I flew back into Vietnam and wanted to hit the ground running, but stumbled instead due to delayed flights and congestion which left me very hard of hearing for a week or so. I finished a class in early December. A friend’s wedding was near Christmas. I had a wonderful Christmas morning with Ngân and a great Christmas party with a close group of friends (featuring homemade eggnog!).

The New Year has just passed and now it’s time for the pre-Tết squeeze. People are restless waiting for the holiday to arrive. I’m looking forward to a decent amount of time off. However, I just got started with a tough new class in finance, which I will be able to pull through, but it sure looks hard at the beginning.

When speaking about Tết to other expatriates in Saigon, there are usually two reactions: 1. I can’t wait to get out of the country. Or, 2: I can’t wait for Saigon to empty out and for the traffic to die down.

I am neither one of these. I have, and will always, as long as I live in Vietnam, go to Long Xuyên for Tết. It’s where I met my wife. It’s where we got married. It’s where my wife’s family lives. It’s where some of my best and oldest friends in Vietnam live. It’s where I started in Vietnam. It’s my “quê hương thứ hai.”

I have always believed that expatriates who leave Vietnam during Tet are missing out on the country at its best. Fewer vehicles are out on the streets, which makes every town and city more peaceful. There are always invitations to eat and drink. You can take a nap or go for coffee at any time and it’s normal. Now that I have in-laws here, I basically have a supply of savory thịt kho, bánh tét and fried lạp xưởng almost any time I want – who would pass that up?

Certainly, I can identify with the expatriates who wish to stay in Saigon to experience a peaceful city; I would enjoy it too. But the thought of trying to celebrate a holiday in a sprawling, impersonal hunk of urbanization is too much for me. For Tết to be Tết, I need to be surrounded by friends, family and a friendly town that I know well.

Everyone in Vietnam enjoys Tết, and this includes expatriates. I guess I have certain things that I need to do, certain people I need to visit, and certain things I need to eat for the Lunar New Year, and all of them can only be found in Long Xuyên, An Giang.

To be honest, I had no idea what to expect. Vietnam is certainly not known for its ballet corps. But we had been impressed with an orchestra concert last month and were excited to see the performance.

Overall, I was impressed with the dancers. They were quite talented and several of them really stood out. It was easy to follow the story and the costumes were pretty good as well. I was impressed to see a group of people who literally put everything they have into a performance. When I perform on the guitar or violin, I use small motor skills and musical knowledge, but these dancers use their whole bodies and all of their strength and focus into producing something beautiful.

My only gripe of the performance is that they didn’t have an orchestra performing the music live. The space in the opera house is very limited, so maybe there just wasn’t enough room. But of course there were errors with using a CD and briefly during “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” the music cut off.

More seriously though, not having an ensemble to play live robbed the performance of its soul. It felt like I was watching a singer lip sync or something. The music of The Nutcracker is what is timeless about the suite. Choreography changes with every performance, but the music stays the same, and musicians can really pour their soul into producing something beautiful.

Overall though, I was satisfied with the performance and would recommend it to others.

After my last post about the attending a performance of the symphony at the Saigon Opera House, I learned from @TylerWatts and @Vietnam720 that pictures from inside are rare. So during the intermission I snapped a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure.

And we will be attending more orchestra performances next month at the Saigon Opera House.

Looking at the interior ceiling.

From ground level near the stage, looking up at the balconies.

A view of the textured ceiling above the stage.

On the lower level under the overhang of the balcony.

The left side of the performance hall.

The main chandelier in the lobby.

Another chandelier in the lobby.

Decoration on the lobby wall.

A cherub decorating the banister.

October 30th, 2011: “Foreign criminals are on the rise: police chief,” reads the headline.

Then, as if to support this statement…

November 4th, 2011: “Reverse alchemy as foreigners trick jeweler,” states the headline for this story.

And then, just yesterday…

November 6th, 2011: “Foreigners steal $750 from post office.”

For a news website that only posts a few new local stories (i.e. not wire stories) a day, I find this “coincidence” highly amusing. I wonder what us dangerous, criminal foreigners will be up to this week? Something has to happen; we have to prove the police chief right.

My companion for several years in Vietnam.

It seems to be even harder to quit in Vietnam because cigarettes are cheap and there are many places where smoking is not banned. Finally, after an evening where I had a couple cigarettes with some beer, I went for a short run after work and I felt terrible. That seems to have been the last straw. I haven’t had a smoke since then.

About a week ago, I came down with something. One of the symptoms was a rather deep cough, and I attribute this to kicking the habit. Nicotine is a harsh and jealous mistress, and I hope I am done with her forever.

Ngân and I had always wanted to go to a classical music performance in Saigon. Neither of us had ever been inside the iconic Opera House set in the midst of downtown. We’d only admired it from the outside while passing by and learned about its history online (it was the senate of the South Vietnamese government before it was restored).

Then last week, @natalie470 (who unfortunately I still haven’t met), posted something on Twitter about an upcoming performance. I checked it out and saw that the program was indeed something worth attending: A fun little Mozart piece, Dvorak’s 8th Symphony and Beethoven’s violin concerto in D major. I happen to be a little biased having a background in violin, but seeing a good concerto performed on the violin is one of the most amazing things that a person can witness.

We also dressed up. Ngân wore a dress and put her hair up. I put on a jacket and tie. We even took a taxi there.

When we finally stepped inside the Opera House, I was delighted. It was elegant, yet cozy. I could not recall having ever been inside a performance hall that was so small. It seemed just like other halls I’d been to before, yet just miniaturized.

Looking down from the second balcony. Stage is on the left.

View of the three-tiered seating arrangement.

The orchestra was better than I anticipated as well. I was afraid that a typical, local audience would ruin the performance for me, yet I heard no cell phones go off, there was very little talking and there was plenty of applause: The conductor and the soloist each had multiple curtain calls.

The conductor, Celmens Schuldt, orginally from Germany, did a fabulous job and showed great passion, even giving the audience an encore from Brahms. The violinist,  Byol Kang, who is still a student, surpassed my expectations with a very complex piece demanding a high level of skill.

I left the Opera House with my head in the clouds and most certainly will be back for more soon. They’re putting on The Nutcracker next month and I’m thinking of getting a seasonal subscription to the performances. More people in the city need to attend the symphony. Even if you’ve never studied or played classical music, there is still something extremely powerful in it that transcends cultures.

This morning, which is a Saturday, Ngân and I woke up early and went to have breakfast at one of our favorite spots, the Trung Nguyên Cafe on the corner of the busy intersection of Trần Hưng Đạo and Nguyễn Văn Cừ. A pair of traffic police were posted at the intersection, and we sat on the second floor of the coffee shop, pretty much directly above them.

At one point, one of the pair blew his whistle and pointed at a car that was coming from District 4 and turning right onto Trần Hưng Đạo. I didn’t see any obvious infraction of traffic laws. Since we were sitting right above the traffic cops, we were wondering if there was going to be any exchange of money.

Initially, we didn’t see any. The man who had been driving went for his wallet at one point but then put it back. He then gave the police his passport. They gave him back his passport and then pointed at his car. As he was walking back to his car, his hand went for his wallet again. After sitting in his car for a couple seconds, he came back to the police and handed over his passport again. One of the police took his passport and held the passport inside one of the boxes mounted on the side of his motorbike. While he had his hand with the passport inside the box, there were about three motorbikes nearby waiting for the traffic light to change before they started moving. The cop with his hand in the box waved them on while keeping his other hand in the box. After the motorbikes had moved on, he then gave the passport back to the man.

One of the officers then took a pen and pretended to write a traffic citation, but wrote nothing and didn’t give the man any receipt or record of citation. After the man was on his way, the two policemen started packing up and preparing to move on. One thing that one of them did was look around carefully before reaching into the same box on the side of the motorbike and take something out, all the while carefully concealing it.

So, was money exchanged? Did the man who was pulled over pay off the cops? I didn’t see any money, but it’s not hard to guess what happened. Enjoy traffic safety month everyone. Remember, the traffic police are there to protect us and keep order.

A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM

Before I start this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me

In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the
hands of U.S.-backed Israeli
forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S.
embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam – a people,
not a war – for those who
know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their
relatives’ bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of
a secret war … ssssshhhhh….
Say nothing … we don’t want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have
piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador …
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua …
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos …
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found
their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of
sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west…

100 years of silence…
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half
of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand
Creek,
Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the
refrigerator of our consciousness …

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be. Not like it always has
been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa,
1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison,
New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and
Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all…Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing…For our dead.

EMMANUEL ORTIZ,  September 11th, 2002.

Am I the only one to see this correlation? And if it is indeed a correlation, what’s the explanation?

I have been using the SwiftKey X keyboard for my Desire HD for about a month now, and I really like it. One of the optional things that Swiftkey is able to do is scan selected apps where you type to get a sense of how to predict words depending on the circumstances. Also, you can set the app so that when you hit the space bar, it automatically enters the suggested word.

That’s a lot of predicting using a lot of information.

I decided to see what would happen if I didn’t type anything and just started hitting the space bar so that it keeps entering predicted words from previous conversations. Unfortunately, it predicts the same stuff regardless of what program I’m using, but the result is pretty silly. Here are the three sentences that it predicts with me just hitting the space bar:

“I am a beautiful person. I have to go to the tutorial this evening. The creator of the most important thing is that the information you need to download the latest news and information on the Internet.”

The funniest thing is I don’t think I’ve ever written stuff like this on my phone, ever.

I mailed the first letter out to my sister-in-law, Diana on June 20th. And today, August 12th, 2011, I mailed the final letter out.

I decided that I really like writing letters, even though it is slower, more expensive and more inconvenient than email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. At one point back in July, I was on a letter-writing binge and there were a couple days when I wrote two letters a day.

It takes more effort, yes, but it is so much more satisfying, at least for me (and I hope the recipients too). So far, I have received two replies and have been overjoyed to open my mailbox and find them. Sitting down and reading them, I feel so much closer to the people who sent them. The messy handwriting is sometimes like a code and the feel of paper between my fingers is comforting.

Despite the additional effort, I’m going to continue to try to write at least one letter a month. The problem is, I might run out of people to send them to. Let me know if you want one; if you receive one from me, be sure to write back.

Sincerely,

-Eric

P.S.: Here’s a picture I took at the Saigon Central Post Office at lunchtime when I mailed the final letter.