Life in Vietnam. Rediscovered.

That's what I've got in the last few days: traffic jams and stuff, most notably run-ins with traffic cops. Incidentally, that's exactly the phrase I taught in my class. I taught "frustrated." I was frustrated. I taught "streak of bad luck." I had a streak of bad luck. Oh my, I'd better teach something desirable if I am to live to maintain this blog. Now I'm waiting for *something* to happen, which will hopefully put an end to this streak.

I'm happy I discovered Lingoes today, a free, portable, and fast program that incorporates many dictionaries, which are to be downloaded separately from that site. What I absolutely love is its "Capture word on screen" feature. It works seamlessly like a charm. No more looking up online. I meant, less.

This post is meant for you, my fellow Vietnamese citizens. No, I'm not going to talk about the differences between the two languages. Ask some linguist. Neither am I going to tell you which language is easier to learn. Join one of my classes at Elite and you'll know!

All I want to say is, and I will spell it out clearly, "People, stop using English words in place of Vietnamese ones when you're in Vietnam. And when you do, use properly-formed Vietnamese." Ask yourself this, "Who does English belong to?" The people from Britain, from Australia, from New Zealand, from India, from the US, from Canada, from South Africa, from the Philippines, and so on and on and on. They share English. We have our own language. Aren't you proud of that fact?

What I see nowadays on the street and elsewhere is all pretentious English. Take Tân Sơn Nhất Airport for example. While guide signs in both Vietnamese and English are common here, the single most important announcement, that is, the flight status e-board, is designed in English all the way. What were those airport functionaries thinking? They are probably implying that, "If you don't know English, you'd better not travel." Hmm. Thanks for warning us in advance. Have they been to Japan yet? I never have but a friend of mine there told me almost everything in Japan is in Japanese. I've come to realize that, with good reason, Japanese products always come in two versions: one for domestic use and one for international use although both versions might differ only in the manuals. I played a PS2 game before. It was all in Japanese, which was annoying because I had a hard time completing it. We used a nội địa (i.e. domestic Japanese) VCR a long time ago. Even labels like "on-screen display" were transcribed in Japanese. The Japanese are so stubborn, you might say. Now, does that mean Japan is backward because its language has not been Anglocized? Far from it. Streets ahead of other wannabes.

I remember some scholar once said foreigners love Vietnam for its own unique cultural charms and peculiarities, not all those fast-food restaurants and imported stuff that they are getting fed up with at home. How true. Some other scholar goes, "As long as the Tale of Kieu prevails, our language does, and so does our nation."

So from now on, stop apologizing in English. Thank people in Vietnamese. Make a habit of expressing your love in Vietnamese (but please keep cursing in English, to the Vietnamese of course). Also, replace "seo" with "sao", "hem" with "hông", "dam dang" with "đảm đang" so people won't misunderstand you, and so on.

Did you notice I've been talking to you in English all along, my comrades? Why not? Don't you know English? Like you, I want to look cool too!

My ramblings, after all. Never mind. Keep using English, or use Vietnamese in any careless way you can think of, until I'm done with my "Vietnamese Learner's Dictionary" project, which will help you relearn your own poor mother tongue.

Happy Halloween to all the living ghosts, witches, princes and princesses and all. I'm going to dress up as Bystander.

These pictures have been sitting in my iPhone for a while now. So here are some quick facets of life.

1 & 2: phở at "Phở Ta", owned by Mrs Đặng Tuyết Mai. The price was 45,000 VND (2.25 USD) per bowl, too expensive by Vietnamese standards. The staff were nice, but the quality was not as good as I had expected. Any restaurant that makes me squirm because of MSG is not worth a second visit. "Phở Ta" is a case in point. 
3: Electricians improving the power grid in my neighborhood. We had no electricity until late evening.
4: From my study room. They were taking down this crazy roll of roof to make space for some partitioned room up there. Rest assured it was lowered gradually with ropes.
5, 6, & 7: At Chùa Hoằng Pháp in Hóc Môn with my friend. We walked and talked with two volunteers, who told me the name of this plant. 
8 & 9: my class this morning. Their names from left to right are Nhã, Pháp, Khang, Hy, and Phát. 

Did the little girl catch your attention? She should, because not only her name sounds Buddhist, but also her English-speaking skills are *amazing* for her age. I was surprised when she uttered "Oh, man", "Forget it", "I hate these boys" in a very American way. But then, before coming here, she had spent two years at ILA, one of the biggest English schools in Vietnam. Despite her somewhat reserved appearance, she wasn't afraid to talk about her family and friends. She said she picked up English more by watching Disney Channel than going to class. No adult student of mine is as competent as this young lady. I told her to tell her mom to get her in one of the adult classes instead of this kid-level course so she could go even farther. She said she was afraid her mom would "get mad" and so asked if I could tell her on the phone. I asked her to try it herself first.

10: My US-bought Nokia phone has not been easy to unlock. My father had some cellphone store unlock it and install a Vietnamese interface. He has been excited with this new belonging ever since. Welcome to the 21st century, dad!

                   

Click here to download:

Quick_stories_through_pictures.zip (6004 KB)

There was an unexpected kamikaze attack this morning, with the result that I had to spend most of the day removing dead bodies. The enemies struck at something very essential to human communication. Luckily, I managed to prevent them from setting up their colonies. OK, enough dramatization. To simplify, my laptop was infested with ants. To clarify, they damaged one letter key which I defy anyone to spend a day without. What a well-planned offensive, aiming at the most commonly used letter in the English-speaking world! Here's one more clue: wythout thys key, Y would probably ynvent another varyant of Englysh. Did you figure it out?

As I opened the lid of my laptop this morning, I saw swarms of ants crawling out from every corner of the keyboard. What the...? Even now, it still doesn't make any sense to me. I have no idea why they thought the keyboard was a safe place to hide. Surprisingly, I'm not alone. Did the manufacturers put anything sweet in there? I'm pretty sure I spilt nothing sugary on the laptop. Probably they just wanted to take shelter from the recent rainy spells. Besides, from a purely spiritual perspective, unlike most people I don't crush ants when I feel them on my body, so by the law of cause and effect, I shouldn't have suffered from such an act of revenge. Anyway, after sweeping most of them off the keyboard, I soon realized the "I" key was not responsive, so I managed to pry open that key and discovered many dead ants blocking the circuitry part under it. Removing these dismembered bodies took quite a time but it was worth it. Now I can type "i" but it's not as sensitive as before, sometimes giving me two i's per press or none at all. Fine then. It's still better than replacing the whole keyboard. Got to find a way to protect this laptop from future ant problems.

I find myself complaining more often these days. It's not good.

Today's discovery is Merriam Webster also has a Learner's Dictionary of its own. Just try and see for yourself. I don't know about the big book but personally I think the web-based version has a rather cluttered layout. Too wordy sometimes, really. Words like "Pronounced", "Function" and "Meaning" right after every entry are so unnecessary. What's more, collocations are not too noticeable. I hope it'll adopt a more minimalistic yet accessible approach in the future. To be fair, it has clear American pronunciations.

To digress and rant, it was too tiring on my way to class last night and I was 15 minutes late. I don't mind the heavy rain, just all the floods it caused all over the streets and the resulting traffic jams. Wearing sandals instead of shoes, despite the fact that I wouldn't look the part, turned out to be a smart decision. On the bright side, at least I have come up with an example to illustrate a word I was supposed to teach last night but didn't through lack of time. You've guessed it right! Frustrated.

I didn't know Google had a good dictionary for English learners too. If you take a look, you'll see lots of examples on verb patterns and word usage. Even word senses are defined by means of examples. I think all this information is probably taken from Collins Cobuild's Dictionary of English, which doesn't have a web interface. Anyway, Google is cool.

Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival. As with most festive occasions, it's usually on the eve of the event that all the exciting action takes place. It was, however, quiet in my neighborhood yesterday. There were no lanterns, no kids, no idle chatter. Nothing. This children's festival, as it happens nowadays, is becoming more and more adulterated when expensive boxes of mooncakes, traditionally a special treat for kids, have been turned into a means of exchanging favors in the workplace. For all this, it reminds me of many things, so as busy as I am, I'm trying to crank out a few words for this post just to break this heavy atmosphere.

Gone are the days when groups of lantern-toting kids chorused cheerfully along the streets. I'm sure like me, these kids would also wish for a power blackout so as to show off their little lighthouses in various shapes and sizes. The lantern for an average child was usually in the shape of an animal like a fish, a bunny, a butterfly, etc. More well-off kids had lồng đèn kéo quân (gyratory lanterns), where you'd see small figures or their silhouettes moving in circles due to convection. When I was in elementary or secondary school, I built a UFO-shaped paper lantern on my own. No one had taught me how to build one before. The idea just struck me when I was reading the instructions in my favorite children's newspaper. I finished assembling my lantern in good time but at the expense of my mother's misplaced scissors and tape. What didn't fail me was that my creative product did look like a U-F-O and not some random unidentified object. I do have my moments, don't I? Sadly, my cousin lost it soon after, to my childish resentment.

Any discussion of Trung Thu would be incomplete if we failed to mention mooncakes. Do you like them? I do. My brothers like the mung beans type whereas I am a sucker for the type with assorted ingredients. I still recall proposing a plan to other childhood kids to save our parents' money by putting together all the money we have to get one big mooncake and share among us. As if that were not enough, I wrote the entire notice and shamelessly stuck it on the wall in front of my house. What was next? Someone laughed and took it down. I couldn't help smiling when reminiscing about this crazy story.

I didn't eat much mooncake, if at all, during my time in the US. First, mooncakes there were terrible. Second, there was no air of festivity to accompany my enjoyment. So this year, I've already eaten lots of mooncakes as if to make up for the last 6 years. Nothing beats feasting on mooncakes while sipping at hot tea on a full moon.

I feel lucky to have experienced this festival as a little kid. I hope posterity will still be able to do the same before Tết Trung Thu and all its traditions are known only through Wikipedia.

I just got sad news from cô Tuyết that chú Phương has just passed away from a severe asthma attack. May you rest in peace, chú Phương. Thank you for your kindness to cô Tuyết's family and me personally when I was still in the States.