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February 24, 2006
Dragon Ladies
When one things of the term "Dragon Lady" the image that comes to mind is that of some old, rich, powerful Chinese lady puffing away on the long black filter holding her cigarette. She is cunning, cruel and calculating, but has become this way due to the hardships endured as she scratched and clawed her way to the top with no help
In Vietnam, these kinds of full fledged, 2000 pound fire breathing Dragon Ladies do not exist. However, there is a smaller breed of dragon, which resembles a mere baby dragon next to the full fledged China version. Although small in stature, and only able to breathe small puffs of fire, they are able to do so in such rapid succession and with so little provocation that they can almost as dangerous as the Chinese version.
The creation of these Dragon Ladies in Vietnam and China are exactly the opposite. In China, the true Dragon Ladies usually made their own way and became nasty due to these battles making it to the top. In Vietnam however, the ladies who have "made it" economically by themselves are usually outgoing, fun, smart ladies. But one must be careful because upon first glance it is difficult to tell the Vietnamese dragon lady from these the Vietnamese female entrepreneur.
1. They both ride in BMWs
2. They both wear fashionable clothes
So what exactly is the difference??? The Vietnamese Dragon lady was most likely poor to begin with but has married a rich man and to compensate for her lack of confidence becomes extremely nasty to everyone except other rich people.
In my place of employment, there was a recent influx of Vietnamese rich business people and this has really taken a toll on our Vietnamese staff. I cannot understand Vietnamese so these new members do not talk with me and also being a foreigner, they really can't be rude to me. But our staff continually tells me stories about how horrible these dragon ladies are and how extremely rude. It had never happened to me personally but did for the first time last week.
Our club belongs to the Saigon Darts League and we hold matches at our venue from time to time. Two weeks ago was the first time for us to hold a match and since I set up the team and darts area in our club and it was all my project and idea, I had to not only be the darts team captain but also make sure everything ran smoothly from an operational side. Towards the end of the match, while we were playing the team game, I heard a desperate plea from one of our terrified looking Vietnamese waitresses.
"Mr. Matthew, Mr. Matthew!!!!!!!"
Apparently, a real life Vietnamese Dragon Lady had revealed herself and was devouring (berating) our staff.
I had to leave the match and placed myself between the dragon and staff who was on the verge of tears. I asked what the problem was and apparently this lady had been waiting 10 minutes for the change from her bill. As this was the first time we had held a tournament in our place of venue, there were going to be some minor problems and the guys from the other team knew this. I asked how much her change was and it was a whopping 80 cents.
I payed her out of my own pocket but that did not stop the dragon from belching fire. Finally I got tired of the nonsense, and looked at her friend and said,
"Is this some dude's girlfriend or what?"
It was a little bit of a putdown because the other team was mostly foreigners and the bar girls who go out with these middle aged drunks are always so colorful and once they get a whiff of the foreigners money automatically think they are better than everyone else and look down on other Vietnamese.
But it was worse than I imagined when her friend got a nasty look on her face and said
"It's a WIFE!!!"
Oh shit!!!!!!!! It turned out to be the most dangerous dragon of all!!!! A bar girl-cum-wife (pardon the pun)!!!!!
Therefore, in the interest of making the first Darts event at our club a successful one I had to turn on a full blast of charm, smiles, handshakes along with an ourpouring of apologies. She accepted the apologies and walked off haughtily. A few of the lesser drunk guys saw what was happening and apologized and I could also tell that the husband was also a little embarrassed.
However, next time we play this team, it will be at a different bar in the city and I will no longer be playing host, but will simply be wearing the hat of our darts team captain and should the dragon appear again, I'll be sure to slay her quickly with one of my "black arrow" darts.
Dragon Ladies Beware! It is not a good idea to castigate drunken darts players!!! But usually these dragon ladies go for easy pray like the waiters and waitresses.
Posted by Mateo at 8:03 AM | Comments (2)
February 18, 2006
Adventures in Saigon
Here is just a brief update of interesting things in Saigon for the week.
1. Valentine's Day has caught on in Saigon! The streets were completely jam packed with motorbikes and the pollution was atrocious. Since it was Valentine's Day I planned to take my girlfriend to the Saigon Town Club for a special Valentine's Day dinner. My girlfriend working for a horrendous Japanese Travel Agency only had about three hours break and then had to go back to the hotel (see next story) to take care of tourists. By the time we sat down, we only had an hour to finish a seven course meal and then half an hour to drive her back to friggin Cholon (China Town). What we didn't know is that the streets would be so packed the entire way.
For those of you who have visited Vietnam, you know there are no rules in the street and it's extremely dangerous to drive a motorbike, especially when the streets are so packed. However, just as athlete's can get in the zone during a game, a motorbike driver can also get in the zone and miraculously avoid crashing and near misses. I had about 10 near misses that night and actually only saw two wrecks. One of which the poor guy had blood gushing down his leg but was still standing. In Vietnam, when you see a wreck, you have to mentally prepare yourself that the person might actually be dead. The disregard for traffic laws is so serious/deadly that it becomes comical.
2. My girlfriend working for a travel agency often has to go to hotels to make sure the massage areas are clean, well staffed and no funny business for the tourists. She was telling me last night that sometimes the older Japanese men are looking for "Happy Endings" to their massages and since the rooms are private it's something she really can't check on. But the funny thing is that while complaining is common for tourists, usually if one receives a happy ending you don't complain to the Travel Agency that the tip for the girl was too high which is exactly what one Japanese guy did. When I heard that laughed out loud in the restaurant. Can you imagine??? "Yea, the tour was great, the price for the hotel room reasonable, but damn, can you travel agency people please find a place where we can get cheaper blowjobs?"
3. FIGHTS! - While hanging out at the Ghetto tavern and having a few beers, we saw a very large white foreigner stop his motorbike in front of a car whose Vietnamese driver got out and the two started yelling at each other. We really didn't know what had happened but guessed that the white man on the motorbike was new in town and had gotten cut off by the driver of the car. Apparently the white man didn't understand that there are no rules except 1. Don't Crash. And if you do then see rule number two 2. The richer person pays for the damage.
They were both really pissed off and yelling really loud. Then the pizza guys from the restaurant above the ghetto who were standing outside got into the argument which was when the white man made a big mistake. He pushed one of the Vietnamese. But it wasn't such a serious push and not a punch which probably saved him from getting seriously beaten. One rule that every ex-pat knows is you never ever ever fight the Vietnamese. If you punch one, you will be ganged up on by every Vietnamese in the area and seriously hurt. Also, Vietnamese like to use weapons and will grab anything in reach. So since this guy pushed one, he obviously hadn't been in town too long. The Vietnamese are not violent people however, and when you see a fight there is usually more threatening with weapons that actual hurting. But if you're a foreigner and you start the violence then watch out.
Us ex-pats in the bar simply looked out and almost anticipated the beating of this guy. It would have been like the bringing down of an elephant by a pack of vicious chimpanzees with weapons.
Also, last night at the Ghetto Tavern, something really random happened. I was sitting there chatting with my mates, and had just mentioned that I had gotten a swollen lip the other week from an accident in the gym. A guy who had been sitting by himself next to us got up and said "If you keep talking like that you're going to have more swollen parts of your body."
We all just stopped talking, looked at the guy and tried to figure out what the hell he meant. Then he said "Americans are so fucking stupid," to which I was a bit shocked, since this skinny guy surely wasn't trying to pick a fight with me and two other guys sitting with me. The other guys though were Australian and one of them looked at the guy and said "I beg your pardon!" in a very stern voice. (sounds funny to Americans to use this phrase), but the guy was quickly out of the bar and down the street.
The only sense I could make of this is that the guy must have been on some sort of drug or perhaps had recently had his girlfriend stolen by an American. The guy had been sitting by himself for over an hour and seriously, if you can't get a date in Saigon, you should just give up and commit suicide. But seriously, this guy had to have been a tourist, on drugs, and in a very bad mood to try to start something with a guy in an environment he knows nothing about. I guess the point of the story, is you'll meet some strange characters in places like Saigon.
Posted by Mateo at 1:58 PM | Comments (3)
Moving to District 4
Last weekend we made the move to the dreaded District 4. Ho Chi Minh City, is a pretty safe place compared to other world cities, but among ex-pats, District 4 has always been a place to be avoided. Apparently, in the past it was a major Vietnamese mafia neighborhood. After hearing this, I asked the landlord point blank, if District 4 was still dangerous. He said no because the Mafia boss was exectuted by the government a few years ago.
The neighborhood in which we live is what we would call in the west "A complete slum." To get to my house, I have to maneuver through barefooted kids playing soccer, fish parts drying on tarps in the sun, and through a virtual maze of extremely narrow alleys where people have to get up against the wall to let me pass.
Moving there was also a bit hectic. As we are the only foreigners in the entire neighborhood, it seems the entire community brought their lawn chairs, laughed and pointed at us while we were offloading the truck. We were quite the spectacle indeed. We also couldn't pull up right to the house because the alley was too narrow, and had to carry everything about five minutes into the maze.
As of today, we have lived there for a week and it's not too bad. However, even for a seasoned ex-pat like me, I am having a bit of trouble with the entire neighborhood staring at me, making comments and whatnot everytime I come or go. On the upside however, we have already made friends with our neighbors. The key was simply to smile as much as possible, and say hello in Vietnamese. They then invited me to sit down for beer and one of them spoke just a little bit of English. Then my roommate brought out some food and we had a grand old time. So it looks like we have won over our neighbors which is not only good for the comfort level, but also for security since they will notice anything suspicious going on around our house and like us enough to perhaps help us out.
I forgot to mention the reason we moved there in the first place. We had to vacate our old house in February and I am leaving Vietnam in May. My roommate is planning on staying here indefinately and had rented the house which was really cheap given the location and invited us to stay with him until we left. It was also good because I could furnish his extra room with my things, desk, bed, chairs and so on and would not have to worry about selling or getting rid of them when I leave. Further, so long as he stays in the country, I'll always have my own room in Vietnam.
Posted by Mateo at 1:36 PM | Comments (0)
February 7, 2006
Corporations for Dummies
I got this in an e-mail from a friend. It's classic:
Corporations for Dummies
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when the cow drops dead.
____
A SOUTH AFRICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
They get stolen, so you blame the previous regime' and steal someone
else's cows and shoot the owner.
_____
A ZIMBABWEAN CORPORATION
A farmer has two cows.
You take over his farm, eat both cows and wait for the international
community to supply more.
_____
A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-design them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow
and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create clever cow cartoon images
called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.
_____
A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and
milk themselves.
_____
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.
_____
AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You pray to them for food.
_____
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You break for lunch.
_____
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 12 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. _____
A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you.
You charge others for storing them.
_____
A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the
newsman who reported the numbers.
_____
AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left is kinda cute.. .
Posted by Mateo at 12:19 PM | Comments (2)
February 2, 2006
Move back to the USA?
At this time, I'm contemplating a move back to the USA. There are many factors contributing to this decision but perhaps the main one is to simply get some American work experience before I hit 30. After living and becoming accustomed to Asia for the past four years, it is impossible to re-adjust to the midwest and American life in general. Perhaps I'm just crazy and with just a simple adjustment in my thought process I could move back, attend the mega-churches, affirm that god hates gays, buy a Hummer and some guns, become a CONSUMER of products and live my life to earn dat money and consume more shit. And oh yea, the American Government spies on it's citizens, tortures and I don't have any rights at all if I'm classified as a "terrorist", and have actually heard stories of the expatriate crowd actually getting detained in white rooms for a few hours while in the USA. Hell, moving to China or North Korea might be safer. Well, maybe not North Korea.
In case you couldn't tell my image if the US of A just ain't so good at the moment. But take it with a grain of salt as my image has long been feed by CNN (Crisis News Network), business books like "The World is Flat" (which is a good book, but the underlying theme the problem) which gets so excited over how much faster Americans can be greedy and CONSUME.
Let me take a minute and ponder this word CONSUME. Being one who enjoys languages and the passive study of etymology I have to say I hate this word Consume or a person who is a consumer. To me it sounds like the person is a leech or like a black hole that sucks things into their being and grows fatter and bigger and bigger and fatter. Like one is a parasite to the earth bleeding it dry until nothing is left. And reading this book "The World is Flat" which is a great book and extremely informative, yet it makes my skin crawl. The problem is the underlying theme which is that we can CONSUME, Devour, Exhaust, Ingest faster and faster in such tones as 'What a great world we live in now that we can DEVOUR CONSUME TAKE IN Over 400lbs of rubble, materials, items per DAY NOW When before It was ONLY 3lbs per day in 1982!!! Wow great for us!
For me, I felt the most liberated in my life when I shed my car, apartment, kitchen appliances, and other items that to me where like a 1000lb weight around my neck. Now if I go back to the states, it will be like putting this weight right back on voluntarily.
However, I'm running out of time to figure out the world. I've gone a little far on the langauges and international learning but for some reason, I feel like I deserve to be working in an office,,,, no cubicle,,, no small desk in a room with no light, with a suit on, and should hate my job but earn just enough to be able to stay afloat with a car, house,, no make it an apartment payment, health, eye, dental fire, flood, insurance and perhaps some sort of insurance from the local priest in case the local board of education adopts evolution instead of intelligent design and God burns down my town.
But on the other hand, America is still a kind of free country for the moment but should things turn even worse, I'm sure I could sneak into an Asian embassy and ask for asylum. But seriously, California I've heard has been reclaimed by the Mexicans with invasion forces coming from Japan, Vietnam, and China who maintain strongholds in certain sections of the city. So maybe California won't be too bad. On the other hand, I've heard there are a lot of egocentric, presumptuous ACTORS out there! If I have to hear a statement like: "Well I think my role in Christina, really portrays our inner journey into the spiritual world and is a metaphor for rediscovery" I swear I'm gonna commit seppuku. And oh yea, if you couldn't tell, I hate actors...... except Johnny Depp. He rocks.
Posted by Mateo at 9:22 AM | Comments (2)
Long time No entry
I write now from the Pham Ngu Lao district in Ho Chi Minh that now is home to Saigon's only decent "Starbucks-like" cafe. Saigon doesn't have Starbucks yet but this place is darn close. They have enough selection that even an American would be satisfied although I'm sure the staff won't understand what a "skinny" latte is, so better take it easy on the coffee jargon.
It's been a while since my last entry and the blame lies directly on the scourge that is the MMORPG. And no it's not a new Bush administration initative to spy on American citizens. The MMORPG stands for "Massive Multiuser Online Role Playing Games." The game I play is "Knight Online" which has refused to release me from it's grip for the past two and a half weeks. However, I finally have reached a decent level and have managed to secure a pretty effective Horn Crossbow Plus 5 with poison damage! Haha..
But honestly, these games are so captivating already and can only get better! I seriously predict that a good portion of the population will withdrawl from society like Japan's "Hikikomori" since the online game world is much more exciting than real life. For those of you who don't understand exactly what these games are,, just picture an entirely new worlds, yes worlds, where it can take years to properly develop your character. You can also make money in the real world through these games, but if you want to learn more just go to www.mmorpg.com.
As for Saigon, it continues it's Sonic Boom of development and has gained it's very first 24 hour convenience store! Not only that, but there is finally a hip new magazine for ex-pats called Saigon Inside Out and it is every bit as Tokyo's Metropolis.
In other news, it is now the "Tet" holiday or Lunar New Year Holiday. It's the time when everyone goes back to the countryside to visit relatives and pray for good fortune for the new year. The ex-pats all say that you gotta get out of the city since it's dead here but that is simply untrue. First, it's much more peaceful here without all the billions of motorbikes and I was struck smack in the face yesterday by a breath of fresh air! Unreal for Saigon. Secondly, there are plenty of venues still open, especially the ex-pat places. So actually this week isn't any different from all the rest except that Saigon actually becomes an extremely pleasant place to live.
Posted by Mateo at 9:07 AM | Comments (0)