New computer; daddy's girl; horrible haircut

I dropped my new Lenovo laptop twice at work, and it stopped working the way it used to. All my videos became a deep blue and the screen would periodically go black for no apparent reason, other than the two drops, I guess. My IT wife decided to take action (to stop my whining) and bought me a sleek, slick HP 840 laptop. It doesn't have a video player or HDMI hookup, but I can work around that easily enough. It's fast and very light, so hopefully I won't drop it, but if I do, I have a better chance of catching it. Remember, I did catch my daughter when she fell off the couch.
My school is planning a trip to Cambodia, and I'm really considering going. I've always wanted to see Cambodia, and I've heard the locals are wonderful. My new passport could use a few stamps and I could use a few days vacation away from Bien Hoa. The trip would be at the end of April, so there's time to consider all the pros and cons.
Of course, the biggest negative is that I'd be away from my daughter Joanna, who has recently decided that her dad is cool beans. When I come home from work at 7:30 p.m. -- after teaching a 5:45 p.m. class -- I ride down our street and see Phuong holding Joanna out in front of our house. Joanna immediately recognizes me and breaks into the cutest smile you ever saw. Then she starts grunting and groaning, which is her way of demanding that her dad holds her. And she grunts and groans whenever someone else tries to hold her or play with her when Big Daddy's around. She's daddy's girl much of the time. But she's very clever, and knows mom is the bomb in the morning, at dinner and at bedtime. Really, Joanna has no favorite and seems happiest when mom and dad are together. She is, however, wisely wary of strangers and is selective about who can hold her and be her buddy. Phuong's mom is part of Joanna's inner circle, and Phuong's dad  is clearly one of Joanna's best pals.
Joanna has changed quite a bit in the past two weeks. Her two top front teeth are coming in, and she stands all the time by using anything and everything she can hold onto, such as chairs, cardboard boxes, and her crib "bars."  And she crawls as fast as a cockroach. Joanna is quite a handful for a 62-year-old dad. But Phuong is non-stop energy and does an incredible job keeping up with Joanna and caring for her. We joke that Joanna is the princess and Phuong is the queen.Not sure where I fit into this royal family.
I needed a haircut and tried a new barbershop on Vo Thi Sau close to where the gang fight took place. I may have been better off letting one of the knife-wielding gangsters have a whack at my head. The  barber gave me a semi-mohawk, kind of a Pee-wee Herman meets Kid 'n Play meets Sid Vicious meets Nick Kyrgios look. To make a long story very short, I look silly. Sillier than usual. Even though I'm losing much of my hair, the hair I have grows pretty quickly, so all should be back to normal in a week or two.

Gang fight, knives, late with a latte

There was a big fight between two gangs less than two miles from our house on Vo Thi Sau, one of Bien Hoa's major streets. My buddy Joy and I rode past the scene of the fight on our motorbikes about two hours before it started when we were coming home from work.  The fight took place at about 11 p.m. in front of a restaurant (where I've eaten a few times) and involved about 30 or 40 people. Swords and big knives apparently are the weapons of choice here. One guy got his arm chopped off and another took a spectacular gash to his face. There was talk of "homemade" guns, but information about these types of things is sketchy and inconsistent. We probably know more about Kim Jong-nam's murder. Anyway, I saw a cellphone video of the fight, and it appeared most of the participants were throwing bricks at each other and running back and forth. I was told by my wife and students who are following the fight that it took a little time for the police to arrive at the scene and that about 21 people were eventually arrested. No word on the one-armed man.  I was also told that some of these guys could serve anywhere from six months to 15 years in prison for involvement. And  most of these guys looked like teenagers.
An event like this is a rarity here. When I was single and stupid, I would walk home from a restaurant or night out in the city at midnight or 1 a.m. and feel quite safe. Now that I'm married and stupid, I really have no interest going out because of the drunken and/or light-less motorbike riders on the road. But one of my co-worders told me that riding a motorbike is no problem here and they've never had an accident or any problems. Only some of the people are rude, she said, telling me I need to calm down. This was the same person who told me "you don't understand." I'm sure she's correct, despite my five accidents (none my fault) and getting hit 11 times by motorbikes when I take my daily walk on the sidewalk (yes, I count. I was hit twice last week, but the riders took the brunt of the collision because I carry a cane). I'm sure getting hit was my fault because I've been known to be a rude walker. But every once in a while -- about once a month -- a young guy will stop his bike, smile, and motion for me to go ahead. It's rare, but some people will give me the right of way when I have the right of way. It restores my faith in mankind. I've written this many times before: Nice Vietnamese people are some of the nicest people I've ever met anywhere. Morons are morons no matter where you live.
Speaking of morons, a friend of mine had a dispute with a neighbor over the neighbor parking his motorbike in front of my friend's door/house. The neighbor apparently was unhappy my friend complained and came to my friend's  house with a big knife to settle the issue. Like I said,  knives and swords are the weapons of choice. My friend wisely moved out of the house and the neighbor will wait to get his arm cut off one day.
My lovely daughter Joanna is changing every day. She'll use a chair, couch, my pant legs, chest hair, – anything she can grab – to pull herself into a standing position. She sort of "walks" when she stands and pushes a chair forward. And this little pumpkin is only seven months and one week old.  Phuong and I know we've got our hands full, and we love it. Joanna and Phuong bring so much happiness to my life that I don't worry about anything when we're together. Even the motorbikes.
Classes have been very, very good. One group of high school and 20-something students like to text on their cellphones when I teach, but they're wasting their parents' money, not mine. And they're quiet and good kids, but they probably needed some classes in manners before they took English. I'm always prepared for classes, but sometimes students stroll in very late with latte in hand, more interested in socializing than learning. I understand because I was one of those students in the U.S., only I would stroll in late with a cappuccino in hand.

Tet hangover, no yogurt, decision for Joanna

The Tet hangover continues in Bien Hoa. TH true, a store near my school that sells only milk and yogurt, had no milk or yogurt a week after Tet. Two weeks after Tet, there was milk but no unsweetened yogurt. Unbelievable. I used to  go there for my milk and yogurt. The girl in the store gave me the hand-wave in my face as soon as I walked in the store, meaning they didn't have squat. The hand-wave in my face pisses me off. Also, I've been unable to get a haircut. Well, I could get a haircut if I want to wait an hour or so. The custom here is to clean up -- in every sense of that phrasal verb -- around the holiday. I'm not a wait-er, so my hair looks like Linc's on The Mod Squad. Or George Washington's wig. It's taken a while for the traffic to rev back up, but I started seeing the usual craziness this past weekend. There were two very close calls involving moms and children in front of our school. The folks here are immune to the risks they take. The women (and their children riding on the back) didn't flinch even though they came within inches of getting hit by a truck and another motorbike. Two security guards watching the whole thing laughed. When I took my walk on Friday, two guys rode past me at about 130 KMH on a very narrow neighborhood street, almost brushing my shoulder.  Then they stopped 100 yards down the road at a coffee shop. Ya know, I could live here indefinitely and enjoy it if it weren't for the motorbikes and the low life attitude of those riding them. I see many of my students bandaged up because of motorbike accidents and they think it's funny. Ha ha.
Phuong and I are waiting to hear from our lawyer on my efforts to get Phuong to the U.S. -- the lawyer told us the process will take a couple of years. Waiting is happiness.
Phuong and I are discussing whether or not Joanna will accompany me to the U.S. this year for my annual visit. She would be 16 months old at takeoff, but I'm not sure she could not handle the 26-hour trip (one way), and the three-week separation from mom. Phuong spends almost all her time caring for, playing with, holding, kissing, hugging, and cuddling Joanna. That's when she's not watching Joanna sleep. But I really want my children in the U.S. to meet their half-sister and see how incredibly cute, lovable, energetic and stubborn she is. Everybody loves Joanna, including the other babies in the neighborhood. She'll be a natural leader ... I know it. There's no hurry on the decision. We'll wait to see how things shake out.
Phuong is threatening to return to the tennis court to beat my butt again. Of course, everybody beats my butt in tennis, but it's so much fun playing with Phuong. Millman vs. Pham isn't Federer-Nadal, but we compete and have some exercise and laughs in the process. We've targeted May for our first match.
I missed watching the Super Bowl because TV here showed three crucial Bundesliga matches. Soccer is a tough watch for me -- 90 minutes to see a dramatic 0-0 (nil-nil) tie doesn't spin my beanie. I know football is just soap opera for men (credit Peach's employee Chris for that line), but watching soccer is like waiting for a haircut.  Anyway, I've missed the last IV or V Super Bowls and seem to have survived OK.  What I really miss are my children, Yoo Hoo, and hiking in Glen Helen.
Happy birthday, Caroline!

Idiots and danger on our street; a tragic loss

People in Bien Hoa will meticulously correct my Vietnamese, no matter how subtle or insignificant the correction seems to me. But folks won't say a word -- in fact they'll look away -- when someone rides their motorbike or car insanely fast down our very narrow street where small children often play. These idiots -- men, women and teens --  will lay on their horns, and ride dangerously close to children or other pedestrians as they go on their merry way. I've almost been hit three or four times by the bass-moles, and I've had enough. Some clown came down our street last week easily exceeding 100 kilometers an hour, so I stepped into his path and politely suggested with my hand he slow down. He didn't slow down, even though I gave him a 100-yard warning space. He swerved around me and almost hit a parked car. I screamed at the clown as he raced away. Good news is that I haven't seen that guy on our street again. And other folks have been taking it easier since the White Monkey started beating his chest and flashing his bright red buttocks at speeding motorists. The bad news: All the neighbors want to do is laugh at me for screaming at the idiots, then look away and not say a word. I wonder if they'll act that way when someone in their family is run over and killed or maimed by one of these clowns. I've been told these guys may be gangsters and I shouldn't confront them. When it comes to my wife and children, I'll confront Mike Tyson or El Chapo and worry about the consequences later. That's the blessing and the curse of having a bad temper. I hope my daughter Joanna doesn't inherit this trait, although she seems pretty strong-headed at times.
Tet holiday lasted a whole week, which meant 90 percent of the businesses here were closed for the whole week, and traffic was considerably lighter. So it was safer to go somewhere, but there was nowhere to go. Even supermarkets and pharmacies were closed for much of the week. Only massage parlors and most of the coffee shops opened the day after Tet. Since a lot of people aren't working around the Tet holiday, you'd think businesses would open and rake in money. In the days leading up to Tet, there's a run on cash at the ATMs. The lines and line cutting at the ATMs were outrageous. Maybe the folks were snapping up cash for "lucky money", which is something like Christmas cards with cash inside. Everybody loves money, whether it's lucky or not. (The ATMs rejected my card until after Tet.) I asked my wife why businesses and restaurants don't stay open around Tet, and she basically said that all the workers go on holiday, so there's no one available to do the work. That wouldn't fly in the U.S., but neither would Muslims if Trump has his way. But I digress. In the U.S. when I was a young boy a long time ago, almost everything was closed on Sundays and major holidays. Sometimes it was a big inconvenience, but you knew that's how it was. It almost forced families to spend time together. Maybe that's a good thing. Families are super important in Peru. They're super important in Vietnam. In the U.S., of course families are important but it just doesn't feel the same as in countries overseas ... in my opinion.
There was a double homicide in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in January, relatively close to my house there.  Sadly, I knew one of the victims, Skip Brown. He was a wonderful guy. I didn't know him really well, but we were Facebook friends and sometimes we would have a few beers together with a very good friend of mine when I returned for my yearly visits. I wish I knew him better because he always had a smile and kind words when I saw him, and he always "liked" my Facebook photos of family and students. Skip always joked about my dad, who lived to be 98. Skip would say I was the guy with the 150-year-old father. Skip had a positive energy that's becoming more rare these days. He'll be missed.