Death, dancing, tennis, french fries

One of our neighbors -- a 39-year-old man -- died this past week. He had a real problem with alcohol and would scream and shout at his mother.  When he was sober, which was seldom, he was an OK guy. Not cool, but OK. He died of lung failure, or so we were told. His death set off three days of singing, chanting, karaoke-like tributes, and music. A typical funeral here. All of this was very loud, of course, and disrupted our sleep, especially Joanna's. Some of the music was awesome, a melancholy type of jazz that was very listenable. I want the album. But most of the music sucked, a twangy, whiny, cacophony of throaty drivel. The issue for me was the lateness. There were tables set up in the street pretty much in front of our house and, of course, people got drunk. Consequently, there were fights. Now that's how you pay tribute to a man who spent much of his life drunk.
My tennis saga continued a couple of weeks ago when two more guys walked slowly across my court while Tai was kicking my ass in a match. I got so angry I cursed out the a-holes and walked off. They responded like the real men they were and mimicked me. I told them "your mother sucks socks that smell."  Tai and I have moved to another tennis complex where he has resumed kicking my ass (2-6 on Friday). At the new court, a young Vietnamese guy playing on the court next to us saw me and said: "Hey, OLD man." I responded: "Hey, LITTLE man." We've been fine ever since.
I gave up on the walk now that I am back on the court. The heat and Bien Hoa's dirty air would not let the skin rash on my face heal. Too bad, because I really enjoy walking. I look forward to getting back to Yellow Springs to resume my walks in Glen Helen -- with Joanna and Phuong.
Joanna is a walking machine these days -- she started walking for real at 11 months, 1 week old. Now, she balks at the stroller and is more than happy to hold your hand as long as she's walking. She reminds me so much of my daughter Jessica, who was one of the all-time great young walkers of her generation. Joanna also likes dancing, which I think is cool for an 11-month old. She'll stand and shake it to the Beatles and Elvis and If You're Happy And You Know It. This reminds me of my youngest son Alec, who was one of the all-time great young dancers of his generation.
I found a place that makes great sweet potato french fries with cheese. Not great for my gall bladderless body, but too tasty to ignore. The fry place is next to Banh Mi Kebab, which makes excellent pork sandwiches on a triangular, toasted, pita-type bread. Awesome.
Our family has the flu. Phuong can't breathe, Joanna has a runny nose and sneezes, and I've got all of the above and then some. Old Man.

Joanna walks, uses the remote, sneaks up stairs

Fitness, rest and proper diet are crucial for Phuong and I as we try to keep up with our 11-month-old whirlwind Joanna. We have to be sharp because Joanna has an incredible knack for finding danger anywhere and everywhere. Five new toys don't interest her, but power outlets, electrical cords and plumbing are a source of fascination. Joanna has almost mastered the TV remote, switching channels and finding maximum volume with ease. She loves our fans and she tries to put her fingers through the grill so she can grab the whirling blades (Phuong bought a protective cover which prevents Joanna from mangling her fingers). I left the door to Joanna's bedroom unlatched while she napped and I foolishly went to another room for a minute. Ninja Joanna left the room without a sound and Phuong somehow "sensed" trouble and tracked down Joanna as she crawled up the stairs toward the third floor and balcony. Oh God! She hasn't mastered going down stairs, but she has no trouble going up.
The latest challenge is that our daughter is now WALKING. She had been taking a few steps here and there the past few weeks, but she gained confidence and began really WALKING the day she turned 11 months old (Friday, June 9, 2017). She also got a vaccination that day for encephalitis, which didn't seem to affect her at all. She didn't cry, of course, but she made a noise like she was really irritated when the nurse stuck the needle in her thigh. The other parents in the room gave us a thumbs-up to acknowledge Joanna's toughness. For the record, Joanna weighs almost 11 KG (about 24 pounds) and is 75 CM tall (about 30 inches).
We took Joanna to Lido for ice cream after her vaccination on Friday, and she loved it. She seems to love animals, and she couldn't take her eyes off the fish and turtles they have there. A trip to the zoo is planned for her first birthday.
On my way home from tennis Friday to pick up Phuong and Joanna to go to Lido, some ass clown hit the back of my motorbike when I stopped because another guy pulled out on me. I say ass clown because the guy started screaming at me after he hit me and began a showy display of checking his bike for damage. Remember, he rear-ended me when I stopped to avoid smashing into the guy who came off a side street and pulled out in front of me.  So it's obvious I'm the douchebag that caused all the problems for both riders. Anyway, I just left the scene. I almost got hit that night when a family of four on a bike crossed a busy intersection diagonally as I tried to make a proper left turn with my signal on. Again, I appeared to be the culprit because the woman yelled at me. Have I mentioned that I hate riding a motorbike here.
Otherwise, all is well enough. My tennis is improving (it couldn't have gotten worse), most of my students are very cool, and it's hot as blazes.

My baby rides on the motorbike; lotto ripoff; black eye

I won't mince words. Joanna has been a passenger on our motorbike, standing between me and Phuong when I ride the bike. Phuong holds Joanna, and Joanna holds the back of my shirt or my hair popping out from under my helmet. I know it's dangerous and stupid, but the rides with Joanna aboard are limited to our neighborhood and the shops and stores that are very close by. It's convenient, and I'm not comfortable always asking Phuong's mom or sister-in-law to watch Joanna if Phuong and I need to go somewhere. Taxis are not reliable -- they can never find our house and the drivers act like they're the stars in Death Race 2000, a quality 1975 satirical film starring  David Carradine, Simone Griffeth and Sylvester Stallone. I don't feel safe in the taxis. I don't feel safe on the bike, either, but Joanna loves riding and actually cries when the ride is finished. And not because of the way I ride. Of course, I'm ultra careful, but I realize there are no guarantees when you ride -- people are stupid on the bikes here and many are more than willing to kill or injure a baby so they can get to the coffee shop faster. We only ride in the middle of the day when traffic is lighter. And I ride very, very slowly.
I've been buying lottery tickets from an older gentleman for the past year or so, and I thought he was OK and that we had a good relationship. I thought wrong. Monday, the guy tried to rip me off for 40,000 dong, which isn't much, but it's still money. I bought one ticket for 10,000 dong and gave the old guy 50,000 dong to pay for it. He strolled off. I chased him down and demanded my 40,000, and he pretended he didn't understand and tried to sell me four more lottery tickets. This guy speaks a little English, and knew what he was doing. Some guy who saw the entire incident unfold intervened and I eventually got my 40,000 dong change.  I was disappointed because I thought I knew the guy and I sort of trusted him. The same type of thing happened with a neighbor girl. She would come to my house to watch cartoons and I would give her candy or buy her some chips. That girl stole 500,000 dong out of my wallet when I went outside to buy her and her sister ice cream cones. I hate when people choose a few bucks over friendship. Hell, if they'd just ask nicely, I'd give 'em a few bucks.
Another day of tennis, another ass-clown walking across my court during my match. This was the second time this turd face has done this, so I told him in Vietnamese that I would walk across his court during his match since he was wasting my money. All his friends made fun of me, going "oooooohhhh" when I talked. The guy laughed and pretended not to understand, so I did the most feminine, wimpiest walk I could across the court and pointed at him, trying to "imitate" him so I could show him and his buddies what he looked like to me. All his friends laughed AT HIM this time, and he apologized. We'll see what happens the next time. I notice that the Vietnamese never walk across a court where Vietnamese are playing. My wife insists race is not a factor in their disrespect for me, but I'm not so sure.
My employer took me off the class that refused to speak to me, and all my classes have been wonderful ever since. The two replacement classes bonded instantly with me and one of them insisted I keep teaching them. I invited them to take a walk across my tennis court on Friday.
I smashed my left eye on the corner of a glass shelf while cleaning, and I've got a pretty good shiner developing. The shelf is Phuong's, so maybe this is payback for the time I gave her a black eye when I "playfully" tossed a puzzle to her in a toy store.
Easy rider Joanna is very close to walking -- eight days before she turns 11 months old. She currently takes baby steps, so to speak, and it won't be long before she really gets rolling. She's having a rough time with her new teeth and it's tough to see her in pain.

Stunning tennis victory; a curiously difficult class

My tennis partner Tai, who I pay to play with me, started showing up late and seemed to be disinterested when he played, like his mind was somewhere else. It was like having sex with someone who doesn't really want to have sex with you. (Insert your pithy comeback here.)  I threatened to withhold money, and he perked up a little. Tai is a good guy, and doesn't want to humiliate me, so he lets me win a game or two. He's that much better, which could be part of the problem regarding his motivation. On Wednesday, he let me climb out of a 3-1 hole to square our match 3-3. Then, it was obvious he was going to turn it on and give me the beating I so clearly deserved. But Tai couldn't get his mojo back on his serve. He double-faulted, and then I walloped a second serve and before you could say Millman sucks at tennis, I broke his serve to lead 4-3. Then the tennis gods smiled on me and my serve gave him trouble, and I held to lead 5-3. I was a runaway train at this point and Tai was in the dumps -- I broke his serve again to take the set 6-3.  Of course the victory comes with a few asterisks, but as Phuong says when she beats me in rock, scissors, paper: "A win is a win."  Tai could beat me 6-0 any time he chooses, but he left the door open for me. My buddy David Pratt is an even better tennis player than Tai, and he would take it easy on me at times, but I never, ever got a sniff of a victory against David.
The heat continues to be stifling and unbearable for me here. My constant sweating has resulted in some real skin difficulties. I have to shower with salt, a special lotion and regular soap three times a day. After my showers, I have to put on an expensive cream to keep cysts and rashes at a minimum. Charming, huh? I've been sitting in my air-conditioned room a lot. The heat seems to bother Joanna a little, but she's also teething. And last week she had a throat infection and fever, and was very grumpy. But she's a trooper, and is back to standing, crawling on my computer, making faces at me, and chewing my shoes. Phuong is well-adapted to the weather, of course, and won't put ice in her drinks because she says it bothers her throat. As for me, I'm barely coping with the weather here.
I saw two motorbike accidents in the past week. The first was minor. The second was a little more serious and one guy's ankle looked pretty banged up. Both accidents were on Vo Thi Sau, where I had one of my accidents.
I had a very difficult class last week, which is a rarity here. Even stranger, I've taught these students before and we seemed to get along very well. But I was gone for a few weeks in the U.S., and when I returned, this class apparently soured on me. Maybe I don't play enough games. I knew things had gone south when I asked close to 30 questions -- many from the book -- and got two responses, which weren't audible. And the questions were about movies. There were only seven students in the class, and all I saw the entire 90 minutes were the tops of their heads because they were either staring at the floor or looking into their cell phones. I asked the class what the problem was, and one student snapped: "I'm tired." I responded that as the 62-year-old father of a 10-month-old, I'm always tired. That's true but beside the point. I also told the students they should stay at home if they're tired and don't want to learn and participate. The official version from one of the students was that the class didn't understand my questions. I'm not buying that one. This is supposed to be a higher level class. Maybe the kids were collectively having a bad day. I like these guys -- they're high school to university age -- but I won't forget those 90 minutes any time soon. I've always had a problem "letting go." Poor Phuong had to hear the story about 11 times about how I downloaded five videos and created a handy-dandy vocabulary quiz for the unappreciative class, and she finally said, "I think I've got it." OK, I'll let it go now. Oh, and one more thing ...
Joanna is very close to walking, and took a few inadvertent steps the other day when she wanted a toy. She seemed to realize what she was doing and immediately flopped to her knees. She hasn't walked -- or tried to walk -- since.

Big belly -- again; IELTS and tennis

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.


I 

I hit the lottery; hot as blazes; Joanna's grit

Unbelievable! This past week I hit the lottery for 3 million ... Vietnamese dong. Nailed all five numbers in order. Phuong was shocked. Her dad was jealous. Her sister-in-law congratulated me. Phuong's mom collected the massive payout for us ... which converts to $131.93 U.S. dollars.  OK, it's not the 3 million I wanted, but I'll take $131.93. That's a decent amount of money here. I buy from three different ticket sellers who roam the city on bicycle or foot -- an older guy, a middle-aged guy, and an older lady. I don't know which one sold me the ticket, so I gave each one of them 20,000. Why not? I can afford to be a big spender now. Honestly, I need the money since my employer scheduled me for three classes over two weeks.
The heat has been unbearable since I've gotten back. Phuong, Joanna and I take a walk twice every day around our neighborhood and down to the park. It's about 88 degrees with 75 percent humidity at 6:30 a.m., so I return from the first walk sweating like the proverbial pig I am. So I shower, take a leisurely walk downtown in 95- or 96-degree heat from around 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., sweat some more, and shower again. Then, around 5 p.m. when it's cooled off to 91 degrees, Phuong and Joanna and I take another walk. When I get home, I'll exercise, shower, eat and go to bed. Welcome to the tropics. God bless air conditioning and Willis Carrier, the man credited with inventing it in 1902.
Joanna had another vaccination on Saturday -- this one for meningitis, I think. The nurse warned us that this one would hurt. The needle was fairly long. Three babies got shots before Joanna, and all three burst into tears and wailed for a good minute or two after they got stuck. Phuong always has me hold Joanna for her vaccinations (so she associates pain with her father). The long needle went in her beefy thigh, Joanna's face went into a scowl, and she glared at the nurse. But she didn't cry. Honest to God, that's how it went down. She toughed it out.  Even the other parents at the clinic were impressed. Some parents around our 'hood ask us if we give Joanna a special diet that makes her so big. Well, she's not that big, really. She's approaching 10 months old (May 9), weighs about 23 pounds, and is 32 inches tall, which is quite tall. There's no special diet. Just steroids. Seriously, I'm one of the biggest guys in the city, and now that I've gotten so incredibly fat, I scare people. Most likely, Joanna gets her size from my genes -- and Phuong is no shrimp either, although she's very thin these days.
Joanna has become a little possessive with her dad since I returned from the U.S. She wants me to hold her, and that's basically it. Dad, dad, dad. She clings to my pants when I cook or make coffee, smiles at me constantly, and, except at bedtime and meal time, wants me to hold her or play with her.  But that little rascal says "mom" as clear as an azure sky, and teases Phuong and Phuong's mom by clinging to me and smiling at them. Funny kid.

Airports, airplanes, family and friends

On a hectic trip to the United States, I flew out of 12 different airports in 18 days and drove about 800 miles in two rental cars. The two rental cars cost me as much as the 11 flights. After all the travel I've done in my life, you would think I'd have a better grip on the money needed to rent a car.You'd be wrong. Same thing happens to me when I buy glasses, which I've been doing my entire life. I let wishful thinking and low-ball estimates take precedence over reality. But as I like to say in Vietnam, tien den, tien di (money comes, money goes). Sometimes I'll jokingly say: Phuong den, tien di. That's not really true, although it always gets a laugh from Phuong's dad. I saw my son Jack, my brother Charles for the first time in about 16 years, my new granddaughter; a bunch of friends and family, and lots of the United States. I got told on several occasions how fat I've gotten, and how much I've aged. Can't argue with either point, but I don't give a crap.
Most of the airports I went to and the airlines I flew were fairly well run and organized. JFK required persistence on my part to find out where the hell I was going since there were no information kiosks or friendly faces at the JetBlue terminal. And the trains taking travelers like me to different terminals on their changeovers were out of order. So I scrambled and found a bus from terminal 5 to terminal 1 and arrived at my departure gate with 30 minutes to spare. The stewardesses on my 16-hour, 40-minute Eva Airlines flight from New York to Taipei were grumpy and snippy, but otherwise my time in the air was OK. (One Eva stewardess twice barked at me to buckle my seatbelt and bring my seat forward. Oddly, my seatbelt was buckled and my seat was forward, but I just said OK and she moved on.) I watched a bunch of movies -- Moonlight (excellent); Lion (pretty good film about an Indian youth); 42 (Jackie Robinson biopic); and Draft Day (entertaining film about Cleveland Browns GM played by Kevin Costner). Read a few books as well. In all, I spent 22 hours in the air coming home. The planes encountered strong headwinds the entire way.
As I noted, my time in the U.S. was fine and dandy. I lost some tennis matches but didn't get injured, ate great food thanks to my ex-wife Lynda, my kind and generous friends Andy and Jane V., and my brother Tom and his wife Shaila. I saw buddies John, Ron and Tommy, and most important, met my first grandchild Frances. She's a beautiful girl just like her mom, and mom and baby are doing great.
Thanks to Lynda and Charlie for getting me a hotel room, to John, Ron, and Andy and Jane for giving me a  place to sleep, and to Vic for recommending a good beer.
Phuong and Joanna met me at the airport, and Joanna smiled and laughed the entire ride home. She didn't say a word about my weight or age either, but seemed genuinely thrilled I was home. I'm thrilled as well. It's nice to be back.