The TatVeg does not apologize for his prolonged absence. He has been out of town and busy having his spirit crushed by work. Despite having only a few weeks more to go until the end of this god-forsaken project and with the future looking semi-bright, he still finds it difficult to drag himself out of bed in the morning to face another day of interacting with people who refer to him with niceties such as, "pathetic" or "space cadet" or "screw up" or "failure." After two years of hearing it almost daily, it's difficult to not let a little of it sink in.
Plus one of the tenants of this blog is that I only write in it as a passive aggressive way to stick it to the man when I should be working. I haven't had a lot of opportunities to do the appropriate sticking because I've been so busy being condescended to and belittled to find the time. It ain't easy being a tattooed vegetarian in the white collar world.
What? You thought I was just a vegetarian with tattoos? That it was just a catchy name? I live that shit. Am I the only one that thinks that garlic clove kinda looks like balls? I'm probably going to regret pointing that out publicly...
Consequently I've had to find other means to express my dissidence. I've stopped clocking in and out of the office. Have grown a beard -and told the world I won't shave until the project is finished. Am sitting at my desk in a t-shirt and what I lovingly refer to as my "weekend pants." And plan to leave the office today four hours early.
According to my friend James, this look makes me appear more approachable.
I do still look for the little things though
If you can decipher the meaning of this shirt, please let me know.
Or the big things:
The view from my beer on Thursday evening
Despite the fact that it's been a somewhat dark holiday season,
at least the world didn't end on the 21st and I still have bicycles to ride, despite not having time to, you know ride them (yet). I encourage you to find a comfy spot in your life-sized foil-barn-manger scene complete with plastic savior (chained down, of course, for the sake of security).
Crack open a cool can of Bird's Nest and think about all the good things you do have.
Made from real bird's nests! Good for health
Like live chickens in a wicker bag.
I'm sure it's cozy in there. Chickens love boats , but you already knew that
Perhaps you could call your friends over for lunch and a relaxing "friend nap." They'll love it!
You'll be thrilled you kept that refrigerator box handy
Or maybe you could invite them over to try out that new chair you got for Christmas
No, seriously. This is what the elephant wanted.
There's really no reason to be alone on the holidays
And try not to think about the failures of this year
But focus on the things that make us smile
Leave the bad times in the past
Learn from your mistakes and focus on doing better next time
And above all:
I only wanted the "stay alive no matter what occurs!" part of this clip. It's way too long. But it does remind me of a story.
I saw this movie (Last of the Mohicans -or LotM if you're a hipster) at the Classic Triple movie theater for 99 cents in 1992. I went with a guy friend named Chris, who drove us in his 26-foot long Buick and a certain girl who will remain nameless. The girl and eye held sweaty hands all the way through the 2+ hour epic, and then made out in the back seat of Chris's Buick all the way home. This is notable because I managed to regain full movement of my hand, which was locked in a half-fist from the hand-holding marathon and touched a real-live boob for the first time. Ah, the memories.... Thank you Daniel Day-Lewis.
From that experience I learned this made prime make-out music. It was good from about 1993 until about 1998. Now the ladies just laugh if you put it on and try to set a mood. Does that make me old?
Twenty years has gone by fast.... Listening to that now it's a wonder any girl ever talked to me, let alone allowed me to touch her boob.
Interestingly enough, I had a major falling out with that girl about six months later when I learned she had also enjoyed some time in the backseat of Chris's car with Chris himself. This was done while I was grounded for staying out past curfew so I could make out with her in the back seat of my car. We didn't speak for more than ten years, and I quietly despised her from afar. Then I ran into her and her new husband at our ten year high school reunion. I took a lot of pleasure saying "no" when they propositioned me and tried to get my date and I to come back to their house for some "group activities." Revenge is sweet. And if you're shocked by that, what kind of behavior do you expect from a girl whose parents were both psychologists?
Last Saturday I sat at home and wrote a lousy blog post where I spent nearly an hour thinking up, and then alphabetizing the names of strippers*. As I engaged in that activity, I was listening to what I like to call "shit pop." Katy Perry, Flo Rida and other pop songs that have little to no redeeming value**. They exist only to get stuck in your head so you can have the same hook loop in your mind for a 90km bike ride. Anyway, I was listening to the song "Whistle" by Flo Rida while our maid, Ms. T, hovered around the room cleaning the floor**.
*How could I have possibly forgotten the other Eastern European standby stripper name, Natasha? I'm slipping in my old age...
*I realize that this music is something of a weakness for me. I know I should hate it, but, just like my new Hello Kitty iPhone cover, I love it because I shouldn't.
**Maybe the most yuppie sentence I've ever written here. The fact that we have a maid is somewhat embarrassing simply because we would never even consider this sort of thing in America. If you can't keep your own house clean, get a smaller house. I get it. The problem is that in order to live in the neighborhood we wanted to live in, we either had to have a too large house, or live in a closet. We went for the slightly too large house and hired someone to help us keep it clean.
Here is the song in question:
I think it's safe to say that Ms. T has saved our sanity and our relationship. For the first six months or so in our slightly too large house, Reyna and I would spend 2/3 of our Saturdays cleaning and doing laundry. It sucked. Now we have time to do other things, like write lame blog posts on the weekends. Although it is a little embarrassing to have a mid 50s woman doing household chores while we sit on the couch and watch television, Ms. T doesn't seem to care. I'm pretty sure she loves working for us simply because we are American and she loves all things American. It might also be because we pay her more than we probably should, but I'll chalk that up to our "western guilt." But I digress.
As the song (this was a post about a song, remember?) faded out, Ms. T stopped cleaning, turned to me and we had the following exchange:
MT: I like that song. It's my favorite song. Next week can I bring a USB* and get the song from you?
Me: Sure. Do you have an email address? I can just email it to you if you want.
MT: No. No email.
Me: Do you have a computer?
MT: No
*She couldn't remember the word for USB, but I figured it out from her charades. Her English is not great, but it's a hell of a lot better than our Vietnamese. Also, what I wrote aren't her exact words. I am simply quoting the intent, because to write it like she speaks would make her appear stupid or slow, which she absolutely is not.
The questions came in waves that went something like this. I asked none of them, but have been plagued by them since our exchange.
How does one listen to a song saved onto a jump drive without a computer? I can just picture little 54-year-old Ms. T sitting in an internet cafe rocking out to Flo Rida while all the gamers stop their first-person shooters to stare at her.
Does Ms. T have a full understanding of what the song is actually about?
Is Flo Rida capable of writing an international hit song that isn't about getting blown?
I guess the answer to that last question is yes..... sort of.
It's come to this. Blogging on a Saturday. I spend a lot of time traveling these days. My current weekly schedule has me working at the project site four days a week and making the trek between home and job site three times per week. Traveling to the site gives me plenty of time to think thoughts. I'll share some with you now:
There Is Only One Strip Club DJ in America: Don't get me wrong, I haven't been in a strip club in a long time, but there was a time shortly after I moved to Las Vegas that I went regularly. The one thing I vividly remember is that every single strip club DJ has the same voice. During that time I also visited strip clubs in various cities in America for no particular reason other than to verify this theory. You know how a pop star like Katy Perry will spend a day doing radio spots for 1000 different radio stations? Saying something like, "I'm Katy Perry, and when I'm in Scranton and looking for continuous hits all day I tune my dial to [Pop-a-Lock 107, Hot Jamz 93, The Freakinator 92.3, The Pit, The Fox, Grinder 108, Power 99, Club Bomb 92, Pinky, The Brain, The Hustle, Hot Dropz, The Drip, The Mechanic, The Jerk, Teen Rager 95, etc.] Scranton's only station playing music that doesn't suck. " It's the same way at strip clubs except that every guy has the same voice.
"Good evening and welcome to [Treasures, Deja Vu, Palamino, Crazy Horse, Cheetah, Toppers, Chelsea's, Scores, Sapphire, Scuttlebutt, Eden, Spearmint Rhino, etc.]. We have the sexiest ladies in [Atlanta, Vegas, Chicago, New York, Birmingham, Memphis, Rockledge, Fargo, etc.] coming to the stage right now. [Amber, Angel, Ashley, Angelina, Angela, Apple, Beth, Brandy, Clarissa, Charity, Chastity, Chance, Christy, Crystal, Charlie, Casey, Daniella, Danielle, Daisey, Foxie, Frannie, Gabriella, Grace, Gracie, Helga, Irina*, Iris, Janet, Jane, Janice, Kittie, Kammi, Lonnie, (Juicy) Lucy, Macy, Mandi, Melinda, Marissa, Miranda, Misty, Mary, Na-Na, Nikki, Natalie, Opal, Pearl, Penny, Penny Lane, Petunia, Precious**, Patience, Rose, Rosie, Rain, Rebecca, Roberta, Sarah, Serenity, Sam, Samantha, Shawna, Shanaya, Shanda***, Shannon, Sadie, Tiffany, Tijuana, Tanaya, Toni-With-An-I, Tony-With-A-Y, Tonya, Tiny, Ulga, Victoria, Vikki, Veronica, Vivian, Yolanda, Zap, and Zippy] to the stage please. Coming to the stage right now, give it up for ...Michelle" And out comes Michelle with her bedazzled bra, thong and mostly blank expression for a three song set, which will inevitably include this song:
*Exclusively reserved for Eastern Europeans
**I'm going to assume this name has lost popularity since 2010...
***Yep, I went there
Wouldn't it be amazing if there was just one guy who did all the DJ voice-overs for every strip club in America, spending his life in a recording studio. How do you get that job? What do the clubs do when that guy gets too old to record the spots? These are the questions that plague me while sitting on the ferry between HCM and Vung Tau. I want to believe the recordings occasionally devolve into this [NSFW]:
Check out this brilliant sign:
How did they misspell the most important instance of "standby" on the whole sign, but get it right everywhere else? Proofreading, people. Perhaps they have a different person doing the writing for each font? Do you think that person got in trouble? My favorite part is the near miss in the third dashed rule, "First priority: who had prepared loose, Women, children, Old." I've never prepared any loose versions of women, children or old people and frankly the idea that I have is a little insulting. I found myself a little sad that they'd actually punctuated correctly. And sorry old people, you'll just have to sit at the waiting area until the next ferry because you aren't getting a standby ticket this time. I also like that Women and Children are treated as different. So they'll let the woman on, but her child has to stay behind with grandma because there's only one seat left? Does the sluttiness of the woman's outfit carry any weight in the decision-making process? And how does one define "old?" There's no age listed, so I might be considered old if the boat was filled with a middle school field trip. What if you're sixty but appear younger? I feel like this sign creates a lot more questions than it answers.
If I need to meet the Director or Vice Director, how will I recognize him/her? If I call the phone number listed, how will I know if I'm bothering him/her at home on a Friday afternoon, or waking him/her up in the morning before my 6:15 departure time?
In addition, why are they saying I should be prepared with loose change? I've never had "loose change" in my pocket since I moved here. There are only two coins* that I've seen and neither of them are useful for buying anything. This tells me the sign has been here since the days of loose change in Vietnam. That had to have been a while ago...
*The dreaded 5000 and 2000 Dong coins. Whenever I receive one, I feel like the giver is just saying "F You" without having to actually say the words out loud. The few that I have sit in a pile in my bureau collecting dust.
Shout-out to Maria. Thanks for reading and showing this to other people. I appreciate it. Maybe someday we'll meet. Today's song is for you. Pay special attention to how much shorter he is than every video girl. If he is on screen with a girl they are always shooting him at extreme close-up or from a low angle to make him look taller. Also, when has a rapper ever played air keyboard in a video? Learn to dance, Pitbull....
I also enjoy that when the camera is on his face for more than a second,
they cut off his head because he's bald. Bald guys are not generally
regarded as international lovers.
I couldn't make out the OSHA safety label on the stool from this distance, but I'm certain it was there. This level of danger seems excessive for a circline fluorescent. Am I the only one that thinks that? Yes? Okay...
At least one country gets the title in the ballpark....
I imagine this has led to at least one awkward encounter
I think it's perfectly acceptable to use an unexpired credit card as a luggage tag. What?
We had to overcome some minor logistical details to get grandma and her motorized scooter down the boat ramp, but we managed. Just be careful which end you step on and you'll be fine. That wood was inspected and is rated for at least 215lbs. All Aboard!
On Saturday Reyna and I went out for a date. We went to The Deck, a fancy restaurant in our neighborhood. We had a reservation to sit outside on the river, which is the best spot for a romantic dinner. In order to get to our table, we had to walk through the entire restaurant, including a table containing a family. At the family table they had an enormous set of binoculars sitting on a tripod next to their table. Ostensibly the binoculars were so the four children, who appeared to all be under under the age of five, could look at the passing ships out on the river. The binoculars, however, were set at adult height, not kid height*. Not to mention that it was already dark, our reservations being at 8pm. Strange.
*Did I feel compelled to kick it over when we walked by? Yes I did... I'm not sure what that says about me**, but it's the truth.
**I know exactly what it says about me. It says, "there are 50,000 other places to get your binoculars out and watch ships pass in this city, perhaps you could take your brood to one of those"***
***That could be the meanest thing I've ever written here.
Once we sat down, I found myself facing the family table. Watching the parents interact with the kids got me to wondering why a parent would ever bring a little kid to a place like The Deck. How do those conversations go?
Mom [to her 4 year old son]: Okay sweetie, would you rather have the Char Grilled Lamb Fillet Kushiyaki or the Pan Seared Seabass with Balsamic Teriyaki sauce? The Caramalized Salmon Infused with Galangal sounds good too doesn't it?
Child [Plays with action figures and babbles incoherently]
Mom: Maybe for starters you can get the Roast Duck Watermelon Cashew Salad! I was thinking maybe we could split the Seared Tuna Nori Rolls and the side of Bok Choi with Shitake Mushrooms in Oyster Sauce. I know you like the Coriander Ginger Prawn with Sweet Thai Chilli Sauce here, so we'll get that too. Would that be alright? Maybe for dessert we can have the Trio Creme Brulee... I just love that Earl Grey Creme Brulee, don't you??
GAAAAAAH!
It's a fair assumption that this exchange happened three more times before we arrived.
Why not take advantage of the fact that kids enjoy eating Spaghetti-O's*, grilled cheese and PB&J? Isn't food one semi-inexpensive thing about having a kid? Consider the fact that two meals for an adult, plus a couple hours of baby sitting probably cost about the same (or possibly less!) than an evening out with the children at a $30 a plate restaurant. Plus it comes with the added benefit of not receiving dirty looks and incredulous stares from other patrons who are out trying to have a quiet (read: special) evening. The whole thing brings up even deeper questions such as: if you can afford to buy a meal for a family of 6 at The Deck, then you can afford to have a live in Nanny who cooks and watches the kids while you go out and have a romantic Saturday dinner. Was it her night off? I don't have a problem with acclimating your child to the finer things in life, but perhaps do it on a Wednesday?
*Is it just me or do Spaghetti-O's smell just like vomit? Just me? Let's move on...
On Tuesday night I had dinner at site with my coworkers. One of my coworkers recently got married, and his now-wife comes to Vung Tau to spend time with him. This means she comes to dinner. I have no problem with this, she is a friendly person. What was odd was that she ordered steak, and when it came, my coworker took the plate and cut her steak up for her. Is she six? Can she not be trusted to handle a steak knife without opening an artery? If a grown woman can't cut her own steak, then perhaps she shouldn't be ordering it. I half expected to see him chew it for her and then regurgitate it into her mouth like a baby bird.
Yes, I am perfectly aware that this is originally a Clash song. Doesn't mean I can't like this version.
It's not that the TatVeg hasn't been writing. He just hasn't been writing here. I've been getting up early to write in a journal at the kitchen table like a damn hipster for the last month. There is very little in this world that will make you feel more like a teenage girl than keeping a journal. But that's exactly what I've been doing. All I need is a heart-shaped key that I wear in a locket around my neck that I use to unlock a brass clasp on my diary and the transformation would be complete. Part of my idiotic ramblings have been pathetic attempts to write fiction. The other part has been bitching about work in ways that I can't do in a public forum such as this. But things have happened! So I'll sit in this haze of gasoline fumes and tell you about them. Why are you sitting in a haze of gasoline fumes you ask? Because the cleaning lady in our office is using it to remove spots from the glass beside my desk. I guess she's unfamiliar with Windex....
The Time I Almost Died: Two weeks ago we had a new driver taking us from the ferry terminal in Vung Tao to the site office. I was riding with a coworker in the backseat of the car. He was sitting behind the driver and I was sitting behind the passenger seat. As I've mentioned once or twice traffic here is chaotic, but chaotic in a way that is generally predictable. Plus after more than 18 months of fighting it every day, my nerves have been hardened from the hundreds of close calls I see and experience every week. As we turned onto a new road, the driver, my coworker and me, were greeted by a small box truck passing a dump truck on a two lane road. So the small box truck was coming towards us in the same lane. This is not unusual behavior for trucks here. The problem was that the box truck wasn't making much progress in its endeavor to pass the dump truck. We slowed down as the distance between the box truck and us decreased. Soon we were stopped in the road as the box truck flashed its lights and honked at us, still unable to overtake the dump truck. My coworker began to inch closer towards me, so that he would at least be on the non-direct-impact side of the vehicle. He was almost in my lap when the box truck was finally able to overtake the dump truck and swerve back into the correct lane. The truck missed our immobile car by less than a six inches and was travelling at least 70km and hour. Our vehicle shook in the air currents created by the passing car. We all removed our hearts from our throats, reswallowed our breakfasts and continued on our way.
The Time I Was Lucky To Not Die From Exposure: The following weekend I participated in a charity bicycle ride from my house to Ho Tram, a 130km distance. I did it for the kids. We have to think about them. Anyway, I was having a fine time riding with a group of friendly riders. We'd covered about 60km of the ride when I got a flat tire. I shouted to the group, but I guess no one could hear me over the wind in their ears and lively banter because they sped off into the distance and out of sight. I stood alone and grumbling on the side of the road and changed the tube. As I worked with a curious Vietnamese man watching my every move* I considered getting in a taxi and going home. The thought of doing the second half of the ride alone was not appealing. Plus it was hot. Like incredibly hot. It's funny how you don't particularly notice the heat when you're moving on a bicycle, but the moment you stop, the sweat starts pouring. I had just about decided to pack my bike into a taxi and head home in air conditioned comfort when I remembered that my wallet, along with $300 or so, ID and credit cards was bouncing in the back of a support vehicle somewhere on the road to the final destination. With the tire fixed, I remounted my bicycle and slogged onward. It's a lot harder to ride quickly when you are alone. There's no one around to talk with and help you forget about the suffering your legs are enduring. This does not happen when you ride alone. If you are suffering you simply conduct an internal Socratic dialogue between your rational mind and your suffering body. I was ensconced in this dialogue while passing through Ba Ria, about 30km from my destination when I heard a pop from my rear wheel. I slowed to a stop and prayed I hadn't punctured again, as I only had brought one spare tube and one spare CO2 canister for my pump. The tire didn't appear to be deflating. I thanked a nameless, faceless deity and continued my journey. But as I pressed onward, I noticed the bike was growing increasingly difficult to control. The back end seemed to be fishtailing, which is a tell-tale sign of a flat. The tire wasn't flat, but it was slowly, painstakingly deflating and I was powerless to stop it. The sun was climbing ever higher in the sky and temperatures threatened to cross 100 degrees. I slowed my roll down to under 20km/hr to keep the bike under control. At 5km to go I couldn't go any faster than 15km/hr. With 3km to go I decided I had to walk. I walked about 100m until two guys on mountain bikes approached me from behind. One of them had a pump, but Murphy's Law of Bike Pumps states, "Whenever you are desperate for a pump and someone appears with one, it will be for the wrong valve type." His pump was type Schraeder, and therefore useless for me. He was nice enough to pedal and chat with me as I wrestled my bike over the last 3km. The tire finally gave out about 200m from the end of the ride and I walked the bike the rest of the way. I was lucky. The ride destination is in the boonies, far from help and on a road that has very little traffic. I had about two swallows of water left in my bottles when I arrived.
*He was downright amazed that I had everything with me to fix the problem. He was especially enthralled with my pump which is is smaller than my thumb.
Things You Can't Unsee: Many evenings spent in Vung Tao go like this:
Arrive at hotel, change clothes.
Meet in hotel parking lot for dinner
Go to dinner
TatVeg returns to the hotel to sleep while "single" coworkers go out to girly bars for "drinks."
#4 happened recently and I left my coworkers on the curb outside the restaurant and took a taxi alone back to the hotel. When I got in the car the next morning I found my Coworker in a giggly mood. As we bounced along in the car he whipped out his phone and showed me a series of photos that went something like this (bear in mind that I am viewing only minutes after finishing breakfast at seven in the morning.):
Our 64-year old colleague being attacked by girls who appear to be less than one third his age. He is smiling and mugging for the camera
64-YOC stands rooted in the same spot, only this time with no shirt on. #Swaggy*
64-YOC stands rooted in the same spot, only this time wearing only boxer briefs. Navy Blue if you must know. (It's seared into my brain....)
64-YOC stands rooted in the same spot completely naked. The butt cheeks, my friend, are blowing in the wind. At this point his facial expression could be described as "the drunk version of the 1000-yard stare."
64-YOC, still naked with his saggy ass in plain view of the camera motorboating a young lady seated on the bar while a crowd of cheering people observe. The Horror, The Horror
* That's me being all hip and Twitter-riffic even though I haven't tweeted in months** and have never used a hashtag.
**Thanks for not following me... jerks
When I regained the ability to speak I said, "I guess he better be nice to you from now on." My coworker turned to me and got very serious. We then had the following exchange.
Him: "Yeah, I already told him we are getting separate tabs at the bar from now on"
Me: "Why is that?"
Him: "Because our tab was eighteen million* and he only had four million with him. I had to pay for the rest."
Me: "And you guys wonder why I never come out with you.... I think I might actually die if I ran up a $900 bar tab in Vietnam"
*VND 18,000,000 = US$900. I can't actually explain to you how it is possible to have a $900 bar tab in Vietnam. To lend a little perspective on that amount of money consider the following. On my birthday in 2011, we bought drinks and snacks for a dozen people all night and our tab was VND3,000,000, or $150. Our tab included at least 20 glasses of wine, dozens of cocktails and more than 30 beers, plus pizza and other munchies for all. This was three guys in one evening. It would be incredible if it wasn't so awful.
Death by Fried Rice: There are only three places to eat near the site where I work every week: a beach restaurant (known as The Beach), Sanctuary, and a local resort called Ven Ven. I normally vote to go to Sanctuary even though it is three times more expensive than the other two places simply because there is only so much rice and morning glory one TatVeg can consume in any given week. Recently, however, I discovered that Ven Ven has some mighty tasty Garlic Fried Rice, so it is back on the green light list for site lunching. The first time I ordered the GFR it came on a tiny plate. It was like a side order of rice, not enough for a meal. So yesterday when we went back I asked for two orders of GFR. A plate came with a portion of rice that appeared to be double the size of what I'd gotten on the previous visit. The TatVeg was pleased. Then, to my surprise, another equally large plate of GFR arrived at our table. Now instead of twice the original portion, I had been given four times what I actually required. I did my best, but could only eat about 1-1/4 plates of GFR. The rest went in the trash I'm sorry to say. Now I have no idea what to order next time...
Capturing A Unicorn:
You'll have to enlarge the photo to see it, but sitting on the dash of that car is the long sought Hennessey Cannon. You thought I forgot didn't you? And yes, I was driving the motorbike when I snapped the photo.
And the same week I managed to capture the long sought after Pineapple Air Freshener. Can you see it? It's right there in the little triangle window above the air conditioning vent. This one had lost most of it's pineappl-i-ness from sitting in the sun all the time I'm sorry to report.
I am now going to attempt to use allegory to tell you the story of my week. You see I've done my best to keep the details of my professional life off the Internets. Most of the time this is a struggle because at times it feels like I've stumbled into some kind of alternate universe. It's not because I have a dearth of material that I don't write here more, often I can't because of the nature of my business.
The people across the street acquired two puppies recently. Our street is narrow. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 hours a day the dog is either whining like it's being savagely beaten, or it's barking a bark that vibrates your brain. In America houses have things like "yards" and "insulation." This is not the case in our neighborhood. Their front porch is about twelve feet from our front door even though they live across the street. When I lived in the US and a dog barked incessantly I would think to myself, "maybe you should take that goddamned dog in the house." And then I would wonder how they were able to live with themselves, let alone sleep soundly, subjecting the wider world to the hellish racket at 3am. I've never been inside their house, but I'm willing to bet it has a lot less bark-worthy stimuli than the outside filled with nocturnal creatures. Also consider the fact that even if I was the type of guy that yells out the window to shove a sock down the throat of their shitty pet, they don't speak English. Besides, even if they did bring the dog in, then they'd have to sleep in the same room with a dog that whines and barks 22 hours a day. Currently the neighbors all want to stomp on the dog's face with a hobnail boot*, but for the owners there is at least a pane of glass between the offending animal and them. Pane of glass is preferable. This speaks to a wider mentality. Even if what I'm doing drives you completely insane, or is highly unethical and wrong; if it's easier than doing something the right way, then that's the way it will be done.
When I went across the street with our neighbor to translate that we couldn't sleep because of their dog, the exchange went something like this.
Me: Hey, I was just wondering if there was something you could do about your dog. It barks a lot at night and we can't sleep. Neighbor-With-Dog-I'd-Like-Dead [Roughly translated using my own understanding of the gestures and tones Vietnamese people employ]: What?! Me: Umm... Well your dog... it barks.... all night. NWDI'dLD [Smiling]: What the fuck is your problem? You knew when you moved into this neighborhood that people keep annoying pets*. Suck it up, white boy. This is your problem. Deal with it. Any other neighbor that comes here and complains I'm going to tell them the exact same thing. Fuck off. Me: Ohhkay.... I didn't realize this was something that involved yelling. NWDI'dLK: I said FUCK OFF!
*There is some truth to that statement -dogs and chickens being the most common, but you don't have to be a dick about it.
I suppose my only hope is that the dogs are only being kept for consumption sometime in the very near future. It is Mid-Autumn Festival time here in Vietnam...
The End*.
*Part of this story was made up to make the allegory a little more...allegorical?
I feel compelled to tell you a story that didn't happen to me. Reyna might write about it, but I don't think there's a lot of overlap in our respective blog audiences. I'm certain that my details will be inaccurate, so we'll call this fiction, but the central action of the story actually happened. Here we go.
Imagine that you're sitting at an airport gate waiting for your flight to board. It's been a long day of travelling. This is the final leg of the trip after, not one, but two eight hour layovers. One in Athens, Greece and one here in Bangkok. All in all, it's been a thirty-plus hour day of flying and you feel like you might be coming down with a cold. Morale is rather low, and you just want to crawl into bed and sleep for 14 hours before you have to get up and go to work tomorrow. Only a two hour flight and a thirty minute taxi ride stand in your way. Also, once you're on the flight, you'll be away from the mother and her chubby 4-ish year old child sitting next to you at the gate. The kid has been messily chomping on a bag of potato chips, talking with his mouth open, spraying chip crumbs around the seating area, licking his greasy fingers and whining at his mother since they unfortunately sat down next to you.
People are starting to stand and mill around the flight attendant desk, like they do when a flight is preparing to board. You check around to make sure you have your belongings policed and ticket prepared for scanning or ripping while you wait for your zone number to be called. Just then you hear the child redouble his whining to his mother. Even though they aren't speaking English, you can tell what the child is trying to say. The language of a child needing to pee is pretty much universal. The translation aided by the child, who is standing on the seat adjacent to yours holding his crotch as he bends and whines. You can see that Mom is doing mental time calculations as the scene unfolds. This is the moment where you begin to regret the fact that you hold a coach ticket.
The mother digs in the seat next to her and retrieves the recently emptied chip bag. You feel a fear that what was once a benign, if noisy, chip bag destined for the nearest trashcan upon rising to board is now being prepped for a new purpose. You hear the foil crinkle as she un-crumples the bag and sticks her hand in to open the top as wide as possible. She holds it in front of the child, still standing on the adjacent seat, who pulls his pants down to his ankles and proceeds to piss in the bag.
At the gate.
Of an international airport.
In the capitol of Thailand.
You hear the pitter-patter on the foil packaging as it accepts its new cargo and cringe in your seat. You try to block from your mind the thought that a child's bare ass hovers less than a foot from your face. If he was startled by gunfire or one of those beeping people movers and suddenly turned, your eye or ear could be in the line of fire. The mother wears a focused look as she attempts to minimize the splash-back, but otherwise appears perfectly placid --a mild look on her face. This is perfectly normal.
When the boy finishes his business, Mom carefully folds the bag over neatly to keep the contents from spilling. She then walks over to the garbage can and chucks the bag in. When she returns, she takes the child's hand and goes to wait in the boarding line, leaving you with a new experience and a story.
Here are the questions I asked, in order, after Reyna told me this story.
"Was it a Big Grab* bag of chips?" Apparently it wasn't. It was one of those tiny bags of chips like they hand out in elementary schools; or the one that comes in your office boxed lunch and contains about six chips. You have to admire the conviction of the mother on this point. She had the stones to hold a vessel that was potentially too small to perform this new and unintended function.
*Is it just me or is the Big Grab in the US now what was once a "normal" sized bag of chips? Am I crazy on this one? I remember in high school a Big Grab would pretty much max out my chip threshold. Now it's like a warm-up. I swear they've gotten smaller. Or... maybe I've gotten bigger. I suppose that's possible too.
"What kind of chips were in the bag?" I'm not sure why I needed to know this information. It seemed relevant at the time. For some reason, it seems funnier with Fritos, or Funyuns. I'm not sure why.
"Did anyone say anything?" No. No one said a word to mother or child. I spend a fair amount of time in airports, but not loads, so I can't speak with much authority on the subject, but I've never seen this before. I have a hard time believing that this is a behavior that people assimilate. I've gotten used to a lot of weird shit since moving to Aisa, but a child pissing in a potato chip bag at an airport gate is not one of them. I suppose there's nothing you can really do about it. I mean, by the time you realize what's going on, it's really too late to stop it. The last thing you want to do is interrupt a peeing child. That's just begging to have your day, shoes, or pants-suit ruined.
"Did any spill?" Sadly and somewhat inexplicably, Reyna didn't stick around long enough to inspect the area. I can't imagine any child has the aim to hit an opening that small. But I didn't ask about the particulars of the way the bag was being held. I choose to believe that the mom held the bat at the bottom and the child cut loose.
I mentioned in the last post that I spent two weeks in the US. While I was there, I thought some thoughts that I don't think I would have thought if I didn't live in Asia. Here are some (with the usual long-winded and odd digressions):
Only people of a certain age know all the words to Oye Como Va by Santana. I thought this while drinking beer* in a bar with some of my brother's friends. He lives in Florida, so most of his friends are, well, old. While we were drinking, the mid-fifties-one-man-bar-band played that song, and a mid-fifties couple we were with jumped up and danced to it. While they were dancing they sang the words to the song to each other. It was actually pleasant to see a couple that age appear to enjoy each other's company. I couldn't help thinking this has something to do with the fact they don't have children. I don't suppose there is really any correlation to the above-stated fact and living in Asia other than I hadn't heard the song in a long time. It's one of those songs that speaks to the time it was popular. There is no way that song would be popular today (the slanderous mambo simply isn't on the radio these days), but it encapsulates nicely what I imagine 1970 was like. When I think of the year 1970 Oye Como Va is the soundtrack that plays in my head while people of all races walk around with afros, tinted glasses, obscenely large bell-bottoms and dashikis. Just like Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm by the Crash Test Dummies could only have ever been popular for people who were plugged in in 1993, Oye Como Va has a certain transportive quality that appeals to people in their mid-fifties. Dun da-dun da-da-dun.
*Miller Lite! Miller Lite so cold it makes your teeth hurt. I never thought I'd be so thrilled to drink icy cold Miller Lite, but they don't have it in Vietnam. It does taste great, but I'm going to go with less filling as my favorite thing about the blue and gold. All the beer here makes you feel like you swallowed a swimming pool after about three.
Wal-Mart offers the same level of convenience as a series of specialty stores. While in Florida I went to Wally World with my brother. We went there because we needed two things: Air Conditioner Filters and Candy for me to bring back for the local staff. In Vietnam it would be unthinkable to have both of these things in the same store, but in America it's every other block*. The Super Wal-Mart is completely out of control. The store we entered covered the area of at least two city blocks. This is not an exaggeration: the Wal-Mart parking lot was bigger than our neighborhood in Vietnam. Once inside**, we spent around 10 minutes just wandering around getting our bearings. I'm actually surprised these big box stores don't have kiosks with maps yet like shopping malls because the place is enormous. As we hiked, I started to realize that it was taking longer to find the two things we needed than it would have to simply drive to two different stores -one that sells HVAC accessories and one that sells candy. Alternately, I suppose going to one humongous store keeps you from getting wet on rainy days. Beyond that I don't see how it's more convenient. Once we found what we wanted (of course they had it all) we then had to walk to a register. It was so far my legs actually got tired and my feet were sore. I was wearing flip flops and hadn't really planned on walking as far as we did. I noticed the beaten down parents dragging their kids through the store and for the first time thought, "It's not the kids, they're exhausted from trekking through the damn store." It doesn't help that dragging your kids through a Super Wal-Mart must be something like dragging them to the top of a mountain -a smoothly paved, zero-grade, climate controlled mountain. Next time I go to Wal-Mart I expect to see a gaggle of old ladies in white nurse sneakers doing laps for exercise. It gets hot out in Florida. The whole experience begged the question, "Will there ever be a box store in America that is considered too big to be convenient?" I welcome your input on this question.
*I think this is mainly due to the fact that every store in America sells candy. I can't think of single store I entered in the US that didn't sell some food product. The vast majority of which was candy. Does anyone other than me find that odd? News flash -this is why your fat, America.
**Here's another one of those uniquely American things. Stores here only have one entrance. At Wal-Mart we went in the "Nursery" entrance rather than the Main Entrance. The Nursery Entrance was complete with lonely checkout aisles and everything; both inside and outside. When did that happen? When we checked out at the indoor Nursery Checkout I didn't see a single shopper buying outdoor items, including us.
American excess is no longer disturbing. It makes me giddy. I had a pretty specific shopping agenda on this trip. I needed half a dozen parts for a bicycle I'm having made here in Vietnam* and a bunch of stuff for Reyna's classroom. The thing that struck me is the options. I went to two bike shops, neither of which carried the right wheels for my bike. So I went to the manufacturer's website. They couldn't ship me the parts in time. So I went to Ebay. Bingo. Wheels are now mine**. This only happens in America. At least that's been my experience. There's only one bike shop here in HCM (a city with a population roughly the same as Manhattan) that special orders parts. If they don't carry what you need, you're looking at a six week to six month wait. In America I went to three stores, and half a dozen online shops to find what I was looking for in the span of about two hours. The wheels were at my house a few days later. Don't take that shit for granted people! There is so much stuff in America and it's so easy to get, it's no wonder people have $100,000 in credit debt. No wonder people feel constantly compelled to buy stuff. It's all RIGHT THERE. And everything is super sized. It's not just Wal-Marts and Targets. All the bars we went to had like 20 or more taps for beer. Even the cigar bar had ten or so, and that's a place that makes money selling cigars, not beer***. Most bars in Vietnam have one tap. Even if they have two or three, the beers are Tiger, San Miguel and/or Carlsburg. And let's be honest here, those are all basically all the same beer.
*This will have it's own post. I about pee my pants with excitement every day just thinking about how awesome it's going to be. That is pretty awesome.
**I feel compelled to tell more of this story. When I ordered the wheels on Ebay, I was concerned they wouldn't arrive in time. The shop had a phone number on the product page. The guy actually answered and spoke English. He also understood me when I spoke, answering confidently rather than pausing and then saying, "okay" in that I-have-no-idea-what-you're-saying-but-don't-want-to-be-rude way that happens in Asia all the time. He then changed the shipping details on my order to make sure the package would arrive in time. If you think that happens everywhere in the world, you are sorely mistaken. Amazing. Thanks Chicago Bike Shop Guy.
***As stinky as the place was, I did like their t-shirt slogan: "A Non-Working Smoke Environment." And the cigar shop doesn't have a humidor. The entire bar is a humidor. American excess? Yes, please.
American politics are completely out of control. The Republican National Convention took place about 100 miles from where I was staying in Florida. I followed politics when we lived in the US. I don't as much anymore because seeing it from over here made me realize that both sides are completely full of shit. Political campaigns are run entirely based on passion rather than policy. Whoever can get people stirred up the most will win. No wonder nothing ever gets done. The thought that a convention could actually sway voters worries me. It's all theater, people. It's all a scheme for rich people to get more of your money. That goes for both parties. For the first time ever, I've considered not voting. In this election I'll make my decision, not based on the policies of a particular candidate, but rather on which administration will make America look less idiotic in the eyes of my coworkers. In that light, there really isn't a good choice.
The world may actually end this year. When I sent this video to my friend in New York and he'd already seen it, I knew we were in trouble. It's possible the Mayans were right. Seriously though, if you haven't had a good laugh today, I highly encourage you to watch this. And then teach your friends the dance. Everyone will know you're on the cutting edge of what's hot in America right now.
And that's a little foray into the twisted mind of your friendly TatVeg. What will the next trip to America bring? Who can know? One thing I can expect from my next visit is to add around one to one-and-a-half Fat Babies (FBs) to my waist line. That appears to be a recurring theme.
And yes, I got paid (finally); and no one has attempted to kick my ass (yet).
Has it really been more than a month? The TatVeg has been a busy guy lately. At some point in July the people I have been forced to work beside for the last 16 months realized that my part of the project was actually somewhat critical and needed attention. It only required three meetings and a snarky email -one which threw multiple people and companies directly under the bus- to get us there. According to their logic their failure to understand what I do or to take my warnings seriously for more than a year is my fault. This was made clear to me when a project manager got in my face a few days after he'd begged on the phone for me to send my email to him and said, "If you ever send another email like that, I will personally fuck you up." He then went on to explain that emails like mine were "unprofessional." He also told me that he would have me fired. I resisted the desire to explain that threatening a colleague with physical violence over an email was considerably more unprofessional than sending an email consisting of facts and dates chronicling a year of missed opportunities and failures to act. I also resisted telling him that since we work for different companies it would be difficult for him to get me fired, especially since I hadn't done anything but my job. Unfortunately for him, my job was exposing his incompetence. The lesson here is that even though a person might have tattoos, dress badly, have a questionable haircut and diet does not mean that guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
So it was on that note I boarded a plane for Orlando on August 20th for a little R & R. America was pleasant and not nearly as bizarre the second time back. I pretty much knew what to expect this time. Toilets that flush with almost frightening force and efficiency and an hour of hot water in the shower. I enjoyed seeing the family, but it also brought up a small amount of depression. You miss so much when you live abroad. When it takes 30 hours to get home by plane, and you live on an 11-12 hour time difference you don't get home enough. No one made me feel bad about or anything, it was just on my mind a lot.
The day before I was scheduled to fly back I got a panicked email from the head of my office. Apparently things that were my responsibility had been installed on the project and looked bad. A meeting was thusly called by the guys that had threatened to "fuck me up" in order to yell, point fingers and assign blame. The meeting was scheduled for the evening of the same day I was to return to Vietnam. I declined the email meeting invitation citing that I wouldn't have time to get home and make it to the meeting with a fully functional brain. I was told this was not an option because it was an emergency situation. Attend the meeting or else.
So I arrived home at 2am, tried to sleep, then boarded a car at 2pm that same afternoon for the three hour ride to site. When I arrived for the meeting I was shown a photo someone had taken of the offending installation. It was taken outdoors, at night with a camera phone. No less than three people looked me in the eye and said, "this thing looks like shit." I had to agree. The photo looked like shit.
So I waited for dark.
Even though the meeting was not scheduled to begin until 7pm, it gets dark at the job site at about 6:15. So I walked myself out to the offending installation to have a look. It looked fine. I quickly arrived at the conclusion that the freak outs over the past four days had been in response to the photo. Not one person had actually waited until dark, walked the 75 yards out to the installation and looked at it. You see the work day ends at 5:00, and to stick around until dark would mean sitting at the job site for a whole extra hour. Instead they waited for me to board a plane, travel more than thirty hours, take a three hour car ride and walk with them to look at what was actually a non-issue. While they were waiting for me to arrive, they took the time to call everyone associated with the project to tell them how badly I'd screwed up. As we stood and looked at the non-screw-up they had a brief, but comical, conversation where they discussed who would make the phone call to the owner to let him know how the catastrophic problem they'd spent the last four days blaming me for was, in fact, not a problem at all. I managed to sleep a little on the car ride home.
When I got into the office the next day I was informed by a coworker* that the company accountant and human resources manager had resigned. No one told our office. She had been gone for more than two weeks before I found out. One would think that it would be a good idea to let the employees of a company know when the human resources department quits. Perhaps I'm naive on this point. Once I learned this information, I hastened to my desk to find that I had not been paid. My paycheck is now a week late, which is why you have the pleasure of reading this post today. I have lots of work to do, but am refusing to do it. I would have left the office already, but I rode my bike this morning and I just stopped sweating from the ride in. Plus our AC is broken at home.
*Not the office head. Not by email from my boss. I learned from an assistant designer that is over here from Vegas to help out for a couple weeks.
I've already raised my hand about this issue and was told that we're awaiting payment from the project and they expect it any minute. I suppose that's the good news. The frightening thought is that the company that employs me is functioning paycheck to paycheck. I also try not to think about what kind of anarchy would go down in the home office if paychecks came a week late. Our office appears pretty quiet, but I don't see a lot of people working. It's been five months since I was switched from being paid twice a month to once a month. In those five months I have received an on-time paycheck once. It was nice that they paid me on time on my birthday.
Can I go back on vacation? Night sailing was considerably more enjoyable than this.
That was a pretty bitter post, so here's a photo of a Hello Kitty plane I took in the airport in Tokyo for your amusement:
Would you feel safe flying in this aircraft? That's what I thought.
This might seem silly and obvious to everyone, but we spend an inordinate amount of our lives surrounded by people speaking in a language we don't understand. Even as I write this, there is a steady stream of unintelligible banter going on behind me. Sure, I heard other languages (mostly Spanish) in the US. But this is different. When people speak Spanish around me, I can almost make it out. Or, if I can't, a Spanish speaker can explain it to me in English I can understand.
Not the case here. And there are times when you feel as if you are living in a modern version of Apocalypse Now.
While at the job site this week, there was a party. The party was to celebrate the hand-over of the first area of the building to the owners. The fact that the area isn't finished, and no hand-over actually occurred that day didn't seem to matter.
I was informed of Wednesday night's party when I arrived in our office Wednesday morning. "The contractor is having a party with dancing girls tonight!" I was told by a breathless consultant from another company. I thought two things:
Brace for digressions
Thought #1 -
"Bald guys in their mid-fifties who bear a striking resemblance to Hobbits really get excited when an event includes 'dancing girls'"
Unfortunately the TatVeg gets nervous whenever the phrase "they'll have dancing girls" gets uttered. You see, I used to shoot photos for a lingerie company in Las Vegas that was entirely owned and operated by strippers. I made a lot of money, and I was the only guy I knew who received money from strippers; but my opinion of strippers plummeted to the point where I could no longer enter a strip club without a feeling of dread.* That glassy eyed look of disassociation you often see on strippers faces? That's not specific to inside the club. Many just look like that all the time. It's likely this comes as a shock to no one, and I was just horribly naive, but most Vegas strippers are every bit as vapid and vacant in real life as they are inside the club.
*Once, when Reyna was upset for me over something I fully deserved to be in trouble over, she punished me by forcing me to go to a bachelor party at Spearmint Rhino; the largest and most popular strip club in Vegas. It was miserable.
Thought #2 -
I wonder if the guy we passed on the way into town roasting a headless and legless beast on a spit while spraying it with liquid from a pump-up bug sprayer is preparing for our party?
This thing was HUGE. It had to weigh at least 1.5 American Fat Men (AFM -my new standard of measurement since I can't seem to settle on using metric or imperial). It sat on the sidewalk and was posed on the spit as if it would be running if the legs hadn't been removed below the knee and it wasn't, you know, dead and skewered over a fire. The mental image of a cow running was confirmed when we nearly hit a live cow running across the street about five minutes later.*
*Have you ever seen a cow run on pavement? HILARIOUS. They have to be the most graceless animals on earth. You know, other than half the girls I've ever dated (not you Reyna!)
So I went to the party. And yes, there were dancing girls...at first. They came out and danced while everyone in the crowd with a smart phone, except me, recorded videos. Then an emcee came out and spoke at length in Vietnamese. A few people got up on stage and made speeches, also in Vietnamese. A lot of handshaking, back-clapping and cheering ensued. Considering we were celebrating a milestone we had yet to reach, the whole thing felt a little forced.
After the dancing girls and speechifying a random guy got on stage and sang a song. It felt exactly like when you were in middle school and the girl who was the pet of the music teacher sings some inspirational song in assembly while the music teacher accompanies her on a keyboard set to "Vibraphone." The difference being that the man singing was a man, and a contractor. A guy who earlier that day had been laying brick or hanging drywall or sweating pipe was now rocking a Vietnamese cool jam. While he sang he did a dance that was basically an excessively animated version of The Charleston -complete with rolling hips and chugging arms. I turned to my Vietnamese colleague standing next to me,
Me:"What is he singing about?"
Phuc*: "He is singing a song about building a building."
Me: "Oh...okay..."
*Yep, his name is Phuc. But know that it's pronounced "fook". Prounounced correctly, it rhymes with "spook." What are we, ten?
And the crowd was EATING IT UP. Singing along and cheering, while I stood in amazement.* The only song about building a building I can think of in English is We Built This City, by an aged and downright depressing version of what was once Jefferson Airplane. No one, in the history of the US, has ever cheered and rocked out to this song. Go ahead. YouTube it. I'll wait...
*Sadly the video I made of this performance didn't save to my phone.**
**Yes I skipped videoing the pretty girls and shot the strange dancing man instead.***
***What?
Next, the World's Gayest Vietnamese Man* stood up and got on the microphone. He was wearing a merlot silk shirt with white cuffs and collar, cream pants and matching cream shoes. Remember, this is a construction site. We were sitting and standing on gravel. His hair was curly -meaning it was either done with rollers or he had a perm- and dyed an auburn that came close to matching his shirt. WGVM got on the mic and hosted a series of game shows: all in Vietnamese.
*It's not normally TatVeg form to publicly refer to anything as "gay" in a derogatory way. The TatVeg loves the gays. And for god's sake, let them get married. What harm could a little gay sex do in a country where a single mom can have octuplets as a publicity stunt; a country where we need to stockpile weapons to protect us from the same military we salute before, during, after every sporting event and slap support magnets for on our cars? When do they become robotic killing machines exactly? Seriously guys? People watch dudes put dick to ass millions of times per day on the internet, but we can't fathom that happening in a real life relationship where people love each other? Somehow that's gross and unacceptable. I'll stop before I really get going.
The crowd routinely fell into uncontrollable spasms of laughter, including the guys I was standing with.
Me: "So, ah, what are they talking about?"
Dung*: "He [pointing to WGVM] ask questions, if they answer right, they get a prize."
We are momentarily interrupted by a large roar of laughter. A beat.
Me: "What question did he just ask?"
Dung: [Wiping his eyes and struggling to keep from busting up again] "A girl, she give a man a birthday cake and a tiger and tell him to chose. Then the tiger blow out the candles on the birthday cake!"
Me: [Quizzical look] "That's not a question...." [pause] "Wait... Why is that funny?"
Dung: [Shrugs shoulders]
*Yes, that's his real name. But before you go all fifth grade on me, it's pronounced "yoong." You see in Vietnamese normal D sounds like a Y. If the vertical part of the D is crossed, then it sounds like normal D. And it was Dung's birthday yesterday. You are now free to feel like a dick.
The only other exchange in English occurred between me and the aforementioned Fifty-Something Hobbit Colleague, who is American.
Me: So what did you think of the dancing girls?
F-SHC: Pretty good. You know, one of them would probably fuck your brains out if you go talk to them. They're right over there.
Me: I'm good. I'm not really down with the whole 'come to Vietnam and cheat on your wife/girlfriend' thing.
F-SHC: It's hard not to, man, these girls are so goddamned horny. It's like you have to fight them off!* [goes in for beer can "clink" with me before wandering away].
*Yes, yes, that's what it is, F-SHC. The girls are just so darn horny. I mean it's like you have to beat them back with sticks! And how could they not get excited about a 5'-5" middle aged bald man who smokes two packs of menthol Dunhills a day? How do they resist? They couldn't possibly be attracted to your money could they? No, you're right. They're HORNY.
The game show(s) went on for more than an hour -video is forthcoming, I promise. Thank god they had beer. Let me take a moment to remind you, that at one point in this party there were scantily clad girls dancing and jiggling on stage. And to make matters worse, Dung told me that not a single game contestant answered a question right. So no one got a prize. The table with the prizes was left with a pile of gifts wrapped in silvery paper sitting there at the end of the party.
The party ended at 9:00. Me and my beer tummy (there was no vegetarian food at the party so I drank my dinner) shuffled to the car to bounce the hour back to Vung Tao.
I walked into my hotel room to find that neither of the bedside lamps worked. I sat with the overhead light on and tried to describe to Reyna the scene I'd just witnessed. Then got straight in bed and fell asleep. At 3am, I woke up to find one of the bedside lamps on.
