The Day That Would Have Been Awful

In keeping with the theme of the last post, I’ll tell you about my day yesterday.

Backstory: my bike’s battery exploded the other day . . .

. . . moving right along . . .

It exploded in such a way that I couldn’t recharge it ever again. Thus adding some urgency to the matter of me getting it fixed. So I found the address of a shop that should have been able to fix it. Look it up on a map, and take off with my hobbling, lurching, almost battery-dead bike to try and get it fixed.

…

Get lost. Ask for directions. Encounter no one who speaks my language. Receive a map from one kind gentleman. Go back and forth over an arching bridge in an effort to find the road that runs UNDER it. Completely deplete what battery power remained in my bike. Finally find this place.

So then there’s the minor issue of communicating my problem to the non-english-speaking mechanics. I handed them a note that I had had a Vietnamese friend write, but they didn’t seem to get it. So I turn into a miming genius, and get across the following message (words in italics are mimed . . . brilliantly I might add . . . just use your imagination):

[This battery exploded. It exploded here. I want a new one, but I want the new one to be bigger and stronger. This battery only lasts one day. 20 kilometers. By the end of the day, it's lurching, and then it dies. So I want the new one to be bigger and stronger. I want it to last more than one day without lurching and dying. 60 kilometers per charge, please.]

She laughs a bit, goes back to use the phone, and I sit down, most self-satisfied that she understands me. She comes back and tells me to leave the bike behind, it’ll take a day to get the battery. OK. This complicates things slightly, as I was planning on having a highly mobile and thus very productive day. But thank God I have feet!

The rest of the day was no more, or less, successful than this trip to the bike mechanic. Successfully got light bulbs, failed to get plants, successfully went to the gym, failed to get soy milk for the roommie, successfully did my laundry, failed to consider that it’s a bad idea to wash all of your shirts at once. That’s a 50% success rate with no wheels, I’ll have you know!

And the whole time I’m thinking: I can’t believe this isn’t pissing me off. A month ago I would have been out of my mind with frustration. I would have turned mean, and the day would have been ruined for me and the mechanic. But this little trip to the mechanic did not only not piss me off, it provided huge amounts of entertainment for me and everyone else there. And I learned what a fricking miming genius I can be after 4 months in the ESL classroom. Excuse me for tooting my own horn but goodness I was good.

That’s all.

Finally, A Home

Well hello, I’m writing from my new happy place. A 20th floor apartment in District 5 that’s overlooking the whole eastern half of Ho Chi Minh City.

My friend Ali and I moved in as soon as she returned from Thailand, a little over a week ago. It’s been a week full of covering empty walls and setting this place up to be a really cozy place to live. It’s what we were both lacking in our last apartments. We’ve ended up with what may be my favorite apartment I’ve ever lived in. Here are a few photos:

Here's the funny part: I made this out of free HCMC magazines, dental floss, and glue sticks that I smuggled from school. Here's the other funny part: I made this.

Sunrise from the balcony. Don't ask why I was up for sunrise. The answer is WHO KNOWS.

Our first home-cooked meal on the balcony.

That’s Ali. She featured in the post about the Mekong, but it’s been a while. She’s one of the managers at my school (oops, living with the boss), and she came to the city just a couple months before I did. She’s from Canterbury, England . . . as in Chaucer. She says things like bugger, knackered, wanker, gutted, and mate. She loves James Bond and listens to Tracy Chapman and Abba (and now Patty Griffin and Michael Franti – I’ve been proselytizing). She loves squid and pad thai and is allergic to metal. She speaks Italian and lived in Australia. And she is a mean haggler. In short, she is a rock star.

So, on a scale of happiness, I’d say I’m approximately twice as happy now as I was a month ago. I love my apartment, can come and go as I wish, can see the whole city from my balcony, love my roommate. And whether it’s related or not, I finally feel like I know my way around the city, and for the most part like I know what I’m doing here. And I don’t mean that in the philosophical sense at all. In this case philosophical understanding came before knowing the difference between north and south in this city that’s gridded diagonally if at all. Or how to buy a frickin pair of pants that fits. Except that you can’t even call them pants, they’re trousers, as pants means underwear in British English (this gets me joked every time – you must be careful with exclamations such as “wow, I love those pants!” or worse “loved those pants you were wearing last night.” Yowza.) Come to that, it’s even harder to find pants than trousers. See what I mean? I heard it would take a while to get there, and it’s been . . . 4 months? BOUT DAMN TIME!

So, it’s groovy, you know?