Weighted luck
Posted: October 1, 2011 Filed under: Stories | Tags: con, corruption, Hanoi, nguyen kim, philips, shopping 1 Comment »
There’s no polite way of putting this – I’m an utter arsehole in Vietnamese supermarkets and the like.
Its just the layer upon layer of irritation. The too-loud music on a loop is bad but go to an electrical shop and they’re liable to have four sound systems playing four separate tracks competing with each. All that with the in-store muzak on top.
Then there is the paying. You’re taken to a distant counter which needs to process an incredible amount of paperwork. You then have to take that paperwork to another counter on another floor to get your goods. If you want the guarantee then that’s yet another counter and more in-triplicate paperwork.
Normally they also insist on checking each item before you leave so it has to be unpacked and plugged in and you have to nod your head in agreement that, yes, it does work.
Bizarrely it was corruption that rescued us from the sheer irritation of Nguyen Kim electrical store and had us smiling as we left the store today. Having bought a Philips juicer and blender for the new Cart we were allowed a go for each item on the lucky spinning wheel.
I took the first spin, spinning it anti-clockwise until it all but stopped on a prize, before lurching a full half turn back clockwise and settling on the free glass option. Curious.
The next time it slowed a full half turn away from the glass before again spinning backwards to the glass. We scoffed.
We already had an audience of numerous shop assistants who were slowly realising that the in-store Philips promotion was a bit of a scam. Just to test it we had a third, fourth and fifth go and every time it swung back to the glass. Laughing shop assistants queued up to have a go as the Philips promotions girls became more and more sheepish.
Considering that the best prize we could have won was a thermos mug it was hardly worth complaining about. In fact we left the place giggling and, as we travelled down the escalator, we could clearly see the back of the spinning wheel. There, obviously where the glass was located, was the large outline of a weight.
Fruit *is* rock n roll
Posted: March 24, 2011 Filed under: Food and drink, Stories | Tags: food, fruit, stories, vietnam 1 Comment »
Once, for reasons to long to go into, I found myself on the “tour bus” of a relatively famous Vietnamese girl group.
We picked them up on the way to the gig – there they were all hot pants, high heels and inch thick make up.
Phew rock n roll, I thought. Later they were to perform to a group of sex-starved teenage boys at a detention centre. I don’t like making war film comparisons when writing about Vietnam but it was hard not to think of that scene in Apocalypse Now as they strutted their stuff as the sun went down.
Anyway, earlier the three girls has settled themselves into their bus seats and delved into handbags and brought out…fruit.
Then with inch long red nails they proceeded to peel, separate and share it.
Rock n Roll, not so much. These were no wildchilds. There were to be no lines snorted up 500,o00 dong notes.
At the gig the young boys were beside themselves as the girl group sang and gyrated – although strangely they didn’t storm the stage until we had an apple eating competition. The lure of fruit.
Elsewhere I see fruit being the central part of teen picnics. At a workshop I attended today, fruit was already peeled and plated for us. Dessert options are limited in Vietnam – but there’s always fruit.
Nothing says, well, anything like fruit.
I have a rough awareness that certain fruits are considered hot, that others are believed to give you spots. The whole business of eating fruit is more complex than you might imagine.
But I’ve also met men who are less willing fruit eaters. Fruit and tea for girls, cigarettes, coffee and beer for men. We get the better deal – they get better skin and longevity.
It’s possible to buy pre-peeled and segmented pomelos, but mostly fruit is bought by the kilo – sometimes it’s so much that you literally have to share or let it rot.
The Sleepy Cockerel of Nghi Tam Village
Posted: February 9, 2011 Filed under: Hanoi, Stories | Tags: cockerel, Hanoi, noise, rooster 9 Comments »Having lived and worked in developing countries on three continents I can confirm that noise is always a feature.
Silence is a luxury taken for granted only in richer, softer nations.
Fireworks and music through the night in Nicaragua, gospel singing and loud scolding mothers at dawn in Cameroon. In Vietnam everything than can make noise will be utilised to disturb the peace. Vietnamese manufacture noise to an extent that I believe they are genuinely uncomfortable with silence.
In Hanoi we have found ourselves a quiet spot to live in. At the end of an alley too wide for cars and with just one house beyond us, there is almost no traffic. Last year we suffered not one but three houses around us being knocked down and rebuilt but that seems to have come to an end.
Now we are left with just the cockerel.
The fact that is all we face makes us very lucky indeed. Every time the cockerel wakes me up at 6am I remind myself of that. It crows throughout the day, starting at daybreak. It has a 10 second cock a doodle doo cycle and can keep it up for hours.
I hate that bird.
But what is weirdest is, on the days when I wake up just before the cockerel, I’ve noticed something very odd. At first I thought I was imagining it but I’ve since heard it five or six times more.
Just before that first break-of-dawn triumphant cockerel crow there are three bangs. It took me a while to work out what they are and when I did I couldn’t believe it at first.
It turns out, rather than the family opposite being woken up by their cockerel, they are waking it up.
Three bangs on the top of it’s wooden coop stirs it from its slumbers and assures it does its duty in ensuring no one in the neighbourhood sleeps on.
Me included.
Like this:
Ovulation for the nation
Posted: January 24, 2011 Filed under: family, Hanoi, Reflections, Stories | Tags: pregnancy, pregnant, vietnam 3 Comments »Tell them you’re married and you don’t have kids and they’ll immediately commiserate with you. They’ll assume that there must be something wrong.
When they say “not good” they aren’t judging you. They are recognising that you’ve been married so long and still no babies. Not good…something must be wrong. How very sad for you.
Typically Vietnam has a confusing, more than meets the eye, attitude to out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
Officially: How could this have happened? Vietnamese people *never* have sex outside of marriage. The shame. What scandal.
Unofficially: A baby? A baby, a baby, a baby! Wow! How wonderful! Everything works with this couple. How marvellous! They must get married immediately. I’ll ring the fortune teller and we’ll set a date. You take a bottle of Johnny Walker and a carton of Vinataba round to our prospective in-laws and we’ll work this out between us.
A couple of months later an obviously petrified couple stand in wedding outfits looking silently miserable while all around them wedding celebrations reverberate.
And everyone, unofficially, knows a baby is on the way.
If your marriage is of the non-shotgun variety then, once you are spliced, they’re watching everything. Weight gain? Choosing a soft drink over alcohol? The slightest bout of sickness? They could all be signs.
Is she? Could she be?
After a recent phone conversation between my wife and her mother I enquired, out of habit, just what were they’d talked about.
Pregnancy of course.
She asked if she was. She wasn’t.
My mother in law prescribed bean sprouts and soft boiled eggs to make me “strong like man”.
Friends lend us baby books. There are a pile of them by her side of the bed.
Pregnancy, fertility and ovulation are the most overkeyed words in our Google searches.
This is 21st century fertilisation. Cycles are monitored using Android and Apple apps.
But, as the websites tell you, the most important thing is you remain calm and don’t feel too pressured.
Time passed since our wedding: three months.
