I'll start off by saying the only real Covid news in our neighborhood is that some of the older folks got booster shots. Even though I'm an older folk, I'll have to wait until they get more AstraZeneca vaccines before I can get a booster. Doctors say mixing vaccines is an effective tool for fighting Covid, but they won't mix vaccines here. Could be an organizing thing, but I've no idea. I've been fighting a sore throat for a while, but not sure if that's dirty air and air conditioning related. Who knows? Who cares?
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For a country that at times seems very utilitarian, Vietnam offers countless beauty products, skin care lotions, skin whitening cremes, the alphabet of vitamins, products such as sheep placenta and shark cartilage to keep you young, and of course there's ginseng and ginkgo biloba and other products to fix whatever ails you. The products people use the most, such as vitamin C or zinc, can run out fairly quickly at times, but eventually reappear. I am doing now what I swore I'd never do -- I take a bunch of pills daily: a multi-vitamin, vitamin C and zinc. I also have to use eyedrops nightly to combat glaucoma, but that's simply a case of (White) monkey do, (White) monkey see. Also, I consume black beans soaked in vinegar to help my kidneys that were banged up in motorbike accidents; it's a Chinese treatment. I justify my behavior because I have two young children. Plus, I don't get my full complement of sleep each night with those two little angels, so I hope the pills fill the gaps. As for the folks here and all the beauty products, I guess everyone everywhere wants to stay healthy, youthful and beautiful. Youthful and beautiful seem to take precedence over healthy here, probably because there are so many young people who are already fairly healthy. It's no doubt important to look good for posting selfies on social media, which is a national pastime.
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At the park we go to, six Grab drivers (Uber-like drivers and deliverymen and women using scooters) were sitting in a circle eating and drinking this past Friday afternoon. When they finished, they put all their trash in one bag, which was good, and dropped it next to a tree on the sidewalk in front of the park, which was not good. The sidewalk fronts a busy street where my son Elijah and I like to hang out so he can look at cars going by. I said to the drop-off guy, who giggled when he littered, that there was a trash can in the park and one right across the street he could use. I even tried to help him out by pointing to the two trash cans. He laughed at me or just continued his giggling, joined his fellow Grab mates and said something, and they all laughed and then tried to stare me down. I don't lose staring contests here (a remnant of my old tai chi practice) but I didn't have the luxury of locking eyes with the litter bugs since I had to watch my son, who will run in the street if given the chance. I've said it before: I don't want conflict here but it's difficult for me to give a pass to such blatant ignorance and disregard for basic decency. My son and I were less than 10 feet away from the guy when he littered.
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Four little kids around Joanna's age were playing in the park while their parents sat on the ground near the exercise equipment, the woman looking into her cellphone and the man looking into space. When the kids sat near their parents (I guess, parents), Joanna hung around on the outskirts hoping to join in and find some playmates. I gave Joanna a bag of lightly sugared popcorn -- it's pretty good, stuff, really -- to give to the kids to sort of break the ice. They refused to take it and said something I didn't understand. Maybe they were being shy, so I took the popcorn from Joanna and tried to give it to the mom. She just stared and didn't move to take it. So I motioned like I would give the bag to the dad, and he stared at me like I was going to give him the finger. So Joanna and I walked away and as we were leaving one of the kids yelled in decent English: "We got popcorn at home." When I was teaching English here a few years back I remember some kids refusing to accept candy I would give out in class, responding with a chip-on-their-shoulder No! to my offer. I get disappointed at some of the interactions I have here sometimes, but Joanna rolls with this stuff real well now. Both of us just missed getting hit by a guy on a motorbike this week while we walked on the sidewalk, and Joanna ducked down and braced for impact. It was that close. Afterwards, she kept giggling, saying "I ducked from the motorbike because I didn't want to get killed by that clown (clown is a copy of dad's language, which could have been worse)." But Joanna is resilient. She's made a good friend at the park, a girl 7 years old, and they build nests for birds and play chase and generally act like little girls. We walk in the mornings and afternoons some days -- I'm trying to shed some weight, with little success, to help my back -- and the morning walks consist of creature searches. We returned to home schooling this past week with a lighter schedule, and the results have been wonderful. There's been a breakthrough of sorts in math; my daughter finally gets the concept of addition.
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Usually there's a stretch of reasonably nice weather around Christmas and New Year's, but it seems to have bypassed us this year. It's been in the low 90s most days; Joanna and I head outside anyway to get away from the return of more neighborly construction noise, including the thump thump thump of wall banging ... My son is an amazing sleeper. He won't accept covering of any kind even when the air conditioner is cranked up and the fan is on. He practically crawls around the bed when he's asleep, and as a result has fallen out of bed maybe five or six times. We put a mattress on the floor so he wouldn't bang his head on our faux marble floors. He rolls off the mattress and sometimes sleeps on the faux marble floor with a pillow. Crazy.
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