Mental illness in Saigon

Last Saturday, by chance, I was at the mental health facility in Thu Duc, near Saigon.

I was joking that I wouldn’t want it to be a drop off trip.

The facility needed a new Mess Hall. And my nephew was tasked to design and build it.

The patients seemed to have adapted to their new home: some got visitors because it was during the weekend.

The Operations Manager wanted to have a backyard area where patients could sit and finish their coffee

(and perhaps talk out their problem among one another?).

What happen to Facebook, the third largest country in the world, size-wise?

This week, being back here in Palm Beach, with not much action, I try to visualize what would happen if I

had stayed on at that facility. Will I be working in the Mess Hall? Introduce myself to people who might not

remember it the next time? Will I find kindness in most unlikely place?

Love in the time of mental illness. That should be a book title for Mr Marquez.

Michael Lewis, in his latest installment “The Big Short”, mentioned that at Sachs, the top heavy hitters would pull the weight for the

rest . I wonder if it works the same way with some of the night clubs in Saigon, where a few VIP tables cover the

entire electricity bill.

In Thu Duc, at that mental illness center, the gate is always guarded and closed. Patients don’t go out at night. perhaps not  until next visiting time.

I can’t come back there this week. I am a world away.

But I can imagine the anticipation and longing by some for that special time.

When you are a shut-in, there isn’t much choice.  It’s a one-way traffic from the outside in.

I heard there was a patient who just asked for a nickel. My nephew gave him a quarter. But he insisted that the quarter be changed to five nickels, of which he just kept one.

Mental illness, or pure honesty and integrity?

Greed is bad.

Maybe, a Neil Young’s line says it best ” I have been to Redwood, I have been to Hollywood, …I’m.searching for a heart of Gold, and I am getting old.”

Maybe Greed is not always good, at least not everywhere. The more individualistic a society, the more prevalent it becomes.  Lewis calls this “The Big Short”.