Antidote to Burnout

Sorry....false alarm

Every time I think about writing about the weather, I tell myself this is a topic I know not much about, and should stay away from posting opinions. But I can't resist posting about the change of seasons. This year, I got caught.

On 17 April when I last posted, the winds had made their annual change of opposite direction, or so it seemed. I am fascinated by the physics of this phenomenon -- it the winds make such a sudden and consistent change, then the seasons should change along with it.

Over the past two years, twice a year, when the wind changed (and it changes almost instantaneously), it stayed changed, and the seasons changed accordingly. This year, it stalled out and changed back. There were very light winds for a couple of days after the 17th, so it seems like the wind never regained its change in direction.

So we remain in the dry season at this point (there are always occasional thunderstorms even in the dry season), and the winds remain out of the east. Sometime over the next month, though, it will change and stay changed, bringing the rainy season.

Meanwhile, it looks like Kevin's shedding dog theory has the upper hand in credibility at this point.

Change of seasons in HCMC

The winds shifted two days ago to now be out of the southwest, the direction of the annual monsoon winds. For the past six months, the winds have been from the east.

The shift this year is occurring 21 days earlier than last year, so we are going to get an early start on the rainy season this year.

French architect wins 2008 Pritzker Prize

A little diversion from Vietnam...
I am pleased to see today that the French architect Jean Nouvel has been named the Pritzker Laureate in Architecture for 2008.  This prize is the equivalent to the Nobel prizes applied to architecture.

He has produced modernist designs that are very tailored to sites and circumstances, along with structural flair.  Here is an example from Lucerne (Luzern), Switzerland -- the KKL Culture and Convention Center, or Modern Art Museum.

When I took these photographs in 2003, I couldn't get over how knife-thin the edge of the cantilevered roof was.

The exterior enclosing walls or screens have the layers of material that I think is becoming the hallmark of a new architecture of the information age.

Tet Parties

My Tết holidays this year were enjoyed in Dắk Lắk Province at the home of my Vietnamese friend's parents, introduced in this previous posting.  A subsequent posting presented their home as a typical rural Dak Lak house.

Since the Tết Nguyễn Đán season is all about the gathering and visiting of family and friends, we spent many hours at parties before and after the first day of the lunar new year (7 February in this year 2008).  The pre-Tết parties were more lavish large affairs, with a variety of food.  On Tet (the first day of the lunar new year) and the days after, individuals travel around to the homes of relatives, friends, and neighbors.  Since everyone is on the road, dropping in at random unannounced times, the visiting parties are much shorter and don't involve much food.  There are always a beer or two, or a glass or two of rice wine, followed by liters of green tea.  Available at every home, and usually only during the first days of Tet, is a platter of watermelon seeds (hạt dưa) and ginger candies (mứt).

Vietnamese crack open the seeds with their teeth at a rate of one every 5 or six seconds, leaving the shells on the table or the floor.  Since no sweeping is done in the first days of the new year (in order not to sweep out the good luck of the new year), the result is a huge pile of shells on the floor.  I never did get the hang of cracking and extracting the seed in one smooth motion like the Vietnamese do.

The big pre-Tet parties were the real peak experiences for me.  They were opportunities to meet the extended family and friends in one or two parties so that I had familiarity with them in advance of the smaller after-Tet visits.

Since these parties involved over 30 people at each, all of the furniture is removed from the sitting room, and multiple dining mats are put down to receive the food.

Most of these large gatherings used propane gas burners for hot pots of broth, in which the various meats and vegetables were cooked.  I particularly liked the fish and the various pork innards.

Like most Vietnamese meals, the food is very healthy with well-balanced portions of vegetables and grain (rice, of course) to offset the meats.

The guests sit down cross-legged on the floor in a circle around the perimeter of the room.

The younger women and the children sit in the adjacent room.  These were the women that prepared and served the meal.

The great-grandmothers join the men in the main room.  Most of the men are 35 or younger, members of the Vietnamese baby-boom beginning in 1975.  There are very few great-grandfathers remaining in these families.  The ancestor altar always features the portrait of the grandfather or great-grandfather husbands of these grandmothers.  There are also few family members my age, including women.  It turned out I was the second oldest male in the room (at age 61), which was a shock to me since I constantly live under the impression I am still in my thirties (and not out of vanity -- I just continue to think that way -- I still haven't grown up psychologically -- and all of my Vietnamese friends are in their late 20s or early 30s).

I also had the realization that these families came from the northern province of Nghệ An, the birthplace of Hồ Chí Minh.  The men my age might have fought in the American War (my friend told me his father did at the tail-end of the war on the nothern side (he is five years younger than me)), and certainly the grandmothers would have experienced to some degree the French and American Wars.  Like many Vietnamese (and many American veterans), they don't talk about the war years.  On the whole, in my opinion, the Vietnamese are very present and future oriented, and optimistic that the new year brings good luck, so they don't dwell on the past.  When meeting new family members and friends, they would ask where I was from, and the answer that I was an American always brought big smiles and handshakes.

It certainly helped that I was able to keep up with all of the toasts and chugging of beer.  Getting right down to it, the food is only a companion to the real event -- the beer or wine, and the toasting for good luck.

I was down at the "young end" of the party.  The young man next to me is a medical doctor.

No one seems to get really drunk at these events, and Vietnamese do not seem to get belligerent at all when they do have too much to drink.  The smiles never end.

All of these parties end with relaxing around pots of green tea

while the younger women clean up the aftermath on the grass mats.

I am very grateful to my friend for inviting me to his parent's home, where they accepted me like a member of the family.  Even though we do not speak a common language, there was no barrier to the hospitality and love they extended to me.  And these are all people of great humor and sociability -- I was proud to be accepted among them.

Rural Vietnamese farmhouses

Since we visited over 20 families around the Tết (Lunar New Year) season in Đẳk Lẳk, I had an opportunity to see over 20 farm and village houses in this rural province.  The home of my friend's family was very representative of them all.

While their house was the typical masonry (extruded clay block) covered with plaster, many of the houses were constructed of wood framing and rough siding.  In the early 1980s, the government encouraged villagers from poor northern provinces to relocate to Dak Lak and plant coffee.  They distributed the land free but the recipients were obligated to clear the native forests, build a house, and plant coffee trees.  This is very similar to the "homestead" laws in the United States in the late 19th century that settled the western states.  All of the families I met (except for the indigenous "minority" tribespeople) had come from Nghệ An Province (on the coast between Hanoi and Huế).

Because the forests yielded substantial lumber, a majority of the rural houses in these central highland provinces are made of wood on a concrete platform.

The general plan and furnishings of both the wood and masonry houses were pretty much the same, however.

The entry doorway (almost always at the left front side of the house) enters into a sitting room.

The furniture almost always consists of a cabinet below a high wall-mounted altar shelf, a coffee table, one long wood bench, and two wood chairs.  I never saw a cushion in all the houses I visited, including in the city of Buôn Ma Thuột.  The chairs are rather deep in the seat, which can become uncomfortable (for westerners like me, at least) after a half-hour of sitting.  The four young men in the photo were the home's first visitors on the first day of the Lunar New Year (at 3:00 am).  My friend is seated at the front of the photo.  They all went out to visit some other friends at 4:00 am.

This new house in Buôn Ma Thuột shows the same features, but the altar is a very modern adaptation of the normal altar shelf.

The young woman in the photo (visiting her parents from HCMC) is an architecture and design student in my English group, and she designed this house.

If a large party is held, the furniture is moved outside and grass mats are laid down on the floor for dining and drinking.

For normal meals, the grass mats are laid down on the floor of the adjacent bedroom that has ample space in front of the TV set.

There were three bedrooms in my friend's family house, but the beds were all very typical in all of the houses I saw; there are no mattresses, and the grass mats are laid over wood slats.  Mosquito nets are put up each evening (although there were significantly fewer bugs than what I experience daily in Ho Chi Minh City).

Laundry and bathing, with a jug of water to throw over oneself, takes place in the bath house.

Kitchens range from spartan to quite modern, with cabinets similar to western-style kitchen cabinets and countertops.


Much of the food preparation took place outside of the kitchen, however, where it was cooler and there was more light and room to work.  Unlike most of us westerners, Vietnamese are very comfortable squatting to work.

There was only one refrigerator in all of the rural houses that I saw.  In homes in the city of Buôn Ma Thuột, however, the three houses I visited all had refrigerators.

The chicken coop was just beyond the kitchen door, and it surrounded the open-air slot toilet in the concrete floor.

The home of the family's married daughter, a teacher in a large town close to Buon Ma Thuot, featured a front and rear garden, as well as a stocked fish pond for fishing.

Vietnamese are very comfortable sitting on floors for long periods, sleeping in very hard beds, and lounging in hard chairs.  This old westerner adapted well-enough for the ten-day period in Đẳk Lẳk, but my old body is not used to this and I usually had to take a break during meal times to stretch a bit.  From what I see in HCMC city houses, however, urban Vietnamese are buying over-stuffed chairs and couches, although they continue to eat on the floor mats for large gatherings.  Over time, will Vietnamese slowly adapt to western tastes in comfort (and grow bigger, stiffer bodies as a result)?

See this posting on the Vietnamese family I visited for Tet, and this posting on Tet parties.

Vietnamese have taken to helmet use....

Simon over at the Saigon Today blog published a photo today of a Vietnamese fisherman at the beach wearing his motorbike helmet while fishing.

Simon opined that the fisherman was wearing the helmet rather than risk theft of it off his motorbike.

In remote locations, there may be reason for that, but in most city locations, theft of helmets stored on motorbikes does not seem to be a problem (at least yet).  But I do notice people wearing them in places where they are in transit between locations and need to keep their helmet in hand.  For example, if you are going to take a bus trip, you probably need to take your helmet with you so you are prepared for the inevitable motorbike rides at your destination.  Rather than carry the helmets, many people deem it easier just to wear them.

I am always anxious to get the helmet off as soon as we stop the bike, since they are hot and uncomfortable without the wind going by when on the road.  Many Vietnamese seem to have adapted to helmet use quite well, however, and maybe even forget to take them off.

Most Vietnamese (both male and female) have always worn hats when outside to provide a little protection from the sun.  Now that helmet use is mandated, one doesn't carry around both a hat and a helmet, so one is left with the helmet to wear out in the sun rather than a more traditional hat.  I carry around a crushable hat in my pack to cover this situation.

Visiting a Vietnamese family for Tet

The Tết Nguyên Đán season (Tết) in Vietnam welcomes the lunar new year (similar to Chinese New Year), but most importantly, celebrates the family and its ancestors.  Vietnamese, including those from overseas, take this time out to return to the home of their parents or grandparents.  Therefore there is a huge migration of people up and down the country as Vietnamese travel from their work residence to their hometowns.  Most workers are given two weeks or more off for this season, so this time is also recognized as the single vacation time available over the work year.

Almost all manufacturers suspend factory operations during this season, and many small businesses such as restaurants close.  The normally busy markets close for at least four days, if not longer in rural areas.  This means that Vietnamese must prepare for Tet by laying in a stock of food and supplies.  Since home decoration for Tet is also important, this combination of preparing food, buying and installing decorations, and buying gifts or accumulating a supply of "lucky money" gives the preseason the same kind of pleasant anticipation that we westerners usually associate with our Christmas season preparations.  And Vietnamese look forward all year to the reunions with their families and childhood friends back in their hometowns.

To westerners in the cities that must deal with closed restaurants and the hustle and bustle in the markets, Tet can become a burden.  Therefore many expats (many of the them being teachers on a forced vacation) take this opportunity to travel elsewhere in Asia.  Last year, I was in Vietnam for my first Tet season, and I enjoyed the freshness of the experience and the lavish decorations of flowers and lights in downtown Saigon.  The season did go on for too long a time, however, and I missed my normal sources of restaurants and cafés.  I did not look forward to staying in the city again with its energy lost.

This year, I was very privileged to be invited by a Vietnamese friend of mine to travel to his parent's farm in beautiful rural Dak Lak Province, 30-some kilometers out of the province capital of Buôn Ma Thuột.

This became a rare opportunity to see and experience how the majority of Vietnam's population on rural farms live.  The result for me was one of the peak experiences of my life, tempered with the occasional tedium of constant visiting and never-ending food and drink that comes with too long of a season.

We began by leaving Ho Chi Minh City five days prior to the new year.  Since most factories had just shut down, there was a rush of Vietnamese for the buses and trains leaving for the rural hometowns.  We had secured bus reservations in advance, so we missed the chaotic crush at the bus ticket counters.  Normally, my friend would be taking one of the crammed minibuses to Dak Lak, but I prevailed upon him to upgrade a bit to a standard bus operated by Mai Linh so I would have room for my longer legs.  Luggage must also be kept to am minimum, since travel by minibus or motorbike in Vietnam does not allow lugging around much bulk.  Vietnamese travel with very little since they wash clothes by hand daily.  Of course I had my computer and camera, so I was overloaded.  Upon arrival in Ban Me Thout (the former name for Buôn Ma Thuột), we borrowed a motorbike from my friend's uncle and biked the road to the home village with luggage and all on the motorbike.

Vietnamese often say that the country is poor, especially the rural farmers.  In economic terms, this is probably correct.  My friend's family own a hectare of land upon which they grow coffee, pepper, and green tea.  With a harvest of 5 metric tons of robusta green bean coffee annually, they gross only US$10,000 per year at current prices (US$2.05/kilogram).  But this family seems to have everything they need, including a masonry house, home-grown vegetables and chickens, and satellite TV.

In comparison with city families, they sacrifice a level of comfort and extra toys, but their demeanor and hard work indicates they are satisfied with their lives so long as their children successfully graduate from a university and find jobs in the city.  And that is what has occurred for their first three children including my friend, who is now an accountant for a company in HCMC.  One 12-year old child remains on the farm.

We visited many relatives and neighbors in this area, and all homes had about the same level of standard of living.

The family welcomed me with the friendly hospitality characteristic of Vietnamese, and I couldn't have been better cared for.  On the other hand, the main business at hand was execution of the Tet customs, and I was encouraged to participate fully in the activities like a Vietnamese and a member of the family rather than as a western guest with accommodations made to defer to western tastes and comfort.  So much the better from my point of view and curiosity about common Vietnamese life.

The family owns no vehicles other than a motorbike, so I was surprised to see such a large "parking lot" in front of their house.

It was explained that this expanse of concrete is helpful for drying the coffee beans (seeds) after the berry husks have been threshed off.

Lots more to follow in the coming days.....

See this posting on rural farmhouses, and this posting on Tet parties.

Long time no post....

Virtual Doug recently presented several potential reasons for his not posting for a long time on his blog.  Missing the muses was one of them.  I have definitely missed the muses over the past month and a half.  My last posting was just prior to leaving for San Francisco, and now that I have returned to Ho Chi Minh City, I am relaxed enough to get back to the blog.

Doug concluded that he had "stopped observing the world", and I heartily agree that observing the world is perhaps the major impetus to most blog postings.  That is certainly true of Doug and his blog where there have been more interesting observations and profound conclusions about life per inch of posting than any other blog I read (over two hundred a day, not all of whom post daily).

In my case though, I have been accumulating photographs and ideas for blog items, but I simply have not had the desire to write the posts.  Writing is not a natural activity for me -- I really have to work at it and edit many times.  So it does take the prodding of the muses to keep me writing, and when they take a holiday, I stop writing.  And the holidays do take a lot of psychic energy, time, and attention.

Now that the Christmas season is over and I am back in Vietnam, the Tết season is upon us, and it requires some of the same psychic energy, even though I am not directly participating.  The logistics of surviving these long holidays in Asia are a major part of the time and attention taken away from other desirable pursuits.  Of course there are also the emotional benefits and cultural experiences gained from observing these holidays that outweighs all the stress in the end.

This year, I have been invited to the family home of a Vietnamese friend of mine.  We will be taking a long bus ride to the hills of Dắk Lắk Province in central Việt Nam, around Buôn Ma Thuôt, where the famous rich coffee of Việt Nam is grown.  I hope to capture many good photographs and observations, but I don't know that I will have internet access while out in the country.  If not, there will be another couple of weeks of no posting, and thereafter a potential flood of postings.  I am looking for the muses to be back inspiring with a cattle prod.