I was born in Texas*. Some of my earliest memories are being whisked out of bed in the middle of the night -or at least whatever constitutes the "middle of the night" when you're three- huddling in the hallway between my parents room and mine while wind roared and storm sirens blared. We never made it on the news. Our house, thankfully, was never blown into a pile of rubble shown from helicopter view on the nightly news, while we paced the wreckage like ants. What was left behind was an overriding anxiety associated with severe weather.
*Please don't hold that against me. I only bring it up to illustrate a tangential point. I'm not one of those "Texas Forever" people. At least I'm not as long as I'm not ensconsed in a Friday Night Lights marathon.
I can remember getting worked up over tornado drills throughout elementary and middle school. We moved to Georgia when I was nine, which is not as well known as a hot bed for severe weather, but has it's share. The buildings of the school, especially those of the middle school were actually made from stucco-covered styrofoam, and all the classrooms we used as "shelters" had windows. We were told that the hill outside the chosen storm shelter classroom would cause any approaching tornado to pass over the building in which we crouched. I tried not to think about the fact that the building was a lot taller than the hill. I was relieved that their theory was never tested. My worries over the stability of the buildings were confirmed over the years, however, as we were repeatedly sent home whenever tornados or other severe storms threatened. Styrofoam buildings can't be much safer than trailers when faced with 250mph winds.
In Vietnam we had a holiday this past weekend. Reyna and I had spent the week prior discussing what things we might do with our extra day off. Mostly we agreed that we'd simply relax and do nothing, but we also wanted to make time to spend with our friends. Sunday was to be the day we all got together. We awoke Sunday morning to rain. Despite it's reputation, Vietnam in the spring time is not a particularly rainy place. Even in the rainy season, it rarely rains for more than a couple hours at a time. Sunday was different. It rained all day.
In the late afternoon, we received a message from our friends that we were invited to their house across town for dinner. I changed out of my lounging clothes and was sitting on the couch reading while I waited for Reyna to get ready. I could hear the rain growing harder outside and the wind picking up. It was nearly dark outside when the power went out*. A few minutes later Reyna was ready. The wind outside was gusting loudly down our street. I grabbed my phone to call a taxi to come pick us up. After dialing the number and placing the phone to my ear, I heard the "deedle-dee" that comes with a call that can't go through. Soon we were both frantically calling the taxi company. No luck.
*It was at this moment I realized that it was the first time I'd been in the house while the Light That Never Goes Out was not burning in nearly two months. It was uncomfortably dark. I realize that the LTNGO has become something of a security blanket.
After sitting around and failing to get through to the taxi company, I suggested we walk to the end of the street to try and get a taxi. I said something to the effect of, "It doesn't look like it's raining that hard. Let's just walk." What I'd failed to realize is the reason it didn't appear to be raining hard is because the wind was blowing the rain sideways. By the time we reached the end of the street, where there were no taxis, we were both soaked to the bone. This despite both of us wearing raincoats. Even my hair was wet even though it had been under the hood of my rain coat the whole time. We trudged back down our dark street to our powerless house wet and defeated.
After changing clothes, we sat on the couch. Reyna used her laptop as a reading light while she finished her book. I read on my iPad, but one thought kept turning over in my mind: "we're trapped here." Soon I noticed that I was getting wet. Water was dripping, not periodically, but steadily onto my shoulders and onto the floor of our living room*. I walked up the stairs. When I reached the stairway leading to floor 4 I noticed that the steps were wet. Sometimes it's hard to tell if you're imagining the water. We spend so much time here in various stages of wet, sometimes it's difficult to tell if things are actually wet or if it's in your head. In this case, it wasn't in my head. Rain was blowing sideways into ventilation holes in the walls at the top of our house. The floor there had nearly an inch of water on the floor, which was running down the stairs and dripping through the opening in the stairwell into our living room and onto the couch. I walked all the way back down to the kitchen on the ground floor, got a bucket, and walked back up to the fourth floor to stop the dripping water from ruining our already beat-to-hell couch. Out of breath, I returned to the couch.
*A little home tour. Our house is five stories tall. The living room is on Floor 2 (or Floor 1 if you usually count G, 1, 2... as they do in Vietnam. For our purposes we'll use the American way of counting floors: 1, 2, 3...). There is an opening at the stairwell so when you sit on the couch in the living room, you can look up and see all the way to the tin roof of the house.
We sat in silence for a while, reading, and the wind sounded like it was dying. I tried calling for a taxi again. After about 20 minutes I managed to get through. I said our address and the dispatcher said, "OK." Sometimes it's hard to tell if they really mean it when they say "OK" because most of the taxi dispatchers speak little to no English. I tried to think positively as we sat in the kitchen and waited. I would occasionally walk to the front door to look down the street for our ride. None came. The wind was still whipping down the street in loud, freaky gusts. I stood at the door to our house wondering what we were going to do. There wasn't any actual food in our house. I was doing a mental inventory of food in the house. We had crackers. That's pretty much it besides condiments. We hadn't bothered going to the store because we assumed we would be eating with our friends.
When no taxi came, we took off our clothes, put them in a bag and put on our wet clothes from earlier. I soaked my ass backing the motorbike down the ramp and into the street. We decided we'd just drive until we found some place to eat that was open. We drove down the street, which was littered with fallen trees and branches. A stack of bricks sitting next to a house that's being built nearby had blown over, broken bricks covered our street.
We drove down Thao Dien road and arrived at an open Mekong Merchant. It was operating despite more than half the restaurant being open to the outside. I walked straight to the bathroom and put on a pair of dry shorts. The servers were all walking through the fallen leaves and branches barefoot while people sat and ate. The whole scene was utterly surreal. We drank a pleasant Cabernet, Reyna ate duck and I had lasagna while the storm blew around us, occasionally threatening to get us wet at our table.
I started writing this post with intentions of saying something about how even though we've lived here for a year, it still finds way to frustrate us and leave us feeling like hopeless tourists. It's amazing how helpless this place can make you feel sometimes. Just when we think we've got this place clocked, we get thrown yet another curve. Now I'm going to throw you one.
The first few months we lived in Vietnam I worked alongside a guy I'll call Scotty C. He worked for another company, but we were working together on the same project. We weren't what I would call pals, but I liked him a lot and saw him as a super smart guy. I always like to hang around with super smart people. It's amazing what you can learn. Scotty was no different. Unfortunately, that project we were supposed to share never got off the ground, and I never got to know Scotty as well as I wanted. Scotty's company was forced to send him back to the US, simultaneously laying him off. That was in October 2011.
Yesterday morning, we awoke with the storm past. The power had come back on sometime in the night. I awoke to an email telling me that Scotty C had secured a job interview on Friday. He was riding the bus to the interview and fell asleep. At least that's what people thought had happened. In reality, Scotty had had a heart attack, lost consciousness and stopped breathing. Because no one could tell he wasn't asleep, he was not breathing for an unspecified amount of time. The email stated that he'd been put into a medically induced coma and had his body temperature lowered in an attempt to reduce the swelling on his brain. Doctors hoped that this would mitigate potential brain damage.
This morning I received an email stating that the doctor's efforts were in vain. Scotty C was declared brain dead at 10:31am on Monday morning. They are taking him off life support tomorrow and he will be all-the-way dead. I also learned from the email that because the company he worked for was a joint-venture partner with the owner of that particular project, he was never paid for the work he did while living in Vietnam. Despite this shocking news I'm happy to report that Scotty is an organ donor, and his tragedy means that others will be able to continue living*.
*Hey you! Be an organ donor. Just because you died doesn't mean the kid that could use a kidney needs to die too. Be a big helper, be a life saver. Just because you're scared of knives and surgery is not an excuse. I'm terrified of being cut open and having my organs removed, but you know what scares me more? Watching someone I love waste away while they wait for someone unselfish enough to share organs he no longer needs. While you're at it, get on the bone marrow donation list too. You don't even have to die to give that. Sure you'll have to endure a foot long needle in your pelvis, but that's a hell of a lot better than living with cancer. Get off your ass and do your part. Think how good it will feel if you get the opportunity to save a life.
We spent an evening getting wet and sitting in the dark. We weren't hungry or sick or in any real danger, even though that wasn't entirely certain for the majority of the evening. Stuff like this makes me realize just how lucky we are to be living this experience, even when it sucks. It's easy to forget that most people couldn't or wouldn't do what we're doing. And even if they could, they may not have the opportunity to stay long or share the experiences we've had the fortune to share.
Sometimes I get frustrated that because we've been here so long, I'm starting to find our lives a little dull. We used to never have "normal" days, but now we have them all the time. When life feels a little dull, it makes it harder to write in this blog, which is one of my favorite things to do. Scotty C's story is an excellent reminder that even when life feels dreary or frustrating, things can always be a lot worse. Every day we get to live here and have this amazing experience is special, even when it's damn hard.
Scotty C, we weren't close, but I can tell you the world is a little less fantastic without you. We weren't that close, and I never said anything, but I respected you, feared you a little and thought you were a great guy. My impression on you was likely minimal at best, but you're impression on me was greater than you probably ever realized. I'm happy that I knew you for an all-too-brief amount of time, and I wouldn't trade it. Thanks and RIP.
P.S. Now that you've reached the end of the post, you may think that the title is a little rude. I've been using song titles to name the posts for a while, and this one popped into my mind. Many times when I start writing a post, I don't know where I'll end up and today's was evidence of that. If you're offended by the title, I urge you to listen to the song here.
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