Virtual-Doug

Name That Liquid!! (by the Mystery Guest Blogger)

The quiz show brought to you by the teachers who are back into teaching and ‘test writing’ mode. 

The object of the game is to correctly identify the liquid in these precisely labeled bottles.

The first bottle contains a commonly used household liquid, but it is labeled in Vietnamese, of course.  It has no safety cap or no warning labels that it might harm you if your drink it, and its name is loosely translated as “water to clean clothes ,” the same as the product labeled Nước Tẩy Trẩng, which is “water to clean out.”   It is a very effective on the mildew in the bathroom bowl. It is also known as liquid bleach. 

Next, we have a bottle labeled in English.  Very precise, even states the generic name.  The rubber stopper was secured by a piece of plastic wrap held by a rubber band.   This bottle stopper is specific for access by needle - as a nurse, I recognized it immediately!  Ciprofloxin – antibiotic extrordinaire.  Good for many infections – great ‘traveling’ drug - as well as being the drug of choice in the event of an anthrax outbreak.  The label indicates “for intravenous administration only.”  Never know when you’ll need that, eh?

But I got it at the Ðông Ba Market in Hué for 10,000 VND, (63 cents US) because the liquid inside is actually fingernail polish remover!  Just what I was looking for, but I initially refused it when offered in this package.  Then I remembered where I was, and asked to smell it – Whew!  It really was what I wanted after all.

Julie once bought vinegar so we could make BBQ sauce – and it was in a sold to her in a La Vie bottle.  La Vie is mineral water bottled by Nestlé.  I guess if you drank it without getting a whiff, it wouldn’t be too disastrous. 

So, when shopping in Viet Nam, be careful of what you buy – it may not be what you think.  Or, it may be what you want, but have confusing packaging..

xoxo - cmy

One Building’s Construction

During the week, some rebar was erected, then forms were built, then concrete poured into the forms.  I am wondering if this will be a one story building because the rebar only goes slightly above the top level.

Last Sunday, it rained hard all day long.  I looked over at the construction site, and there were folks working there anyway.  Many (most?) Vietnamese work more than one job, so Sunday is just another work day for many.

Student Comments

Some of you who read the comments section may have noticed a rash of questions, posted by someone with a Vietnamese name and the cryptic “K27B or C” 

Say a welcome to some Third Year English students.  Their teacher is our American colleague.  She is experimenting with some ideas – and one idea is to use blogs in cooperation with another American English teacher in China.  The teachers post weekly, and the students respond by writing comments to the post as well as to each other’s comments.

That’s right, folks – two American teachers are using blogs to teach English to classes in China and Việt Nam.  Our colleague has given them some blogs to visit, and gives extra credit for leaving a comments on them – hence, the comments on this blog..

Let me respond to some of the comments.

To Nhi (say Nee) – I did not know dragon dancing brought luck.  Thank you for telling me.  With all the dragons I saw over the Autumn Festival, there will be many lucky homes this year.

To Phương – (say Phew-ong)  You are quite right about the older houses.  In the older section of Hué, known as The Citadel, (see map at left) are many older homes with ornate and elaborate gardens with trimmed topiary plants.  You are right – I need to go see some of these.  Notice Phương refers to Hué City as “poetic and quiet.”  I hear this from my students all the time that Hué is a good place for old people because it is quiet.  They must be right – we love it here in hue, and we are old.  Most of the younger people pine for the big cities.

Linh asks a number of questions.  I will try to answer them. 

First of all, you are correct about me spending a lot of time trying to learn about Việt Nam, and I am very glad I did.  Some of the books I read include “”Understanding Việt Nam” by Jamieson, “Shadow and Wind” by Templer, and “Sacred Willow” by Elliot. (Look at reading list to the left.)   But, I did not read a lot about Hué before I got here.  In fact, when I arrived in Hué last February, it was the first time I had been in Hué, though I had been in Việt Nam five times before.

As to the rain in Hué – I don’t think I am as poetic as you are, Linh.  Rain is just rain to me, and that means I get wet.  But, I do understand walking in the rain.  I have done that sometimes in my life too, and it can be wonderful for the soul

Finally, you ask if I regret changing my background.  No – I do not regret it at all.  There have been times when learning to live in a new culture is very hard, but I also know that people learn the most when the circumstances are difficult.  There are many many differences between the American culture and the Vietnamese culture.  As an example, I was raised to be very punctual – to always be on time for everything.  When I attended a meeting, there was a time when the meeting was scheduled to begin, and a time when it was scheduled to end, and I was always on time.  In Việt Nam, time is not as important as relationships.  Meetings do not always start on time, and there is a not time for meetings to finish.  Meetings are over when everything has been talked about.  That was very, very difficult for me to get used to, but once I did, I found that maybe the Vietnamese way is better.   When I went home to America this summer, I found I quickly was back in the habit of tightly scheduling my days, and being stressed by that.

I want my North American readers to read the last part of Linh’s comment – she wants to know if there is someway she can make adapting to Việt Nam easier.  This is so typical of the Vietnamese people. They are kind and generous in the extreme, and are always looking for a way to be helpful.

And that is another reason why I love the students here in Hué.

Autumn and the Full Moon

One can tell when the full moon arrives, even if the clouds obscure it.  On that evening each month, the streets and trails are filled with many small fires carefully tended by residents and business owners.  They are burning paper effigies of items needed by their ancestors.

But, on the fifteenth night of the lunar month of August, it is special.  It is the Autumn Full Moon Festival.  While it has some spiritual significance, the real importance is that it is a night for kids – rather similar to Halloween in America in that they get to dress up and walk through the neighborhoods to collect money.  And, the fun goes on for more than one night.

To the sound of loud drums (often carried on a cyclo because they can be quite large), some of the kids put on a dragon costume while their friends put on other outfits and parade through the streets.  They go into businesses and cafés as well as by homes.  The dragon dances, while one of the other kids collects the money. On the way back from dinner tonight we counted 21 different traveling troops of  “dragon kids.”  It is one time kids can be loud, noisy, and make money – all with parental blessing.  Our friend Mr. Cu hugs a couple of costumed children.  Of course, he is a grandfather of three, so he enjoys the kids and their antics.

The Mystery Guest Blogger had fun with this dragon inside the café where we were eating.  What can’t be felt in this picture is the loud drumming going on while the dragon dances around.

The center of the tourist area of Hué is Hung Vương Street.  Autumn Festival had it tied in knots – notice the one small tan uniformed traffic policeman in this photo.  Nobody really paid him much attention, and he was having fun watching the kids too.

Now – if I could just get the booming of the drums out of my head.

One Building’s Construction

I was on our little balcony this morning, and I noticed seven buildings under construction – and that with only about a 120 degree view.  There are more buildings going up in front of our Guest House, including one across the street.

Thinking it might be fun to mark its progress, I decided to take a photo every weekend and post it.  It might give us all some insight into how the Vietnamese build.  While I’m not sure what the building will be, most likely it will be a home.

There are few large cement trucks in Việt Nam.  They are used for big projects, so home building is done with a small mixer on site.  It is a bit difficult to notice it in the photo (don’t forget to click on it so you can see a larger version), but women do manual labor right alongside the men.

There are no large subdivisions of tract homes in Việt Nam. Each house is custom built.  Don’t be misled by the nearby homes – this is an area of newer, nicer homes built by the emerging middle class, and is certainly not representative of how the majority of people live.

We’ll see what the place develops into.

Living in the ‘Burbs

Hué, like the rest of Việt Nam is growing fast.  This city of 300,000 is expanding outwards as does any other growing city, and as it grows outwards, the population density is lower, and the new houses are bigger and nicer.  In other words, the suburbs.

That’s where we live now.  Our Guest House is new, and we are surrounded by building projects and homes.  But, there is still a bucolic feel to the place.  Scattered amongst the new buildings are rice paddies, as well as grazing cows.  Both of these pictures were taken from the small balcony off our second story rooms.  Rice is being harvested in this area of Việt Nam – one of two harvests each year.  Rice is the main staple of the Vietnamese diet as it is served at almost every meal and with just about all other dishes.  However, the cattle industry is quite small.  The country is too mountainous for cattle in most areas, and what little arable land is available elsewhere is used for rice agriculture.  Nonetheless, small herds are seen, usually tended by either a small boy or an elderly person.

At present, there still aren’t many people living in the Guest House – just five of us English teachers, but I expect it will more people soon as they come on a short term basis to teach or do research.  The building is still very new, as can be seen by the workers putting the finishing touches on the building. 

Ah, what a difference a semester makes!

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Living in our new quarters has improved the quality of life, but the new place is also outside of town – in the suburbs, if you will.  Knowing that riding bicycles in Hué’s heat as we did last spring would be tough simply because of the additional distance and the lack of places to eat in the new neighborhood..

So – we went off to get the Mystery Guest Blogger an electric bicycle.

Here it is when she took it out for a test spin, and it doesn’t look much like a bicycle does it?  This little scooter is the cutest thing on wheels.  MGB took it for a spin, and it seemed the answer to her needs.  It goes about the same speed as a fast-pedaled bicycle, has lots of places to store “stuff”, and is easy to use.  Just turn the switch on, twist the throttle, and go.  So we paid our money, and we went on home.

Well, it may be cute, but cute doesn’t cut it.  This picture shows the scooter being loaded onto a cyclo for the third time in four days.  It was the only way to get it back to the dealership.  They treated us well.  The batteries appeared to have bulged badly during charging, indicating they may have been defective at delivery.  We found a good café where we could enjoy a café sua da (iced coffee with condensed milk) to kill some time while new batteries were installed and charged.  We picked it up, and she rode it home - - in the rain.  But it made it home.

No, I did not pedal the cyclo – I was just ballast while the driver loaded it.

MGB’s ecstasy is not having to pedal in this heat – let’s hope the agony of keeping it running is over.

PS – many thanx to the International Relations Coordinator at our school for her help.

(Frodo and company have just been forced to turn back at the evil mountain of Caradhras.)

We’re Back

Not for lack of desire, but its been awhile since I posted. Our new digs are wonderful, but the place is brand new and there are bugs to be worked out. The first day we were here, the phone system went kaput, meaning we had no Internet service either. (Remember – this is not Hà Nội or Sài Gòn – we have dial-up service here.) What’s more, September 2 was a major holiday. It was National Day – the anniversary of Việt Nam’s declaration of Independence from France in 1945. Being a holiday, there was no repair service for the phones. Then there was the weekend. After that, it was just plain slow getting installed.

What is it like to be back, you say? Thanx for asking.

This experience is so totally different than last February. Back then, everything was new, mysterious, and slightly scary. Now it is seeing that a certain store has closed, and new café has opened somewhere else. Now it is a renewal of old friendships, such as seeing Mr. Cu again at the Mandarin Café, or eating at my favorite phỏ shop, or greeting some of our Vietnamese teaching colleagues. The foreign teachers had their first meeting with the rector of our school, and it was followed by a cordial lunch at a riverside restaurant.

Wednesday, August 31st was a hectic arrival day. I don’t know what there is about coming to Hué – it was raining when we came here in February, and it was raining this time as well. After dumping our “stuff” at the new guest house, we returned to our old place to retrieve the boxes we packed in June. We had lots of student labor and a truck, so this old man did not have to strain himself. We worked alongside the two new American teachers from another agency, as well as our agency’s

Last year Hué was described as a beautiful city, but for the first few weeks, we were fixated on the mold, the busted sidewalks, and the feeling that it was not “new” as we are so used to having in America. But I am long past that now– when we walked over the bridge to the Citadel side (see the link to the map of Hué to the left), we both said “What a beautiful city!” – and meant it.

Obviously we have Internet access now, and I will soon post more about our new housing along with some pictures. It is much improved over last year – much improved indeed.

Our teaching schedule has not been firmed up yet, but I know I have a speaking class of students I had last year, and the Mystery Guest Blogger has at least two such classes. Most likely I will have some graduate classes to teach along with some special courses – more when I know it.

(Frodo and company have just left Rivendell for the south.)