Paradise Marred

Nancy seems to be looking forward to our trip to Bali.

I am too.

It is doomed, of course. Like all our holidays.

She knows it and I know it.

Yet here we go again, putting our knives into the toaster all the while knowing that nothing delicious is stuck.

Nancy doesn't even like the sun. Or beaches. Or islands. Or friendly smiling natives. Neither do I.

I think we've both been cursed with the Wandering Grimace gene ... a desire to travel but not to enjoy it.

If euthanasia is legal by the time Nancy is on her death bed (it's only a matter of time until both of these things happen), I will paint a port hole on the wall and tell her she's on a cruise. That oughta do her in.

Tet Tales Part 1: Schmosperity

More on Tet and how I've been spending my time.

1. Musings on the YOTT

Yep. This is the Year Of The Tiger.

Great.

I mean ... THAT'S GREAT!

RIGHT?

GREAT!!!

(right?)

When I first heard that it was going to be the Year Of The Tiger I thought of golf themes. I expected it would be all about virility and adultery this year. But apparently not. Although the previous Year of the Wood Tiger finished in Feb 1975, the same year Tiger Woods was born. I think them Chinese are onto somethink.

By all accounts, this is still supposed to be a good year: I've got sms's and facebook messages to prove it.

I could even go so far as to say this is an auspicious year because that's what it said on the discount leaflet that arrived with my pizza the other night ... and this piece of literature is as credible as anything else I've heard on the topic.

Either way, this tiger is packing fire in its belly and I wanna get me some.

I also wanna get me some of that Tet Special B - large pepperoni pizza, your choice of pasta and a garlic bread - all attractively priced for this auspicious occasion.

Anyway I think we all agree that our Tiger symbolises Prosperity and Health.

Now forgive me if I'm wrong (or don't), but this is all sounding veeeerrry familiar. Wasn't last year also pretty special? And the one before that? Actually I'm struggling to recall a Chinese New Year which was underwritten with a "this one's pretty crap" warning.

Indeed, I had vague memories of prosperity being mentioned last year so I went and looked it up. Sure enough. The Year of the Ox. Sure enough I found prosperity splashing around there. Actually not so much splashing as loitering; leaning against a lamp post smoking a thin cigarette.

So what about the year before that? What about the Rat? Sure enough there she was again, hanging around with money.

I think I've worked it out.

Prosperity is just sitting there at the end of each new year, pulling her bra up ... adjusting her dress down ... reapplying her lipstick ... waiting for the new ship to dock. Prosperity is a whore and Chinese New Year is her pimp.

These 12 animals to no represent different goals in life. They do not differentiate one year from the next. I think we should just to call every year the Year Of The Gnat and admit that this year we want to make as much money as possible. Human rights or not.

Perhaps Olive has the right idea. She sent this obscure email the other day to her "family":


Hi family,


In this new Tiger year, I wish you all...


Strong as tiger
Long-live as turtle
Sharp-eyes as eagle
Agility as rabbit
Smart as fox
Money as flood
Happiness as grasshoppers


It's cute, but it's stupid. We all know there is only one animal allowed per year. And as for the flood - well I'm not really sure when we are going to celebrate the Year Of The Flood but I can't wait. I'm like Noah excited.

So I replied back to the family (as Daddy of course) that she should add "Stupid as a cow" (an expression in Vietnamese) so that R does not feel left out.


2. ¿Cómo se dice 'money' en ingles?

Cuntastic was pulled over by police the other day for not wearing a helmet. He kept clearly saying to her in English "Give me money" and she kept responding in English "Sorry I don't understand Vietnamese".

This went on for a while until he gave up out of sheer embarrassment.

Cuntastic is an English teacher, which equips her to quickly reach into the core of a student's confidence ... and exploit it.

The recipe is simple: make the foreign language speaker repeat a simple phrase so often in your language. Imply they are so hopeless that even after several attempts, you still think they are still speaking their language and not attempting yours. Continue stirring for 3 minutes. You will notice their self esteem unravel before your eyes. Finish stirring once they start walking away, ideally with shoulders hunched. It's the perfect ploy and I can't wait to use it.

This is actually what happens to me when I attempt to speak Vietnamese ... people don't even conceive that I could be speaking their language so they don't even try to match my words with any of theirs. Instead, they just stare at me, shaking their head, sometimes trying to match my words against their limited catalogue of English but usually just assuming I'm an idiot.

3. Man Down

Yesterday I was stuck in a motorbike pack behind a very, very slow moving large white van. As I attempted to wriggle my way around it (passenger's side), they started chucking red and white things out the window. They looked like wrapped sweets and I tried not to squash any as we inched forward. I initially thought it must have been some (auspicious) Tet ritual and that the sweets were for kids, or Buddha. I eventually craned my head down and realised they were just paper. Tet Origami.

The back door to this van was open and packed with old ladies in traditional dress, seated facing each other like soldiers in a military aircraft. A couple of them were crying, which was odd because Vietnamese people never cry in public. NEVER. So I figured they were all wrapped up in a Tet moment, loving ancestors; or possibly smoking heroin they'd scored under the bridge ... working their way through the buzz. I don't know, but it was all very traditional and ritualistic.

The van was being stalked by a clump of people with long white scarves wrapped their heads. They weren't really scarves - more like cheap bandages - which made the stalkers look like they'd been in a riot at an English football match.

But I thought it all looked interesting - charming, even - and wished one of the head trauma victims a Chúc mừng năm mới as we made eye contact. She looked horrified at my new year's greeting so I guessed I must have gotten my tones wrong and called her a cunt or something.

As I reached for my camera to capture this moment, I luckily noticed it. The coffin. In the van. These old ladies were facing a coffin and this was was a funeral march and I was wedged in the middle of it and I had just wished one of the mourners a Merry New Year.

Talk about awkward.

For a few minutes I tried to make some apologetic eye contact with her but by this stage I was persona non grata and no one would look at me. They must have all heard my earlier cheery greeting. I guessed that as it wasn't my funeral, I had no right to make demands or complaints about how I was being treated.

After another 5 minutes I was over my awkwardness and decided to plan my escape. This wasn't going to be easy. There were bikes either side of me and it had all become a bit of a traffic jam. Then the oddest thing happened. A man came out of nowhere in the van and stood facing the group. He started waving his arms around and howling words out at random. Then he collapsed off the van and into crowd, grief stricken and landing in a foetal position as they caught him. It was awful. Pure grief. I imagined at this point that the coffin was carrying a young person. Perhaps a motorbike accident.

It became a very tragic,sombre, terrible moment of grief and it touched me. Well it touched most of me. There was still a little bit left in my disobedient mind to come up with the following inappropriate thoughts:
1) "Good stage dive, man!"; and
2) "Good catch, mourners"; and
3) I wish some of those mourners had been on hand at my training course.

Why can't the entire brain be touched by tragedy? What allows that little evil bit to still function?

Anyway, once the foetus had been returned to the van I sat there another few minutes and recalled John McCain's writing of his own experiences in Vietnam, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine." John and I define torture a little differently: 6 years of POW torture vs 10 minutes in a traffic jam. But I had reached mine and needed to make another break for it.

I picked a moment when they had stopped throwing fake lollies out of the window and accelerated up the side, over the rocky sidewalk and into freedom's arms.