New Room, New View

Guys. I just had the most delicious sausage roll in the history of mankind. I'm not using hyperbole here. I may be sun-drunk and hungry, but damn do the Vietnamese have a way with the French rolls. It consisted of two mini rolls baked into one another, slices of sausage baked into the top, pieces of chives and garlic here and there, a generous sugar glaze, topped off with some stinky and delicious cheese.

It was nearly the size of a sandwich, and I paid about 43 cents for it.

Anyways, that's not why I'm here. I'm here to brag about my new digs, which I found on Craigslist. Yup. Craigslist. Compared to the tiny little room I was staying in initially, this is an absolute palace:

It's a little pricey, but cheaper than the guest-house I was staying at, and a couple of blocks removed from the tourist din of the area my guest-house was in. We'll see whether or not I can swing it in the long run, but for now it's some comfort. My fellow house-mates are a Vietnamese family, from what I can tell I am their only boarder. They are terrific people, very friendly and helpful. They noticed I had a lot of books from the school, so today while I was out they put a desk and chair in the room for me, a nice surprise.

Here's the view from the balcony:

If I crank my head over to the left, I get a good view of Bitexco Financial Tower at night, all cantilevered and glowing. My camera doesn't really get a good shot of it, but it's nice to look at.

Right now, it's a beautiful night. Nice and cool--actually turned the AC off for once and have the windows open. It's raining a little, and there's some wicked lightning in the distance. This is a welcome relief from earlier today, when I was out at 7 am--it was already tremendously muggy and very, very smoggy. I actually ducked into a pharmacy to get a couple of those cloth surgical masks to wear while walking around and riding the xe om (motorcycle taxi, pronounced kind of like zoom).  I felt like Michael Jackson for a moment, but after a while I didn't feel weird at all--I was breathing better, for one, and for two, everybody wears them for the same reasons--air through a cloth filter is better than air through an exhaust filter.

As for my activities today, they were nothing short of spectacularly bureaucratic. I was talking with an old friend who lives here on the phone last night, explaining my task-list, to which he replied, "Welcome to communism, Beev. Welcome to communism."  If there's one things I can say about the communists, it's that they can departmentalize like champs. And--they like stamping things.

So my training in Social Services has prepared me well.

The most interesting thing that happened to me today was having a health check-up for the purposes of securing a work permit. I paid $33 and got a tour of the hospital, meaning, went from department to department, having various parts of my body checked. In this room, somebody talked to me about the United States and then looked in my ears. In the next room, somebody complimented me on looking younger than my age and took my blood pressure. It wasn't altogether unpleasant, but enough to kind of turn me off from socialized medicine. I saw a lot of sick people, just waiting, in un air-conditioned hallways.

So I will end my day with a nice bottle of water and Emergen-C. Gotta fight the sickness.