Singapore - The Flight

(PICTURE: Singapore's Parliament)

The days preceding my trip to Singapore made me reminisce about my teenage years. I felt like my young pre-pubescent self getting all excited for the annual Memorial Day Tournament that Livingston Lighting, my traveling soccer team, used to take. The only big differences between now and then are:

a) I'm not in good physical shape now.

b) I'm playing for a Vietnamese team. Sure the lightning had Matt Shin and Ben Park but they were Korean-Americans.

c) My parents wouldn't be driving me to the tournament...which meant no Peter, Paul and Mary
or John Denver on repeat for 6 hours of traffic.

d) I was going to play ultimate frisbee instead of soccer -- a sport I just started to play about four months ago.

I got to the airport early and met up with a few of my teammates who were on my flight. Ngan, one of the girls on the team looked pretty nervous and I asked her, "Is this your first flight?" She shook her head yes so I told her everything would be okay. I also told her that sometimes people's ears hurt on flights so she should either chew gum or wiggle her jaw. Ngan didn't believe me...probably because I also told her all women on flights are supposed to bark like dogs during take-off. Well, she should have barked like a dog and chewed gum because about five minutes into the flight I looked at Ngan and she had a pained expression on her face. She pointed at her ear and winced out the word, "Hurt."

But that wasn't the highlight of the flight. The highlight of the flight happened about fifteen minutes later: I was reading my book (Billy Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything) when an all too familiar smell hit my nose. It smelled like dog shit. I looked up and guess who was walking down the aisle towards me -- Minh! That's right Minh, my landlord who had thrown me out of my old house just days earlier (and who I basically called a liar to his face when he cheated us out of about $40 on our security deposit giving us a bogus exchange rate).

Minh and I briefly made eye contact and I smiled at him. He immediately darted his eyes towards the ceiling as if a Michelangelo fresco was painted there and kept walking to the lavatory (where I can only assume he was going to clean the bottom of his shoes off). A couple of minutes later he walked back down the aisle and sat down. I saw him casually whisper something to the person next to him. Sure enough that person casually turned around a minute later and it was Binh. I smiled at her too and she too darted her eyes away. It was like I was Medusa.

Despite my LHS and Syracuse educations I'm really really bad at math. But come on! What are the odds that my landlords would be on the same exact flight as me just days after throwing me out of their house (quick recap for new readers: my girlfriend Huyen slept over my house and my landlords evicted me). Whatever the odds are they aren't good. I'm not a very superstitious person but immediately the thought struck me, "this can't be a good sign for the tournament."

Okay, Maybe A Few Ninjas...

I got back from Singapore and Malaysia yesterday and was greeted with some good and bad news:

Good News: The kitchen is finished and it is really nice. In fact, when the taxi dropped me off Huyen was inside my house preparing a feast (no she doesn't have a key yet, Ryan was home). She cooked a huge meal for Ryan, Jessica and myself as a welcome home meal. It was delicious.

Bad News: Ryan informed me that he left his keys in his motorbike last week and when he returned someone had snatched the garage door opener. All the other keys were still on the key chain except for the garage door opener. So yeah, scratch that blog from yesterday -- the ninjas might in fact have the key to our castle.

No More Ninjas

Check out my new front door which I purposely left off my blog yesterday. Yeah, I'm attempting to stretch a single into a double. That said, my new front door is AWESOME! There's no way Ninjas can break into this house...unless they climb one of our four porches.

Tour Of My New House

My Mother asked for it and I'm delivering. Here's a tour of my new house. For contrast go back in my blog and watch the tour of Huyen's house. This place is ridiculous...

Me and Huyen

The day I was robbed four months ago I had two thoughts running through my head:

Thought One: Maybe I should leave Vietnam. I had been here for nearly a month and a half and had seen most of the country. It would have been just as easy for me to pack up my bags and move on to another country and begin to teach somewhere else. I started to look into teaching in Japan and even emailed someone about my options there.

Thoughts Two: I had just met this really great girl and didn't want to leave until after having gone on a couple dates with her.

Four months later -- and one eviction -- I couldn't be happier. Happy Anniversary, Huyen!

The Lion City

I am currently in Singapore playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. I wrote a couple entries before I left to automatically post so that my die-hard junkie(s) wouldn't freak out. If I get a chance during frisbee madness I'll post some new stuff...but I can't make any promises. You know how crazy these frisbee tournaments get.

A little chuckle to get you through the next minute: I was packing for Singapore and put on my favorite green army-ish button down. Huyen looked at me and said, "You look like Forrest Gump. Do you know him?" I said, "Forrest Gump?" She said, "Yes, he's very famous. There is a movie about him." I said, "You know he's not real right?" And she said, "He's not real? He fought against Vietnam in the army."

Man, I love Vietnam!

Dog Shit

Apparently I am not the only person to hate my old landlords. Last week, when I pulled up to my house the "crazy man" across the street approached me and started ranting to me in Vietnamese. I have mentioned the crazy man before but for those of you who missed those references let me just explain that there is a guy who often stands across the street, shirtless with a crazy look in his eyes, always staring at me. He totally creeps me out and Huyen too. Moving away from him has been one of the positives on my mental plus/minus list of moving.

Anyway, he approached me and started making gestures at the house. The gesture had three parts: a) point at the house b) hold his nose like something smells c) shake his head back and forth. I took this to mean, "those people who live there stink." I told him I agreed and gave a thumbs down at the house. This was my first sign that the neighbors didn't like Binh and Minh.

Here's the better sign: Every morning since living in the house I was awoken by Minh running a faucet in our alley. He would always be filling up a bucket around 6AM. Well, I finally realized why he was doing that the other day. I woke up super early and exited the house before Minh had filled up his bucket. Well, in front of the house on the front walk were two HUGE piles of dog shit. Pictured here:


Well I quickly put two and two together: The neighbors all have their dogs shit on Binh and Minh's front steps. I also had a flashback to a few months earlier when I came home from work and there was a ton of dog shit on the front steps. I happen to see Binh and said, "There's always dog poop on the front steps." She didn't understand me since she can barely speak English. I pointed at my shoes, which had some fresh poop on the bottom and she quickly understood. In broken English she said, "Yes! They go toilet here. I stay home from work once to catch them but could not." Anyway, knowing that the neighbors all hate B&M made me really happy. I guess dog shit attracts dog shit.