Tag: The Girl Of My Best Friend

Saigon siesta

We used to lie on the floor (absorbing the coolness from the tiles) and listen to “Y0ur Song” , theme of that time’s radio broadcast. That’s my siesta as I can recall.

Older brother used Hit Parade, with Elvis Presley  on the cover.

My friend, meanwhile, laminated his vinyl album (James Taylor).

We have just met over lunch today. He mentioned his 3-year old boy who listened to While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

Rock lives on. So does Saigon siesta.

People find shades.

Some cafes even offer hammocks instead of chairs.

Self-created summer breeze.

People move about between two extremes: fate and future.

Aren’t we all, living in Saigon or South Central.

Still, there is something about growing up, lying on the floor and listening to Soft Rock.

It’s truly a Wonderful World, where “the dog says goodnight” and the rooster crows, always a bit early for city life.

I can’t recall how I  pick up a date, while attending an all-boy school without a cell phone (and SMS).

But I somehow managed.

At work, in Santa Monica, some inshore techs couldn’t open their eyes after a lunch of heavy rice staple.

They probably stayed up late for conference calls anyways , living in our 24/7 connected world.

Siesta: a must at my friend’s work place here in Saigon.

Might as well work that into company policy.

Just that it’s hard to have tile floor at work similar to my “your song” experience.

I hope you don’t mind, I wrote down this song. I hope my friend’s kid grow up liking this song . It’s for him as well.

Get fat, get fit

I was crunching, when the PA system announced “free pizza at Planet Fitness, 1st Monday of the month”.

Might as well. Indulge.  After all, it says “No judgment zone.”  Get fat, get fit.

Carrot and then Stick.

In a blog I recently subscribed to, I found : ” the extent that we help fulfill other people’s dream,we fulfill ours.”.

We know that life is not without paradox.

Past choices limit future options.

(We did not then have the benefits of hindsight).

Pleasure and pain intersect right there on the exercise mat: one more crunch, reverse crunch etc.. just to build up a better appetite (which gets us right back to the beginning).

Who among us lives without self-conflict, let him cast the first stone.

We want the oil, but also a  clean beach.

We dress up to see Les Miserables, at Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, but hurry up across the street when a homeless guy approaches.

And we can’t wait to tell others ” I told you so” when the chips are all down.

Pundits, politicians and pollsters, were in denial about the “black swan” of the Financial system, which gave us all a “black eye”.

A suicide here, and a robbery there. Not sure how the consequences will play out. Wall Street watches Main Street. Main Street waits on Wall Street. All one-way streets (as of this edit, unemployment in Greece still at 26.9 per cent).

There have been more migration to the dust bowl, where not too long ago, Dorothy couldn’t wait to leave home on a Greyhound bus. These states now seem attractive with tax incentives, and rural broadband connection.

And a story that we all missed: Vietnam was at the top of Emerging Countries chart 3 years in the row (2007-2010) even when they have yet exploited the wheels of industrialization. Just cheap and surplus of labor. But everyone seems to be fit, not by going to the gym, but by default (no “free pizza” every first Monday of the month.)

Here is our last paradox, in the absence of plenty, everything tastes sweeter. You should see how aggressive people were with Moon Cakes during the weeks that lead up to the Festival. It’s not the mix of flour and sugar. It’s flour and sugar that have been denied for years, and only recently made available and affordable to all. Free Moon Cake for every sign-up at Planet Fit.