Alain Delon – Thang Nguyen 555

10/06/2013

Sunday afternoon

If it weren’t for the rain, I wouldn’t have remembered the incident. Being just a kid, I was home-bound by torrential rain. No matter how hard I tried, the adults in the house would not let me go out and play. My tantrum perhaps lasted for hours with ending compromise: I got taken to see…

Cote D’Ivoire as I recall

I set foot on Cote d’Ivoire summer 86. Abidjan looked like former Saigon. Both were built on French architecture template. Next door Ghanians got shinier skin. But hearing French spoken by the people there made me feel at home. In fact, so at home that I, upon discovering a Vietnamese restaurant in town, stopped in for lunch. And they did…

Vietnamese love for French

When traveling in Vietnam, you can still hear French embedded in every-day culture: fork (fut-xet) , suit (com-plet) and tie (ca-ra-vat). Apparently, they just use the phoneticized versions for lack of dynamic equivalents and use literal translation, such as “Hop Dem” (Boite de Nuit) as last resort. Some old hands can still carry a tune…