.
"I don't know how to tell you this." I said, startled by how meek my voice sounded, "but I just killed a goose on the ninth hole. I feel terrible. I'm so sorry."
He turned and looked out the window. "Oh yeah. I think I can see it down there. Is that it right there by the cart path?"
"Uh yeah..." I could see the tiny brown corpse laying motionless even from this distance. My face felt like it would burst into flames. Other tiny specks were milling around the body, clearly making arrangements for the wake and service.
"No worries, guy, it happens all the time." he laughed. "Actually I should thank you because those geese are a pain in the ass. We've been trying to get rid of them for years."
"Really?"
"Yeah, don't worry about it."
"Okay..." I turned to leave.
"Actually wait. No. There's a fine of $200 if you kill one of those birds. And you have to pay the fine to me!" the drink girl said and both of them died laughing.
I slunk out.
My shame and I drove us home. We told my mom and brother, who laughed uproariously at the vegetarian who killed the bird. When I texted the story to Reyna, her response was to ask if I brought it home and ate it for dinner. No. We did not. And everybody thought it was hilarious.
All night I turned with the image of the goose and it's broken neck flopping around on the ground. Pleading eyes boring into me until a malevolent groundskeeper with a pitchfork speared the still-clinging-to-life animal and deposited it in the woods.
The next day, I summoned my courage and played golf with Dad again. These are the sacrifices one makes when one is only home to enjoy golfing with one's father for one week a year. When we passed the scene of the crime again, the sad goose was still pretzeled on a patch of grass stained brown with its blood; a gaping flesh wound in its neck still plainly visible. It seems neither a malevolent nor a friendly groundskeeper could be bothered with shuttling the mangled bird away. I wondered how many golfers had passed by the scene and wondered what the hell happened. Something should be done I thought. As we passed, I reasoned, they left it to serve as a warning to the other geese, because the only thing besides the corpse that was left on the bank of that pond was goose poop.
I parred the hole and flew home the next day.
Fun Fact: I saw these guys live by accident in Vegas (they were playing with the band I actually wanted to see) and there were loads of kids walking around with t-shirts that read "DOCTORS WON'T BE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE YOUR FUCKING FACE" in reference to this song. All I could think was, "that kid's parents let him out of the house wearing that...." I guess I'm old. Don't believe me?
Hopefully this unaccompanied minor won't be able to recognize his fucking face and sue me for using his photo without permission
A few weeks after I returned from diving in the Philippines we had a holiday weekend here in Vietnam. I had, by then, come to realize that not having to go sit at a desk for eight to ten hours five days a week really leaves one with a lot of free time. So we booked some travel. The original plan was to fly to Kuala Lampur and then on to a city called Sandakan*, which is in Borneo**.
*When you live in this part of the world, you find yourself flying into places you never heard of. It's crazy. I'd never heard of Cebu (Philippines) or Sandakan (Malaysia) or Denpasar (Indonesia) before we moved, but they are all major cities with International Airports. Suck on that, Topeka.
**I realized after a few short conversations with my American pals that I need to be slightly more specific when discussing destinations in the region. Kuala Lampur (or KL as people "in the know" call it) is the capital of Malaysia, which is west of Vietnam. It's also the home of these buildings, which you probably saw on a Discovery Channel show with the word "extreme" or "marvels" in the title. Borneo, is a large island east of Malaysia, but is still considered part of Malaysia. Oh, and Singapore is both a city and a country. Got it? Good.
You might be asking yourself, "why would they go there?" Well, it turns out that 2013 is the year we started diving. I suggested we get certified before we made a trip to Bali (life is hard) in February for Tet. We did our Confined Water Dives here in Saigon, and finished our Open Water Certifications in Tulamben, Bali. It was the most spectacular week of my life, and I'm pretty sure Reyna would agree with me. If you enjoy traveling, stunning mountain vistas, terraced rice paddies, lush rainforest, volcanoes, perfect blue ocean, food, diving, shopping, friendly people, then Bali should be on your bucket list. I mean we dove a shipwreck while we were getting our certifications. I have yet to meet anyone else who has done this. You know, besides the guy who got certified with us.
Anywho...
Armed with our sparkly new certifications we decided that we should go to Sipadam on the long weekend. It's generally regarded as one of the top diving destinations in the world. Plus this is the time of year when there are sea turtles in the area. How could we NOT go? So we booked the flights and applied to the dive resort.
And then we waited.
Weeks passed and we heard nothing from the resort. Sipadam is a small island off the coast of Borneo, so it's not like there are hotels on every street corner. In fact, there are no streets. There is nothing except one tiny dive resort with room for 50 people. And the island is protected, so they only provide dive passes for the people staying on the resort. So forget about staying on the main island and taking a boat out to dive sites. Finally, after multiple tries we were told that the resort was booked for the dates we wanted (shocker), but if we wanted to stay on such and such available nights, the cost would be in the neighborhood of $2500. For three nights.... yeah....
Reyna and I looked at each other and said, "It's Borneo. I mean how bad could it possibly be?" We found a reasonably priced hotel in Sandakan, booked a few nights and flew to KL.
The plan was that we'd arrive in KL on Friday night, spend the day seeing the city, then fly to Sandakan that evening. Once we got to Sandakan, we'd see if we could find a place that would take us diving. If not, there were monkeys and other things to see. Again, it's freakin Borneo people.
We spent the day shopping in KL, which was fun. We were both completely floored by how big the city is. It's easy to forget sometimes that there are enormous cities all over the place, and just because a city happens to be in Malaysia, that it can't be as sophisticated as say Chicago. Wrong. KL is magical. We loved it.
Reyna found a three floor H&M, and I probably should have seen this as a sign of potential danger. At 2:00 I said, "hey we should probably think about heading to the airport."
"Our flight isn't until 6. We can leave in 30 minutes."
"OK"
You probably know where I'm headed here.
We left the H&M at 2:30 and got on the train back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. While on the train it started POURING. Upon exiting the train, we found ourselves on the wrong side of a jam packed eight lane divided highway. We stood under an overpass and discussed what to do. Time passed while we hopefully waited for the rain to stop. It didn't. We hopefully waited for the traffic to let up so we could scamper across the street. It didn't. In the end, we ran to the end of another block and crossed at a pedestrian bridge. The whole thing took almost 45 minutes. Not good.
Of course when we got to the hotel there was a line of people checking in. I sat in the bean bag chairs they had in the lobby (backpackers....yeesh) while Reyna waited to get our bags. We got them, got back on the train and went to the KL Sentral station, which is where the express train to the airport departs.
Of course we got lost. We were running through the rain and ended up spending twenty minutes trying to get into the station that we both thought the train was taking us. Turns out that is not the case. When we finally found the right place, we were informed that the "express" train only goes to the International Airport. Since our flight was domestic, we had to take the other train, which would also include a bus ride of indeterminate length. We bought the tickets and ran down to the platform just in time to see the tail end of the 4:00 train leaving.
So we sat for 30 minutes waiting for the next one. While we sat, we split a bag of Goldfish Crackers. It's not something I'm proud of, but when something seems overwhelmingly foreign, Goldfish Crackers always make things OK. I tried desperately and failed to find an Internet signal so that I could check us in to our flight.
The train made four stops before the bus and took about 45 minutes. Then the bus took a full hour to get to the Domestic Airport. The bus also just dumped us out. We had no idea where to go to check in, so we ended up walking on the street for about 10 minutes until we found the "Departures" sign. I found an Air Aisa kiosk at 5:35 and tried to check us in. No luck. We went to the Customer Service counter, where we were informed that we had indeed missed our flight. They take that "you must check in at least 30 minutes prior to departure" thing pretty seriously, even in Asia. It had taken us three and a half hours to get to the airport of the same city we spent the night in using public transportation.
The guy at the Service Counter let us know that the next flight to Sandakan didn't leave until 6am the following morning. We looked at each other and wordlessly lamented the thought of making the 3.5 hour journey back downtown, and then get up at 2am to do it all again the next morning. We asked about a later flight. There was one at one o'clock the following afternoon, but the ticket price was $600+ for the two of us. Dejected, we wheeled our bags away from the counter.
Out in the main terminal area, we were able to find an Internet signal with spotty connectivity and discuss our next move. Reyna went and bought a couple beers somewhere, and we sat like alcoholic bums who just found an iPad beside the front entrance of the airport and discussed our next move. We both agreed that taking the train back to the city was less appealing than simply flying someplace else, if we could find a ticket that was reasonable. Our position was across the room from the big board showing all the arrivals and departures. My eye fell on a 9:20 flight to Bali.
The tickets were the same price as the next day's flight to our original destination. We ended up having to eat the tickets we already bought, and the hotel room we'd already booked in Sandakan, but we flew to Bali that night. We spent the first night in Sanur in one of the worst hotels I've ever encountered. It was creepier than Skip's Beach Resort in Cebu. The furnishings were remarkably similar, actually, but this place had mold on the walls and was actually falling down. I was semi-surprised we were not awoken by either critters or people breaking into our room that night. I don't think either of us slept.
At breakfast the next morning I called Made, who had been our instructor when we did our Open Water Certification in February. We'd friended him on Facebook, and both Reyna and I had written glowing reviews for him on Trip Adviser after our first trip. As luck would have it he was available for the days we'd be in town. I talked to our server who helped us hire a car to drive us the four hours to Tulamben. Over the next two days we did five dives. Reyna got her Advanced Open Water Certification (I did mine in the Philippines) and saw two sea turtles. We dove the Liberty Shipwreck at night and experienced the stunning reefs for the second time.
On the night before we left, Made invited us to drink beer with some of his friends. We met them down the street from our hotel. We sat outside at a picnic table, drank beer and chatted. One of the guys had his guitar, so he and Reyna played and sang songs all evening. I only joined in for the schlockiest tunes, and after several drinks we managed to unleash an only mostly awful rendition of Adele's "Someone Like You." An Italian couple who had also been diving in the area and knew Made joined us. They brought an Aquafina bottle of homemade palm liquor* with them, which we passed around as we sang and discussed other diving destinations.
*I use the term "liquor" loosely here. It was like kerosene. It might have actually been kerosene. Even the locals, who I'd assumed grew up drinking the stuff were coughing and choking it down. But down it went, and after about an hour, they were off finding another bottle.
As the night started to wind down, Reyna and I took a short walk out to the beach and listened to the waves crash on the rocks and look at the full moon. It was a magical end to a special trip.
Made arranged the car for us to drive back to the airport. As we turned onto the road to begin our journey home, we saw the Italians from the night before. We stopped and said hello again. When we asked them where they were going, they said, "the airport." So they got in the car with us and together we began the journey home.
---
So why is this post called "Far Behind?" If you listened to the song you're probably wondering how these things are related. Since we moved we've been able to have so many spectacular experiences, it's difficult to comprehend why we were so afraid to leave America. In my last post, I included an excerpt of a story I wrote the day I left my job. After the experience in the Philippines and our second trip to Bali, the pain of the last six years is gone. I think it's why I didn't write for so long. I didn't know how to process my feelings. I spent so long being filled with rage that I didn't know how to write about things that brought me joy in the big sense of the word. I considered never returning to this blog.
But I recently decided that if I don't continue the blog then they win. I didn't just keep the blog because it got me through the unending days at my desk, I did it because I liked it. I still like it. You have to hold onto the things you like, even if parts of those things remind you of pain and sorrow. Leave the bad behind, but hold on to what's important. This blog is important, and I don't particularly care if anyone reads it.
It's 7pm. I'm sitting at my kitchen table-cum-computer desk listening to the alternating sounds of Backstreet Boys Greatest Hits (I Want It That Way, et al.) and an angle grinder, eating re-purposed spaghetti sauce on noodles for dinner while Reyna is tutoring. And while I heartiningly carried a journal around with me most places over the past nine weeks, these are the first words I've actually written. When there's no Man to stick it to, I'm less motivated.
---
I'm sure you've been waiting breathlessly to hear how the job actually ended up. You might have noticed, if you're a serious devotee of The Tatveg, that my last post was dated one day BEFORE I actually stopped having a job. On my actual last day, I awoke with dreams of writing an epic post; one in which I skewered all the things I hadn't already. The post where I bit my thumb at my oppressors and skipped out the door giving the finger behind me all the way to a waiting taxi cab.
What actually happened was that I laid in bed until ten o'clock, before mustering the energy to ride the elevator downstairs and eat at the Sofitel breakfast buffet*. From there, I went back to bed and finished my book. Then I went to the hotel bar and drank beer until it was time to go to the airport. It was how I imagine CEO's spend their final day at "work" before jumping out of their corner office window with a golden parachute.
*The Manila Sofitel Breakfast Buffet is a destination in itself. It was an orgy of food. If you find yourself hungry for breakfast and you happen to be in Manila....well you know what I'm getting at.
But I didn't go to the International Airport. I went to the Domestic Airport and checked into a flight to Cebu, Philippines. In roughly thirty minutes I went from a top floor delux room at the Manila Sofitel to ass-sweating through my shorts in a metal chair at the Domestic Departures Terminal in Manila.*" Clearly a CEO, I am/was not. As I sat in the front seat of the taxi I noted that 5pm came and went without my phone ringing or a friendly clap on the back. The taxi driver didn't break into song or turn and say "FIVE O'CLOCK FRIDAY BEE-YOTCH! YOU JUST QUIT YOUR JOB! LET'S PARTY!" The reality is that I just felt my Pad Thai and half-dozen Hoegaardens (which I happily expensed to The Company) churn in my stomach.
*Dear America,
Have you ever considered that when you live in a country like the Philippines that 99% of the time you get on a plane you are flying internationally? Because it's true. What does this mean for you? It means that when you fly domestically, you are in the tiny, crappy, only occasionally used sector of the airport. This does not mean it is empty. Oh no. It's packed like a feed lot. There was a sign in front of the airport suggesting, not demanding mind you, that travelers lock their guns in a locker before departure. I walked through the metal detector with my iPad in my hand. If you think the security measures at a US airport are kind of ridiculous, try doing it after a year of domestic Asian travel. You'll consider setting the place on fire, I promise. **
**This also explains the confused looks and generally slow footedness of foreign travelers in line when they learn they have to take half their clothes off to get through the security checkpoint. The shit does not happen anywhere but America, Land of the Free, Home of the Paranoid. So let's cool it with the sighing, muttering and eye-rolling when the non-English-speaking, elderly Asian man is holding up the front of the line. He's not being stupid, you are being an insensitive jerk. Repeat after me, "I am checked in, the plane is not leaving without me."
Upon arrival in Cebu I met a tiny, smiling man whose name I have forgotten. He and his pal put me and my things in the back of the world's most uncomfortable van. We left the airport and I rolled around in the backseat for over three hours. It rained the entire time. From the van window, I watched scenes of the Filipino late night roll by: shirtless bros slouching around pool tables, people riding bicycles and holding umbrellas at the same time. You know, the usual. No words were spoken until the driver turned to me and handed me his cell phone. The voice on the other end of the line informed me that the bay was too rough for me to cross to the hotel I'd booked, so the driver was going to take me to a similar place on the island, and that I could then ferry across to the resort in the morning. I didn't have a choice, so I agreed.
Shortly after, we turned onto a dirt road and passed a sign which read "Skip's Beach Resort." The lady working the desk, who I later learned was Mrs. Skip, showed me to my room. It consisted of a bed, chair-less table and a circa 1988 television*. She flipped on the air-con unit in the window. To refer to it as a "window rattler" would conjure thoughts of a trailer in the woods. This was much much worse. Again, I reasoned that I didn't have a choice, and it would be a king-dick move to be all, "this won't do" after these guys had just driven me across the entire island at one in the morning to get me there. So I thanked them, shut the door and drank in my surroundings.
*Seriously. I never saw a remote for the TV and it had dials. DIALS!
When I was a kid, I remember my brother going for an entire year without washing his sheets. At the end of the year, they were so threadbare you could clearly see the mattress underneath. This was exactly the same, except instead of a mattress, there was a foam rubber pad. You know, the kind that if your skin touches you immediately start sweating and itching at the same time? That kind. The pillow was the same, and felt like placing your head on a bookshelf.
"No matter," I thought. I'm dead tired and it's just for the night.
I turned out the light, lay in "hotel dark*" and listened to the rain fall on the tin roof. I took a deep breath and said out loud, "It's Over."
*You know that dark that's so dark you can't tell the difference between what you see when your eyes are open or closed? Hotel Dark.
In the morning I woke up early. And by woke up early I mean, I never really fell asleep. I wandered around on the rocky beach, and said things to myself like, "this is so great" despite the fact that it was chilly, cloudy and the beach was trashy. Later Mrs. Skip asked me if I'd like a ride to the ferry station. I said yes, but not before she presented me with the bill for my stay. I was busy admiring a framed 8x10 glossy of a heavy set white man with a voluminous mullet when she handed it over. $45.
"Do you take credit cards?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
[Giving me a quizzical look as if to say, "did you see the room you spent the night in?"] "No."
"All I have is Vietnamese money. If you take me to an ATM I can get money."
"The closest ATM is one hour away."
"Can I pay you in Vietnamese money?"
"If that's all you have, then yes."
I paid her $10 extra, feeling like a complete ass.
We chatted as she drove me in an even more beat van to the ferry. I learned that the wonderous mullet in the restaurant/front desk was Skip, her husband. Skip had died five years earlier, and she told me keeping up the place had gotten tougher since she'd been on her own. Did I say I felt like a complete ass yet?
When I arrived at the resort, I had a few hours to kill before my first dive. That was the last time I wrote anything before this here post. I will share a small exerpt of what I wrote that day:
I wish I could tell you that I stood up and yelled “I CAN’T
TAKE THIS SHIT ANY MORE” while throwing a stack of drawings into the walkway
and storming out into a spectacularly sunny Vegas afternoon.I wish I could say that, because it’s exactly
how I felt.But sitting behind a desk
for four years can do funny things to you.Do not believe for a moment that you can shake off a day in which 25
people lose their jobs, even when you are spared, with a cocktail and a blowjob.The shock of seeing your friends packing up
their desks at 2pm, when three hours earlier it was just Tuesday,
secretes The Fear into your soul. Tomorrow
it could be me.
And The Company loves The Fear.It feeds and thrives and has romantic dinners
with The Fear. The Fear keeps its employees coming back every day to be worked
like pack mules; to be forced to share a toilet with 50 other men that is only
cleaned twice a week without complaint; to never ever be thanked or told you
did a good job.A confident work force
could leave and find another, less crap job.A work force languishing under The Fear is a slave.The Fear is like a drug without the fun part
in the beginning –that initial love affair when you dropped Oxy the first few
times and it was mind-altering and life changing.The Fear makes you an instant junkie.You are powerless against it and you hate
it.Every. Single. Day.
People said, “Why don’t you quit?”But it’s not that simple.It’s like saying the same thing to that kid who tried Oxy after a couple years of serious abuse.In his mind there is no life
beyond the next fix.Even sucking dick
for it is preferable to not having the fix.The illness that sweeps you away when you detox is the essence of The
Fear.Even though you know the drug (or the job) is bad, or
it’s going to send you to a premature grave, the thought of NOT doing that
thing is too overwhelming.It’s the same
for the cubicle slave.You know the
escape is out there, but it feels so foreign and frightening, it’s not really
worth looking for.
I love how raw I was. I cranked out seven single spaced pages in under two hours. It was beautiful.
The next three days I spent diving at the Malapascua Dive Resort in
Cebu. It is one of the only places in the world where you can see
Thresher Sharks in the wild. I also dove the Dona Marilyn Shipwreck,
which was spooky and sad. For three full days I went barefoot, rode on
boats until I felt seasick on dry land and dove. The thought of not
wearing shoes for that long struck me as perfectly poetic after nearly
six years of abject misery behind a desk. Think about it. Have you
ever gone for three days without shoes and not felt like a completely
lazy fuck? I didn't feel like a lazy fuck. I didn't even think about
turning on my television, slept like a dead person and thought about how
lucky I am to be in a place where I can experience three special
days.
Then I got shingles and was sick for three weeks. You win some, you lose some. I have a bunch of stuff I want to write about, so let's hope this is the first of a flurry of blog posts in the coming days and weeks. It's good to be back!
