Subdued celebration as 2022 comes in quietly

Just like Christmas, New Year's came and went in Bien Hoa with no great fanfare. New Year's Eve featured a very distant and very faint pop-pop-pop of fireworks, and some neighbors shouting "Happy New Year!" at midnight. Otherwise, not a creature was stirring, not even a rat ... The next day was business as usual. And why not? Tet looms, as does Covid, so the mood is quite restrained. The Roman calendar probably doesn't excite a lot of folks in Vietnam anyway. In addition to Covid, hot weather -- it's in the low 90s with grueling sunshine daily --  is also slowing the pace of life here. The slower pace is not a bad thing unless folks get sick from Covid. A red "Covid is here" sign went up on a couple of houses on our street and was removed from three others, so things have settled on that front to a certain degree. Joanna and I have been out shopping and we take a taxi to travel; the drivers are cordoned off behind plastic hung from the inside roof of the car. Business must be bad due to Covid because our drivers have been prompt and polite, quite a change from pre-Covid days. I notice that more cars are on the road and the bigger vehicles during any confrontation assume right of way, which has led to faster and more aggressive driving by everyone, and lots of horn honking.  Drivers of smaller cars and motorbikes take out their frustrations on each other and pedestrians. I try to maintain my cool for my daughter's sake when threatened by a car or motorbike while out walking. I've done pretty well, even when some clown laid on his horn and tried to race by us when we walked in the street because there was no sidewalk space due to parked motorbikes, and there were cars parked next to the bikes to force the issue a little more. I yelled at him to relax and wait but he stormed ahead and nearly sideswiped us. But really, most drivers have been more polite since the Covid outbreak. Not sure why, but that's my honest opinion based on daily experience walking.

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Going to the park in the afternoon remains the family event of the day, where Elijah loves kicking the ball. On New Year's Day, the Electric E was fussy and left the ball behind. Joanna was trailing us and saw a little boy about 2 or 3 pick up the ball and throw it in the canal. The mother or nanny or whoever the woman was who was with the little boy just sat stoically on the bench and let the events unfold. She said nothing to us, meaning she offered no apology, which I'm, well, sorry to say. It has happened to Joanna a couple of times with stuffed animals, so it was no big deal for us. We got a long stick, sort of slid the ball up the retaining wall a little and my wife climbed over the railing and was able to retrieve the yellow ball without falling in the mucky canal or hurting herself. Good work, dear. 

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I broke down and bought a new laptop, a Dell XPS 13. It's really light and quite small with a 13-inch screen. Electronics are expensive here, but so far, so good with the Dell. My MacBook was old and had been through too much. The guy who worked on it sold us another MacBook (used) for about $450 U.S. and said it was fine, but it didn't work very well at all, and he wouldn't refund. We'll unload my old one for parts and keep the other one for my wife to have Mac practice on. Buying a new laptop is a big deal for me; it's a special treat since I use my laptop every day for my daughter's school lessons, news, and  blogs (ha ha). My cellphone has my Kindle, which, by the way, shows I've read 756 days in a row.  Currently reading COLUMBUS The Four Voyages. It's not particularly uplifting, but it's well done.