White skin is considered chic in Vietnam. If you go into the beauty shops, which I do on occasion, there are countless skin whiteners or lighteners on the shelves. The billboards feature light-skinned Vietnamese women with equally white teeth, and the outdoor advertisements and posters for local English language centers show smiling, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white children studying English. Everyone knows that the sun can damage your skin, but I think that many white wannabes here are more afraid of darker skin than they are of skin cancer. I have no statistical evidence to support this, but I think the preference for white skin explains why folks go to remarkable lengths to cover up by wearing hats, hoodies, gloves, long pants, and scarves on their faces in 90-plus degree heat. White was the preferred skin color in Peru, as well. The lighter the skin, the higher the caste in many people's eyes. How ridiculous. In the U.S., a lot of people go to great lengths to have darker skin, or a tan. Go figure. I find darker-skinned Vietnamese and Peruvians and African-Americans more exotic looking. In other words, I think they're hot. My wife Phuong has fairly dark skin -- not super dark, but certainly darker than mine. And Phuong is very pretty, in my eyes. Our daughter Joanna has light/white skin, and that seems to attract a lot of attention in town. But an older, wiser White Monkey realizes that looks and appearance don't mean much after a while. Qualities such as kindness, generosity and intelligence will give a relationship longevity. Physically "beautiful" people aren't physically beautiful forever.
I tried to explain my philosophy about beauty to a couple of my classes with an adjectives exercise. One of the tasks: Use three adjectives to describe your favorite person. Every student, and I mean every student, used the adjectives "pretty, beautiful and handsome" and then were at a loss for words. They had used up all their adjectives to describe people. So I asked about their moms. One girl said "fat" and another said "short." I told them their mom isn't their favorite person because she's "short" and "fat" or tall and thin or ... beautiful. Maybe she's chic, but hopefully she's a child's favorite because she is kind, caring, generous, thoughtful, nice, smart, loving. These are adjectives, by the way. And these are traits that don't erode over time, like physical beautiful can. I believe a couple of the students actually understood the point I was trying to make. When teachers make students think, they're doing their job. So maybe I actually earned my paycheck this week.
I'm loving my walk and coffee shops these days. The corner coffee shop, where I take all the traffic pictures, has great coffee and nice waitresses. The owner is very nice as well. And Lidos by the river has cleaned up the riverbank and added a nice waiter and waitress. Since I walk almost every day, almost everyone knows me. I shake hands with some of the security guards and car wash employees, and wave to coffee shop waitresses and vendors. When they're not on their motorbikes, the Vietnamese are some of the nicest people I've ever met anywhere. Especially the ones that are pretty and have white skin. Ha ha.
My son Jack recently passed the bar exam in the United States, which means he's an honest-to-god lawyer now after graduating from New York University Law School No. 3 in his class. I'm so incredibly proud of him. Of course, I'm proud of all my children -- Jessica, Caroline, Alec, Jack and Joanna. But this is Jack's time in the spotlight. Congratulations, son. I love you and admire you.
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