Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
My incredible wife Phuong tried to surprise me on my birthday, and did really well until I started snooping around the refrigerator, which I'm apt to do whenever I'm bored or hungry. And I'm usually bored and always hungry. As a result, I found a cappuccino birthday cake with my name and a "64" candle embedded in the icing. The cake was so big it was difficult to hide in the fridge. Besides, I knew something was up because Phuong didn't mention my birthday all day even though my super student Sam gave me a wonderful coffee/tea mug with her picture on it in the morning. The picture is actually a drawing of a rabbit, which is Sam's persona. She's a truly special friend. Anyway, Phuong cooked a wonderful chicken dinner, my favorite food in Vietnam, and we had cake and yogurt. Our nephews Vinh and Hai came over for dinner and cake, and along with Joanna's usual shenanigans -- she danced non-stop to a disco-style version of Happy Birthday on YouTube -- it was a very nice gathering. I joked that the numbers on my cake were transposed and should have shown my age as "46". I thought back to my 46th birthday in Bakersfield, Calif., and I recall waking up intoxicated and covered in newspapers on a city bench next to Guthrie's Alley Cat at 4 a.m. -- not a particularly proud moment, but a moment nonetheless. Life is short, folks, and in all likelihood I'm not the only person in the history of mankind to get drunk on his or her birthday.
(Also, thank you Jack, Tom and John for the birthday wishes. Very nice and thoughtful!)
* * *
The park where Joanna and I go four to five times a week has remained fairly clean. The threat of taking people's money for littering works wonders. But some scumbags still leave beer bottles and coffee cups and plastic water bottles under trees or on the walkways. One clown threw a bag of trash in the tree that produces the Jamaican cherries Joanna and I eat every time we go to the park (see photo on the right). But other than a handful of littering imbeciles, the park is a pleasant locale in this otherwise hardscrabble (this adjective is for you, Lucy) city.
* * *
I got into an argument the other night with my neighbor about a barking dog across the street from our house. The dog's barking was loud and relentless and went on into the wee hours -- easily past 1 a.m. My wife and I had to sleep in our daughter's room away from the street. When the barking started again the next night -- the poor dog was chained outside -- I asked my shirtless neighbor who was walking around in the street what the hell was going on with the barking dog. The neighbor told me it was protecting our neighborhood. And get this: The neighbor told me it was a cultural issue that I didn't understand. Maybe dogs are better trained in your country, he said, but it's part of Vietnam's culture for dogs to bark like this. It's not a big deal, he added. I told him I don't need the dog's "protection" and that his country's "culture" is pathetic if it's acceptable for dogs to be chained outside, bark all night and disturb the neighbors, and it is a big deal to me because I teach a private student English in the morning. There was no barking the third night, so I suspect some other neighbors finally complained, or the dog's owner/owners got sick of the barking. I also told my neighbor that it's part of my culture to play loud rap at 3 a.m. while drinking Hennessy ... it's no big deal, right?
* * *
Some odds and ends since the last blog:* Remarkably loud karaoke drove us off the police tennis courts last week. We told the guy in charge of the courts that either the karaoke stops or we stop coming. The karaoke stopped last week, but who knows what the future holds.
* I go to the same coffee shop each day, drink a cappuccino and read for an hour. I've been doing this for a couple of months. Last week, one of the shop's employees who's waited on me for the two months asked me if I liked to read. Folks here have wonderful hearts but sometimes they really struggle to interact and communicate with foreigners. Nervous, I guess
* I'm trying to pick up a few more private students to get more disposable income to buy more books. I'll experiment and see if Amazon will deliver books to our house in Vietnam.
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