Tag: Vespa

I love

Our own Duc Huy has sung “Toi yeu…nhung loi noi thanh that, toi yeu ly ca-phe buoi sang” (I love sincere comments, .. morning cup of coffee). So do I. Especially when it’s cappuccino prepared with care and passion by our UVT Hospitality students. They even brought it up to my office (perk!).

I love “the dog says Good-night” in Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong.

I love Shubert whom my Dad adored. I love “Ao Dai” my mom used to wear.

I love Good Morning Vietnam with the aerial shot of the chopper leaving the lush-green rice field.

I love little children with innocent eyes, arms wide-spread in front of mom’s Vespa (thinking it’s they who “fly” the vehicles).

I love the man- on the balcony across the alley- who squats and spreads his arms as if he were a Master of ancient martial arts.

I love Au Marche (Cho Hoa Hung) with “le poisson glisse” (fish that glow in the sun ).

I love grandma types who think her savings would make a difference in the clan’s future.

I love Security Guards (in Vietnam, it’s big business) who know everything that happens in the company.

I love back-stage Rockers who can’t wait for their set.

I love Accountants and HR, who feel important and needed when others are hired and fired.

I love people, places and purposes.

Let’s do it.

It’s a wonderful world.

The coffee by the way is cappuccino.

Can you imagine if I had had something else this morning.

TGIF.

My Saigon

Like Trinh Cong Son‘s Diem Xua, I got my own imprints of what  Saigon was like.

Especially on Sundays, like today.

Shaded streets, short strolls and sweet smiles.

Who needs all the executive shirt with designers’ emblem on it.

Instead of shirt, just smile even when you are not on camera. “Cuoi len di em oi” Just smile.

Le Sourire.

Flowers for the graves, flowers for the grade school teachers.

Lots of laughters, lots of tears “Ta chi can mot nguoi cung voi ta doi chet moi ngay”

Just a person to pass the time with while awaiting death inevitable.

Hence, Saigonese put on their best.

Last night, at a friend’s private birthday party, I sat outside on the balcony, looking into the glass door, taking in the scene, as if it were a movie set. Was I there, or just watching myself being there?

Am I in or in but not of it?

They say you can take a Texan out of Texas, but you cannot take Texas out of a Texan.

Perhaps the same holds true for Saigonese like myself .

Something about the French cafe, the Vespa, the Chinese noodle, and now, the KFC.

Saigon is a synthesis.

We “cao dai (unitarian) every strand of thoughts and expressions.

No one knows or is let in to our core. Double protection.

Suspicious of foreigners yet embrace them all.

Like on LinkedIN.

Like on Facebook.

Like on Twitter.

Just smile.

Le sourire.

Lots of laughter and lots of tears.

Just one life time.

But in mine, I have seen Saigon live multiple lives.Try every dish, every taste: bitter cucumber or  pickled lemon.

We take everything and leave out nothing.

During my entire life interacting and learning about Saigon , I have yet seen Saigon lose out.

It blends and synthesizes everything.

To the point where you could only recognize it by its smile.

Then the younger generation takes over.

You see the resemblance but can’t put a finger on it.

Turns out it’s that smile underneath the facade.

They smile when they are happy and when they are sad (see Understanding Vietnam).

Saigon’s smile is more of a reaction than an expression. “You always smile but in your eyes your sorrow shows”.

My Saigon. Cuoi len di em oi, du nuoc mat rot chet vanh moi. Smiling while swallowing tears.

Par Avion

I almost stepped on an envelope with imprint of an airplane on the cover.

It’s been a while since I saw that design. We used to write intimate letters, telling in detail what had happened in our lives, then “seal with a kiss” an envelope which had “Par Avion” on it.

In fact, when Vietnam was still North and South the way Korea now is, we were allowed to mail only post cards across the DMZ. So and so just had a third baby, the youngest finally got married and moved out etc….(Good news!:)

We lived with what was available at the time:  American cars for wedding rental, Pan Am flights, and Vespas (Roman Holiday without Gregory Peck).

Now I heard of $3,000 Chinese-made cars.

No thanks.

I’d rather get married and chauffeured away in a ferry or a bus, slowly but surely.

Best off is to take pictures in front of Notre Dame De Saigon and walk across the colonial boulevard to a Bowling Party at nearby Diamond Plaza.

Speaking of Malls.

Shoppers in the US are anticipating Black Friday shopaholic reunion.

“My name is Tommy, and I am a shopaholic”.

The prayer of serenity will be recited in unison.

Friendship fosters via common interests. And what is more popular than the love for shopping?

I used to be into ties and books.

Now, if given a choice, I still am into books, and you can keep the ties.

Except for when I attend a wedding. Like yesterday, of all places, in Cu Chi

(No, I did not wear a tie to crawl into one of those war-time tourist “traps”).

Still, a wedding in the country, especially in Vietnam, brought out major “players”.

I got to meet a very important man in the vice squad.

Go clubbing safely my friend, from here on.

It’s important who you know, not what you know.

Back to modern mode of communication.

Vinaphone and Vietel will offer 4-G.

Who is going to write letters and “seal with a kiss” before sending them via PAR AVION letters any more?

Even fax, chat and e-mail will soon be obsolete.

When I saw the young groom, tall and slick, I know time has moved on.

His kids will be of the 4-G + generation.

Text, voice and video, simultaneously.

No more Concorde or Cu Chi.

Messages will be instantaneously delivered.

As we think, shall others know.

Par Avion will be too slow (turn of 20th century not 21st).

My parents did not think so at the time.

To them, buying a stamp that had “Par Avion” meant having less meat for the meal.

Faster mail= leaner meat.Perhaps the same is still true today with many families in emerging economies (I-phone 5 = less milk).

One will have to grow stronger, swifter and smarter. Welcome to an increasingly flat world, at the speed of light (fiber optic).  But that envelope on the street did trigger this lengthy flash back to the past.

Proust would be proud! After all, I did not title this “Air Mail“. It’s Par Avion.

Halloween in Vietnam? A redundancy

Young people are out in drove, that is, if they were not already on bikes, racing like mad on weekend nights.

This time around, in costume. Halloween costume. In Vietnam, of all places.

First, the masks trickled in at tourist and expat hot spots. Then, wider adoption is made possible by cheaper goods from next door China . No stranger to superstition and spirits, Vietnam has always opened to trying new things, from Tango to Hip Hop, Vespa to Roll Royce.

Only this time, young people agree with their elder generation: the spirits world.

Their parents would burn incense on the 15th of July, Lunar calendar, and the younger generation dress in costume, Twilight style. Long held reverence for both the living or dead (animism and ancestral worship), Vietnamese are no strangers to para phenomena and cyclical lives. In contrast, to be consistent with their linear and industrial model, Westerners have tried to suppress witchcraft and superstitious belief which gained popularity in revolt of Darwin and the rise of science and technology.

That can’t explain away Twilight, the Blair Witch project and tons of Halloween  candies and candles flickered inside pumpkin shells on US front lawns.

But in Vietnam, year around, in any household, one finds incense burning at the family altar. Even in Catholic households.

In fact, Cao Dai ism accommodates all spiritual traditions under one roof (Victor Hugo was one of the saints).

Caodaists wear white, symbol of purity. Another striking contrast in how funerals are conducted. White robes in Vietnam, all Black for the West (this tradition is widely adopted by Vietnamese overseas who attend Chapel services in Rose Hills, a popular cemetery in Los Angeles, California. The Buddhist Vietnamese in the US struck a compromise when colliding with public ordinance and traditional mourning practices: they brought in the monks,

then the limousine people take over.

So, the children in Vietnam  got both Moon Cake last month, and Halloween candies this month.

Halloween allow both adults and children to take on an alter ego. Someone said aptly that “give me a mask, I will tell you the truth”.

Actors do that all the time, and get paid handsomely.

Halloween, it’s one day out of the year, when the bad and ugly feel accepted at the table, or a bar stool in Vietnam. Westerners are welcome to join in what had already been a built-in practice in this culture: a reverence for the non-living.

Blind man amidst Saigon traffic

Yesterday I saw a blind man, cane first, feet followed, amidst really busy traffic.

He was neither assisted by a companion, dog or human being, nor by traffic alerts for the blind.

Yet he made it to the other side (without music from the Door) , and was on his way into an alley, which must be his way home.

I am sure his hearing must be extremely sensitive to compensate for his lack of eyesight.

Then I reflect back to my situation. I am  sure I have missed tons of signals during my trip: designer glasses, upscale bikes, Vespa resurgence, Western-style brewery, less road fatality and infrastructure improvement.

Still I have been blind to many situation, most obviously, the absence of the middle class.

Yes, more are out of the poverty level, but it will be another 10-20 years before we see the emergence of a “middle-class Vietnam“.

Since this society is inter-linked on a web model (extended families), we won’t see all-boats-rise for a while yet.

Case in point: the credit system has yet taken hold here because people have used to borrow from friends and relatives, and not institutions (which rely on home ownership as collateral). Banking, insurance and heavy industries are dominated by State-Owned Enterprises.

ATM‘s weren’t even around back in 2000 (one exception was at the Diamond Plaza).

Micro loan (similar approach has been successful in India), hui (turn-taking to borrow from the common pot) and pawning are still prevalent.

So, an economy whose rate of growth is only behind China and India, still functions under the old “trust”system, which further insulates Vietnam and impedes its otherwise ascension on world stage (i.e. access to a larger FDI pool.)

20 years from now, I hope to see Electronic Medical Records take hold here, as well as E-government and E-services. Vietnam Airline now allows self-check-in and there will be a traffic audio alerts to help our blind hero in his daily walk.

There was an Iranian film (the Willow Tree?) about a blind professor who after undergone surgery in France, decided that he did not like his new state of “seeing”.

Way philosophical for me, but the gist is : we can only control the smaller circle and  not the macro one.

To play God is to invite guilt. And I am sure our blind hero has every right to curse the dark (and traffic). Instead, he goes about his way, using cane for feeler and ears for sensors. Wonder what he hears everyday. Certainly, more than those who listen from their I-pods to tune out Saigon noisy traffic. Perhaps on the I-pod, we hear “Getting on to the other side” by the Door.

Vespa in Vietnam

The brand is revitalized and resuscitated here in Saigon.  If not for the helmets, I would think it is a replay of A Roman Holiday.

Back then, the burning monk was pouring gasoline on himself and asked a younger monk to lit the fire.

He earned a memorial in that intersection.

Another Buddhist temple a few blocks away took collection to renovate. The presiding monk took off with the proceeds, leaving behind an abandoned project. Good monk bad monk. It’s Mid-Autumn Festival. Children with lanterns and adults with sweet cake. Fairy tales that had to do with an uprooted tree now replanted on the Moon. VIet Nam in the Sputnik and Space age.

The city is now catering to whatever clients demand and could afford: Gloria Jeans Coffee and Ha Long Bay tours (without Catherine Deneuve).

And back to my French coffee, Italian Vespa and USA‘s Hard Rock Cafe. You would have thought I am someplace but Vietnam.  I can assure you it’s Vietnam, with multiple English schools and exam prep “store fronts”.

Young Vietnamese design games, play games online and love watching soccer. They have street racing here too. And while doing it, they might as well feel the wind by taking off their helmets.  Electric bikes couldn’t make an inroad here, especially after they changed the regulation which required electric bike riders to wear helmets.

So forget the love for sustainable environment or the disgusting gas price. Young people zoom by on Vespa, adopt I-phone and continue to play games online. There isn’t enough open space for them to play soccer ( I notice a strange absence of basketball, US urban youth favorite past time sports).. On this Mid-Autumn day, my old neighborhood gets one less choice of temples: the abandoned Temple is still sitting there, “torn”, but not completely torn down while Vespa after Vespa zooms on by. Thang Cuoi in a Space Age. I will never look at the Moon, or Vietnam, the same way again, even with some familiar handles into the past like Vespa and lanterns on the street.