Happy Thanksgiving from the Electric Company

Hello! I've been busy, busy, busy this month with work and preparing for a recent excursion to Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of the Angkor Wat temple complex, the area of which proved too immense and spectacular for a one-day visit. While I'm sorting and collating the some 300 pictures and videos I took, I give you this picture of people either working on or worsening the state of city electricity.

They are strapped to the poles with those industrial cloth tie-downs I have used in vans designed to accommodate wheelchairs; their shoes are outfitted with something similar to bicycle clamps. These guys are actually practicing a greater degree of safety than the average public works employee--I once saw about five more guys about twenty feet higher in the air, with just their shoe-clamps. It's either amazing or incredibly irresponsible, I haven't decided which one yet. Either way, it says a lot about how things are done in a society whose citizens don't really have the liberty to be litigious.

As for Thanksgiving, I'm afraid it came and went without much thought on my part. Typically, I love Thanksgiving. It's a holiday that features tons of great food, and the chance to connect again with family and friends. Who wouldn't love it? But over here everything is pretty much the same--the weather stays hot, it's the "dry" season (though I'm learning that that means "less rain, but same humidity," contrary to my prior hope that things would actually be drier), the restaurants in the tourist neighborhoods start playing horrendous Christmas music, but really life goes on without much thought about parades, football, turkey-comas, and people trampling each other to death at some unlucky Wal-Mart in the early hours of the morning.

In that vein, can someone explain "Cyber-Monday" to me? What is it, please? When I first started using the internet, "Cyber-ing" had some pretty, ahem, adult connotations. I can only assume that "Cyber Monday" carries different ones.

And also also--while I don't like to use this blog as a platform for my political opinions, I gotta say I'm a little shocked at what's coming out of the US these days vis-a-vis the Occupy Wallstreet movement. I am of course removed from a firsthand account of what's going on exactly, so doubtless my perception of the movement is a bit skewed. However, I struggle to understand how, in a country that protects people's rights to protest military funerals with signs insisting that our fallen soldiers are going to hell, or a parade/public demonstration of hate groups like the KKK, this movement is getting beaten down just to (seemingly) make a point.  A picture floating around Facebook provides a timely assessment of what is/isn't (seemingly) allowed in the US:

Granted, we can start an argument about private/public property rights and different legal definitions of what constitutes "trespassing" or "unlawful loitering" or whatever. The point is in the perception.

At the end of the day, a movement is a movement is a movement. You don't have to agree with Occupy Wallstreet, but you have to let 'em have their voice, however Smartphone-coordinated it may be. That's what America is all about. I mean, you know who suppresses freedom of speech and the press, and responds inappropriately to nonviolent demonstrations that seek to expose and correct corruption in high-level government corridors?

Communists.

And with that, I wish you all Happy Holiday Season! :-)

Driving Lessons

"Never think you are right. You think you are right, you're already in the cemetery."


Depending on how you apply it, the above quote may seem needlessly intense. Apply it to Saigon traffic, and it's more than apt.

One of my Vietnamese colleagues at SEAMEO is a man whom I will call Mr. H. Months ago, Mr. H gave me his phone number with the promise: "Call me, I will teach you how to drive."

Well, months passed, and nothing doing. Occasionally Mr. H would make a remark at school, something to the extent of: "You have not called me yet." or: "Come to my house this Sunday. We will go driving."

Finally, after months of waiting, Mr. H could not wait anymore. Last Wednesday he informed me: "Next week, tell your driver not to come. I will bring you home. Then you will drive."

Sometimes, decisions are made for you in Vietnam.

Not that I'm opposed to driving. Sure, I value my life, but you can't argue against the innate convenience of being able to go somewhere when you feel like it, regardless of how lazy of a person you actually are. However, in the four months I've been here, I've found some definite advantages to using a xe om  (literally, 'motorbike hug'), as follows:

1. My driver. Whatta guy. I'd call him a sidekick, but that would be getting it all wrong. This is someone who found me a phone and bought me a SIM card, shares cigarettes with me, went apartment hunting for me while I was off being a tourist, cautioned me against goods and services that were too expensive, recommended a bank, negotiated the INSANE traffic outside the District 5 hospital where I had to have a health check, continues to negotiate the INSANE traffic day in/day out, displaying only the slightest evidence of road rage (He stops, looks at the person annoying him, and shakes his head slowly. He once did this to an oncoming bus. I was like, Dude, I know you have a point to make and everything, but can you please go!), he gets me to work on-time, he does it in the pouring rain, at 6:45 AM on the weekend. He gives me extra rides for free. If that's a sidekick, then I am a piss-poor hero.

2. After all that, how can I put the man out of work?

3. I don't have to worry about traffic. I don't have to worry! Of course, I worry about the psychotic buses weaving through three "lanes" and an endless supply of errant motorbikes, but I don't have to worry about it directly. I have an expert in Vietnamese driving right in front me, within hugging range but not being hugged for the sake of personal boundaries, doing all of the legwork (pun intended) for me. Life is grand on the back of a motorbike.

4. I get to see the scenery. I routinely conduct scouting missions while on my way to different places, noting the little fashion kiosks, a different supermarket, a store where I can buy USB modems, interesting looking cafes, guitar shops, safe shops, luggage shops, helmet shops, etc. I wouldn't be able to do any of this if I were driving, because I'd be dead, and dead people can't see.

5. No gas. No Maintenance. No problem.

It is true, I am paying my driver $5--$10 more a month than I would be paying someone to rent a motorbike, but I'm fine with that. You know what, I can afford it. Plus, that whole 'no maintenance' thing is really a kicker. A blond-haired big-eyed Western girl can get the runaround pretty damn easy in a place like this, and what's more, I have no idea about motorbikes. This precludes me from being able to bring the pain to an unscrupulous motorbike establishment, although it probably wouldn't stop me from sending a scathing yet cleverly-worded email that would never be understood well enough to be fully appreciated.

What's more, the motorbike rental places usually hold your passport as collateral, and that's a whole different set of pros and cons.

But anyway-- driving lessons. Mr. H is determined to teach me how to drive. While I thought my first lesson would consist of a few do's and don't's, I realized about halfway through that Mr. H is not just a careful and serious driver, he is a traffic analyst.  If harboring well-developed insights into the intricacies of Vietnamese behavior coupled with a preternatural ability to simultaneously narrate and implement traffic strategies were a super-power, this guy would be Batman.

So, I was getting a serious education earlier tonight while swooshing through traffic, craning forward to hear all of Mr. H's hard-learned and carefully crafted lessons. I learned to always stay outside in a traffic circle (why would you ever want to be on the inside of a traffic circle, anyways? It's an inherent flaw in the whole system), don't trust your mirrors, signal with your blinker and your hand, wear a bright-colored rain jacket at night, never think you are right, and left-turn etiquette, which to the untrained eye is probably best understood as: turn left, and ask questions later. In actuality, turning left has a whole, for lack of a better word, philosophy behind it.

My favorite strategy of Mr. H's was how to use cars and other large vehicles as secret weapons. When you can, stick by a car that's turning left on the same road you are, and turn with it on the inside, but stagger yourself behind, effectively using the car as a shield against the legions of motorbikes while not putting yourself in the position of being smashed against the boulevard. Aha, very clever, Mr. H.

This is only part one. Next week, I drive. Though hopefully not on Trang Hung Dao, the West Broadway--94-interchange-with-construction-during-rush-hour of Saigon.