Liberation Day

This weekend is one long holiday here - Friday was the Hung Kings Day (fathers of the Vietnamese nation in, lets say, 269 bc), today Monday is Liberation Day, and tomorrow is May Day. April 30, 1975, Vietnam was officially re-united. I was rather small then, I don't exactly remember the occasion. However today, there was a sort of circus in the middle of the street. The funny thing is they often have concerts and performances there, and they never close the street. So everyone just keeps coming until there is about a half mile of mayhem, and everybody in the front can see the event and everybody else just sits there and breathes motorbike exhaust until the show is over. This time I got there early enough to get seat with a view.

Before it got crowded

After that…

Twirling hoops

Twirling flaming hoops

Bouncing on a stick

Bouncing and twirling a drum on foot, upside-down

Twirling burning bamboo

Trapeze

Euro Bovines

Europe Days 2007 in Vietnam are opening with a decidedly non-conformist herd of cows, currently grazing contentedly in Lenin Park. Cow graffiti must be effective, I think I remember some appearing in Harrisburg once, and I remember some as well in Bennington VT where I used to slip through with a rig early in the morning.. Anyway, cows:

Spring is here

Forever and a day

Yes it has been forever and a day since I posted anything. I am still here, and, like, getting up every morning, eating pho, motorbiking with my fingers crossed and all that, so what does the lack of news mean? I guess I haven’t learned anything in the last month? That can’t be it!

I have seen two noteworthy films recently, the first of which is called (with great originality), Congo River, and it is about the Congo River. It appeals to me on several levels. While it was billed as a documentary, it is less of a ‘facts and figures’ kind of documentary, and more of a ‘here is what happened to me’ kind of documentary. Most of the film involves a sort of river barge version of a matatu, how could that fail to be fascinating?

Apart from that the film is narrated in French, obviously with a lot of local languages as well and I heard all of two words that I remember from Swahili (of the four that I remember), and I was provided with Vietnamese commentary. It was a film, not a lecture, so I thoroughly enjoyed it in spite of not understanding much of the narrative. Languages are addictive, and naturally, ever after the first one they just give you a headache.

An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s film on climate change did actually make it to Hanoi. Of course, most films make it here before they get anywhere else, through the $1 sidewalk DVD sector, but I mean in a cinema. I don’t think there was much about the film that surprised me, outside, perhaps, of that fact that Al Gore’s delivery has been de-woodenized. Maybe it is easier to be engaging when you are facing the establishment, instead of sort of staggering along underneath it.

On climate change, there are a couple ethanol plants underway here in Vietnam, at least one of which will use cassavas. Which is a great idea, I can’t think of a better way to use a cassava! That in spite of reservations about ethanol as a sort of bandaid on a bullet wound, again pushing off that nasty little issue of the actual problem – the bigger is better complex.

Well, I guess the last month wasn't a complete wash. zaijian

The King of Procrastination

A quote from a BBC article, giving an amusing two paragraph synopsis of Switzerland:

Switzerland is what was left over when the Europeans formed their nation states. Italian, French and German ultra-conservatives escaped to the mountains, joined forces and then created 500 years of peace, the cuckoo clock and the gnomes of Zurich.

Today the Swiss feel a bit disorientated, because the country's business model - neutrality - is problematic. Totally surrounded by the EU, they "have no-one to be neutral against".

In more news, today I found out for the first time (being naïve and ill-informed) that Malaysia has a king! Or at least that’s what the paper here said – apparently this is an elected head of state, in a constitutional monarchy. Learn something every day!

Perhaps because I’m American, the whole concept of kings and royalty is somewhat bizarre but also fascinating – in the same way that a fuzzy yellow bobble-head daschund in a roadhouse trinket shop in South Carolina might be fascinating, I’m there, it’s there, there’s nothing else to do… Anyway, speaking of kings, anybody who wants to read the ramblings of the King Father of Cambodia can go to this site which never fails to amuse me.

Vietnam used to have royalty, now it has the guys with REAL motorcycles lording it over the rest of us…! The former prince of Vietnam died last weekend. He was born on Réunion – some of the royal family was ‘banished’ by the French colonial government to Réunion! I guess it would be a good place of banishment, some odd thousands of miles of ocean away from everything else, but it always seemed appealing to me. Mostly because it is really too small to show up on a globe but, since there isn’t anything else anywhere near it, it does show up.

Now that I’ve gotten all that important information out of my head, perhaps I can get some work done!

My Daring Dictionary

I have the funniest set of dictionaries ever. Arriving in Vietnam as a student I bought 'pocket' Vietnamese-English and English-Vietnamese dictionaries. That is 'pocket' as in my Grandpa's bib overalls pocket, not as in any pocket I've got, but they are hardly up to Oxford Unabridged standard either. They are both "EXCLUSIVELY designed for Vietnamese students" which is why they probably cost a dollar, which is I why I chose them. I keep going to the bookstore and looking at real dictionaries, but real dictionaries have no character. I can find Vietnamese words for English words I didn't even know existed. For instance, insipidity. I can see the logic in that, but if I ever heard anyone actually use that word in a sentence, I would remember it, and I don't. On sentences, the example sentences are classic.

"I bitterly fail in this dusty world And must be content to hand my wish to the future."
"Everytime coming the autumn I dream of my childhood."
"It's time you woke up the fact that you're not very popular."
"Do you believe that stories about fairies exist?"
"Can you board and lodge me?"
And the winner of the insipidity contest:
"Thinking of her unfaithful character is the best way to distract myself from missing her melancholy-eyed face."

I can't read that without laughing, shouldn't dictionaries make you laugh? The E-V dictionary has an entry for "imbibition," unfortunately it doesn't have a sentence to go with it. Actually it doesn't have a definition either, or a translation or anything, only imbibition, so all exclusively Vietnamese students know for a fact that imbibition is indeed a word of some kind, with some meaning, to be used in some context or another... Allow me to offer a sentence.

"The inquest investigating the inhibition of imbibition was inhibited by its inimitable insipidity."

:)

Gloria Jean’s Bún Chả

When I was in Hanoi the first time, on the road from the ‘cafés and restaurants with English menus’ district back to my house, one block was a giant noisy hole-in-the-ground, surrounded by a corrugated iron fence, further surrounded by construction workers drinking rượu, hút thuốc lá-ing and yelling HELLO and various other things at funny-looking foreign passers-by. Construction workers and truck drivers are the same everywhere; I can say that since I am one. Was one. Anyway, what was that hole-in-the-ground is now a high-rise building which, having driven past about a million times without ever really looking at it, I was inspired to go into the other day. There is motorbike parking down the hill to level minus two, with pipes and things hanging about making it a good idea to keep a helmet on, particularly when you are walking.

The first four floors are a shopping mall, complete with fashion shops, electronics spilling into the walkways shouting "Hey buy me, I’m shiny," squeaky clean restaurants with lacquered bamboo arbores draped in iridescent green plastic with vague vine-like qualities, sappy-jazz music (yes that is a real genre…), and a teeny-bopper arcade with what appears to be papier-mâché rocks hanging over the door. Looking out the window over the most hygienic bún chả I have ever eaten, the rest of the block is a wasteland of mud, gravel, boulders, and people parking motorbikes. The hole-in-the-ground apparently just missed being squashed by this building, and has moved next door, complete with above-mentioned accoutrements. Across the street are the usual sidewalk cafés selling coffee and bread and noodles and anything, for about 30 cents each. On the way out I saw Gloria Jean’s Coffee shop. One of the things I like best about Vietnam is the surprisingly good coffee you can get on any street corner, but having Gloria Jean’s down the street isn’t a bad thing either!

Another book to recommend - The Devil That Danced On The Water: A Daughter’s Memoir, by Aminatta Forna. The story of a girl growing up in Sierra Leone (some of the time) after independence, of her family, and her country. There is a fine balance between the personal and the political elements of the story, both of which are worth reading independently. I guess I’m getting old – when I was on the other side of Africa in Mozambique in 1997 I remember meeting someone from Freetown, whose family was still there. Seems like very long time ago! In any case, it is an arresting book regardless of ones connections to Sierra Leone, or Africa in general.

I think it says something about me, that when I was in America last I was reading loads of books about Vietnam, of course. Now that I am back in Vietnam I am reading about America and Africa... I suppose what it says is that I am chronically unsatisfied. Or maybe I will call it perpetually curious - that has a much more positive ring! Language is not a science, obviously or I would not have a job being an editor!

There are the symmetrical days …

… then there is the rest of life!

Tết Fireworks on Hồ Hoàn Kiếm