Letter from Dear Old Dad in Hanoi

*For a great, basic map of Hanoi, visit THIS CNN SITE. For a personal, humorous account of a visit to Hanoi, please keep reading.

My father has more interesting things to say today than I do, so I thought I'd share his latest e-mail with all of you.
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Subject: Freezing and dining in Hanoi

When I left my house to fly to Bangkok, I debated whether or not to bring my LLBean gore-tex rain jacket and an extra long sleeve shirt. I'm sure glad that I did. It's about 6:30 PM and the rain is pouring and wind is gusty outside. The temperature is probably in the low 50s.

I'm in the same hotel in Hanoi where I stayed last time. I think that it was probably built by to emulate a French style. There is a long, slightly curved outside staircase to my room with very uneven and steep concrete stairs, broad at the bottom and narrowing at the top.

It is a relatively small room with two single beds, a very large wardrobe, two small tables, a night stand, three chairs, none of which are comfortable, a suitcase table and a desk that is wholly occupied by an older TV. There are a greater range of English channels than at the hotel in Bangkok but the sound does not work and the picture is what those of my generation termed "snowy".

There is insufficient space to fully open the wardrobe doors without hitting the side of the first bed. I might be able to move the second bed a bit closer to the window, that will not shut securely, but the bedside lamp fixture prevents moving the first bed.

The bathroom is one an open designs with no partitions or curtains over the hosed shower anywhere so that the shower-a hose with a small spray at the end washes the outside of the closely situated toilet. The toilet tissue cannot be kept in close proximity to the toilet itself less it become soaked with water so it is located about three steps away at the other end of the bathroom, thereby providing an incentive to remember its remote location before sitting down.

Nobody at the desk understands English. They've added wireless since I came but nobody knew the WEP key this evening.

The pluses-it is a 30 second commute to the office. It is very clean. There is a lot of hot water. There is A/C (important on my last stay but not this one) and it's secure. It's also 30 dollars a night.

I went out in the rain to look for a place to eat. I knew that there were some in the next business area over but it was frigid with wind blown rain coming down. I tried a couple but neither served food though food appeared on the menu of one of them.

I finally went into one, open to the front but deep enough to be warm if I kept my jacket on. There was also nobody smoking. I thought to have pho but there were the hot dishes spread in the front so I pointed. Nobody knew English.
I recognized beef, pork, and fish dishes with veggies so I chose the one I didn't know. Turned out to be liver but not bad and probably not enough to mess up my cholesterol too much since it's probably been three decades since I had it. I chose a large portion of really good stir-fried spinach, and another portion of some delicious meat and veggie balls of uncertain origins. The cook threw in a large portion of steaming rice, a hard-boiled egg rolled in an unknown but tasty coating to round out my shot of cholesterol, and a bowl of hot soup.

It was good. There was an elderly woman there who greeted me warmly with the only words I recognized, "Good evening" but in French. I replied in kind and greeted her again when I left. I knew how to say "Good evening" in French if not to write it!

The cost of tonight's feast was only 30,000 dong or $1.25.

This was in great contrast to last night in Bangkok. I was tired and it looked like rain so I went down to the Japanese place in the housing development where Richard lives. I have to admit that the relatively small piece of fish that I enjoyed was wonderfully cooked and the small accompanying dishes were beautifully presented, each one in its own specialized container that was laid on the table only in its rightful place and one other. No muti-compartmented
stainless steel tray for the Japanese.

In spite the ambiance, though, the overall experience was unnerving. The wait staff consisted of four or perhaps five women, all but one young and with a core group of gigglers in the bunch. I was their only customer. There is such a thing as too much attention. I know that over 30 years of living and traveling internationally, I've brought laughter into the lives of many but usually they are not grouped at the other end of the room waiting for my water glass to fall below the three-quarters mark. At one point, forgetting that my glass had once more been filled to the top, picked it up and, without looking, tried to begin drinking from where I had left off. My shirt escaped a wetting but not my mustache and therefore my chin, since wet mustaches drip. And I had only the ever-present already dampened and scented white cloth with which to clear the dampness. I did not even look up.

I'm not too bad with chopsticks but having an audience does little to improve my dexterity in trying to separate a wonderfully flaky fish from its outer skin without any cutting tool. As the remaining fish grew cooler the flakes clung more tightly to the skin. As the remaining fish grew lighter there was no longer of sufficient weight so that attempts to separate flaky flesh from its increasing adherent skin became virtually impossible. I finally admitted defeat and became multi-cultural, using the acceptable Thai utensils of fork and tablespoon to separate the flesh and the chopsticks to eat it. The final cost of the dinner reminded me why I seldom eat Japanese.

Time to end this and wrap myself in a blanket.

Isn't life fun?

Cheers,

Meredith
W Meredith Long, DrPH
Senior Director of International Programs
World Concern
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And I was going to write about yet another grey day and a trip to the store to track down corned beef. Glad my Dad had more to say. To find out more about World Concern, click here: World Concern

thoughts

Honestly, it looks as if the greenish baby is a bust. Sad, that the next-to-last Sunday Add-A-Caption should be so bereft of your smart captions. But I can't think of a single one, so I don't blame you. Anyway, I'll let it run for a while and see if you can dig anything up.

It's sunny and lovely and Mom and I are enjoying thirty minutes of quiet before the next thing. Life is so full of "next things" that it's hard to just stay in a moment--a cliche, I know, but true for all of us. I can't seem to reconcile all the pieces of things right now--the devastation in Japan, the thoughts that I am fortunate to sit down at my kitchen table, drink tea, pour milk into my cereal, and the realization that people have to eat and grieve at the same time. Looking at the images yesterday, I was struck by a man's face, crumpled in despair as he read a list of the names of the dead; I wondered, was he mourning a specific person, his wife or child or mother, or was he just overwhelmed by the sheer weight of those names? And that man, with worlds of loss inside of him, will have to stand in line for food, because he is alive and still needs to eat. It seems as if some other reality entirely should descend when a whole country is shaken and torn--God should send a respite from hunger and thirst, a tent you may enter where you will be healed completely.

And what material is sure, if not the earth that holds us as we walk and run and sleep? Writers point to the sky; that is the one thing that is steady and expansive above us, and I know that during a period of sadness and worry I found great solace in the sky. I was sitting in a parking lot, overcome by heaviness, and I looked up at a late summer sky, so blue and detached from all my petty doings, and I felt comforted. I wish all that we love, our children and life partners, our parents, our friends, gardens, homes, the smell of our mothers cooking and the sound of our father's laughter, our ability to love it all--I wish it were all as sure as the sky, that we could awaken and know all those things would be waiting for us, because they always have been and they always will.

SUNDAY ADD-A-CAPTION GAME

Look carefully at the baby. . .looks like she/he's been pretty busy. Happy Sunday and happy captioning!

Headaches and Cupcakes

Well, my dears, it is so cold again that up in my office my fingers are stiff and almost unusable. I feel as if I have the digits of a robot; no flow and ebb, no warm core. I'm layered in sweaters and socks and slipper-boots. I am a frozen puddle, no river, no creek rolling over stones and turtles. I think I'd like to be a water bug with legs as thin as eyelashes, skating the golden/green lips of the stillest part of the creek, deep mud down below and sky, so far away, held in the arms of a sycamore tree. And the river and the water bug and the sky and the white sycamore, all whispering to each other:
Hot day, hot day, hot day, cool river. . . .

And here I am again, complaining about winter when we're about to topple into spring if I can just be patient enough--well, whether or not I'm patient, spring will still arrive--and the lilac buds are just greening and the tulip leaves are like fists of ribbons, and the sun is somewhere far above us, in the mouths of the clouds--if only they'd spit my sun out, roll it out on their tongue like a glowing lozenge. I'd like to hold the sun on MY tongue, and swallow it, and beam out all my orifices--SHAZAM! and breathe it into chilly people and the beaks of tired birds and into the ears of the sidewalk, so cracked and gray is the sidewalk right now!

Friday does this to me, you know. Last night in the middle of talking to dear Martin, who is at a conference in Indianapolis, my eyes went to Vegas, all twinkling and crazy, and I spent the beginnings of a migraine drinking tea, eating a cupcake and watching TV with my mother, after which I dropped in bed uncommonly early and slept it away. And this morning only the bolts of a headache remained clattering around in the back of my skull and all seems to be well again.

And beer is in order this afternoon, partly to celebrate another story being taken at another journal.

So hurrah, and Happy Friday and Friday libations to you, my dears.

The Birds Have the Best Liquor

Where are all the birds this morning? Have they flown off to an underground bunker where a fat robin in a waistcoat is serving worm margaritas and sunflower seed wafers? They know, as I know only because of radar and the weatherpeople, that a big snow is due to hit us this evening, dumping masses of wet, icy slush all over us, the hopeful tulip leaves, and the sickly grass. The robins have taken cover. They'll be smoking cigars somewhere tonight by a roaring fire.

The creek at the bottom of the hill is frothing close to the banks. We've had steady rain for days now.

Oh! I see a couple of tiny blackbirds in the Bird Tree outside my window--what are those sharp-beaks called? And they're off. Someone reminded them to get out of open air. Right now the air is mild and heavy. When I stepped out with the garbage, it felt like a May morning.


My mother is drying her hair (a novelty around here--Bea was so entranced yesterday that she summoned her friend E to come and watch, as excited as if there were elephants pouring tea); my father is in Bangkok; Martin is off on a conference, the girls are speaking in falsettos while they fix a pretend party. Elspeth just told Beatrix, "Your mother died!"

"Oh, no!" Bea said.

"And your father died!" Elspeth continued.

"Oh, no!"

"And there's a monster, and a robot, and a witch!"

"That's terrible!"

I am pushing my luck. In two minutes my mother will come around the corner and say, "Oh, my! You're not dressed yet!"

Better scoot.

PS. I just saw a rather tipsy chickadee stagger off the end of our deck. That's the last time she has a cocktail before ten a.m. Silly bird.

Rainy Day Ramble

Beatrix and her little friend, E, hunker down like little hedgehogs under the table by my feet. I can hear them whispering and now Bea's singing a little snippet of Baby Beluga, to which Ethan is singing a reply: Baby Beluga, POOP! Bea snaps, YUCK! as if she herself does not engage in the potty humor rather frequently. My friend T and I used to reflect that being stand-up comedians for a bunch of two and three-year olds would be facile--we'd just stand up there and yell, PEE PEE! POOP! etc. (just add any bodily function that's mildly yucky at times). We'd pack a full house, no doubt.

For older kids we'd change our routine slightly, adjusting to their cognitive levels by encasing the potty humor in story and adding various unlikely tragedies, such as arms, legs, entire heads falling off or being consumed by wild animals. Insert slightly more sophisticated language, a couple of sexual innuendos and a few pop culture references, and we'd engage the older folks in the audience as well. (You've got. . .SNL!) T and I have it all figured out, and when we quit our various day/night jobs, we'll make a fortune on the comedic stage.

Currently my mother is sleeping off an all-nighter on the plane from Seattle (personal party consisted of a glass of wine followed by sleeping all night in a snug economy seat). We picked her up yesterday morning and wined and dined her; the children swarmed her and peppered her with their stories and she fell asleep at eleven in our living room chair. Of course, right now, it's only 6:30 her time.

Bea just pointed to me and reminded E, "That's Uncle Kim!" To her, it's just a matter of having a peanut or a bagina, and I thought she'd figured out which one her mother had. I think it's just a matter of slipped semantics. We can't expect consistent accuracy from anyone in monster footie-jammies with a slightly runny nose.

Spring rain today; rather dreary but good for earthworms waking from their snarled sleep. Good day for ducks and extra cups of tea and a good ramble with wellies, if one had wellies. How I long to be British and storybooky and beautiful and practical with my bright wellingtons and cups of tea sitting just so in saucers after the rather soggy but romantic country ramble.

Instead I am American and slightly unkempt, inside without bright boots, but happy all the same with my mug of tea. And here I end my increasingly incoherent wandering. Hope the weather is lovely where you are.

SUNDAY ADD-A-CAPTION GAME: WINNER

From the relatively sparse but excellent pool of captions this week, our judge has chosen a winner: Anonymous!

Employing Cowgirl Annie for their new ad campaign was a desperate effort to add some glamour and sex-appeal to a car model usually associated with stocky, round little people.

Your reward: a book, "Everyday Choices," by the acclaimed author, Hayley Una Lykli. Lykli (but Hayley Una) deals with conundrums such as, "If you were forced to choose whether to drown in a giant pond of ketchup or mayonnaise, which one would you choose?"

Speaking of mayonnaise, you'll definitely want to check out the Hoagie Controversy in our little town by clicking HERE. Don't forget to read the comments.

SUNDAY ADD-A-CAPTION GAME

Go to it, ladies and gents. Come up with some more doozies.

Fiction, Full of Danger

I spent much of yesterday moving area rugs and cleaning the floors underneath. Tiny treasures, such as stale cheerios, old goldfish crackers, pieces of Lego and wooden beads abounded. Moving the furniture by myself (wedging my back under and table and lifting, turtle-like) to smooth out area rugs was a delight--not a necessity, since Martin would have lent a hand, but my preference, because then I don't have to worry about any grumpiness but mine. I couldn't possibly lift the piano, though I tried, so I had to wait for a little extra help. I hate it when I can't do things all by myself. Hmm. Maybe that's where the girls get their sometimes-alarming, mostly-encouraging independence.

Merry just cornered me in the dining room and told me about a book that her friend Cat had read and hated. Turns out the blurb on the back amounted to what they thought was false advertising: it told about the friendship between a boy and a girl, all the wonderful things they did, and the cover showed the smiling little girl about to cross a rope bridge over a rushing river. Unfortunately, Merry says, at the very end of the book, the little girl gets swept into the same river and dies. "Can you believe it?" she says. "It's AWFUL. Why would they have to do that in a story? The mom or dad could have died, and that would have been better. But not the KID." Merry was so upset her eyes were almost watering. It seemed like a good opportunity to talk about fiction, but Merry was not persuaded by any of my arguments. "They were supposed to have good times," Merry said, "The book is actually called the name of the river. That's the main part of the story--" Merry stares at me with incredulous eyes--"She dies."

I felt the same way about "Mill on the Floss," but I had to read through two million pages to get to the final drowning scene. Fiction. It's full of pitfalls. Better to avoid it altogether and focus on daily activities, like moving enormous pieces of furniture.

:) Happy Friday, everyone.

A Little Rant

You know that advertisement when people do stupid things while talking on their cell phone and their neighbor turns to them and says, "REALLY?" Well, that's how Martin felt last night when he went to a memorial service for a student who was recently killed in a traffic accident and sat next to a guy who texted and browsed the internet on his cell phone. REALLY? You'd think at least death would have coaxed that fellow to put away his technology.

Since Martin and I turned in our cell phones more than seven years ago, we've "outside" the cell phone culture, and the cell phone now astonishes us. Increasingly it takes people away from each other's very real presence--I've been on a walk with someone in a beautiful place when they picked up a call and chatted to a person hundreds of miles away--for a good part of our stroll. It didn't make any sense to me--I felt increasingly invisible even though I was present in the flesh, and the person on the other end of the call--an important person but not THERE--received all the attention of my walking partner. Same thing while riding in a car, which I see as a great social interaction UNLESS the person in the passenger seat is locked into a conversation with someone in California. OR. . .wait for it. . .you're sitting with people you love in your kitchen or living room and a person you love becomes so wrapped up in her internet browser on her cell phone that, when you finally leave, she barely glances up at you. Cell phones: possibly ending real community everywhere.

Mind you, most people I know well don't engage in bad cell phone behavior, but occasionally my jaw drops, like Martin's seatmate last night. And before I go all Wendell Barryish on all of you and engage in more badly written arguments about nameless people, I'll close with a weather report.

Sunny, sunny, sunny. I feel like hauling the rugs outside and beating out all the winter doldrums.

I can't resist one last comment. In all honesty, I enjoyed my mother's cell phone usage yesterday when I was able to chat with her as she shopped in Washington State. . .I would have much rather been next to her, digging through scarves, but chatting on and on was the next best thing. And am I not depriving my children of my full attention now by typing out this silly blog entry? In all honesty, I don't think they're missing me at the moment, but in interest of full disclosure, there it is.

Spring Laundry

Laundry is for the birds.
I have hired a passel of robins to grip socks,
underwear, light blouses in their beaks.
They coast down the stairs to the laundry room.
Occasionally en route they leave muddy white ink blots
on the floor, but I don't care,
as long as they're taking care of the children's
clothes, stinking of crayons and spring mud
and cafeterias. In return
for neat stacks that the birds nudge into drawers
I provide platters of coiling worms,
dug fresh out of the garden. It's a good swap:
the robins indoors, singing to themselves as they work,
I in the rows of chilly dirt, dreaming of sugar snap peas
and of being a bird.

early spring sunshine

Is there anything more wonderful than sunshine dappling a frosty hill, a squirrel climbing up a bare branch, the shadow of a bird, a third cup of hot tea, children singing as they play their own games?

Martin ordered sugarsnap and snow pea seeds last night--St. Patty's Day is the magic pea-planting deadline, and though yesterday I would have looked at you incredulously if you'd mentioned the garden, today I can feel the hoe and rake quaking with excitement. . .almost, almost time for us to sink into the soft spring earth again, to feel earthworms about our tines. Our friend Mike has a great big pile of sh--- for us to load into the back of our pick up and spread over our winter-parched beds, and Martin, bright faced, (excitement comes easy at Wazoo Farm) announced this morning that there's a new compost pile ready for all the scraps from last year's garden. I leave the garden full of seeds and twigs and all last year's growth for the birds and cats--the birds love stripping the dried flower heads and the garden cats love to have a bit of a jungle to paw through--little cat prints in the snow make me feel happy, as if the garden is still serving a happy purpose even in the wintertime.

Bea's plastered the red end of a plastic stethoscope to my shoulder and is listening very carefully. I hope she finds a pulse in such an unlikely place. I want to be alive for a very long time.

SUNDAY ADD-A-CAPTION GAME: WINNER!

And the winner is. . .
Anonymous...
babe: Dada. Look. Me float!
pops: Holy *#&%!

Your reward is. . .well, we have nothing for you but love. But since you can't buy love, that's a pretty good reward, wouldn't you say? To claim your reward, write your name and address and the reasons you should be loved (in alphabetical order) on the bottom of a pint of Haagan Daz Five Chocolate ice-cream and hand deliver it to: Wazoo Farm, Pennsylvania. We will then consider your qualifications and radiate some love your way while we eat the Haagan Daz ice cream. Thanks for playing!

I just got one of my favorite stories accepted at a good journal. . .after over 300 days Pending Response. Usually I think really that patience is for the birds, but the wait was worth it this time, I suppose. Tornado and Flooding Watch sent the school kids home early, but inside, it's all sunny with a gaggle of kids doing puzzles on the floor and eating peanuts.

Get your smart captions in by 11 tonight!