Princess Vespa and Company

Lone Starr: What is this?  I said 'take only what you need to survive...'
Princess Vespa: It's my industrial-strength hair-dryer, and I can't live without it!

Spaceballs (1987)                          



When I was young I went on a mission trip with my mom to Mexico*.  During the orientation, the trip organizers pounded the notion of the "Ugly American" into us.  "You do NOT want to be an Ugly American!"  They said this because even though we would only be two miles inside Mexico, we would find ourselves in another culture entirely, and we would encounter poverty like we'd never seen in our cushy, sheltered American lives.   

*Yes it's true.  Mom forced me to join her on a Christian mission.  Spending a week amongst Jesus-Lovin' Southerners in 120 degree heat wasn't a sunny prospect for 17-year-old me.  I whined and moaned for months beforehand.  This may be the only time in my life that either parent has ever forced me to do anything (other than the usual room cleaning and dishwashing that comes with becoming a contributing member of society).  She was right.  That trip (and the two subsequent ones I took during following summers) was one of the most profound experiences of my life.  I found that I could ignore the religion (no one expects a 17 year old boy to sing "Awesome God") and just appreciate doing something good for someone for no reason other than it is the right thing to do.

Last week I had to spend the night away from home with my coworkers for a series of lengthy meetings.  Two people who work on the project from our home office in the US flew over for these meetings.  In order protect the largely innocent, we'll call them Man and Woman. 

Princess Vespa is my new name for Man.  If the humor found in this monicker is lost on you, feel free to stop here and go watch Mel Brooks' 1987 classic Spaceballs (go ahead, I'll wait).  I’ve known a lot of soft and whiny people in my life, but I have never met a man as wimpy as him**.  During our one night stay he:

• complained at least a dozen times about the heat, but appeared at the meetings in a long-sleeved black shirt, black pants and black shoes, when he knew we would be standing outside for hours and hours.  You are not Al Pacino.  Or Johnny Cash for that matter.
• complained about the hotel we were booked in starting before we even checked in.  It was rustic, yes, but by no means crappy.  You would think we were staying in the Bates Motel the way he was dreading it.  This is a four-star beach resort, mind you.
• asked “what rooms are available” when we checked in, despite knowing that rooms had already been assigned before he came to town.  Then insisted on being shown his room before accepting it.  You're just going to have to take my word for it when I say there aren't any places nicer than this around.  There's not a Hampton Inn at the next exit.
• went through a laundry list of issues his room had last time to the front desk clerk.  He bitched breathlessly and at length while half a dozen people waited quietly behind him in line; as if we all don’t have these same issues; and they were keeping the “good western rooms” secret from him.  Bear in mind that these complaints came at the tail end of a day when I got up at 4:45am to make the 6:00 ferry and spent the next 14 hours either traveling or sitting in high-pressure meetings and presentations.
• The bathroom is open to the outside!
• I had to take a cold shower!
• My bed had mosquito netting!  There were mosquitos IN my room!
• The bathroom had live a gecko on the wall! 
• What kind of hotel has to provide guests a can of Raid inside their room?
• "This place is a fucking dump."

It was embarrassing to watch Man interact with the local Vietnamese.  It was like being nine years old, going to a friend's house to spend the night and having the friend get into a yelling match with his parents.  You (or at least I did at the time) want to crawl into a corner and die.   He complained loudly and continuously to us in front of the hotel staff, who all speak English; laughing about what a stupid and backward place it is at check-in, dinner, breakfast and checkout.  He did this while holding the four (FOUR!) bags he brought for a ten day trip.  He carried more luggage than Woman.  He had more bags than I brought when we moved to Vietnam (I had three). Dude, it’s VIETNAM.  It’s like this whole other culture.  This is a beach resort not a Courtyard by Marriott with Wi-Fi and desk lamps and plush carpeting and mattresses manufactured specfically for that particular hotel.  Frankly, I found the hotel to be a pleasant change of pace from the filing cabinet we live in in HCM.  It was kind of like going to camp on the beach.  The only thing missing was the campfire smell.  Here's a small list of things I noticed:

• My room was SILENT.  No cars, no people talking, no hammer drills or jack hammers - nothing.  If you live in a city, this is a big deal.
• The bathroom of my room was larger than most hotel rooms I've stayed in with a tub, separate stand up shower.  The bathroom was landscaped around the shower, between the shower itself and a tall cement wall.  No one could see in, but it was like standing alone in the jungle taking a hot shower.
• I was less than 100 yards from the ocean.
• My room had a porch where I could sit and enjoy a view of the ocean.
• We had dinner ON THE BEACH.  Not in an adjacent restaurant with an ocean view, but on the beach; sand under your toes, sea breezes, waves crashing, local seafood being grilled 10 feet away, and never ending tubs of icy cold beer.  Bug spray seemed like a fairly small price to pay for this spread.
• 20 yards from my room was a salt water pool (I didn't bring my suit, so the answer is no)
• It was all FREE - Eat as much as you want, drink as much as you want, sit as long as you want, it's on us.

My sense is that this we are intentionally put in a rustic place so that people are forced to leave their rooms and mingle with each other.  You put up with minor inconveniences so that you can appreciate the beauty of your surroundings.  Wouldn't you rather walk on the beach and make friends than sit in your hotel room, eat lukewarm room service and answer emails?

** I later heard a story that last month when Man and and Woman were here (no this is not their first time in Vietnam or staying at that particular resort), they almost missed their flight home because Man was waiting in his room for the valet to come and get his bags.  I wish I was making this up.  They were in town for seven days and he wouldn't lift his own bag.  Man is 6'-6" tall, at least 18" bigger than any Vietnamese person I've met in eight months, and he can't lift his own bag.

All of Man's complaints came only after we watched Woman have a tantrum when she realized "her" (not our) driver took the local guys back to their further away and less nice hotel with her luggage in the trunk of the car.  She was literally stomping around saying “what the fuck was he thinking?”  She was doing this in front of our whole team, plus the few guys from other companies that were still around.  Woman is a VP and head of her particular branch of the company.  Way to set an example for the local staff!  Her display was so childish that one of my colleagues also based in Vietnam turned to me and said, "I'm not riding in the car anywhere with that bitch.  I'd rather sleep in my office."  Her bag was an hour away.  This does not constitute an emergency.  You can actually wear the same thing to dinner that you wore to work (I did it and I felt fine the next morning).  Sure enough, once we got to the resort, she refused to leave her room and come to dinner until her bag returned and she could change into her “dinner outfit.” It ended up being a fortunate occurrence, because she was then able to make a grand entrance in front of everyone when she did finally appear (45 minutes late) at dinner.  

It was crazy to me how bad they were at traveling and adapting.  They looked ridiculous.  It was clear that the muckity-mucks from other companies who were also there for the meetings wanted nothing to do with either of them, and we too wound up looking ridiculous by proxy.  I cannot explain why we have the two highest-maintenance people in the home office working on the project that requires the most flexibility and “go-with-the-flow-ness.”  It’s fun to watch them struggle and refuse to adapt and overcome when no one else is around.  If outsiders are around then they (and by association, we) look like spoiled children.

I wasn't going to write about any of this.  It's not good to spread negative energy around, and frankly, I don't know who reads what I'm writing.  I decided to write about it because we are leaving on Saturday to spend three weeks in the US.  I am both excited and terrified.  I literally cannot wait to see my friends and family, to see our house and eat in our favorite old haunts (my heart gets racing and I can't sit still more than usual).  My fear is what if we don't like what we find when we return to America?  Culture shock works both ways, and I think we're in for a big one.  Since moving I've discovered a paradigm shift occuring inside me: 

We celebrate when things go smoothly rather than complain when things go wrong.

When was the last time you went to the store and felt excited when they had everything you wanted to buy?  I don't think I ever had until I moved here.  Things always go wrong here.  You learn to expect it, and then be pleasantly surprised when things go right.  Your priorities tend to shift when you determine success or failure by thinking, "I didn't get hurt" or "that didn't make me sick;" rather than, "I had to stand in line" or "traffic was bad."  Traffic is always bad.  You always have to stand in line.  There will always be a gecko or a roach or ants or mosquitos or some combination thereof in your room.    The first store rarely has everything you need.  You will get caught in the rain without a rain coat.  You will wade in calf deep water to get to work sometimes.  The motorbike is going to break down.  Someone will pass you and splash water all over your work clothes when you're 2 minutes from work.  This is called life, not inconvenience.  Shit happens.  It's a bumper sticker for a reason.  You can let it paralyze you; or you acknowledge it happened, shrug and move on.

I used to whine and moan about those inconveniences (and I still do sometimes), but more and more I find myself finding that even the bad things have a lot of good.  My hotel room had mosquitos I had to kill before I could get in my mosquito-netted bed.  There were geckos in the open air bathroom.  I have to take a cold shower two or three days a week when I'm sleeping in our house.   I had to get up at 4:30am to catch the ferry to sit in alternately hot and stressful, then cold and boring meetings for two days.  But I also saw this:

It's been a while since I set foot on American soil, but from what I can remember, people tend to sweat the small stuff.  Getting the wrong soda at the drive thru is a morning ruining issue.  I hope we don't find America to be any less amazing than it's become in my head after all this time.  Alternately, I hope we don't become "judgy expats," because I don't miss being bombarded by advertising every second I'm awake.  I don't miss the never-ending parade of lifted trucks, Affliction t-shirts*, faux hawks, muscle heads, trucker hats, Republicans (except my brother -love ya bro), skinny jeans, rhinestoned cowboy gear, country music, the word "ain't," McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, Subway, Macaroni Grill, Applebees, Chiles, TGIFridays, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Costco, Best Buy, Bed, Bath & Beyond.  There were moments when I longed for a few things on that list, but it's been months since it happened.   That American landscape is not what makes me excited about returning, and we're about to be dropped in the center of Instant Gratification Land -Las Vegas.  How will we react?  Will it be just like we remember, or will we be like so many slack-jawed foreign tourists we used to mock; both awed and disgusted by what we find?

*I literally just had to sit and think for a full minute to remember the name of those god-awful shirts.  Who pays $70 for a t-shirt? 

It would be easy to say, "Well it's only been eight months.  It's not like we've been gone eight years."  But I distinctly remember being shocked by the outsized everything in the US after spending just three weeks in Piedras Negras, Mexico, which is just two miles from the Texas border.  It's amazing that people can have so little and be so close to a place with so much.  Now I'm coming back after ten times that period and from 10,000 miles instead of 2.  I wonder if it will feel just as strange when I step of the airplane and think "this is home" as it did when I stepped off the plane eight months ago and thought "this is home." 

Stay tuned and find out.

Taxista

Dear Silence,

This hasn't been a very strange week.  There have been developments, but none that I can comment on here.  I can tell you that the vast majority of my work week was spent riding in a car to and from meetings (3 hours each way).  After living here for eight months (happy anniversary to me), riding in a car has become something of a novelty.  I'm not counting taxis, because taxis are weird, covered in plastic like a 50s couch and smell like popcorn.

This popcorn smell is one of two things I can't explain about taxis.  It's not a good smell either, although I'm not really a fan of the smell of popcorn anyway.  I'm fine with eating it, but something about the smell of your kitchen after popping a fresh bag in the microwave is nauseating to me.  Only the microwave kind, not the stove kind.  My guess is this stomach turning feeling stems from a day in middle school when I scrapped all the plastic butter left in the empty bag out and ate it while watching MTV.  I then spent the next 12 hours vomiting and losing the will to live.  The fact that my mom had the same virus before me had no bearing on my connection between plastic microwave popcorn butter and gut-tearing heaves and uncontrollable tears. 

The inside of a taxi smells like if you took that barrel of popcorn you received as a Christmas present from some company representative with whom you have occasional dealings*, ate half of it, put the lid on and let it sit in a humid garage for a few months. It's a smell you can feel in the back of your throat.  When we first moved, I actually felt under the seat for an opened bag of kettle corn trying to figure out what it was**.  There was nothing there.

*These are the only people that give flavored popcorn as gifts, right?  Nothing says "I have no idea who you are or what you actually enjoy" quite like a greasy, keg divided into a pie of butter, cheese and caramel popcorn.  It's not a complaint, just an observation.  I can throw down on some cheddar cheese popcorn.

**Which totally brings me to my favorite Vietnamese taxi freshener: the pineapple.  This is not a little cardboard cut-out that dangles from your rearview mirror, but a very real and very sad looking pineapple rolling around the floorboards of your vehicle.  So if you're looking for an environmentally friendly car-freshener, I highly recommend chucking a pineapple in the back seat and letting it age.  You'll be shocked how good it smells, until it doesn't.

The other thing I can't explain is the Hennessy Cannon.  Protective dashboard ornaments are something of a requirement for cars here.  I understand the idea behind Buddha on your dash, but have no idea what the significance of a mini-bottle of cognac in a rolling holder made to look like a cannon and stuck to the dashboard of a moving vehicle holds.   I've sat in the front seats of a number of taxis with this particular ornament and studied it, but still cannot discern what it does.  Perhaps it's there in case you're in a jam at happy hour, or if you have a close encounter with a bus.  I suppose you never know when you might need a soul fortifying shot that can only satisfy the needs of iced out hip-hop artists and Vietnamese taxi drivers.  I have never ever thought to myself, "I could really go for some warm cognac that's been sitting on a sunny dashboard for six months right now*." 

*In fact, I've only had Hennessey one time.  It is my personal philosophy that liquor should be enjoyed with only one mixer: ice.  After one sip of a glass "Henny" as the rappers call it, I poured 3/4 of a can of Sprite into my glass.  I don't even like Sprite, but it helped that foul devil-spawned beverage. 

And here's the strange thing:  I seem to be the only person who finds the Hennessy Cannon strange.  Everyone I've mentioned it to has either never noticed it, or doesn't care enough to ask why it's there or what purpose it serves.  Being an industrious fellow who spends 8-10 hours a day sitting in front of a computer, I Googled that shit.  NOTHING.  I couldn't get an image searching for "hennessey cannon" or "hennessey dash ornament" or "hennessey car ornament" or "hennessey air freshener."  Although I was treated to a healthy dose of candy cars, random freaky porn and strange looking people (how do you do it internet?).  Even the world wide web, where useless information goes to mold, doesn't care enough about the Hennessy Cannon to bother explaining it.  I couldn't find one reference to a Hennessy Cannon in or outside a Vietnamese taxi.  I suppose that it's not all that important if I didn't immediately feel compelled to take a photo of it either.  In fact, once I stopped to think how weird it was, I stopped seeing them.  The Hennessey Cannon has become something of a Vietnamese unicorn for me because so many people give me a crazy look when I mention it.  At least now it's on the internet, so the next person won't feel weird, alone and isolated like I do.  I'm doing my part.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say it is an air freshener.  It probably is.  It answers the function question, but creates many more questions.  Why is it a Hennessey bottle and not some other adult beverage (Smirnoff Ice Car Freshener anyone)?  Why is it set up to look like a cannon, when it could just sit on the dash like a normal bottle?  If you buy it to make your taxi smell fresh, why do all taxis smell like nasty old microwaved popcorn?

Am I missing something here?  I think getting to the bottom of this mystery is as good a reason as any to learn Vietnamese.  If you know anything about the origins of the Hennessey Cannon dash ornament please share it with me. 

When I started writing this I was writing an introduction to post a story I wrote in August.  I guess that will have to wait for another day.

The Decline of Civilization

Ha! I bet you were thinking, "well it was fun while it lasted, but he's run out of things to write after one month."  No sir I have not run out of things to write or say.  The truth of the matter is that the semi-beloved laptop on which I write these posts went viral on Tuesday night.  Not viral in the good I-got-a-million-hits-on-YouTube way either, but the soul crushing, losing everything you didn't know you loved way.  I thought that people only got virii on their computers when they looked at creepy porn.  Well they don't.  Apparently they also lurk in innocent looking worksheets used to teach youngsters the parts of the microscope.  I guess the joke is on me because my laptop is now a brick until I can get it back to the US.

Which brings me to this:

In a world where we need to put "Do Not Attempt" disclaimers in commercials showing cars skidding around on ice is it really a good idea to put this on a product that is applied to one's body?  Not to mention that this is not EXTREME deodorant, it's Old Spice.  I'm not twelve.  I don't need to be entertained with amusing visuals while applying the deodorant in the morning.  What's more troubling is that someone got paid actual money to write this.  I can just picture a bunch of guys sitting around a room trying to figure out how to write a catchy description of deodorant and coming up with this.  My guess is that the original one said that the "stench monsters" were replaced with " fresh, clean scent elves" when some suit who makes money per year than I will see in my lifetime read it.

"'Scent Elves?"
"Yes it's funny." replies the midlevel executive who wrote it.
"It's not funny, it's gay.  Our product is marketed as MANLY."
"Well what if the 'scent elves' were 'masculine,' 'masculine scent elves'."
"Yeah that's better."

I like to wear Old Spice because it is ridiculous, but I'm not down with it being ridiculous like this.  I miss the days when nothing was EXTREME.  Apparently even here in the third world it cannot be avoided.

I suppose I should congratulate the Old Spice executives because they just got me to repost a picture of their product on my blog... Good job guys. 

We're all doomed.

Amusing Weekend Photos



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