Happy New Year !!!

Speaking of tea, yesterday I was in a tea mood and remembered a Taiwanese teahouse I used to go to when I was a student here. Surprisingly I actually found it again.

The atmosphere was good. The tea was fine. The gruel-looking stuff next to my tea is a sort of rice based porridge, I don’t very often eat that but in this case it was really good. Very hot, which was good (it’s still winter here – I have to wear a jacket…), enough beef and beef liver in it to give it good body, and enough spice to obfuscate the fact that it’s really just liquefied rice…

Christmas Eve - yes I'm late, I KNOW that

Christmas tree smell, spiced hot cider, nieces and nephews jumping up and down on you, Grandma’s Christmas cookies, my neighbor’s bourgeois Christmas tree decorations and luxurious ‘tea’, Christmas song medleys on the random instrument collection, making breakfast crepes with my sister at lunchtime, family togetherness that is exceptional in a bizarrely mundane way…

Well, not so much this year. This year I just focused on the tea. Not the luxurious kind, the green kind. Not that green kind, well maybe, I don’t know, I mean the still growing kind.

Inspired by a friend of mine who sells Vietnamese tea (among 57 other primarily Chinese varieties, as I recall) in the states, I got up early the morning of Christmas Eve and rode off into the sunrise in search of chai perfecto. In the interest of full disclosure I must say, though, I had a cup of coffee with breakfast; my inner purist wasn’t awake yet… It was cold that early in the morning, my horn button thumb stopped cooperating after about eight minutes in the breeze. Thai Nguyen Province is about 80 km north of Hanoi. Remember Ho Soc Son, the lake with no Coke machines? Thai Nguyen is about an hour and a half beyond that.

On the two and a half hour motorbike ride, somewhere after the ‘cold and stiff’ mode was replaced by the ‘it can’t be far’ mode, I began to notice again things which I ought to have pictures of. A motorbike, a wide rack on the back, with a giant dead hog stretched out on it, hanging out three feet on either side. A bicycle outfitted with something like a hat rack, each hook holding a clear plastic bag of full of water and goldfish, creating a surprisingly sparkling effect. The bicycle saddled with a pair of vases, looking like a pair of larger-than-life six-shooters dominating their hero in a cartoon western. Vases like you might see in a Chinese restaurant, about 5 feet high with classic blue bamboo patterns all over them, presumably expensive and breakable but transported by bicycle anyway. Another bicycle bristling with synthetic dustbrooms, like a psychedelic porcupine, shimmering hot pink and neon yellow with every bump. And a procession of bicycles somehow dragging along an entire haystack each. When you pass the haystack you see a peasant hat on a 4’5” woman trudging along, dwarfed by her load, oblivious to blaring horns and swarms of vehicles of all sizes buzzing by. And Santa. I saw Santa on a motorbike (Rudolph dissed the customs guy and couldn’t get a visa), but he turned out to be a tourist.

Arriving in the town of Thai Nguyen, I got lunch in someplace with a bamboo floor. Ordering was easy – some kind of soup, some kind of beef, noodles, a mystery item for good measure and a Orangina – fake Fanta. The ‘soup’ looked like cranberry jello or something. The peanuts on top were good, the rest of it was bloody. I don’t really like blood pudding, actually the bloody part wasn’t that bad, but the gritty stuff in the bottom was a tad distracting. The beef was good. The mystery was pickled green things, and they weren’t cucumbers. Round, woody, and definitely adding a new tanginess to the pickled flavor. Turns out they were sycamore. Sycamore seeds, I guess, or nuts, or something I don’t know really. Didn’t know sycamore was something to eat.

From there on, I followed my instincts, carefully ignoring the bloody sycamore feeling in my stomach. It was nice to get off the main road, although by the time I got up the Thai Nguyen the main road wasn’t all that main anymore anyway.

Christmas Eve Photos

The Provincial Band of Brothers inspected and approved.

And, ooh la la, I actually found some tea!

It’s the dark green bushes on the hillsides.

A landscape defined by panorama.

Au Chemin!

NAFIQAVED

It's my acronym-of-the-day.

Go ahead, I'll give you three guesses on what it stands for. Any takers?

Click here.

Con Voi Vui Lam

Theoretically I am supposed to be ‘adding value’ here, saying something that could possibly be usefully or edifying for someone somewhere. However, there are times when things which could hardly be classified as ‘value’ simply need to be said. So you just say them.

Elephants destroy crops in Nghe An

A herd of elephants last week destroyed more than 2 ha of crops in Thanh Thuy Village... The elephants did not attack anyone (not even the reporter wandering the fields in a ganja haze dreaming up what kind of story to write next), but roamed the area, uprooting cassava and corn plants and then piling them up into several heaps. (So did they pile the corn and cassava in separate heaps? Which one did they eat first? Did they have ugali or boule on the menu?)

Local residents believed the elephants belonged to one family. (Let me guess, all four had the surname Nguyen and worked in the Elephantine Pedicure Boutique.) The elephants also entered the area late last year. (It’s officially a tradition now, next year they’ll invite the cousins.)

Thanh Chuong District authorities called on local people not to kill the elephants if they travel to the area again. Loud noises are sufficient to scare the elephants away. (I’d say try karaoke.)

And, finally, here’s what those elephants felt like, sitting around looking at their cassava stash!

I have a weakness for articles about elephants and pictures of nephews...

Photo credit to my sister, starring Joshua Nganga and Zachary Gicharu, and partial appendages of Moses...

Drumming Durians

Drumming

As a chronically understated person who is typically happier observing the world than actually taking part in the world, I am not particularly prone to undue excitement. One thing that does nudge my interest is music, specifically music resulting from unusual combinations of influences, either geographic or stylistic.

A thoroughly amateur musician, I have a thoroughly amateur collection of instruments (and ‘things’) which takes up some of my time - when I am at home, I should add - my instrument collection doesn't travel as well as my flag collection! In any case, I do sometimes miss random musical instruments lying about the house. Particularly my d’jembe drum, which is a great instrument for trance, thumb blisters, and creating general astonishment and mayhem in the neighborhood. Listening to West African music just makes me smile, not much more to it.

And I was reminded of my d’jembe this week by an article describing a young Japanese traditional drumming troupe’s visit to and performance in Senegal with a well-known Senegalese drummer. Traditional Japanese drumming is “all about holding the silence and creating a well-placed sound with in it.” Life is like that – don’t forget the silence because without it music is impossible.


Three Gorges

Just read about this film, Jia’s Still Life, which I have not seen but it really sounds interesting. About a town that is being emptied due to the 3 Gorges Dam project. I don’t know when this was filmed or exactly where the town is. Four years ago when I was in China I did a river cruise from Chongqing, down the Yangtze River to the dam. At that point they had just completed blocking the river, albeit symbolically, with most of the dam completed but a gap on one side of say, a half mile or so… Well, not quite that big. Truly, the scale of that project is astonishing. Hoover and Grand Coulee are really not even close to the same league. In any case, my memories of driving through a city which was swarming with workers and sledgehammers slowly demolishing everything to carry it up the hill and reuse for the new city, well you don’t see a city moving too often so I remember that. Right, so if you get a chance watch the film and tell me how it is!

Russ Feingold column on Chad
Pure self-interested political realism meets humanitarian idealism (well, at least in this article), and still nothing happens on the ground.

Kofi Annan speech
Kofi Annan gave a speech the other day. On the UN, on everybody being in the same world and hoping for essentially the same things. Attitudes on the UN here are almost universally positive. Attitudes in America on the UN, based primarily on anecdotal comments by truck drivers (…) are less positive. Leadership involves being in the front, and it’s hard to go forward, even from the front, if you can’t take your eyes off the folks behind you.

Quote of the day from a candidate for Governor of Aceh, from a BBC article.
“Being the governor is like being in prison, I will lose my freedom," he said.

Funny headline:
Govt Allocates Food to Seriously Durian-hit Province
I’m picturing Durians raining from the sky, the besieged wearing spike helmets to split them and gas masks to breathe…

Happy Birthday to me … :)

On the other hand

Rather, on another subject altogether I read something which caught my eye today. For anybody reading this who doesn't actually know me, outside of being a professional English teacher (6 mos experience) and a professional news editor (3 weeks experience), I am also a professional truck driver. Way too many years of experience - it's the only thing that I have ever made a respectable amount of money off of. Anyway, American truck drivers have some rules they are supposed to follow on how long you can drive or work in a day and how long you have to rest. SUPPOSED to follow. I, of course, always followed them. Anyway, reading an article on how those rules have been changed over the last few years I see the name of somebody from the last trucking company I worked for. The rules have been relaxed, you can drive more now, thus if common sense prevails you have to say that means more drivers driving sleepily and more sleepy drivers sleepily driving into innocent bystanders OR cell-phone-talking-road-hogging-SUV-drivers-who-don't-look-where-they-are-going and, in any case, causing more accidents. That's the first time ever on this blog I've even started a proper rant...

Before Mr. Bush entered the White House, he selected Duane W. Acklie, a leading political fund-raiser and chairman of the American Trucking Associations, and Walter B. McCormick Jr., the group’s president, to serve on the Bush-Cheney transition team on transportation matters.

In the months before and after the election, a leading industry figure in the campaign against tighter driving rules was Mr. Acklie, who became chairman of the American Trucking Associations in the fall of 2000. A longtime Bush family friend and Republican fund-raiser, he led one of nation’s largest trucking companies, Crete Carrier, based in Nebraska. Mr. Acklie, who stepped down from the post about a year after his appointment, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Nothing really to say about that, except that Acklie Corp. owned the company that owned the company that I worked for. It's a good company, for that sort of thing. Having driven a motorbike around Hanoi for all of six months now and still being alive I must have some kind of driving skills, although I have to say that the skills you learn driving 40 tons 65 feet long at 65 mph on cruise control endlessly on American interstate highways (how to stay awake without actually having to do anything except for steer for hours and hours and hours and hours) are not exactly the same skills that keep you alive on a motorbike in Hanoi (how to tilt your bike sideways while still going straight so as to get past small obstacles like public buses, ladies selling mangos, and APEC dignitaries). But I would argue that the ability to act with aplomb, good humour and common sense serves the same purpose everywhere, on and off the road, incidentally. In any case, for lots and lots of reasons, I'm glad I don't have to keep a log book anymore!

Mei you yisi

I'm afraid this is going to be a very random and unorganized post, nothing new about that I guess. How about Castro?! Two stories, about the same event, from somewhat amusingly opposite perspectives. The parade in Havana commemorating the beginning Castro's revolution was attended by Vietnamese officials. From Vietnam News, the story on celebration and mutual memories I think, Vietnamese toast Cuban President’s birthday, forces. And from the BBC, Ailing Castro misses Cuban parade.

I have never really had much fascination for studying or experiencing communism just for the sake of it. I guess I grew up at the very end of the Cold War in a very sheltered place and was just never that fascinated by it. However, I have been to three of the remaining five nominally communist countries (China, Laos and Vietnam - I expect Cuba and North Korea are somewhat less 'nominal' in their ideology) I get a lot more news here, on the opposite side of the world, about Cuba than I ever did in America, all of 90 miles of Gulf away. I wonder if you can buy Cuban cigars in Vietnam? I wonder if Fidel knows about the Che graffiti in Hanoi's old quarter?

It has actually been cold here. The paper said 16 C yesterday. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit but I am voluntarily wearing long sleeves, and actually used my jacket today - for the first time I used my fleece that I carried from America. My fleece bought in Labrador, Atlantic Coast Canada, where in August it was probably colder than this. I do miss home sometimes. But photos like this help me get over that feeling! It might be cold enough here for me to shiver while riding my motorbike, but I don't miss the ice and snow. I can't afford to snowboard anymore anyway!


Today I went to my first ever Vietnamese wedding. I mean the first time I've ever been to a Vietnamese wedding, not 'my' first one. The idea of me ever having any kind of wedding is scary enough without calling it 'my first' one! Anyway, someone who is I think, an acquaintance of an acquaintance got married today. An early morning (for Saturday) van ride 50 k out of town to a village, a large tent with tables full of food, a lot of noisy people and noisy events, a few crystallized moments of comprehension separated by long periods of 'well I am here so I may as well eat and drink since I can't understand what's going on...' All in all, not a bad strategy, I think. Actually it was a good time to talk with the group of people I went with, even though I didn't really follow much of the ceremony, that was quite short anyway. The food, local rice wine and tea was worth the trip!