Mr. Bitterness

For those who have written to me and responded to the blog, I thank you.  It is because of your encouragement I find the strength to continue writing here.  It's gotten a lot harder to think of things to write about.  As time passes, things that are totally bizarre start to feel normal, which in many cases is a dangerous thing. 
On May 15th I celebrated 5 years with my company.  The day passed without any acknowledgement from the home office, the satellite office, my boss or anyone else.  There was no "Congrats" cake, no email letting me know that I now get 3 weeks of vacation a year* along with being fully vested in my 401(k).  The whole event passed without a peep.  I didn't even realize it was the anniversary of my start date until about three in the afternoon.

*I had to remind them to start calculating it that way.  They were trying to slip an additional 8 hours a year after every five years into my Vietnamese contract.  At that rate I'd earn three weeks of vacation after twenty years of service.  Apparently I was the only one that caught it in the new contract.

And after five years, I suppose this shouldn't have come as a surprise.  Since 2007 I've had my pay cut three times; been forced to sign a contract stating I will work a 50 hour work week indefinitely; been told that handling all the marketing photography for the company for four years does not warrant a pay increase despite not being hired to do that particular job (going to see the projects is my reward!); been paid an overtime rate of less than minimum wage; transferred halfway around the world for a raise that puts me in the same salary bracket as a fourth grade teacher*; and been threatened with replacement for not accepting a 10% pay cut for a month**.

*No slight to you fourth grade teachers out there intended.  You are also underpaid.  It's criminal how teachers are treated.  Also, a fourth grade teacher here makes more than me.  In order for us to be equal, I have to factor in my housing stipend.  The housing stipend does not actually pay for my housing.  It covers about half, so I get to pay rent in Vietnam AND a mortgage on a house in the US I don't live in.

** Here's what I wrote to my boss at the time:

I am trying my best to keep this professional, but between you and me, I can’t tell you how irritating it is to be asked to take a pay cut from a guy staying in a $350/night hotel.  According to my calculations, my pay cut will pay for just over one day of his trip here [the trip lasted ten days -and included a business class flight that was booked less than 24 hours in advance].  Maybe he has points or something that made it more affordable, but it’s the perception.  I don’t understand why it’s necessary to keep a $3000 a month corporate apartment when the CEO is only here four days a month.  Perhaps it made sense when expats were moving here regularly, but now it just seems like a waste.  Even staying at the $350 a night Hyatt, that would be a massive savings.  Reyna and I stayed in a really nice two room suite when we moved here for $92 a night.  Everyone sees the waste, but it’s never acknowledged that it exists.  Finally, [name redacted] took the time to pass down my pay cut, but absolutely did NOT have the time to listen to my proposal to get more local work.  It’s all negative all the time.  The solution is to cut everyone’s pay rather than sit down and actually LOOK at how money is being spent.    

That email was greeted with a "sign or get fired" response.  Very effective negotiating tactic, by the way. 

Before I took this position, I'd never known what it was like to truly loathe getting up and going to work in the morning.  I knew on the first day five years ago that I hated it, but felt that I needed to give it time, an not rush to judgement on the job.  At the time I craved the stability and the paycheck was more money than I'd ever made.  Plus I was hired with assurances that "your salary will quickly increase ."  Then the economy tanked and here I am: five years later, I make roughly the same amount despite earning my professional accreditation, moving around the world, and being the only person in my department.  Somehow being the only one doing my job for my company in this hemisphere doesn't warrant a title of Department Head or Senior X or Managing Y.  I'm still figuring that one out.

The moving around the world was an act of desperation more than anything.  I couldn't find another job in the US, and I couldn't bear the thought of growing old in an office without windows.  I looked across our cube at my boss, who has been with the company almost 15 years and realized I don't want his life.  Sitting behind a computer at work and at home, while life moves along around me is not an option.  At least by moving to Asia, we'd be in a place where interesting things come to us. 

The trip back showed me just how adaptable the human mind is.  I was crawling out of my skin after two days.  He's sat in the same chair for ten years.  Moreover, he doesn't find it inhumane to be forced to work in a converted warehouse under fluorescent light for 60+ hours a week.  It's worse in the winter, because it gets dark before the end of the workday.  He rarely goes to lunch, so the only exposure to sunlight in a day for him is a 15 minute drive to the office. 

If you work in an office with a poopy toilet, and after a year no one has bothered to clean, you grow accustomed to the toilet being poopy.  And that is how it happens.  The first pay cuts in 2008 were in an effort to keep from laying anyone off.  We'd all make the sacrifice together, as a team.  Then when 20% of the company was laid off anyway three weeks later, everyone was too afraid to speak out.  When the next round of pay cuts came, it was in an effort for people to "make more money."  You see, we'll cut your pay 4%, but then have you sign a contract stating that you work 50 hours a week.  The added ten hours of overtime (which will be paid at 50% of your normal hourly rate - calculated over 50 hours instead of 40) will pay you slightly more than you make now; but if you don't work the 50 hours (and it's totally your choice!!), you'll make less than you do now.  Sign or find a new job.  And that's how you end up working a high profile, white collar job for less than minimum wage.  I was working on some of the biggest and most iconic projects in the world, but barely making enough money to pay my $800 mortgage.

The idea that I've been reflecting on recently is we're taught that in order to be happy, you need a good job.  A job that pays enough money for you to live the lifestyle you want.  I'm realizing that those are two very different things.  A good job and a job that affords you a certain lifestyle very rarely coincide.  Is being miserable for 80% of time spent awake really creating the lifestyle you want?  When does simple happiness become more important than money?  Does it ever?  Is the spectre of unemployment worse than being paid to be treated as either wholly expendable or wholly ignorable?  Thinking about that, I realize how much this job has changed me.  I used to be outspoken, independent and quick to point out injustice.  People used to listen to my opinions and those opinions counted for something.  Now I write a hugely passive aggressive blog.  Do I write in a quiet hope that the wrong (or perhaps right, depending on your level of cynicism) person will read?  Am I growing spineless in my old age?  Kind of.  Once you have a good life and plenty of money, it's hard to go back to having nothing.   Hard to go back to worrying about putting gas in your car or buying groceries.

So here I sit.  Wondering after five years if it's been worth it.  There have been good times, of course.  Times when I felt proud of my work and ideas.  The worrisome part is how quickly five years has slipped by.  Have I done all I can to make the most of these five years?  Has it been a waste?  It's hard to tell sometimes.  I've learned a lot and gotten much better at my job, but I'm not sure I've enjoyed the process.  That's a first for me.  And then the ultimate:  if I stay in my current field will I ever feel differently than I do now?  Does the fun ever start?

There will be dick jokes next post, I promise. Just had to get that stuff out. I'll leave you with a photo I took over the weekend of the world's saddest mannequin. Who approved this design?

I HATE THIS PLAID PRINT! Her head looks enourmous on that body...

American Errorists

On Wednesday I had lunch with people I don't normally hang around with.  Three are coworkers and two aren't.  Of the two that aren't I'd met one of them before.  A middle aged American guy who is an agent for some company I'm not familiar with.  We were eating lunch at The Sanctuary north of Vung Tau.  It's a pretty nice place, but the food isn't that great considering the price.  It's unfortunate because the restaurant is the only one which offers Western food in the area. 

As we sat and ate we made small talk about the area.  One of the guys at the table recently moved from Saigon to Vung Tau in order to be closer to work.  The whole group besides me spends most of their week nights in Vung Tau, only spending a few days a week in HCM.  The conversation mostly revolved around the best bars to visit in the evenings.  The American I didn't know turned to us and said, "Those places are pretty great, but have you ever been to Tiger Massage?*"

"Nope" replied one of my coworkers.
"You should check it out!  The first time I came to Vung Tau I was only supposed to stay for one night, but I ended up staying five.  That place is great!"
"Happy Endings?"
"Twice.... and not just with the hand either."
Everyone around the table laughed. "I guess I know where we're going tonight!" announced Coworker #2 as I fought to keep from regurgitating my pizza.

 *That is not the actual name he used. I honestly can't remember the real name.

Allow me to take a moment to describe the people involved in this conversation:

Speaker #1: Try to picture in your mind the most out of shape man you know that hasn't been on a reality televisions show about fat people.  He's probably in his mid-fifties.  HIs stomach is so big a grown man could comfortably curl up inside it.  He's the kind of guy that gets out of breath eating a sandwich.  Couple that with the average temperature/humidity hovering around 95F/95% every day, and you get the idea.

Coworker #1:  Also fat and in his late fifties.  He is red-faced with spider webs of burst capillaries from drinking*.  Captain Red-Face is my coworker, so I can also tell you he's married with two grown kids.  His wife lives in Middle America, and as far as I know is not aware of his evenings out in Vietnam.  The richest detail of all is he's a dedicated follower of, you guessed it, Rush Limbaugh.  He refers to Rush as "real news," and if he's in the office alone (or thinks he's alone) will blast it from his computer speakers.  At that same lunch he went on to tell us that he believes his recently missing phone was stolen by a prostitute outside a bar while he was drunk.  The night before our lunch he'd been "woozily" (his word not mine) walking home from the bar when he was accosted by a prostitute who grabbed his crotch and called him by name.  He couldn't remember ever meeting her, but also realized that two nights thense he'd blacked out and couldn't remember how he found his way back to his apartment.  He deduced that the hooker had stolen his phone during the blackout period.  Needless to say, this variation on the story had not been reported to the office adminstration.

*On my birthday last summer Reyna threw me a little surprise party at Bernie's, one of our favorite bars. There were about a dozen people, only three of which drank beer that night. Two were a couple who had about 4 beers between them. This particular coworker had the rest. When the bill came, we had been charged for 33 beers. I'll leave the math to you, but know that we were at the bar less than five hours.

Coworker #2: is in his late forties, is married and has two young kids.  He has a family photo on his desk.  He also has at least one girlfriend under 20**.  I know this because in the few times I've had to stay in Vung Tao overnight, a girl is waiting for him outside our hotel.  I've also ridden in the company car with them to our out of town project.  He has the company driver take her to the beach while he attends his meetings.  He is in the process of getting divorced from his wife who moved with the kids from LV to Shanghai when she found out about his hobbies.  She was originally hired by our company to join him in Vietnam.  Clearly that didn't work out.  Just to clarify the extent of his obsession with girls, we discussed watching the Rugby World Cup semi-finals together because he was supporting France and I was supporting Wales.  When I told him I'd be watching at Bernie's (a normal bar with normal servers), he was no longer interested in watching with me.  If there wouldn't be girls, he wouldn't go.  We were going to watch Rugby, not pick up ladies; or at least that was my plan.

**It's possible that she's had a birthday since I saw her last, so she may not be a teen any longer.

Since we moved, this has been one of the biggest problems I have with the expat community.  I've sat down a dozen times to write about it, but I never feel like it comes out correctly.  I find the sense of entitlement of male expats regarding Vietnamese women sickening.  I ask myself, how do you go from being repulsed by prostitution in the US, to happily paying to be jerked off in a massage parlour by a stranger who doesn't speak English?  These guys wouldn't be caught dead trolling for hookers in downtown Las Vegas or hitting the Bunny Ranch in Pahrump.  That's gross.  But a small town in Vietnam?  No problem!  This is to say nothing of the sanctity of marriage I hear Republicans drone on and on and on* about.  I guess they plan to claim the "different area codes" exemption when it comes to having sex with girls who are the same age as their kids.  My current theory is the costs associated with American hookers are a massive deterrent.  I'm pretty sure no one takes the bait when LV strippers whisper that they'll join you in your hotel room for $1500, do they?  The same treatment for a $40 bottle of tequila tends to illicit a different response.

*and on.  Marriage is between one man and one woman.  Or between one man, one woman and the one man's 12 girlfriends in SE Asia.  Has Mitt Romney said that on the campaign trail?  I admit I haven't been following that closely.

You hear stories in America about guys going to SE Asia to do horrible things to underage kids.  There are a whole series of highly offensive child prostitute jokes I heard from various roadies back in the day.  But to live with it and see it regularly is tough.  Watching a 50+ year old fat white guy walk down the street holding hands with a pretty, but bored-looking girl that is young enough to be his grand-daughter is something I can't get used to.  When Reyna and I see it, we turn to each other and say "They're in love. You don't know what they have!"  What do a 57 year old expat and a 20 year old Vietnamese girl have to talk about?  The answer is nothing, which is why you always see a digital toy being toted around by the girl* (smartphone, iPad, Galaxy Tablet). 

*I have a friend who is working on a project with me is in his late 50s.  He owns his own company in Macau and opened in office in Vietnam.  We meet about once a month, when he comes to Vietnam from Macau to to discuss our common project and see his lady-friend. Usually we arrange to meet at the bar after work or at the very end of the day for meetings.  That way we can watch sport and have a beer while we discuss work and I can unchain my desk padlock a little early.  He generally brings his early 20-something girlfriend to these meetings, because they go to dinner after we chat.  She sits and listlessly tends her Farmville farm on a Samsung tablet while we discuss work.  In the 10 or so times I've been around her I've only heard her speak twice.  One time we met at Bernie's and the owner pulled me aside while I was walking back from the bathroom.  "I don't like your friend.  I see her in here with many men" she hissed.  How's that for putting a guy in an awkward position?  We don't go to Bernie's anymore.

My working theory is that the "sexpats," as they're known locally, become that way because they aren't getting laid in the homeland.  They're fat, they've got bad teeth, they have a drinking problem, people tend to find them generally irritating or strange at home, they've been married for their entire adult lives and wifey doesnt' really "do it" for them anymore.  Essentially the teen hypothetical, "if you could do such and such and no one would ever find out, would you?"  The answer apparently is always YES when it comes to men and secret, no-strings-attached sex.  And not just yes, but yes with relish and very little thought or reflection.  I then ask myself how they sleep at night.  How can Coworker #2 stand to talk to his kids on the phone -he had to do it in the office because of the time difference before they moved- knowing there's a girl, who under normal circumstances would be attending the same school as his kids, sleeping off a hangover in his apartment?

I ask myself regularly if I had moved here alone would I behave differently?  Living in Vietnam alone would be tough.  I came with my best friend and it was still incredibly hard.  Finding a Vietnamese "girlfriend" comes with the added benefit of having someone around who speaks Vietnamese in addition to sporting a willingness* to roll in the hay with a guy who hasn't seen his genitals in 20 years. 

For a man it's a win-win situation.  But I don't ever like the feeling that people are merely tolerating my presence.  This is why I'm not a fan of strip clubs.  No matter how nice a stripper is to you inside a strip club, it's all an act to get your money.  I spent two years taking photos for a lingerie company owned and operated by strippers**.  I know this to be true.  Getting to know a few strippers ruined strip clubs for me for life.  I suppose it's not a bad thing since strip clubs are nothing more than a money toilet.  At least slot machines occasionally give money back to you.  Granted all the strippers I knew drove better cars and lived in fancier neighborhoods than me.  But the American stripper operates in a relatively secure environment.  There are big dudes wandering around strip clubs whose only job is to kick the asses of people who get out of line around naked ladies.  If you've read this blog before, you already know that security guards only exist in Vietnam as window dressing. 

*Not a desire.  There's a big difference.

**This might sound like the greatest job ever.  It's not.  It was miserable work.  The money was great -I was the only person I knew who had strippers paying him- but I earned every damn penny.

Can you really blame a woman who makes $75 a month for exploiting that male weakness? Not really. The fact that men are willing to overlook this obvious reality is what I find most surprising. What this boils down to is the boner.  I never realized how powerless it makes many men.  I don't claim to be immune to the power, but it doesn't control me.  It doesn't matter how beautiful you are, if I don't like spending time with you; or if I'm not sure you like spending time with me, then I'm sure as hell not paying you to hang out with me.  Why would I pay someone to sit around and look bored next to me while I'm out having drinks with my other expat friends? 

Get It Together

Holy crap...

Have three weeks passed since I last wrote anything?  Is that possible?  My apologies reader(s) but it couldn't be helped.  I've sat down to write at least half a dozen times and nothing came out.  Today I realized it's due a shock and awe campaign life has staged.  I don't want to say it's been some kind of metaphysical plot against me, because nothing that's happened has been especially shattering.  It just seems like a conflagration of odd events has cropped up around me, and I couldn't find a way to discuss them on their own.

I spent a week in Europe since I last spoke.  The strangeness started there.  Luckly, most of the oddities were generally amusing.  For example, at breakfast in Germany I watched as one of my Vietnamese hosts spooned a taste of butter into his mouth from the pad on his plate.  Nothing especially unusual there.  What was odd was he then spooned half of what was left into his coffee, stirred it up and slugged it down.  This was not a fresh cuppa either.  It was a half-empty, half-chilled cup o' joe.  The next morning my roommate* announced that he would not be heading downstairs to partake of the enourmous breakfast buffet.  He said he found Western food too salty for his taste and he preferred to boil water in the room and eat ramen noodles.  Read that sentence again.  A breakfast of eggs, bread and meat tubes is too salty in comparison with a cup of noodles.  I had been living all this time with the notion that a cup of noodles was the single saltiest food known to man.  My pleas that we were sitting in Lyon, France, home of one of the world's richest culinary traditions fell on deaf ears as he called the buffet waiter over to replenish his stock of hot water.

*Yep... We had roommates on a business trip.  I wish I was kidding.  The first couple nights were pretty easy due to my jet lag and long days spent wandering around a trade show, but when I was forced to stay in a room with another guy suffering from sleep apnea things got significantly more difficult.

Watching the Vietnamese guys struggle with western culture shock was really interesting.  I was struck at how easy it's been for me to talk about my own realizations when confronted with cultural anomalies.  I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about how difficult it would be for a person born and raised in Vietnam to live in the west.  When you have always eaten noodles or rice for breakfast, then suddenly find yourself without that stuff, it's tough.  His cup of noodles was his comfort food, much like Americans bringing granola bars to Asia.  I found myself standing on the edge of that most western of thougth patterns.  He brought his own food because he's simple and "doesn't know any better."  The simple fact is that I lived on Sweet & Salty granola bars when I traveled to China for the first time.  We're the same when it comes to dealing with traveling to new and strange cultures.  I admit I took a small amount of pleasure watching them struggle with things I consider normal simply because we struggled so madly when we were adjusting to life in Asia.  I am human after all.  It was also bizarre to find that I was having a deeper Vietnamese cultural immersion while standing in Mainz, Germany than I ever had in Vietnam.  Sad, and a little embarrassing, but true.
I also saw this:

This is werid right?  A fictional beer brand based on a cartoon television show in America coming to life in a French advertisement?  Is that normal?  Sadly I didn't get to taste La Biere D'Homer Simpson while I was in Europe.  I wonder when Duff Beer will make it's way to Vietnam?  Oh wait... Never.  It is nice to see that "Woo-hoo" trancends the language barrier like a smile or a laugh.

Moving on.

I'm not generally the type to get all rubbery when celebrities die, but I have been affected by the death of Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys.  I even feel silly writing it down, but there it is.  I suppose when you spend your entire life (or at least from the time you were eleven until you were thirty-five) listening to a band, and then they stop existing suddenly it's hard.  I remember lying on the floor in my brother's room listening to his License to Ill cassette on his XBS boom box in 1987.  We made repeated efforts to make the "MMMM DROP" bass hit as floor rumbly as possible.  When I listen now I think, "there's not much actual bass there" but that wasn't the point back then.  I remember going to my friend Justin's house and having him show me how if you hold the album cover up to a mirror, the number on the tail of the plane reads "EAT ME."  I remember listening to Paul's Boutique on the library CD player during a free period. Rocking out to Stand Together in my basement bedroom while my grandmother died a slow and painful death from breast cancer less than ten feet away upstairs..  Until MCA died, I hadn't given much thought to how much of my formative youth played out to the soundtrack of the Beastie Boys.  The world got a little less awesome with the passing of Adam Yauch*.

*I hate the expression "passing" and now I'm hating myself for writing it.  He DIED.  Grandmothers say "he passed."   "He passed" sounds a little too much like "he passed gas" for my comfort.  Sad things and funny things shouldn't be so closely linked.  And let's face it -farting is ALWAYS funny. 

So that was sad and shocking.  Then I woke up this morning to read that Tom Gabel, singer with one of my all time favorite bands, Against Me, is starting sexual rassignment therapy.  If you'd told me ten years ago when I first started listening to them that the singer would eventually come out and announce he'd always thought he was meant to be a woman I would have laughed.  I guess it just goes to show that it's impossible to know what's going on in someone's head.  The guy that wrote this:

You watched in awe at the red,
White, and blue on the fourth of July.
While those fireworks were exploding,
I was burning that fucker
And stringing my black flag high,
Eating the peanuts
That the parties have tossed you
In the back seat of your father's new Ford.
You believe in the ballot,
Believe in reform.
You have faith in the elephant and jackass,
And to you, solidarity's a four-letter word.
We're all hypocrites,
But you're a patriot.
You thought I was only joking
When I screamed "Kill Whitey!"
At the top of my lungs
At the cops in their cars
And the men in their suits.
No, I won't take your hand
And marry the State.
now says he's battled gender dysphoria for "years."  How is that possible?  How can a guy whose spent the entirement of his adult life yelling secretly want to be a woman?  I don't have a problem with this development, it's just surprising to me.  I'm all for people doing what they feel they must to be happy.  Plus I'm a pinko commie liberal.  I love the gays.  They should all get married and adopt babies or have their own if they can.  This just seems totally out of left field.  I mean sure, he also wrote this:

If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman.
My mother once told me she would have named me Laura.
I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her.
One day I’d find an honest man to make my husband.

but for whatever reason, those lyrics never struck me as out of place.  Besides, it's only one song out of a hundred that mentions it.  Doesn't exactly scream "I am uncomfortable in my own skin."  Not to mention that I saw the song as being environmental and the verse as some kind of metaphor I didn't understand.  I never realized that he was talking about himself.  I applaud his bravery in making the announcement in such a public way.  I wish her all the best in her new life.  On the weirdness scale, this totally beats drinking coffee with butter.

So that's the weirdness as pertaining to people I don't know.  Yesterday I was riding in the car to work when one of my coworkers asked me if I knew "Shelagh."  When I said yes, she then asked if I'd looked at my email.  I admitted I hadn't since I had to get up extra early to catch the ride to work.  Well apparently Shelagh went to sleep on Tuesday night all cozy in her bed.  Unbeknownst to any of us, including her, a blood clot began a nefarious journey from her leg to critical parts unknown.  She never woke up.

We're not talking about a 68 and-a-half year old lady quietly enjoying retirement in an exotic destination.  We're talking about a co-worker who wasn't much more than a few years older than me.  A lively and vibrant woman.  My response was pure Mallrats, "She's fucking DEAD?!"  How can people be fine one evening and dead the next morning?  It's not fair.  And why does it seem to be happening to people I like?  Why can't Paris Hilton die of some flesh rotting disease?  Why can't Kim Kardashian take a stray bullet in the base of the skull?  No, we lose awesome people like Shelagh and are forced to endure thirty years of Jimmy Buffet songs about pirates.  There really is no justice in the world.

When I arrived in the office this morning I learned that yet another one of my friends was fired last night.  I talked to him yesterday and everything was normal, or as normal as it can be in this bizzaro company.  Apparently they called him at 8:00 while he was out of town on assignment for work and told him his services are no longer required.  When my time comes I wonder who will deliver the news?  Will it come like a night stalker and take away my livelihood without warning?  There's no way to know, and that's how I think they like it. 

But I'm doing fine, even after getting sick on yet another holiday, throwing my back out and being confined to the couch for two days last week.  The saddest part about those events was that my sparkly new bicycle had to sit in the corner unridden for an entire week.  On Sunday I thought, "back pain be damned" and took it out.  I'm having a blast riding in the traffic.  And yes, I ALWAYS wear a helmet.  Parents: you should always wear a helmet too.   Don't be that parent that goes bare headed and makes their kid wear a helmet.  Everyone I know that's had a horrible, face wrecking bicycle accident has done it while riding less than 10mph.  Your kid's helmet won't do much good when you're a drooling vegetable*.

* Top Three Things That Give Me Homicidal Thoughts in Vietnam

3.  People riding motorbikes the wrong way on crowded streets.
2.  Motorbikes honking impatiently at you while you're walking on the sidewalk because they want to use the sidewalk to bypass traffic in the street.
1.  Parents who don't wear helmets but force their kids to.  1A would be parents who don't wear helmets and don't force their kids to either.  At least you can all be brain dead together.  It's a small thing.  Heads are important.  And considering Reyna got hit on her motorbike yesterday (she's fine -things have been so strange around here that didn't even make the cut) you never ever know what's around the corner.  Might as well err on the safe side, right?

So I think I'm back on the blog horse.  Sorry to those confused few who actually read my disorganized and incoherent ramblings.  I already know what I'm going to write about tomorrow.  I'm resisting the urge to go there now.  How's that for a cliffhanger?  I'm back!