Scream If It's Your Birthday!!!!

Those tonsils belong to my buddy Alex, and yeah, it's his birthday.

The story of how Alex and I met is quite romantic. Alex was best friends with my buddy Mike in summer camp for years. When I got accepted to Syracuse back in '96, Mike told me I should become friends with Alex who also was going to Syracuse. For some reason or another Alex and I didn't get each other's contact information (this is pre-facebook so it was only moderately easy to get in contact with friends of friends).

Well, it was move in day at SU and my parents and I were in Schine Auditorium signing me up for cable television. I of course had to have cable since I was a communications major. After filling out the form, the cable guy read back my details. As soon as he read my name, some punk next to me said: "You're Ben August? You know Mike Aidekman, right?" That punk, wearing the baggiest jeans I've ever seen, was Alex. Since then we've been best friends. It's been twelve years. Holy crap, it's been twelve years!!!!

Happy birthday, Alex.

Door To Door Vets

(PICTURE: Actors playing my cousin Stacey and her husband Scott in a hypothetical made-for-tv-movie about them)

The other day, when I was at Huyen's sister's house, the doorbell rang. Huyen's brother-in-law answered the door and standing there was a woman with a needle. Huyen's brother-in-law promptly walked over to the family dog and dragged him out to the woman. The woman stuck the needle into the dog's butt and gave him a shot.

Apparently how it works here is that every few months, vets go door to door and give pets government mandatory shots. When I saw this I thought two things: a) "That's a pretty good idea." b) "I bet my cousin Stacey and her husband Scott, both NJ Vets, wouldn't think it was such a good idea."

REMINDER: Send me checks for Habitat For Humanity Vietnam. You can send it to my parent's house: Ben August, [REDACTED] OR you can send me money through paypal. Thanks! We're gonna build a house!

I Am 30.

I'm not sure what scares me most:

1. Today I'm thirty years old.

2. In two weeks I'll be thirty years old AND unemployed.

3. In two weeks and a few days I'll be thirty years old, unemployed AND living at home.

Last night in Vietnam I celebrated my birthday the same way I celebrated my 10th or 11th birthday -- with a bowling party/Habitat for Humanity Fundraiser. (NOTE: I'm writing this entry before the party so I have no pictures to post yet). A quick funny story: I sent out an email to everyone I play frisbee with about my party. The subject was: "Ben's Ba Buoi Bowling Birthday Bash." Well, I had a little typo in the subject. It should have read: Ben's Ba Muoi Bowling Birthday Bash. Ba Moui means 30. Ba Boui means "3 Penises." Yeah, I got a few emails from people about the typo.

My mom always tells me that out of her three kids, I was the most restless inside her womb. My mom said I kicked all the time and as the story goes, I was moving around so much that I nearly strangled myself on the umbilical chord. I guess things haven't changed that much in thirty years since I'm still really restless. My sister thinks that I moved to Vietnam because I had a quarter life crisis freak out. The truth is though, I just don't like to feel stuck somewhere for too long.

To celebrate being thirty, I asked my mom to email me some pictures of me as a baby and as a little kid. It's cool to see pictures of myself, but it is even cooler to see pictures of my parents who weren't that much older than I am now. My mom, with the help of my sister, actually scanned these pictures. My mom using a scanner is up there with the biggest surprises in the first thirty years of my life. Here's some pictures of fat little me:









For those of you who didn't read yesterday's blog, go check it out now. For my birthday present I want everyone to send me a check which I'll donate to Habitat for Humanity in Vietnam. Thanks in advance.

Oh, and Mom and Dad, thanks for everything these last thirty years.

My Birthday Present

Today is my birthday in Vietnam. But since I wasn't born in Vietnam, I'm not writing my birthday blog until tomorrow. However, this blog is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT. Over the last couple of months I have started to think of a way to do something good with the blog. Well, I've come up with an idea: I want everyone to send me a check for my birthday. That's right, send me a check. $1, $2, $5, $10, whatever you want. I'm going to take all the money and donate it to Habitat For Humanity in Vietnam. The way I see it is this:

a) For those of you who would have bought me a drink/dinner/etc. for my birthday if I was in the USA, put that money (or a fraction of it) towards helping to build a house for someone in Vietnam.

b) For those of you who I don't know that read Ahoy Hanoi, consider this your subscription fee. Throw a couple bucks in the mail and consider yourself paid up for a year worth of reading.

A few months ago I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity for a day and since then have thought that if everyone who reads the blog sent me a check for a few bucks, we could easily build a house (or two). A house costs a little over $2,000 to build and together we can make it happen. I really want to be able to give back a little to this country and to be able to say, "My blog built a house."

I know times are tough in the states right now so I understand if you can't contribute. However, I would really appreciate anything you can give. Like everything else here, a few bucks goes a LONG WAY.

Please send checks to:
[REDACTED]

I'm not sure how quickly these things work, but when I come back in August, I'll ideally I'll be able to help build the house. And well, anyone else who wants to come help is more than welcome to join!

NOTE: I wanted to set up a donation page through Habitat Vietnam but the people over here tell me they don't have that capability on their website yet.

The Farm

Last weekend Huyen and I visited her Grandfather. On our way to his house we picked up the other member of our carpool -- Huyen's nephew Viet Hoang. For some reason Viet Hoang likes my driving style and asked to ride with me and Huyen. By asked, I mean he just climbed on to my bike. Despite having lived in Vietnam for over a year, driving around a three year old still makes me really nervous. Huyen insisted though that it is safer for him to drive with two of us than just with his mother. I succumbed to Vietnam logic and let Viet Hoang ride with me. Basically how it works is that he is sandwiched between Huyen and I as I drive. I must be a good driver because after just a few minutes Viet Hoang was passed out and slept the whole ride.

Eventually we got to the ceramic village where I bought some souvenirs for my family. When we were leaving Viet Hoang climbed on to the front of my bike. I told Huyen that it definitely wasn't safe for Viet Hoang to ride there but she said -- and this is my favorite quote of the month and maybe year -- "It is okay. Viet Hoang wants to ride there." I said, "He's three. We're supposed to make those decisions!" Huyen and her sister laughed and then climbed on to our bikes. And yeah, I let him ride in front:

(PICTURE: Viet Hoang riding shotgun)


(PICTURE: This is the type of ride I'm comfortable giving little kids.)


After our visit to Huyen's grandfather's house, Huyen's sister invited me to her farm. Yes, her farm. Apparently Huyen's brother-in-law, much to the chagrin of Huyen's sister, bought a duck and pig farm a few miles from their house. I'm not exactly sure what he was doing before this but he put all his eggs so to speak into this farm basket. Personally, I love farms so this was really exciting for me to visit. Here's some pictures:

(PICTURE: Huyen'brother-in-law's duck and pig farm)



(PICTURE: Me and the pigs)



(PICTURE: Huyen in front of the neighbor's rice farm)



Ironically after leaving the farm, we stopped at a local market and bought some BBQ-ed duck. Apparently the 5,000 ducks on Huyen's brother's farm weren't ready to eat.

Cool Pictures

One of the great things about having friends visit is that you get to get copies of their pictures. Recently my friend Sebastian visited and he took some amazing pictures. It doesn't hurt that he's a cameraman in LA. Oh, and he used a non digital camera. It uses that plastic paper stuff. What's it called? Film? Check out these pictures:

There Aren't Many Black People In Vietnam

When my buddy PJ visited last year, he was the first black person Huyen had ever met. The fact is, there just aren't that many black people in Vietnam. Don't get me wrong, there are black people in Hanoi but they're just few and far between. Because of this, I was asked a really funny question by a few of my students the other day when we were talking about how to greet people. My students asked me: "Do you shake hands with black people or do you do this (they motioned making a fist and doing a three step fist bump thing)?"

I told them to shake hands.