The Wedding: Step #1

(PICTURE: Huyen's childhood home)

Last weekend Huyen and I took Step #1 in planning our wedding -- choosing the location.

Huyen has told me for a long time that she has always wanted to get married in her childhood home. Her sister Huong got married in this home and the house has very special meaning for Huyen. The one problem with the house is that it is in total disarray since nobody has lived there in almost ten years. Huyen's parents' plan is to eventually build a new house on the land and spend their retirement there.

When we discussed the wedding with her parents they seemed a little bit skeptical about having the wedding at the old house. For one, having it at the house means that all of her family and neighbors need to participate in the wedding festivities whether it be cooking, cleaning or using their houses for toilets (Huyen's old house has no toilet). Like in any small town in the world, there is a lot of politics involved with something like this. Do you ask your Aunt to cook the chicken or do you ask your cousin? Do you use the neighbor on the lefts toilet or will this offend the neighbor on the right? The prospect of juggling all their relatives and neighbors definitely had Huyen's parents a little stressed. Her mother suggested to us to check out a nearby restaurant that often serves as a catering hall for weddings. Huyen and I agreed to have an open mind and went to look at the restaurant. Well, it took us two seconds to decide upon seeing the restaurant which was located about fifty feet off the busiest highway in Vietnam -- we were sticking with the old house.

In the afternoon we went to the house with Huyen's father, sister and brother-in-law. We tried to imagine how we could fit everyone in the limited space (Vietnamese weddings often have up to 400 guests...just for one of the wedding party). The chief issue though quickly became whether or not the roof of Huyen's old house would cave in during the party. Huyen's father showed us that it was riddled with termites and he felt that if a lot of people were walking around it could be disastrous. I mean, I haven't exactly been planning my wedding in my head since I was a little boy but I'm pretty sure having the roof cave in at my wedding would definitely be considered a wedding nightmare. Am I wrong?

(PICTURE: The family in front of the house during Tet 2009.)

I told Huyen's father that we should test the roof and I then launched a couple of bricks up top. The roof didn't flinch at all. Despite my tried-and-true method of testing a structure's sturdiness, Huyen's father wasn't convinced. Just when I thought this was a ploy to make us have the wedding at a highway rest stop, he announced that he would simply knock down the old house. As he told us this I felt a huge wave of guilt come over me. I told Huyen to tell her father that that wasn't necessary and we could have the wedding somewhere else. However, Huyen insisted it wasn't a big deal since they would have to knock down the house eventually to build the retirement home. I asked when they were planning to build that home and Huyen said in about twenty years. My huge wave of guilt suddenly became a tsunami.

Soooooo, the plan is to have the wedding at Huyen's old house...sans the actual house. We will have to built a tiny little house on the location which is important for Buddhist worship. Now we just have to figure out which neighbor's toilet we're gonna use and which relative is gonna cook the chicken.

Crossing The Streams

Apparently Vietnamese men never learned the valuable lesson taught to us in Ghostbusters: NEVER CROSS STREAMS!!!

A month ago, on our way to Quan Lan island, our bus stopped at a highway rest stop. Immediately everyone from the bus stream lined for the bathrooms. We had been stuck in traffic for a long time and clearly everyone, including me, needed to pee. I followed the crowd into the mens room and didn't have enough time to care how utterly disgusting it was (imagine a football stadium bathroom in the fourth quarter...times ten). There was one urinal open and I darted for it. I unzipped my fly and began the amazing feeling of relieving myself....until I was interrupted by a Vietnamese guy trying to share the urinal!!!!

Yes, a stranger tried to cross the streams with me. Apparently a few tour buses arrived at the rest stop right after ours did. There was a stampede towards the bathroom and instead of waiting in line, the men were doubling up at the urinals. I quickly glanced around the room and saw that I was the only person not sharing my toilet. The man gave me a look like, "Move over you selfish bastard!!!" as he basically elbowed his way into my urinal. I'm cool with a lot of things but frankly, I'm not cool with sharing a urinal with a stranger for the simple reason of inevitable "splash back." I gave the dude a look, shook my head frantically and gave him a chest high elbow. Thank goodness that this was enough for him to stand back and let me finish my pee.

Come on, Vietnam! Never cross the streams!

Cicadas

There is a new layer to the soundtrack of Hanoi -- cicadas. All across the city is the loud singing of the insects. On normally quiet streets, the cicadas songs are almost overwhelming. On main roads, the hymns can be faintly heard underneath the roars of motorbike engines.

The other night as Huyen and I walked home from dinner, I commented to her about the loud sounds of the cicadas. Huyen told me that all students in Vietnam love the sound because it means that the school year is about to finish.

Book Review: The Making of the President

Jim, my personal library, recently gave me an American classic: "The Making of the President: 1960" by Theodore H. White.

The book chronicles Teddy White's experiences along the campaign trail with Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential election. The writing is outstanding and the insights are second to none. There are countless political observations that are as true today as they were 50 years ago. However, none of those are what stand out for me. There are two paragraphs that are extremely eerie though the power of retrospection.

The first is on Page 372, when talking about Kennedy and The Oval Office: "When the windows are closed, the sound of Washington traffic, which hums as it passes by outside, is entirely locked out, and one is reminded that these windows are three inches thick of laminated glass, thick enough to stop an assassin's rifle bullet from beyond the grounds -- if the assassin gets time enough to sight."

The other disturbing reference is to a day in the life of John F. Kennedy. On page 375, Teddy White wrote: "Then the supreme and somber problem of war and peace: a long meeting of one and one quarter hours in the cabinet room with Secretary of State Dean Rusk; Secretary of National Defense Robert S. McNamara; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman Lemnitzer; Admiral Harry D. Felt, Commander-in-Cheif, Pacific theatre; two personal advisers McGeorge Bundy and Walter Rostow; and Vice-President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson. Here at this meeting he considered, not for the first time but for the decisive [Whit's italics, not mine] time, American response to the newest thrust of Communist pressure on the changing world -- the movement of Communist guerillas over the jungles and ridges of Southeast Asia into the formless Kingdom of Laos. Could anything be done there, and if it could, should anything be done there? This was the ugliest of problems; and if his decisions were right the meeting would fade into history as unimportant; but if the decisions brought war, then this, indeed, was where the Americans chose war."

I think we can say that the president decided wrong that day.

License Plate

(PICTURE: The mysterious Lexus.)

Huyen and I were riding around the city the other morning when she pointed at a car and said, "Where is that car from?" I put on my best Mister-know-it-all voice and said, "That's a Lexus. It's from Japan." Huyen politely said something like, "I know it's a Lexus you idiot, but where is the license plate from?" I squinted my eyes and then shouted, "NO WAY! That car is from California!!!":

(PICTURE: 5SLP211. Anyone in LA missing an LS600hL.)

I think this car was a sign. Huyen and I have been talking about the states a lot recently and BOOM there was a car from California. Why this car was here, I have no idea. My first guess was that it was stolen. Do any cops read my blog that can run the plates?

Obama

I remember last year, Ryan came home talking about the new Obama karaoke shop in our neighborhood. If the Vietnamese know one thing, it's how to pick up on recent trends. Well, what's hotter than the name Obama these days? The other week, Huyen and I went to a friend's wedding in a small city about two hours from Hanoi. Right down the street from our friend's house was a clothing store called --- Obama.

With a little help from my friends...

My favorite song growing up was Joe Cocker's version of, "With A Little Help From My Friends." Well, with a little help from my friends, we built a family a house!!!



(PICTURE: The house.)



(PICTURE: Our placard on the house.)

As I mentioned a long time ago, although I physically built a house last summer, Habitat hadn't used our specific donation money until recently. The money we raised helped out this family:



(PICTURE: The Family.)



(PICTURE: The Family inside the house.)

Thank you once again to all the 70+ people who helped to make this possible!!!