Um, yeah, I might have a Vietnamese Girlfriend

(PICTURE: Huyen wearing a traditional Vietnamese dress in front of The Temple of Literature)

So Huyen (the girl who asked me if I "was going to make water") and I have hung out a couple more times recently. She and her sister came over on Tuesday night and cooked an amazing house-warming dinner for Ryan and I. Then yesterday she swung by during the day to talk for a little while and to drink fresh melon shakes.

Now the question is, how many times does it take for a boy and a girl in Vietnam to hang out before they are considered boyfriend and girlfriend?

In case you're wondering here are Huyen's stats:
Age: 23
Occupation: College Student at the University of Hanoi; finishing her thesis in economics.
Languages: Vietnamese (A+), Russian (A+), English (B), French (C+), Japanese (C+)
Height: 5'7 or 5'8. She's a giant out here.
Extra Curricular Activities: Badminton, Cooking, Riding her motorbike, going to the movies, hanging out with family.

One negative about Huyen is that she literally might kill me. Yesterday I made a joke about her bothering me and she started to strangle me and said, "You are so mean!" I'll keep you posted on this budding romance. If it does turn into marriage, I expect everyone to fly out for the wedding.

Honesty Is The Best Policy

(PICTURE: Vietnamese Dong. Everyone's a millionaire here)

Minutes ago I embarked on an adventure: Finding my neighborhood pho shop. At my "old" apartment I had a couple of great pho places that I frequented every morning. When Ryan and I looked at this new apartment the first thing I asked the landlord was, "Are there good pho stands nearby?" She responded, "Of course. Everybody loves pho." Well the other day Ryan and I went walking to find one and it took us about twenty minute before we came upon a shop. The pho was half decent but when the bill came we knew we'd never come come. The bill was 120,000 Dong for two phos and one fried rice. That's almost exactly 4Xs as much as any place I've been yet.

So this morning, solo, I went for a walk in the opposite direction. It took me only about two minutes before I found a street pho place where the soup was literally cooking on the sidewalk. There were three old ladies sitting around the ingredients and an ample amount of flies for me to know this place was legit. I took a seat, got my usual "why is this white person here" stares and ordered a steaming hot bowl of beef noodle soup.

On my pho scale I gave the soup a solid B+. However, it will be a long time before I go back to this particular stand. While I was finishing my soup I watched the only other patron pay. He handed over 15,000 Dong and went on his way (this is about the right price for pho although my favorite place is 12,000). After sucking down the rest of my broth and proceeding to sweat profusely because of the chili floating on the bottom, I got up to leave. I handed the money lady (one lady handles money, one lady handles pouring the broth, one lady handles cutting up the meat) a 50,000 Dong note and she gave me back only 30,000 Dong change. I asked her, "is that it" and she shook her head no and stared down at the ingredient table, refusing to make eye contact. I had clearly been ripped off by 5,000 Dong or roughly thirty eight cents. That's a lot of money out here. The moral of the story is this: if the lady had been honest she would have had a regular costumer for months on end. However, she wasn't and I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

In other news, I went to the Apple store yesterday and was told that "my file is very big." Come back this afternoon. In the afternoon I got this text message: "Hi Mr Benjamin August. I'm from Apple's istore 63 Kim Ma Str. Your hard disk drive got some problems.it changed to blue screen or got computer hanging problem while it is running. we will try but we are afraid that we can not keep the memory in your hard disk space. could you come back tomorrow afternoon?" Yeah, not looking so good....

SOMETHING ELSE WAS MISSING THIS MORNING!!!

(PICTURE: Some random dude with a more disgusting rash than me)

...my heat rash!

Thank god for Jewish doctors. Last week I met Steve's friend David and Michael Shapiro. Immediately upon hearing that Michael had just graduated Georgetown Medical School I whipped off my pants and showed him my lingering heat rash. Well, turns out it wasn't a heat rash at all but a fungus: "Kind of like athletes foot." (How do you like me now ladies! I got a fungus on my groin) Michael walked me into the local pharmacy and helped pick out the proper cream. One week later, I'm all cleared! Watch out world...

In other exciting news I now have skype. That means I can call the states for a whopping two cents a minute (plus a ten cent connecting fee) or for free if you have skype. So, can someone go to my house in Livingston and install skype for my parents. Thanks!

Good News And Bad News Part III

(Dr. Marcus Brody -- I'm sans camera and I refer to him later so yes, it makes sense)

THE GOOD NEWS:

I got a job teaching English at a really good private language school called Language Link. Here's the website:

http://www.languagelink.edu.vn/index.php?lang=en

If you look at the picture on the top of the homepage I'm the white guy in the front row...or at least will be soon. The job is perfect: it pays well for Vietnamese standards, is right near my apartment, has free bottled water, gives me a cubby for my stuff to be properly stolen from, allowed me to sign a six month contract with bonuses for finishing it (most schools want one year contracts), gives me money to join a gym and has a plethora, yes a plethora, of cute girls working there. The best part is that I only have to work a few hours each day and don't have class until 4PM every day so I can write in the morning and make my body look damn sexy at the gym in the early afternoon.

THE BAD NEWS:

Some of you may recall a little incident in which I was robbed of all my belongings in the middle of the night while sleeping. You know, that whole Ninja thing. Well, you may also recall the "good news" in that blog entry. I believe I mentioned how I luckily had recently saved everything from my computer onto an external hard drive and that somehow the robbers didn't take it. I think I said to at least thirty people, "Thank god my hard drive wasn't taken." If that isn't the exact quote it's a damn close variation of it. Well, yesterday I bought a new mac and plugged in my hard drive. Immediately some message comes up:
"Would you like the Time Machine to back up your hard drive on your passport (passport is the name of my external hard drive)."
I thought, "yeah, that sounds good. I want my stuff backed up." So I clicked yes.
Then another message came up: "Erasing External Hard Drive."
Um, what? Excuse me? Then the wheel on my screen starts to turn as if it's starting to work. I freaked out and did the only thing someone who doesn't know crap about computers would do--I pulled my external hard drive plug out of my Mac. Phew, saved it. Um, not so much. I then tried to plug back in my external hard drive and well, the computer wouldn't recognize it. Panic started to set in, more so then when I realized I was robbed last week.

I took a few deep breathers and thought, "I'll just try it on Ryan's mac." I went up to Ryan's room and plugged in my external hard drive into his slot (that is not a gay joke and for the record since I've gotten a few too many emails about this: RYAN AND I ARE NOT GAY LOVERS). Well, his computer couldn't recognize my hard drive either. Yeah, I think I did what the robbers couldn't do: I LOST ALL MY PICTURES/MUSIC/SCRIPTS/ETC!

Hold on, hold on, there is some possible good news:
1. This morning I took my hard drive to the apple store here (which by the way I'm pretty sure isn't really an apple store and, like everything else, is a rip off of a major brand) and the IT guy said he thinks he can fix it. I left him my HD and was told to come back tomorrow.
2. The other day I put all of my scripts onto Steve's computer. Well, Steve is traveling in Cambodia and Laos at the moment so who knows if he'll make it out alive or with his computer. It's kind of like that scene in Indiana Jones when Dr. Marcus Brody has the grail and Indiana says he could never be caught but in reality he could easily be caught. In this scenario I'm pretty sure, based on his blog, Steve would trade his laptop for a night of spooning with a girl.
3. I recently put online all of my Australia and China photos. Also, Ryan stole a bunch of my Cambodia photos which I'll soon steal back.

The moral of the story is never, never ever, hit "yes" on your computer if you don't know what you're doing. Ironically the thing called "Time Machine" won't allow me to travel back in time and fix this problem.

Tom Tancred, this is for you...

(VIDEO: My class in HCMC celebrating Bruce's endorsement.)

Is it any coincidence that just a couple of weeks ago Bruce Springsteen endorsed Obama and since then Obama's been collecting super delegates like it's been going out of style? I've been saying for years that Bruce Springsteen in the ultimate superdelegate and well, it now appears to be the truth. I speak for all of 'Nam when I say, "Hillary, it's time to drop out."

By the way, the best part of this video is the first girl's reaction after I slap her high five. Enjoy.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

(PICTURE: Mom and I at Zev's Rehearsal Dinner. NOTE: The problem with having all your stuff stolen is that pictures are hard to come by and snapfish only allows you to steal tiny ones from your albums like this one)

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! I tell you every single year, and I'll tell you again (this time for the whole world, AKA ten friends, to read): I could not imagine a more wonderful, caring, loving mother in the world than you. You're not just an amazing mother but an amazing person too. I love you!

I know you wish I could be home to have dinner with you tonight but instead think on the positive side: The great thing about having a child in Vietnam is that you get to celebrate Mother's Day for an extra day since we live in the future over here!

Please send my love to Grandma and Nanny too. Hannah/Zev, give them both a big hug and kiss for me.

Learning The Language II

Learning a new language isn't just hard for us Americans. Tonight I went to dinner with Huyen, a great girl Steve and I met at the airport when we picked up Devin. Huyen is literally the person who welcomes foreigners to Vietnam as she stands outside the arrival gate, wearing a traditional dress and passing out literature about Halong Bay.

Huyen is in her final few months at the University of Hanoi and is an extremely smart person. Besides her native tongue, she also speaks Russian fluently, English well enough to work part time as a tutor, French and a little Japanese.

But it's the English I want to talk about. This is just a little side anecdote that I found hilarious. Huyen and I walked into the movie theater and I, having a small bladder, asked where the toilet was. Huyen asked, "You have to go make water?" I wasn't exactly sure what she said so I asked, "What?" "You have to go make water?"

Yes, this English tutor was seriously asking me if I had to piss by saying, "You have to make water?"