Hàng Ngày

Just my two cents on the Myanmar protests. It makes me so angry to see that a US government spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, stated “The United States is very troubled by the action of the junta against the Burmese people. We call on them to show restraint and to move to a peaceful transition to democracy.” We need to be doing something besides “urging” the Burmese military junta to restrain themselves in the crackdown on monks and civilians who have been nonviolently protesting the regime at a growing rate for the past month. President Bush and his colleagues have decided that increased sanctions against Myanmar is also a good solution to the problems of economic hardship and political repression in the country (??) This measure did not work to depose the corrupt regime in Iraq 10 years ago: corrupt governments find ways to get money. The ones who suffer are the people, and the people in Myanmar have been suffering from poverty for years. Instead the US should enter discussions with monks and protesters to find ways that we can economically and politically support their efforts to oppose the military regime. This may not mean democracy! My own humble ideas, take them for what you will, and I’m sure I’ll get all kinds of comments about this one…

people in Vietnam started wearing helmets on motorbikes. As of September 15th, 2007, every person riding a motorbike on a national road anywhere must be wearing a helmet or risk severe punishment by the traffic police. I had forgotten about the new law when I took my bike out to the market and the library on Saturday morning and felt like there was something…different. Everyone was wearing helmets! I mean EVERYONE! Even children on motorbikes were wearing helmets. It’s amazing how much a little fear of the police can go such a long way. It might also have to do with the amazing propaganda campaign displayed in the central city roundabout. We’re talking pictures of disgustingly mutilated limbs and mangled faces underneath the motorbikes which led the people to their early deaths. Talk about fear tactics, this is absolutely stunning. I’ll try to get a picture or two. It reminds me a bit of those pre-prom SADD anti-drunk-driving videos that made me afraid to ever get in a car again, with anyone, period.

Perhaps people in Vietnam really wanted to be wearing helmets all along, but that mob mentality of “well, no one else is, so I don’t want to” just took over. Now everyone else is wearing helmets, so maybe people figure, “why not, might as well protect my brain.” I even saw a man riding a bicycle today who was wearing a helmet! There are of course, still issues with the motorbikes. Helmets are expensive, and the solution to this problem has been to import cheap Chinese helmets that may or may not save people’s brains from separating from their skulls in the case of a high-speed accident. People are potentially driving more recklessly than before; I’ve heard that in the US motorists drive closer and more recklessly around bicyclists who are wearing helmets. The rationale here, I guess, is that if they hit the cyclists, they probably won’t kill them. But in any case it’s an amazing step that I seriously never thought I’d see.

There, I edited the post due to comments of my former colleagues at AGU. OK?

It’s the rainy season, and the cool season her in Long Xuyen. This means that I haven’t had my A/C on for days (hallelujah!) but also that it is cloudy and rains almost every day. This Saturday we had a particularly interesting rain storm. Some students were over chatting at about 1 pm, just about to leave for class, when it began to dump buckets of rain. This is way more serious than cats and dogs. One of the students jokingly “forecast” the weather: 500 mL of rain in the next hour, no end in sight. We laughed and they departed for class after it was obvious that it wasn’t going to let up for a while. I went into my room to relax. The water, meanwhile, was pooling up around the guesthouse at an alarming rate. After about 30 minutes reading I decided to lay down on the mattress in the middle of my floor for a short nap (it’s Saturday, after all). I was shocked when I lay down on the mattress and water sloshed out from underneath it…I lifted the mattress to find a giant pool of water in the center of my room, and when I looked to where it had come from, I saw that I had a river flowing into my room from my balcony door. The holes that let the water out of the balcony were clogged with leaves and grime, and all the dirty water was flowing into my room. I got a mop and the housekeeper to come help me open the holes, push the water out of my room with towels, and clean the floor. Then I looked over my balcony and saw that the guesthouse was surrounded by a mote. A deep mote. We’re talking, you would need a boat to get anywhere. Wow. Here’s a picture from the front door:

It’s Friday night in Long Xuyen, Vietnam. I’m sitting at home in my room after what seemed like a long week (indeed only my second week back, hard to believe!) and sipping a glass of fairly crappy Vàng Đà Lạt, listening to the rain fall outside my door. I just read one of my new student’s blogs. She is Vietnamese but writes poetry in English, and touching poetry at that. She writes about missing her family, and the feeling she gets when she looks at their fading picture on her wall. She writes about happiness, and how happiness feels, and that she feels happiest when she’s doing something for other people. I felt that to read her blog was like a window into her soul that I rarely get with my students…

And I am reflecting on my own busy week, my second week back, during which I have turned in the research proposal, taught 11 periods of class, had coffee with at least 15 students, played badminton twice, had a meeting about the mentoring program with 14 third year female students, and suffered two abbrasions as a result of my clumsy trip on the pavement on Wednesday (somehow I scraped my shoulder, despite the fact that I was wearing a short-sleeve shirt??) It has been a good week. And I will probably go to bed at about 11 pm, after talking to Eric and Minh for a few minutes when they get home from teaching. I can’t help thinking how different life is here as opposed to New York City, and even Ho Chi Minh City, where I have been for the past two weekends. In the cities my peers are going out, staying up late, drinking, partying, gathering, causing trouble, and having fun. And I am in my room alone drinking a glass of red wine, slowly, and contemplating the slow life that is Long Xuyen. Would I change it? It seems somewhat sad when I think about it…and it is so much harder to be back here for a second year: much harder to be committed to something on a long-term basis. Now it’s not a game, things aren’t really new, and to stay means…I still haven’t really figured it out. Oh, it’s funny how the rain and a sleepy Friday night makes one muse like this

We just watched “Supersize Me” with the fellows tonight, which has left me feeling…queasy. But also reminded me of my awesome food adventures in Saigon this past weekend.

We went up to Saigon for the weekend to see an art exhibit that one of Eric’s friends was taking part in. The exhibit was on Saturday evening, and after the show I went out with Bich, Will, and Michelle to meet Bich’s friend at a restaurant in District 1. This restaurant is famous for its “bo tung xeo,” a type of grilled marinated beef that you cook on the fire at your table. We decided on the beef, obviously, and then Bich’s friend from Germany decided that we should order two more of the restaurant’s exotic delicacies: (DAMNIT, DAMNIT, AT THIS VERY MOMENT ANOTHER DAMN COCKROACH HAS CRAWLED PRACTICALLY OVER MY FOOT AND UNDER MY DESK!! WHEN WILL IT END!?!?!)

The two new exotic delicacies that they decided to order were crocodile meat and kangaroo meat, both of which we grilled using a similar method as the beef. (pause again while Lillian sweeps the cockroach out of the room with a broom. damn these vegetarian buddhists living here now and their influential ideas about not killing anything…)The kangaroo was similar to a more rich beef, and was delicious. The crocodile, not so much. It looked like fish before it was grilled, but turned into a jerky-like consistency after grilling. Not my favorite.

As if that wasn’t enough, Sunday’s home-cooked meal (apparently a tradition at Chris’ house, which I’ve been privileged to take part in the past two weeks in a row) consisted of shish-kebab. This means grilled meat, thin slices that we wrapped around onions and put onto skewers. This I could handle, as I’ve become quite accumstomed to the preparation of raw meat. The thing I couldn’t handle, however, was the shrimp. We had bought a kilo of large live shrimp at the market, and I had had to carry the triple-bagged suckers home on the motorbike, them squirming all the way. I was told that we had to skewer these shrimps, LIVE through the butt-end and out of the head, and then grill them. Oh, HELL NO, I said. I will not skewer live shrimp. That is my line. So, instead they gave me a shrimp that had already died to skewer. This I could handle, I said. No sooner had I begun to insert the skewer into the shrimps tail, when the little bugger started writhing under the anal pressure. He was certainly NOT dead, and I screamed and dropped him onto the floor. Everyone laughed, and someone finished skewering him for me. Wow, but they were so delicious!

The latest news here: AGU and the My Xuyen ward surrounding the university are having the power lines restrung. What does this mean for us teachers and students who live and work on Campus B? That’s right, you guessed it…no power, for days at a time. For the past two days the power has gone out early in the morning and not come back on until late at night, leaving everyone sweltering in the heat and fumbling in the dark, and asking the question: “Why the hell do they have to cut the power for so long in order to fix it?” and prompting the exclamation, “That’s it, I’m going home!”

I have arrived in Long Xuyen, after long flights, delays in Hanoi, and two days of procrastinating my arrival in Ho Chi Minh City. I arrived this evening around ten to a dark, musty-smelling, cockroach infested room. One of the cockroaches was on my bed. Tyler is here until tomorrow morning and helped me shoo them out and/or kill them with a broom and a dustpan. I then borrowed some shawls from Jenna and Phil to put over my bed temporarily until I get a clean sheet tomorrow. There is dust everywhere and spiders abound along with their webs. As I entered the university gates with my massive backpack, I heard someone call my name: “Miss Lillian!” I turned around to see a man and a woman wearing pajamas, riding a motorbike. I did not recognize them. “Miss Lillian!” the man said again, “It is good to see you. You have just come back America?” I responded politely (who the hell is this guy??) and then realized he is probably one of my to-be students for the semester who I haven’t met yet. A warm welcome from a stranger is always one of the lovely things about being in Long Xuyen. I’m practically a celebrity I then sat with Jenna and Phil for about an hour in their room listening to updates about what has changed at the university. A lot has changed: faculty shifting around, programs changing, scheduling, etc. Some people I thought would be here will not be here this year. It is now midnight, and I have put a mosquito net over my bed, shawls over the sheet, and turned on the air to try to rid my room of the dank smell. Tomorrow I will spend all day cleaning. Send happy messages friends and family! It’s feeling a little bit sh*%$y here.