Woes

So, my laptop is dead. Nathan's laptop has also kicked the bucket. So far, the problem appears to be beyond the skill of the two repair shops I have taken it to, but I'm still holding out some hope that the data may be retrieveable when I take it back with me to the states. I didn't lose anything more serious than some half-hearted writing, since everything important was backed up on disk. I am, however, quite sore that I don't have a computer at hand, which cuts out a signficant portion of my income. Also, I just downloaded the entire Season 2 of House. Imagine all that fascinating entertainment locked dormant inside the hard drive! The gigs of unwatched curmudgeonly doctors and maybe a few dedicated to Blue Crush. It was horrible, horrible timing. Now Nathan's getting tired of my requests for him to sing ''Billie Jean'' or ''Hey Jude'' because I can't stand writing in silence. I honestly don't see what his problem is; he has a great voice. Not to mention that now I have to deal with writing with an actual writing instrument. On actual paper. Who even does that anymore?

Perhaps I wouldn't be so irritated if one of my favorite pants didn't have a sticky splotch of red ink from a leaking pen in the wash. It was my favorite pair because it made me feel like a bad ass athletic type, with little zippered cargo pockets that were perfect for whipping out pocket knives or antidotes. The only upside to the whole affair is that I can blame it on the maid. Because, did I mention? We have a maid to do our laundry. Apparently she came with the house we're sharing with three other roommates. I woke up and began panicking because my laundry basket was empty before I realized that no one would want to steal my clothes. But when you only have two pairs of pants, they become VERY PRECIOUS.

Since I'm rarely in the house, I rarely see our maid, chi Yen, so the only times when I'm reminded that we have someone doing our laundry is when I find boxers in my clothes. This happens...pretty much all the time. I don't think chi Yen is confused about my gender, but I feel embarassed about bringing it up anyway, since I still feel vaguely guilty about having a maid. The woman does our laundry, so who cares if Colin ends up with my towels and I end up with his boxers? I guess, except Colin, of course. Or possibly Nicholas.

Most Unpleasant, De La Thanh

De La Thanh is almost certainly the most unpleasant street in Hanoi. It's a long, long street populated with furniture shops; shops that are in businesses involving welding, power tools, and lots of sawdust. There are people sending blinding sparks into the road, operating very heavy machinery, and trucks pulling in and out with furniture deliveries. I went looking for a table the other day and almost passed out.

That said, it's also the quickest way to work, barring some illegal traffic manuevers. I snapped this photos on the back of a xe om, a motorbike taxi. Some days De La Thanh will be so crowded that xe om drivers will refuse to take the route, opting to drive the wrong way up another a major arterial road instead.

P.S. yes, I have a helmet. Sometimes I like to pretend that I am a space cowboy.

Omai

A while back in January, when it was numbingly cold and I had taken up regularly wearing a green-brown scarf that Nathan dubbed “the vomit scarf”, I developed a prolonged cough. This was nothing new, as I’ve always been prone to coughing ever since a quarter spent on an island researching crabs. For whatever reason, I developed severe allergies, sneezing so violently and frequently that it became impossible to type or dissect, or really, anything activity involving basic motor skills. People became convinced that I was suffering from a malignant sneezing virus. At the end of the quarter, we discovered that the protective wax paper covering the countertops had also been covering up enormous growths of mold, which 1) was extremely disgusting and 2) convinced everyone that I was not going to die of sneezing.

Instead, I was left with a persistent cough, and now it only flares up whenever I’m feeling even mildly under the weather. And I was feeling under the weather. To compound things were Vietnamese people soberly muttering that I wasn’t adjusting to the rain and cold. As much as I wanted to point out that, ahem, actually, Seattle is actually not known for being sunny or mild, my vocabulary would have only permitted something like, “My city is also cold and wet like this.” Well, that would have gotten my point across, but I don’t think they would have believed me anyway.

My xe om driver, Kien, certainly didn’t believe me. Hanoi is so cold, he said, that it chills your bones. You’re freezing on the inside. He tsked at my fleece jacket and vomit scarf, and began lecturing me on proper outerwear, all the while weaving in and out of traffic. Mid-lecture on the importance of hats, he took a sharp turn into Hanoi’s Old Quarter, saying that he knew just the thing to make me stop coughing.

Omai refers to fruit that has been preserved in a variety of ways: pickled, dried, steeped in syrup. Usually sour and sometimes sweet, I used to eat sour ones by touching one to the tip of my tongue until the sour coating had been licked away. Only then could I stand popping the whole thing in my mouth. Kien bought me two types of gingered apricots: dry and sour, and sweet and sticky. He said they were from the best omai shop in Hanoi and he promised that the omai would make my cough go away.

It didn’t really help the cough, but it didn’t matter because the omai were so damn delicious. Nathan and I gobbled up the sweet sticky kind in a few days, and I managed to take a picture of the dry and sour kind before that disappeared too.

Will Speak for Snacks

One of the difficulties of being just barely fluent enough to comprehend simple commands but not actually express yourself is that people tend to treat you like a pet. Conversational interaction consists of the following: calling your name for lunch, smiles and pats, and there’s a lot of miming and gestures involved. Case in point: a while back, two of my coworkers were waiting on motorbikes for another guy to show up so we could all go to lunch. I’m perched on the back on a bike, and out of the corner of my eye I see co-worker #3 on a corner ahead of us.

I tap the guy in front of me, pointing with my arm and begin stammering out, “He’s waiting over there.”

The co-worker looks at my outstretched arm: “Hm? He’s up there? Yeah? Oh yeah, he is! Good girl!” And then he gave me a Scooby snack.

There is another one.

I have cute kitties.

I have two cute kitties.

The kitten is Boots. I tend to call her Boo. Occasionally, she will respond to Booze.