Last Place You Look

I have a confession to make. I am lazy.

I will be playing dead on the couch all day just in case a bear attacks. That's not lazy, that's proactive.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) September 28, 2013

I got called lazy today. I almost replied.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) August 19, 2013

Nothing says lazy like laying on the couch making today's responsibilities tomorrow's problem.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 24, 2012

You call it lazy, I call it selective participation..

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) September 12, 2013

If you've never tried to use "the force" to get a an out-of-reach remote control, you're probably not as lazy as me.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) November 9, 2013

The oldest of these tweets is from 2012, so I think it is clear that I have known this about myself for quite some time.

I am also quite comfortable with it. Like inappropriately comfortable. My sloth knows no bounds.

However, occasionally, I have to get some stuff done. Earlier this week was one of those days.

Living in a foreign land, some things are quite different than back home. One of those things is our banking situation. I have never set foot in or spoken to a single person at our bank. I don't even know where it is. I do all my transactions through a third party designed for foreigners. It is called TIMO. And last month, TIMO and the bank that actually holds our money parted ways.

This means that my TIMO phone app and ATM card no longer work. I have no access to my money. I am going to actually have to go into a bank (30 miles away) and try to get all the new stuff (ATM card and actual bank app) without being able to speak the local language. I was not looking forward to this, but it is one of those things that has to be done. After all, they have all our money and we do not have any way to get it. We kind of need it. I tend to be hungry a lot.

Because we live in the tropics, the sun can be unforgiving. This is something that must be taken into account when you use a motorcycle to travel everywhere. Hours traveling on a motorcycle in the tropical sun has beaten me down on more than one occasion. So, these trips to Đà Nẵng require certain measures. Despite the temperature being close to 100, I wear long pants and often long sleeves.

But the most important measure for me is getting an early start. I try to be on the road by 7:30. That would get us to the bank when it opens and if there are no problems, we would hopefully be back home before 10 a.m. Safe from the treacherous satanball trying to kill us from the sky.

We popped out of bed early. Got our breakfast and showers out of the way and were headed out the door at about 7:15. We were doing great on time! The UV demons would not get us today.

I reached for the key bowl by the door and came up empty.

Although rare, this happens now and then. I popped into the backroom to see if I had tossed them on my desk the night before. I had not. I then checked the pockets of the shorts I had worn the previous night. They weren't there either. At this point, Red started helping me look. 

We checked the kitchen table, all the counters, around the motorcycle outside, under the bed, our nightstands, and the coffee table. We even looked in the freezer. Where could they be?

After spending over half an hour tearing the house apart, it occurred to me that I may have locked them in the seat of the motorcycle. It has a small storage compartment that can be opened using the ignition key. If I locked it in there, I wouldn't have the key to open it and check.

So, I did something I did not want to do. I went next door to my landlord's house. He is the sweetest man and takes very good care of us, but he is almost 70 and I do my best not to disturb him unless I really need to. Plus, he does not speak a word of English. We call him Dad.

I showed Dad my problem and hoped he had a way to get into the seat that I might not know about. He tried all the same things that I did. Nothing worked.

Through pantomime and exchanged grunting, he suggested we have the ignition changed out. I didn't see any other choice so I agreed. I pulled up my Google Maps so he could show me where to go, but he insisted on speaking into the translator on my phone. The words I got back from the phone were useless, but he would not show me on the map. I don't believe he understood how it worked.

I was already a little embarrassed for losing my keys, but it only got worse from here.

My well-meaning landlord was going to help me get my motorcycle to the mechanic. He backed my bike into the street and went to get his.

Dad motioned for me to get on his bike and he sat on mine. His intention was to have me push him like in the following video.

But it just didn't work. I couldn't even get him started. I don't know if my angle was wrong, but it wouldn't work. Plus, even if I had gotten him moving, I didn't have any clue where we were going. Negotiating turns would have been very awkward. Besides, we live on very narrow back-alley streets. Not much room to maneuver. 

Dad realized this was not going to work, so he hopped off and started pushing my bike. I tried to stop him because there is no reason a 70-year-old man needs to push my bike for me. I can push it myself. I just need to know where to go. He did not listen to me and just kept moving. So, I was riding his bike at 2 MPH behind him while he pushed in 100-degree heat.

When we got to the first corner, he had me get on my bike. Good! Now I won't feel like such a putz. He tried to push my bike with his foot while he was on his own bike. Like in the above video. Once again, it did not work. He had me hop off again and started pushing my bike down the road. I could not get him to stop and let me do it. I eventually went back and got on his bike and slowly followed him while the local Vietnamese people watched us go by and gave me dirty looks. I don't blame them. At this moment, I literally was the fat, lazy American.

About 1,500 feet later, we came to the end of this road and his adult daughter Hanh appeared from the other direction on foot. He told her what we were doing and she nodded. She then took my bike and yelled over her shoulder, "Brett, go home." 

Hanh knows a total of maybe 100 English words. I often get basic sentences like this one from her. 

Dad tried to get me on his bike with him so we could go back, but I really wanted to go with Hanh. If I knew where she was taking my bike, then this was something I could take care of on my own in the future. I like to be self-sufficient when it is possible. However, I was having great difficulty getting Dad to understand why I wanted to follow. And the last thing I wanted to do is be unintentionally insulting. He was going out of his way to help and I wanted to be appreciative. Plus, as I looked back over my shoulder, Hanh had gotten a passerby to start pushing her on the bike. I guess she was more coordinated than us. She was gone. So, I accepted the ride home and waited.

An hour later, Hanh showed up with my bike and told me how much it cost. I paid her and thanked her profusely. I was so thankful, but totally embarrassed and felt utterly helpless.

After she left, we opened the bike seat only to discover the key was not in the seat. That means it was somewhere in the house and would turn up eventually. The changing of the ignition was not necessary, but there was no way of knowing how long it would be before we came across it. We had done what we had to do.

At this point, it was about noon and it had been a stressful morning. Defeated, I turned to Red and suggested we take off to a nice restaurant and try to put the morning behind us. She wholeheartedly agreed. I grabbed my new key and we got our helmets to head outside.

FOUND IT!!!

The key was in a motorcycle helmet that never got picked up because we realized we had no key to go anywhere. I'm beginning to wonder if embarrassment has an upper limit.

Fortune Cookie #15 - Diversity

I dove into my collection of fortune cookies this morning and came out with this gem.

A diversity of friends is a
credit to your flexible nature.

My immediate thought was that this is one of those rare fortunes that is actually accurate. I DO have a very diverse group of friends. But on further reflection, I realized that this diversity was actually forced on me.

I haven't lived in America for 4 years. In fact, my Facebook Memories this morning had a video of me showing off our empty apartment in Indianapolis hours before leaving it for the first time. We left our home four years ago today.

Since then, we have lived in China for 20 months and have now been in Vietnam for over two years. And we have a wide diversity of friends.

Countries our friends are from:

Australia

Thailand

South Africa

Jamaica

Peru

England

Taiwan

Vietnam

Mexico

New Zealand

France

Romania

Ireland

Russia

China 

South Korea

Canada

Malaysia

Singapore

I am sure there are a few I haven't thought of, but these are the people we associate with. And with so many different cultures over the years, a level of flexibility is necessary. However, I have to acknowledge that it wasn't our flexibility that gave us such a diverse friend group. It was our circumstances.

When you live the expat life, you meet a lot of other people doing the same. Yes, we get to know many of the locals, but we also meet up with and get to know the people who are "foreigners" here. Wherever they may be from.

When I lived in Indianapolis, I guess I had a diversity of friends. I met a lot of people through my job at Amazon and had friends from all walks of life. People of various colors, creeds, religions, and countries. There I had friends from six different African nations. Immigrants from Tanzania, Kenya, Senegal, Namibia, Egypt, and Ghana. However, once again, I met these people because of my job. I guess it does require some flexibility in order for us to form friendships, but work gets the credit for putting us together.

I grew up in an all-white, Polish Catholic community. A very small town.

I don't write this to make it sound like it was a racist place. Many small towns across America are the result of settlers from a couple hundred years ago settling there. The town I lived in and a few of the surrounding towns were heavily comprised of people with Polish ancestry. In fact, a few of the old-timers still spoke Polish. A few towns over was a town of heavy German ancestry. That's where you could go to buy the best sausages. You still can. There was another town that was heavily French. These cultural distinctions are still evident today despite it being many generations since the towns were founded by people emigrating from those countries.

However, being all European settlements meant basically all white residents. Growing up, this was my group of friends.

Can you say DRUNKEN REDNECKS?

There are a few of my old crowd missing from that picture, but you can trust me when I say they would just be more of the same. The only diversity among our group was when we decided to spring for Stag beer instead of our usual cheap Milwaukee's Best.

I am not saying anything bad about these guys. They were (and still are) some of the best friends I ever had. And as for the lack of diversity, it wasn't because of a deficiency of flexibility or racism. It was because of proximity and geography. Most of us had no real interactions with Asians, Latinos, or African-Americans until we turned sixteen and had to get jobs in the bigger city where there was work.

Other cultures just weren't around. There were Polish people and the few of us who weren't. Even if we had a black friend from the city, it's not like they would have wanted to come hang out in our redneck haven anyway. And I can't say I would blame them.

I am not trying to claim there was no racism in my small town. There was, but I have to admit that I was probably blind to most of it since it didn't affect me and, other than the occasional after-school special, I'd never been challenged to even think about it.

I remember going off to college when I was about 30 and loving the fact that I had a neighbor family from Myanmar. Across the hall were three roommates from three African nations. All men who had left their families behind to get an American education and would then return home. I have never had this kind of proximity with the outer-world before.

So, thank you to the cookie for having so much faith in my flexible nature, but location must be given its credit also. I am sure that if I had never left Scheller, IL, I still wouldn't really have international friends or friends of different colors other than people I might meet at work.

 I am so grateful for the intercultural experiences I am having now and wouldn't trade them for anything.

Checking In With Myself

Every now and then it is a good idea to stop and take a little inventory of what is happening in your life. I did this about a year ago and when I stumbled upon that post, I thought I would try it again.

MAKING 

Lots and lots of great memories. My life for the last five years has been a whirlwind of travel, activity, and adventure. I love my life and just wish to keep making more of it.

 

COOKING

Due to the global pandemic and all the adjustments that have been made to accommodate our new restrictions, we have done more cooking in the last few months. Of course, the way we cook here is radically different than when we were in the States. Not only do we not have access to most of the foods we are familiar with from America, but the kitchen setup is different also. For example, we do not have an oven. No one here does. Baking is just not something people here do. We cook a lot of meals with a small pressure cooker. We make some amazing chicken and rice dishes and I have learned how to bake potatoes with it. This week we are going to buy an air fryer. I am very excited to start using it.

DRINKING

One of the perks of living in Vietnam is their phenomenal coffee. It is wonderful. It doesn't just taste better, it is a totally different kind of coffee.  First, the world recognizes the Arabica bean as the superior bean. Coffee shops in America advertise 100% Arabica. However, it is the Robusta bean that grows here. So, before we even get into the different process they use here, they already use a different kind of bean. The Robusta bean has a stronger flavor and can be quite bitter if not prepared properly. The flavor is so much stronger, the Vietnamese do not understand the concept of Arabica bean coffee. It just tastes likes dirty water to them. That's why Starbucks, despite their many efforts, keeps failing here. The Vietnamese just don't like it.

The most popular coffee here is cà phê sữa đá (iced coffee). It is a slow drip coffee filtered through a small metal pot directly into your glass. A small amount of condensed milk is added and it is served in ice. It is a very small amount of coffee, but the caffeine level is through the roof. That small drink is all you need.

 Our favorite brand is a type of weasel coffee. The weasel coffees are made with beans that have been passed through the digestive tract of a weasel. This is not a joke. Weasels are very picky about which beans they eat. They only eat the best, so those are the beans you want. The weasel swallows them whole and only digests the outside of the shell. The rest is passed through and made into great coffee.

When I'm not drinking coffee, I drink my aloe juice and rice milk.

The rest of the time, it is beer.

READING

I am currently about 80% through The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This is one of those books that everyone knows exists, but I had no idea what the actual story was. I never saw the Disney movie. I'm really enjoying it.

 I'm also reading: 

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by John Haidt

Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate by Greg Lukianoff

 

WANTING

That air fryer. I may run out and get it today.

 

LOOKING

I've had my eye out for a recliner for the last couple of months. We are going to be in this house for a long time and our living room sofa is terrible. More than 10 minutes in it causes a backache. I'm ready for some comfort.

 

PLAYING

I haven't really been playing anything, but I feel like my XBOX misses me. We should get reacquainted.

WASTING

I often feel like I am wasting time. I am quite happy with my life, but sometimes feel guilty that I'm not doing anything with it. I have a lot of free time. I am not bored, but sometimes wonder if I should be doing something.

WISHING

I would like to see my family. I'm not particularly homesick, but being so far away during this pandemic has greatly restricted travel. I couldn't leave this country without some major expense and hassle. And it would be impossible to get back in for the foreseeable future since the borders are locked. Not having the option to being able to see family makes me want to do it more.

  

ENJOYING

Life

 

WAITING

For the world to open up again.

  

LIKING

My freedom of being released from the traditional work force.

  

WONDERING

If I have already seen certain family members for the last time. With the state of the world right now, I honestly do not have any idea when I will be able to get back to the States. My parents are in their 70's. They are in great health, but old enough that it must be accepted they are in their last years. Plus, with a deadly virus ravaging around, you never know who might get sick and succumb to it. Not only my parents, but my kids, siblings, etc.

LOVING

The sun, my house, my wife, my free time.

 

MARVELING

At how I landed where I am. And at how long it took me to figure it out. I could have had this life 20 years ago if I had figured it out.

 

NEEDING

Not much. The only thing I can think of is "This town needs a decent Mexican restaurant."

 

SMELLING

The rice is being harvested right now. So, every time we step out for an errand the smell of the freshly cut rice crop is in the air. It is wonderful.

 

WEARING

T-shirt and shorts. No shoes. Same thing I wear every day.

 

FOLLOWING

I have recently started following a YouTube channel called Half as Interesting. It is great. Very educational and funny.

 

NOTICING

How many of my friends are morons and racists. The condition of the world and America right now has shown many people's true colors.

 

KNOWING

That I don't know nearly as much about anything as I thought I did.

 

THINKING

Life is what you make of it.

 

FEELING

Supremely content, but quite nostalgic lately.

 

OPENING

A new beer every day. Well, a few new beers.

 

LAUGHING

Every day. This one is easy.