I’d give you everything I’ve got for a little peace of mind
Posted: March 11, 2012 Filed under: expats, family, getting married, Reflections, work | Tags: family, life, work 5 Comments »Putting aside the fact that in another time in another place we could have hated each other – I wish I’d met my wife a dozen years earlier.
While I’d be naive to think that there wasn’t some connection between settling down and getting older, the responsibilities that come with it are more to do with age than marital situation. I wish we could have had adventures together. I wish I could have shown her parts of the world I’d loved. I wish we could have explored new places together.
It’s not youth that I miss, it’s time.
The context of the post below is not one of problems with Hanoi. It’s bigger than that or rather it’s an accumulation of lots of little problems coming to a head. Expats tend to blame everything on their location and yet sometimes problems are just problems.
As you get older the road less travelled is less travelled for a reason and yet the congestion on the other only makes it less appealing. In the end, choosing either requires a huge leap of faith and when there are two of you the stakes are twice as high.
Enough metaphors yet?
Just wish I could switch my head off.
Diep got married
Posted: February 4, 2012 Filed under: family, getting married, Pics | Tags: diep, family, wedding Leave a comment »I’m taking advantage of the immobility of a bad back to catch up on the blog which has been left idle for some time now.
These pictures our from my sister-in-law Diep’s wedding. It was agreed that I would be photographer. I had mixed feelings about this. I know that is the dark greyness of Tet I’d had my work cut out to try and get anything even vaguely useable without the flash constantly going off and making everything look unnatural. They’re not great but I think I just about got away with it.
On the plus side, a camera in my hand gave me something to keep me occupied with us spending 12 hours there. On more than one occasion I was told “get the camera and get out quick” as a drunken uncle zig zagged over to me with rice wine drinking in mind. It’s hard to say no and yet once you’ve said yes once, you’re a goner.
The second pic is the same location and tent as the lunchtime do for our wedding. However there weren’t the tall buildings behind then. The lovely little enclave of Hanoi where the inlaws live is slowly being ringed by development. I hope they can keep their own walls intact in what is a lovely quiet community – kids playing in the streets and all.
The happy couple look as nervous in the shots as I did in ours. Now Diep is living with her inlaws, as is the way of things here.
My Hanoi life: sister in law to marry, brother in law nearly overlooked
Posted: January 3, 2012 Filed under: family, getting married | Tags: family, married, wedding Leave a comment »When I married my wife she was the first of four sisters to find a husband.
On our way back to Vietnam we learn youngest sister is next up.
We hear the news when we text from Newcastle airport. We arrive jetlagged in Hanoi the best part of a day later.
Just as I start to take for granted the following day off, the last before work starts again, the family swing into action.
My wife is summoned to talk weddings.
We drive across town in now cold, damp and wet Hanoi. On arrival father in law offers me a brandy. I say no half a dozen times before I give up and just drink the thing.
They discuss the plan.
Since I have last been in the room the family had purchased a large flat screen TV. It plays continually over the top of the conversation.
I am referred to only once. Could I take the pictures? Every picture I have ever taken has been on auto setting. This is too much pressure but my protests fall on deaf ears. The decision is made.
A couple of hours later we return. It takes the best part of an hour through traffic. Hanoi is now wetter and colder still.
Soon-to-be-married sister follows us to try on my wife’s ao dai and wedding dress. A friend of my wife’s turns up to pick up the baby clothes she requested we purchase on her behalf when we were in the UK. They start a long conversation about how cheap shirts are in Britain. This will surely mean buying shirts for this lady’s entire extended family next time we travel.
Then an alarm goes off on my wife’s phone. A reminder. It’s her brother’s birthday! In all the wedding planning it has been forgotten. She rings the family home. Father in law isn’t happy at the oversight so invites us all the way back for an impromptu birthday dinner.
My wife, sensing that I may not fancy another trip across town and yet more wedding chat, plays up my cold. I am excused.
She goes. They eat hotpot with prawns and squid. I stay at home and eat half the “quiet dinner” I had prepared for the two of us before birthday plans evolved.
The engagement (an hoi) and wedding are scheduled between now and Tet. No time like the present. Nothing is finalised but I’m keeping my shoes shined and suit pressed.
My boss has been warned that family events could come at any point and I will need to be excused from work.
It’s good to be back.
Like this:
Silence is spooky in noisy Hanoi
Posted: November 29, 2011 Filed under: change, environment, getting married, nghi tam, Reflections | Tags: development, Hanoi, noise, powercuts 2 Comments »As usual the fan was whirring. Well, there was the whir, the additional clinking of the chain that hangs from it and a slight clacking noise that I assume must be internal ball bearings.
On top of that there was the dehumidifier buzzing. On other occasions, at warmer times of the year, there is also the noise of the air conditioner.
And then the dehumidifier stopped dead and the fan slowed. My phone charging by the bed lit up. It dawned on us the power had stopped.
In the summer, when this happens it is hell. The heat means you lie there sweating with the choice of losing the net and opening windows to catch the minutest breeze while getting eaten alive, or you continue to dehydrate on damp sheets.
But this time my only discomfort was the silence. Silence is spooky in noisy Hanoi.
My wife, as ever, fell asleep straight away but suddenly I was aware of everything. My breathing. The compressing of the bed springs as I rolled over.
Our house is down an alley too narrow for cars and while there are houses on all sides, Hanoi sleeps early. If I strained my ears I could just about hear a distant peep every 20 seconds or so from the dike road a few hundred yards away. I could just make out the generators from our neighbours at the Sheraton.
But for the most part the silence was overwhelming.
I’ve heard of Vietnamese simply not being able to stand the silence on trips overseas. A friend who went to study in my home city of Newcastle called it incredibly quiet. I’ve heard Newcastle called a lot of things but never quiet.
There was a time in my life, not such a happy time, when I realised I had developed the habit of turning on the TV or radio on entering every room. I came to the conclusion that it was a way of jamming my brain to stop myself mulling over problems. About the same time I realised that walking home from work gave me unwanted thinking time.
Here it’s hard to miss the Vietnamese compulsion to create noise. The peeping on the roads is obvious, less so is the constant clicking of safety belt catches on planes or a TV blaring in the background of a shop. The tinny speaker of a mobile phone between a group of teenagers by the lake.
So much of modern noise is now created by the constant building and development but is this largely tolerated as part of a acceptance, culture and even welcoming of noise?
If noise has become a habit what started this?
And if these are the good times, then when will the silence return?
The Irish Stew
Posted: November 29, 2011 Filed under: family, Food and drink, getting married, Reflections, The Cart | Tags: cart, food, irish stew, wife 1 Comment »Earlier this week, The Cart specials popped up on my Twitter feed and I was happy to see, for the first time, Irish stew among the items on offer. It prompted the post below and the explanation of how it has come to mean more to me than the sum of its potatoes, carrots etc.
***
As a foreigner, before you can marry a Vietnamese national, you have to go through the kind of interview best known for its dramatisation in the movie Green Card.
Basically they want to check it’s not just a marriage of convenience.
Having seen the movie, I filled my head with lots of useless facts about her family and her favourite food, cosmetics, TV shows etc. In reality the interview was actually a lot more friendly than I’d imagined.
After a general chat they suddenly hit me with: “When did you realise that you had fallen in love with your wife to be?”
Had I prepared an answer then I may have come up with something that made me look a little less bad. Then again any other answer would have been a lie.
“When she made me Irish stew,” I said.
I’m not proud of it but there was some sentiment behind it rather than just my-wife-as-personal-chef. Honestly we both cook as much as each other.
You see I’d just spent a lonely year in rural Cameroon. A year which in many ways I had chosen to do after the break up of a pretty disastrous relationship.
In my new apartment in Hanoi I was still marvelling that hot water came out of the tap every single time I turned it on. I’d stand there grinning and shaking my head in wonder as the steam rose.
I had just met my now wife and I had cooked for her first. Some days later she told me that she would return the favour but wouldn’t tell me what she was making. I’m pretty good with Vietnamese food but feared it might be something I’d struggle with. Either way I was working down the other end of the studio flat as these amazing smells wafted by.
I kept asking what it was and she’d tell me it was a surprise.
Finally she relented and said: “It’s Irish stew”.
Still bruised from a previous relationship, still grateful for home comforts after Africa, I nearly burst into tears on the spot. Making me food was one thing, going to the effort of researching how to cook something so foreign moved me beyond words.
Now, just over a year into the marriage, I teasingly sometimes refer to the Irish stew moment as being “back then” when she’d do anything for me (and I for her).
“That was my trap”, she says, with a mock evil glint in her eye.
