Cotton-Pickin’ Days

My dad asked me to fax him a copy of my passport and accompanying visas today so he could get me out of jury duty in California. To do that, I had to go down to reception and ask them to copy and fax everything for me.

That’s right. I have no fax machine. I also don’t use or have any of the following:

• Wristwatch (Haven’t bothered to wear one since Stephen was born because I didn’t want to whack him with it.)
• PDA (No, not public display of affection - although I don’t have that either - Personal Digital Assistant.)
• MP3 Player
• Cordless Phone
• Copier
• Scanner
• Printer (My 1994 laser printer is the wrong voltage and I didn’t bother to get a voltage converter for it when we moved here from Japan.)
• Toaster Oven
• Coffee/Espresso Machine
• Vacuum (I’ll have one in London, though, because we won’t have housekeepers there.)

Because we move so often, we’ve tried very hard to pare down our belongings, especially fragile electronic goods. As a consequence, we’ve learned to do without many of the things we used to take for granted. We write in a notebook or read onscreen instead of killing trees by printing; we grill toast in a frying pan instead of in a toaster oven; and we drink instant coffee at home instead of fresh brewed.

I’ll set everything up properly when we finally settle down in our own home in Singapore. But for now, we’ll have to ask for the occasional favor or pay for the occasional service.

What modern conveniences are you doing without?

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Four moving companies have come this week to give us quotations for our move to London next month. Our apartment’s not that big and we haven’t bought any big ticket items like furniture or full sets of china like many of our friends so I really don’t think we have that much stuff. But each time I walked the movers through, I felt as if they were judging us. For example, they all thought they were so funny commenting on the amount of toys we have.

Since I’ve been doing show-and-tell all week, here’s a general idea of what’s hiding in our cupboards, cabinets, and closets.

Kitchen

• 1 shelf of glasses, cups, and mugs.
• 1 shelf of pots and pans, and other small kitchen equipment
• 1 shelf of fancy glasses, tea cups & saucers in their original boxes that I don’t dare use because they’re too precious
• 1 shelf of plastic containers.
• 1 shelf of tea, coffee, vitamins, medicine, and other consumables that we’re allowed to bring
• 4 shelves of decorative items that were never unwrapped from our previous move; many were gifts
• 2 shelves of framed paintings, cross stitch, and other artwork - also never displayed here

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Stephen seeing how close he can get to the puddle
before I give him a warning.

The weather has been mild and temperate here in Ho Chi Minh City - in the high 20’s C (low 80’s F). Usually, the climate is tropical year-round with the rainy season, from April through October, being the warmest. I’m so accustomed to it being hot during this time of year that I’ve been staying home instead of going out.

After four consecutive days at home, though, Stephen and I were both ready to go out. We went back to Reunification Palace and it started to sprinkle on the walk over. No problem. It’s not as if we’re made out of sugar and were going to melt on the spot. The cloudy weather actually made it nicer; the handkerchief I use to wipe off the sweat barely got damp.

The first time I experienced hot, humid weather as an adult was in Singapore in 1993. I’d grown up with dry California summers and wasn’t used to it being so muggy. When I stepped out of Singapore’s Changi Airport, the wave of heat was almost palpable and sightseeing was torture.

Since then, I’ve lived in Baltimore, MD on the U.S. east coast and experienced summers that are even more stuffy than Singapore’s constant warm-breeze, palm-tree-swaying weather. Summers in Taipei, Taiwan are actually worse because of the pollution. And, central Japan had manageable summers because the air is cleaner but sweat darkening the backs of shirts are a common sight there.

It’s taken a while, but I think I’ve finally become acclimated and am no longer stifled by humidity and heat. That’s saying a lot because I’m the kind of person who gets HOT with the smallest bit of exertion or stress. Maybe one of these days, I’ll get the chance to live in a place that tends toward the cold or frigid. That’ll surely cool this hot bod down.

Meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy these few days of cooler weather. You won’t find me complaining about it like the cabbie I once met in Singapore who was shivering because the temp had gone down a couple of degrees from 31C (88F) to 29C (84F).

Are you happy with the weather where you are now?

xposted

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Shopping in Vietnam is unpredictable. In the U.S. or Singapore, you can be 99% sure that every time you go to the store, you’ll be able to find what you need. And if you can’t, there are many other stores within driving distance that will be able to sell it to you. In Vietnam, you’d just be out of luck.

Of course, I’m talking mostly about imported goods that foreigners buy and locals can’t afford. There’s always a ridiculous sense of excitement whenever we see something we love on the shelf here. Invariably, when we return to buy another, they’re all sold out and is usually never stocked again.

For example, I saw several Winnie the Pooh DVD’s just a couple of weeks ago that I knew Stephen would like but I didn’t want to spoil him by buying more than one. I later realized that they were hard to find and went back to the same shop today. They didn’t have any left and nothing new either. Fortunately, we were able to find some at a kiosk just down the hall for a cheaper price and better service.

Grocery stores are the worst of all. On Tuesday, there were six cans of straw mushrooms on the shelf. I bought one and when I went back for more the next day, they were all sold out. Regular button mushrooms aren’t sold fresh here and canned ones haven’t been seen in weeks. Sometimes even local products like yogurt or milk aren’t re-stocked for days at a time.

I think things disappear off the shelf because everyone knows that when you see something you like, you should hoard it. I’m currently hoarding pasta, pizza sauce, string cheese, mozzarella cheese, bread flour, soy bean cooking oil, kitchen sponges, color safe bleach, babywipes, diapers, sanitary napkins, hand soap, and body soap. I’m sure I’ve forgotten something and will be badly disappointed when I go shopping again in out-of-stock shopping hell.

xposted

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Like a cream puff amongst day-old bread, the plump young Vietnamese woman waited at the check-in counter with three dorky Taiwanese men. She was inexpensively, but trendily decked out with a full face of make-up and bleached hair twisted into small braided sections leading into a chignon. At a quick glance, she looked like a submissive bride, but looking more closely, you could see the annoyed look in her eyes, the surly twist of her mouth, and the sullen expression on her face.

Her father-in-law approached me and asked if I could help lead her to the right boarding gate for our flight to Ho Chi MInh City. They seemed genuinely concerned about her even though her Mandarin Chinese was good enough to communicate. While waiting in line to clear immigration and still in view of her entourage, she didn’t say much. After some questioning, I learned that she had been in Taiwan for almost a year and had a two-month-old daughter under her mother-in-law’s care while she visited her family in Vietnam for eight days. As we waited, I continued to wave good-bye to my parents and cousin through the clear plastic dividing walls. In contrast, the Vietnamese mail-order bride studiously stared ahead and didn’t look back even once at her husband and father-in-law.

Her demeanor changed completely once we cleared the immigration counters and were well out of sight of family. Without any prompting, she started ranting about her in-laws in very good colloquial Chinese complete with mild swearing. She told me that her labor had lasted five days at the end of which her doctor took pity on her and performed a C-section. During her hospital stay, her mother-in-law never visited her. Within weeks of giving birth, her mother-in-law made her go back to work as some sort of hostess–bar or restaurant, I’m not sure. When she returned home from work at 2 a.m. each morning, she was expected to clean the house and take care of her daughter.

When she wanted to return to Vietnam to visit her family, her mother-in-law refused to let her bring her daughter along and told her that if she went, she wouldn’t be welcome back to Taiwan. Her mother-in-law also only gave her enough for a one-way ticket so her father-in-law was the one who gave her the rest of the money needed for to return to Taiwan.

We went through the baggage x-ray area and she was stopped. The scanners had picked up something in her bags that needed to be checked. The suspect items turned out to be three metal fish de-scalers for her own mother in Vietnam who was a fishmonger. Is this the life she was trying to escape when she decided to offer herself for sale as a mail-order bride?

Down at the boarding gate, she showed me a picture of her baby daughter. She said that she couldn’t afford to bring her daughter because it would cost $100 USD. Then she asked me how much I had paid for Stephen’s ticket. I didn’t have a clue because Marvin had taken care of everything for me. She couldn’t believe that I didn’t know. She was probably astounded by my stupidity and couldn’t imagine having a marriage like that.

By now, I was eager to get away from her because her talk was getting nastier and I didn’t want her to learn anything about me. I managed to ditch her as I followed Stephen around while he played with two other children and we boarded early along with other families of small children. When we deplaned, Marv was there to greet us and expedite our passage through Vietnamese immigration and customs. She tried to tag along with me then but I redirected her to the proper lines without explaining why Stephen and I got special treatment.

Vietnamese mail-order brides are becoming more common in countries like Taiwan, China, and Singapore. As the women in these countries receive more education and become more financially independent, they are reluctant to marry anyone who is lower on the social ladder. Hence, men without much education or social status are sometimes forced to turn to mail-order brides. Also, the sex ratio problem in many countries, especially China where m
en will outnumber women in the next decade, makes finding wives difficult.

In Taiwan, mail-order bride businesses are now allowed to advertise on TV. The average price for a Vietnamese mail-order bride is about $10,000 USD including paperwork. Marv tells me that it is about $5,000 in Singapore. Many mail-order brides arrive finding that their lot in life hasn’t improved much. Just like the woman I met, they’re expected to work long hours at the family business and bear children rapidly. They’re also kept under tight control because many of their predecessors manage to run away and “marry up” or return to their home country. Perhaps that’s why this woman’s mother-in-law kept her baby in Taiwan.

There were many instances during this last trip to Taiwan that reminded me of how lucky I am to be living such a privileged life. Meeting the Vietnamese mail-order bride was a unique reminder.

For more discussion of mail-order brides in Asia, see FuturePundit.

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In countries where I’ve spent some time–the U.S., Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Vietnam–an American (Yankee) accent is usually admired. If not admired, it is at least considered the standard accent for the English language mostly because of the wide distribution of Hollywood movies and American TV shows.

In some European countries, however, an American accent is becoming a liability especially for people working in government. A person speaking with an American accent is sometimes assumed to side with the Bush administration or on the side of Americans in general.

Thomas Fuller of the International Herald Tribune reports:

They make up a tiny portion of the thousands of civil servants, diplomats and politicians who work in Brussels, but the fact that they report increasing levels of suspicion toward their accents seems to signal that the malaise between Americans and Europeans has gone personal.

…does the stigma of the American accent in Brussels and other places in Europe have consequences larger than just awkward moments and hostile looks?

“When you speak with an American accent there is a certain assumption,” Ann Mettler, the executive director of the Lisbon Council, said. “It’s not well looked upon.”

Blatant discrimination based on race and religion is considered politically incorrect. But, prejudice against seemingly benign attributes like accents is coming to the fore. There’s just no stopping human nature.

(My previous post about accents.)

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Before meeting Marv, I often told people that I had no interest in travelling outside of the U.S. because there was already so much to see within the U.S. What a numbskull. Anyway, I haven’t achieved my goal of visiting every state. Guess I have a few more years to attempt it.

create your own visited states map

Someday, I’ve got to do more globe trotting too. I’ve been living outside of the U.S. since 1998, but still haven’t made it to too many countries. It’s still more places than I would have expected 20 years ago!

create your own visited countries map

First seen at White Lightning.

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The more time I spend outside of the U.S., the less interested I am in experiencing the exotic uniqueness of local culture. I wasn’t always like this. I used to be much more adventurous in visiting tourist destinations (those close enough to require little planning), attending cultural events, sampling street food, trolling local markets, and learning the local language.

In contrast to my sister, I’m not much of a sightseer or tourist. When she visited me in Japan several years ago with her husband, we went to Kyoto. We had to skip lunch because we were in a rush to make it in time for the tour of Kyoto Imperial Palace. As we trudged from place to place the rest of the afternoon with our stomachs growling, we realized that we would make it to our last destination, Ryoanji Temple, just minutes before it closed. My brother-in-law and I wanted to skip it and go straight to dinner instead. My sister, however, used a bit of reverse psychology on us and said, “I’ve already seen it before. I’d just feel sorry for you if you don’t get a chance to see it.”

Maybe it’s because I go everywhere with a young toddler that makes me less inclined to go deeper into local neighborhoods in a developing country like Vietnam. But, I think it’s more because after six years, I’m tired of stretching myself. I want to keep my life in steady equilibrium; not always reaching out and testing the limits. Frankly, I’d just like to have a comfortable life without struggling all the time to do even the simplest things like buying food.

Today, we were pleased to try Juice, a new restaurant in town opened by an American chef that serves fruit smoothies similar to our beloved Jamba Juice in California. We indulged in a white chocolate smoothie, a strawberry smoothie, a plain toasted bagel, a corned beef and sauerkraut sandwich, chili Colorado, and a chocolate cupcake topped with chocolate buttercream frosting and rainbow sprinkles. I also noted for future visits that they serve Peets coffee as well.

While it’s nice to know that a life abroad can be full of new experiences and adventures, it’s equally nice to know that it can feel like home too.

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Meme idea from .

January 2004 - We went to Marvin’s office today around lunchtime so he could get some work done before visiting some friends in the afternoon.

February 2004 - Baked chocolate chip cookies today.

March 2004 - I started packing today and put knick knacks and wall hangings into their original boxes, including our Liu Li Gong Fang glass sculptures.

April 2004 - Today is Thursday.

May 2004 - Since I became pregnant in late 2001, I’ve read over 30 parenting books and have another 10 on the shelf waiting.

June 2004 - If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren’t well enough to travel. –Sir Vivian Fuchs

July 2004 - Edited to correct major misunderstanding.

August 2004 - I’m afraid I might have offended Mir at Woulda Coulda Shoulda by referencing her blog in my last post about divorce.

September 2004 - Marv’s family is superstitious.

October 2004 - When you make the finding yourself - even if you are the last person on Earth to see the light - you will never forget it. — Carl Sagan

November 2004 - Several years ago, when I was a clerk in a high volume pharmacy, I didn’t understand how to take a break.

December 2004 - After more than three years, my hassle-free life has come to an end.

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