Antidote to Burnout

We are back "home" in Ho Chi Minh City after our month in the USA.  We went there for the wedding of our older daughter.  I have been putting off posting anything about this wonderful event, while running through a debate in my mind as to whether this blog has become (and should be) more journalistic and much less personal.  My original intent was to mix the two, but the past year has been predominately journalistic.  But even professional journalist bloggers like Tim Johnson, Beijing Bureau Chief for the McClatchy Newspapers, occasionally gets family personal in his excellent and prolific blog China Rises.

So here's a wedding photograph of Kristine's wedding to David Nakamura, Washington Post journalist.

The setting is a mountain lake in western Montana just southwest of Glacier National Park.  Montana is my home state where I was raised and achieved my B.Arch at Montana State University.  After that, though, it was off to see the world, and learn how to live in big cities.

Kristine has never lived in Montana.  She chose this location to bridge between her friends, colleagues, and David's family in Washington, DC, where she and David live, and her friends and relatives in California.  She also wanted to encourage her relatives and friends to take some time off for a vacation in Montana.

This brings me to some thoughts as to why I would return to Saigon.  Why not just retire in Montana and enjoy this wonderful setting?  Or at least stay in San Francisco, one of the acknowledged prime cities of the world.  My plan is to someday retire and try to spend four months of the year in Montana (July, August, November, and December), four months in San Francisco (May, June, September, and October), and then January through April in Viet Nam, which is the best time to be in HCMC, and the worst time to be in either Montana or San Francisco.

I am intrigued by people's reasons for choosing a location to live.  I suspect most people stay where they were born (like most of my neighbors in Saigon) or go where friends and relatives beckon them with good jobs and support (Mexican immigrants in America).  Upon reaching retirement, many Americans have many options for relocating away from their former workplace.  How do they choose where to live?  I admire Virtual Doug for his version of retirement, and he is especially inspiring when speaking of his devotion to caring for his mother.

So what is it that attracts me back to Ho Chi Minh City?  Beyond the heat that I love, the friendliness of my neighbors, and the healthy food, I especially like the intensity of life and environment here.  And this is from a person who most enjoys his leisurely breakfast and coffee in the morning, a nap at lunchtime, another coffee hour at the cafe in the late afternoon, and beer on the roof terrace in the evening with dinner.

I get energy from being around lots of people (even though I can't talk with them), and HCMC is the perfect balance of high density population in a relatively safe environment.  The neighborhood is generally low-rise with an average of three levels.  But the lanes are narrow, and the doors and windows are open, so there is constant contact with people.  That also means that the neighborhood is very safe.

The intensity here is sensual -- many colors and angles and variety of visual experiences; many sounds including wonderful Vietnamese music (but yes, there is a downside sometimes); and fragrant smells from cooking that provides wonderful tastes.  Does this intensity of life arise out of the density or out of the local culture?  This is a question I hope to study over the next few months.

Back in San Francisco...

I am back in San Francisco for a month after 7 months in Ho Chi Minh City.  This being summertime, San Francisco is shrouded in fog until mid-day, and it is damp and cold.  Part of the big change in moving to HCMC was escaping to the heat, which I love after 30 years of the cold in San Francisco.

Another part of my personal burnout was my taking for granted the beauty and energy of San Francisco.  It has been good to move away for a year-and-a-half and then return to appreciate anew why San Francisco is such a special place, including its climate.  My neighborhood, Glen Park, has improved with two new restaurants opened in the village, with one replacing a seedy bar.  The undergrounding of utilities is finally completed on my street.

Downtown at lunchtime, the density of people rivals that of Ho Chi Minh City.  Of course the majority of the downtown workers don't live in San Francisco, but they add immensely to the energy of the city.  I noticed that the standard of dress has returned to suits and business casual rather than the jeans of the past few years.  In addition to being a financial center, San Francisco is the creative center for the adjacent Silicon Valley.  The blog capital of the world is here south of Market Street, which was made very clear when an afternoon power outage knocked the major blog services off the net for a couple of hours, including Technorati.

Returning to the USA is also a time to recharge my western tastes in food.  While in Saigon, we stick to Vietnamese or other Asian food, and we love the healthy fresh ingredients and tastes that characterize Vietnamese food.  But part of the antidote to burnout is to avoid staying in a rut for too long.  Although I don't miss western food while in Viet Nam, I do look forward to the return visits to the USA to do a change-up and give the VN food a break.  I keep a list of my favorite foods and restaurants, and I have been working my way down the list, starting with a western breakfast of pancakes, egss, and bacon, then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, followed by pizza for dinner.  I will be moving on to hamburgers, steaks, cinnamon rolls, burritos and tacos.

This is also a good time to evaluate the antidote to burnout.  After a year-and-a-half in Ho Chi Minh City, the change has been very good for me, even if my business is not working out as hoped.  The key to change is to learn new things, which has been abundant for me as I learn more everyday about the real estate development business, building upon my 35-year career in architecture and project management.  I have also rekindled my old interests in urban design and planning, since Saigon is in the midst of a major rezoning and city vision project. I love living in HCMC.  What I am now learning, however, is the need for constant change-up between major changes.  It is important to "get out of town" regularly, eat varieties of food, and stay out of ruts.

This seems like common sense -- a prescription that everyone can follow, but I observe that people find it easier to stay in ruts.

A couple of differences between Viet Nam and the USA

In the three weeks I have been back in the USA, I have racked up 39 credit card transactions (Christmas shopping plus road trip).  For the previous ten months in Vietnam, I had two transactions.  Credit cards are still not actively used in Viet Nam except by tourists at international hotels and hotel restaurants.  Even high-rolling Vietnamese businessmen use cash for expensive business dinners and entertainment, pulling out bulging rolls of half-million VN dong notes.

ATM or debit cards are now in wide use in Viet Nam, but mostly for access to cash at ATM machines.  There are still few opportunities for point-of-sale use of debit cards in Viet Nam.  And the opportunity to use a Vietnamese debit card is limitied to ATM machines owned by the bank card issuer.  There is as yet no interoperability between VN bank ATMs.

There is also almost no use of checks in Viet Nam either -- I am told that Vietnamese business pay their bills in cash, personally or by courier, rather than by checks transferred in the mail as in the USA.  I have noticed a wide use of bank transfers.  If I want to subscribe to a Hanoi newspaper, I need to have the subscription payment wired from my VN bank to the newspaper's bank account number.

This leads to the second difference between life in Viet Nam and in the USA -- personal security.  The utility payment collectors come by  our HCMC house every month to collect our payments for electricity, garbage collection, telephone, ADSL, and water services.  We pay in cash, which means the collectors walk through the streets and alleys of Viet Nam carrying purses bulging with cash.  The same is true of curbside motorbike parking attendants and bus fare collectors, flashing huge rolls of cash in their hands.  There seems to be no concern for personal robbery since it is evidently a not a problem in Viet Nam.  There seems to be few incidences of personal crime such as homicide or rape in Viet Nam (I need to do some research on this).  On the other hand, crime against property is an issue -- I am constantly told to properly lock up our motorbike, and keep the house locked up when we are away.

Missing Christmas in Việt Nam

While Americans debate celebation of Christmas versus generic holidays, the Vietnamese unabashedly celebrate Christmas as a national holiday.  In my observation, Vietnamese love parties and celebrations, in addition to being avid consumerists.  They also love to sing, and Christmas carols provide many opportunities to sing in this season.  Although statistics (81% non-religious??) indicate otherwise, Vietnamese are also highly spiritual or religious (at least in the south where I live).  Therefore Christmas provides a wonderful opportunity to display their strong sense of design and community.

OK -- plenty of gross generalizations made here to ponder.  Better to go to two sources that graphically and articulately  show the response of Vietnamese to Christmas:

charvey in vietnam dislays his conclusion that Vietnamese love Christmas with many photos of a Christian worship service that he attended with his Vietnamese friends.

the final Word in Saigon presents several quality photographs of Christmas decorations around TP. Hồ Chí Minh.  In my opinion, these decorations far surpass in design quality and quantity most of the decorations I see around the USA, including downtown San Francisco. 

Thank you to Chris and Jon for offering their on-the-spot observations for those of us that went home for Christmas.

Merry Christmas from Montana

As much as I love the heat in Việt Nam, it is good to experience change regularly, and it is certainly a big change be in Montana for Christmas with temperatures below freezing.

There are also mountains and pine trees to remind me how different life is for me in flat tropical TP. Ho Chi Minh.

Although it is a day later now in Việt Nam, it is still Christmas here, and I wish for all of my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to come.

-- Mel

A Rice Cracker?

D. has posted a provocative thread of ideas on his blog VA to VN entitled "Everyone's an expert" (5 September 2006).  He points us to the website Ethnically Incorrect Daughter, published by what he describes as a "conflicted Vietnamese adoptee."  He writes,

"One of her posts spoke about how some ex-pats return from a stint abroad with a greater sense of "understanding" of the foreign culture than they truly have obtained. It was a riff off of this post from What Happened to Your Hair? These two posts stirred within me a latent impression of a few of the expat discussions on blogs and forums. It seems everyone thinks they're an expert - be it from two weeks or two years in a foreign land, all the while living high on the hog......It's wholly presumptuous to think that you've done anything other than scratching the surface of a culture and a society when you don't (1) speak the language (2) look like a local - even a fat V.K. doesn't cut it - and (3) earn a living like everyone else. It's great that you've used your passport, it's great that you've learned to order beer in a foreign language. But, for god sakes, realize that hundreds of thousands of other people have done this - they're called immigrants. They just don't blog about it."

D.'s link to the posting on the blog What Happened to Your Hair? is entitled "The Rice Cracker" on 26 August 2006, written by Kev Minh of Seattle -- here is an excerpt:

"What is it with white American males who travel to a foreign country and come back presuming they "know" a whole culture? Are we to believe that these men are outfitted with an osmosis/camouflage gene that allows them to travel to a foreign country and soak up its essence and blend into the native surroundings in order to fraternize with the locals? Then, they return home, book and movie deal already in hand, to write and speak extensively about their exotic adventures and proclaim their expertise in the field? Of course, I'm being facetious, but do notice that I am denigrating a certain annoying characterstic called "White privilege". In the White privilege paradigm the tendency is to speak one's mind as if it were the bible-truth, without reservation or qualification, and convince oneself that apologies and concessions are for weaklings."

Well, that thread of ideas has certainly caused me to reflect on my own motivations and identity as an American blogger writing about my observations in Viet Nam.  Here's my starting point:
1.  I am a white American male.
2.  I have been in Viet Nam now for seven months, but have not yet returned to America, so that makes me an expat at this time.
3.  I don't speak the Vietnamese language or any language other than English, but I am currently trying hard to learn Vietnamese.  It appears that this is going to take a very long time, but my current intentions are to live in Viet Nam for a long time.  In the meantime, I can definitely order beer (bia) in the Vietnamese language.
4.  I definitely don't look like a local, but I have made a choice to live among locals rather than the expat areas of Ho Chi Minh City.  My Chinese-Vietnamese wife looks like a local, but the locals recognize her easily (I don't know how) as a Việt Kiều (an overseas or returned Vietnamese).
5.  We do and don't earn money like the locals -- there are many Vietnamese real estate developers in this rather closed market here, and we are trying to compete or work with them.  Typically, developers work for nothing until an income stream from their projects comes online.  For us, it appears that this will be several years from now if all the risk factors fall my firm's way.  In the meantime, we live off savings.  Therefore we try to live at the same economic level of our Vietnamese neighbors.
6.  I don't have a book or movie deal in hand, but I do enjoy publishing my experiences and observations in my blog.

I definitely feel that I have achieved some understanding of the circumstances and culture of Vietnamese life, and I enjoy offering my observations for the possible benefit of those who will follow me in the coming investment rush to Viet Nam.  But the longer I am here, the more I realize how much more I have to experience and learn.  I have come to understand that it would be presumptuous to think that I have done anything other than scratch the surface of the Vietnamese culture and society.  But I want to try to understand as much as I can.  My real fascination with Việt Nam is its people and their friendliness, and with their culture and approach to life.  There is much for me to learn here.

So do I stand on "White privilege"?  Preya raised a similar question last March in her blog Dreaming of Hanoi.  My answer then, as it is now:

"If one grants that a westerner's base motives for going overseas are at heart a search for validation of western culture over other cultures (even if this is mostly subconscious to us), then the opposite might be gained in the course of living in an overseas culture -- we learn things about other peoples and their cultures that open new perspectives and appreciations for us.  What we learn strikes out what we thought we knew or hoped we would find.  Ideally, the new balances out the old preconceptions.  I am not saying this is true for everyone who visits overseas cultures, but I am striving to make it true for me."

Yes, I do tend to offer my experiences and observations on my blog without enough reference to "reservation or qualification".  I assume too often that most readers will read my "about" and "essential" postings to understand my privileged background and put my postings in the context of that background and current stated intentions.

But I think Sume of the blog Ethnically Incorrect Daughter has a good solution -- she wrote in a comment to Kev Minh's posting: "Why not take them head on, pick their opinions apart, point out the flaws and show them for the experts they're NOT? At the very least, make it known that their's is not the only opinion out there."

I might not like it, but I hope I would learn from the experience of others challenging the gross generalizations to which I know I am prone.  I hope that these challenges would come from Vietnamese people themselves.  I attempt to ask questions and try out my ideas on the Vietnamese around me, but they too reflect a limited cross-section of the population and culture.  I am sure I could learn a lot about Vietnamese life and culture from reading Vietnamese blogs if I could read Vietnamese.

As for immigrants not blogging about their experiences, I suspect there are some that do.  We need to find them so that we can better understand what they think about their adopted land and people, and thus we learn about ourselves as we meet them.

Family Matters

Today is our 33rd wedding anniversary.  We were married in the white chapel built by the Seabees at the Newport Rhode Island Naval Base.  I don't have a picture of the wedding with me here in Viet Nam, (like I know I should), but I do have this photo taken sometime in the summer of 1972 about 34 years ago in Saigon.

Also this week, we are proud to announce that our oldest daughter Kristine has become engaged to be married to David Nakamura, the son of Bob and Bernie Nakamura of Vienna, Virginia.

David is a staff reporter for the Washington Post, and Kristine is a graduate student at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

We are thrilled to welcome David as our future son-in-law, and wish for them the best in their marriage, as it has been for their parents.

The big change starts....

Enough of the doldrums.  We are ready to catch the wind and fly off to Ho Chi Minh City late Friday night.  No project approvals from the VN government yet for the three projects we hope to start, but we seem to be getting closer.  We will need a month to find a place to live and get settled anyway.

Virtual Doug asked me awhile ago if I was in a panic yet about the big change, and I felt at the time that there was no need for panic since I had plenty of time to prepare.  But I now find myself three days away and am realizing that this trip is not like the 5-week trip we took last fall to China and Việt Nam -- that trip had a firm end date and I could plan the packing needs accordingly.  This trip is different -- no return date scheduled, and I am left wondering what do I really need to take for the long term.  Our intention is to travel light and buy what we need in Ho Chi Minh City, but I am in a panic over leaving things I am comfortable with even though I really don't need them.

We will be back to the U.S. every four to six months or so to maintain contacts and pick up any additional items found to be needed.

Merry Christmas to all my readers

At this point, we are planning to return to Ho Chi Minh City in mid-January to start settling into life in Việt Nam.  From there, we hope to make our way into the development community and find opportunities to help with projects.

For now, we are in San Francisco and are about to drive up to the State of Montana to celebrate Christmas with family.  There will be snow and ice on some of the highways, but we have done this many times.

We may not be posting any items for the next week or so.

We understand (from reading other blogs) that Vietnamese enjoy Christmas as a time for colored lights and greetings from friends, even though most Vietnamese are not Christian.  The spirit of the lights and greetings are universal, and in that spirit, I wish for all of you a Merry Christmas.

Hiking

As I plan for the next couple of years in Vietnam, I sometimes worry about opportunities for hiking.  In San Francisco where I live now, there are many opportunities for both urban and natural-area hikes.  Golden Gate Park is a very large famous park in San Francisco with lots of hiking trails.

In Ho Chi Minh City, there seems to be very few parks, and those that exist are fairly formal, such as the zoo.  I would appreciate advice from anyone regarding opportunities for natural-area hikes in the Ho Chi Minh City area.

Here in my San Francisco neighborhood, there is a wonderful canyon park just four blocks away from my house.  I trek though this park every other day on my way to the supermarket at the top of hill above my neighborhood, Glen Park.

This neighborhood is in the middle of the city.

Here is the primary trail through Glen Park:

A short while up the trail, I split off to the right and head up the hill:

It is always hard to remember that this trail is in the middle of a dense city.  As I continue up the trail to the supermarket, I can begin to see the city at the edges of the park -- that is the city's High School of the Arts at the top of the canyon:

When I get to the top of the hill, I can see the supermarket buildings beyond past the playground.

On my way home, I take the other side of this loop trail through the valley of the canyon

and I end up at the Recreation Center in the park.

I can always drive out of the city to get to natural areas, but it sure is nice to be able to walk out my door to a park close by.