The local fascination with my pot belly continues to amaze me. I was in the produce section at Metro supermarket on Sunday looking over the few remaining zucchinis when a man and a boy about 5 or 6 years old, presumably father and son, smiled and came walking toward me. I smiled at them and waited for their arrival. When they got to me, the man grabbed the boy's hand and had the child poke my stomach and search for my belly button. I'm sure stranger things have happened to me, but none that I can think of off the top of my head. The incident wasn't nefarious, but it weirded me out. I let the boy poke and prod for a few seconds -- he and dad (I guess it was dad) found the whole process hilarious. Me? I just walked away, prepared to defend myself from further prodding with a large zucchini I took off the shelf. If this kind of crap keeps happening, I'll have to go back to calling myself the White Monkey again.
I returned to the tennis court last week. Phuong arranged for me to play a 21-year-old whipper snapper named Tai three times a week at 8 a.m. I'm no competition for Tai -- he's a young tennis bum -- but I get a hell of a workout in the brutal heat. Yes, the heat is brutal at 8 a.m. and my shirt is so soaked with sweat that it weighs about four pounds when the tennis is finished at 9 a.m. My tennis game is becoming like my golf game. I'm awful, but I'll recount my one or two shining moments that make it all seem worthwhile. Plus, I'm 62 and coming off several bad motorbike accidents. So while my mind and spirit are willing, my pot-bellied body is practically disabled. Tai wins 6-0, 6-1, and he barely breaks a sweat. But then again, he's Vietnamese and the Vietnamese don't sweat very much. One guy strolled across my court while we were into our match and I kind of lost it. I threw more F-bombs at that clown than I've said in the past year. The guy's attitude of entitlement during his stroll across our court pissed me off more than the fact he interrupted our match. He sort of apologized and I threw one last F-bomb at him. A couple of other guys have cut across our court, but they asked if it was OK, smiled, and then hustled across. That doesn't bother me.
I'm teaching IELTS -- International English Language Testing System - at our language center and I find it reasonably enjoyable. The students are motivated and their English is quite decent. The focus is on speaking with some writing sprinkled in. So I'm pretty comfortable with it.
Our tall daughter Joanna is getting even taller. She stands a lot, and babbles ma-ma-ma and ba-da-ba for 15 minutes or so every night before she falls asleep. What a cutie..
Phuong and I are exhausted because we're up at 5:15 a.m. every day with Joanna. And the Peanut, which we sometimes affectionately call her, doesn't really like napping. She'll nap, but it's a struggle, adding to our fatigue. Wouldn't change a thing.
Stopped drinking the sugar-infested tea here, and just drink lots and lots of water. Maybe my stomach will get smaller.
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