heart beats

Traveling again, especially to less developed countries, makes COVID seem like an episode of the Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. While some still wear masks, most are doing so to protect from the smog and pollution, especially when the primary mode of transportation is motorbikes. While many in my circle, including myself, contracted COVID, with some, as many as four+ times, luckily, none passed away from it.

But what will never fully be quantified will be the deaths that occurred because of COVID's impact in the world, from logistics/economy (e.g., overtaxed medical system, inability to get food and resources to those in need due to transportation and/or financial constraints) to mental health (e.g., depression, broken relationships, stress). The huge demand for emotional support animals also resulted in the unfortunate abandonment of such furry friends when life adjusted to a new normal, ranging from an increase of 25% in places like England to 50% in India. 

At the same time, in a country where animals were generally kept for functional purposes (e.g., security or rodent management), I was surprised and elated to see how pets are now being treated in Vietnam, with a significant increase in pet clinics/veterinarians, groomers, boarders, and even cat cafes for people to pay to spend time with the kitties. Walking past a Vietnamese man sitting on a little stool at a local street cafe cuddling and talking to his canine pal made my heart smile. Of course, the experience made me think of baby girl, followed by the excitement of the imminent adoption of her kin.

While I had wished I had captured the loving scene for my IG stories (a new way to catalog my travels), I was happy to just be present. Seeing an IG message from an old high school friend, who had shared that she had been enjoying my travel 'stories', I was saddened to hear the passing of my prom 'date' the day before. He had died of a heart attack in his sleep. He marks the third man in my circle and age group, with the other two being college classmates, who have been victims of the leading cause of deaths in the US since the start of the pandemic. Another close friend who was a surrogate father at a point in my life also succumbed to the disease; however, he was older and had a history battling the disease.

Unlike with the 'surrogate father', there was no warning, and perhaps with the stresses of the pandemic, it became the silent killer that we can't prepare for. When I had gotten word that Jay (22 and 11:11 (part 10)) passed right before Christmas 2020, intermixed with the initial shock was a smile and a knowing that Jay had beat us all in accomplishing his life's dream, that kept us up late at night for hours just connecting and talking about all the complexities of life. I knew that where I may have missed my initial train (11:11 (part 10)), Jay made his. I still feel Jay with me at times, as recently as saudade (part 6).

I knew that most news happen in Facebook, so upon hearing the news about my prom 'date', I temporarily reinstated Facebook, something I had deleted since the pandemic, to find that the news of his passing had not made it there yet. However, it was with a happy yet saudade heart that I soon discovered that he recently got married in December 2022. We weren't really in contact since high school, as I left a lot of that trauma behind for me. But when I had joined Facebook in late 2008, he found me and had messaged me to see how I was doing. We must have kept in touch sporadically after that as I have his contact information. In looking at our Facebook messenger chat, the next and last time we had contact was before the pandemic, when I had sent him a YouTube video on 'Twin Flames/Soulmates/Divine Partners - Searching For Answers', it must have been in response to a post he had as my intro was 'this may help you'.

As with Jay, I knew Steven had finally realized his dream. Much like Helen in Sliding Doors, he met his boo. He had struggled so long to come out of the closet and find 'home'. It seems fitting that it is also Pride Month, which although there still isn't a parade in Ho Chi Minh City to commemorate it, there are more visible signs including companies supporting and sponsoring activities around the city. It brings me such peace to know that for all of these men in my life, they were surrounded by love when their hearts stopped beating.

* * * * *

Update August 20, 2023:

At the age of 33, her heart also stopped in the middle of the night. As a pre-teen, she was diagnosed with long QT syndrome that caused her parents to pull her out of soccer which she loved. As an adult, she made the decision to live life and not let the condition debilitate her. Skydiving for her was not only defying gravity but also her genetic predisposition. She forgave easily and loved fully. Her family gifted me her last creation that had a special meaning to her, from the careful curation of the gemstones for their meaning and her favorite colors to her spirit animal that contain three hearts and nine brains, one in each tentacle and the biggest brain-to-body ratio of the invertebrates, making it one of the most intelligent marine species.

My Octopus Teacher brought us into their worlds, showing us the ability for these colorful creatures to form relationships with humans. While known to be solitary creatures, scientists are recently discovering the complexity of their ability to form relationships among themselves, utilizing colors to communicate, and with other species. In one experiment, four octopi were given MDMA, and despite serotonin transporters nearly identical to humans, scientists had hypothesized that its lack of the parts of the brain that results in behavioral changes from drug use would override, negating any impacts. They were surprised to see that the octopi were all cuddly.

This behavior has usually only been observed during mating, which marks the beginning of senescence and their eventual deaths. The female spends over six months guarding her thousands of eggs, unable to catch prey to nourish herself, slowing starving herself and with her last breath, uses her siphon to blow the hatchlings into their new world.

In her own way, Jessica left those she loved with parts of herself that will guide them to their new 'world'. I finished her special mala today before her memorial service. After cleansing and charging the energy in the moonlight, I set the intention of the mala to live fully and love wholeheartedly. While already on the journey of carpe diem and 11:11 (part 4), I know along with Jay, Jess will guide me towards the remainder of my journey.

culo up

Since a spontaneous yet fateful motorcycle tour around Bangkok, I have always loved motorcycles. The irony though is although it is on my bucket list to own one, I have not quite learned how to ride one, which would require quite a bit of customization given my size.

In some countries, it is fairly common to own a scooter, motorbike or motorcycle, yet I have found that there is some common personality trait that would draw someone to owning certain types of motorcycles, and perhaps that is the trait that appeals to my adventurous side (face of the girl (part 1)).

So when offered a trip to Caorle to see the Adriatic Sea on the last weekend of summer on motorcycles to avoid the traffic, given the crowds, I was more than game. My motorcycle host though was coming from his family's country estate in the mountains, and while he owned a few motorcycles, his options were limited to what he had stored at the country house.

My friend dubs it the 'culo (ass) up' bike. It is designed as a motorcycle for racing, and not very practical for passengers although it has an option to attach a passenger seat. Given its design, the passenger is sitting higher up than the rider, which results in a very uncomfortable position that probably works for shorter rather than longer rides. With the ride being approximately 40 minutes each way, my body was definitely sore for days. Luckily, my companions offered to provide massages, including one whom I found out had studied to be a professional masseuse in his career explorations.

Caorle, known as Little Venice, is a beautiful little beach town with colorful buildings and history. The Sanctuary of the Madonna dell'angelo had its own claim to a miracle in 1727 when the entire town was flooded while the church on the sea was left unscathed. It even has its very own leaning tower, one of the few circular bell towers in Italy.

The Adriatic Sea is shallow in general, with average depth of 173 meters. However, most of the northern part of the sea is less than 100 meters, which was amazing to see and great for families with small children. It was as if everyone is walking on water for as far as the eyes could see. With shallow water comes warm water temperatures even for Northern Italy.

The fellows' idea to take motorcycles rather than a car was a great idea given the immense traffic at the end of the evening as families were taking advantage of the last days of summer. While it was great to be able to swerve in and out of traffic between the cars on the way home, I did miss the ability to hit high speeds on a racing motorcycle. My host though was kind enough to oblige when he could with a few pop-a-wheelies and slowing to a crawl in order to hit speeds of 160km/hr, even if for a short stint. Though sore and tired, we ended the day with great laughs over pizza roulette.

lights, cameras, action!

While Christmas is not a national holiday, the Western influence and marketing of retailers have hit Vietnam in preparation of Christmas and Tet. During the hot season, there have been a number of blackouts and rolling brownouts but this has not deterred such businesses from decking out their facilities with tons of Christmas lights. The last few weeks in District 1 has been quite claustrophobic with all the crowds, regardless of weekends or weekdays, coming into town to take family pictures with all the Christmas lights.

Children are dressed up in cute red Santa outfits that are sold all over the street stalls. Motorbikes just stop in the middle of the road as people wait for family members to take pictures with the lights and displays. Sidewalks are packed with families from all walks of life - young/old, city/country dwellers, couples/families, etc. With the Southeast Asian lack of courtesy when it comes to personal space, people are practically on top of each other to get a decent picture with the displays without strangers encroaching in the frame. Perhaps this is why it seems more crowded compared to the large number of tourists that I'm used to in NYC during the Christmas season.

Christmas is one of my favorite holidays, and I generally love the lights and decorations, including spending the hours to put up the decorations in my home in the US for the few days of enjoyment while I'm usually in town. It does strike me as ironic that so many are out and about to enjoy the festivities, yet know little, if anything at all, regarding the purpose of the season. I also realize that many in the States have also lost sight of the reason for the season. 

santarchy

Three years ago, one of the expats decided to start his own tradition - Santarchy. While Santarchy was a way for expats to get together to go on a pub crawl around Ho Chi Minh City, it has become a showstopper for the locals. There are a number of Catholics in the country; however, a majority are Buddhists so Christmas is not a national holiday. While it wasn't the original purpose, it was a pleasant unintended consequence to bring some Christmas cheer to the local night life.

As with any expat event, there is always some theme attached, which in this case includes everyone dressed up in Santa outfits. A bicycle is souped up with a lit rudolph head affixed to a car battery and ipod tunes, with a cooler carrying roadies for all. During the pub crawl, traffic stops as locals take family pictures with the Santas. Even the billiard/bar girls stopped work for a bit to watch the festivities.

Note to self: flip flops are more conducive to pub crawls with uneven sidewalks than heels.

got milk?

There are obvious things that make me homesick:

• images of my nieces and nephews on skype
• my niece telling me to hurry up and come home for Christmas
• messages from friends telling me stories of their adventures (and missing their friend/wingwoman)
• messages of encouragement and enjoyment from my stupid blog posts
• messages of concern from family and friends when they haven't seen me on skype, instant message, social media, or blogging in awhile

However, there are also things that on a daily basis, one takes for granted until it is gone. Bangkok is somewhere in between the developed and third world countries. It's got all the amenities of Western lifestyle at emerging market prices. Surprisingly, these are the things that Bangkok made me realized that I miss:

• speed and fast cars - the expressways and wider streets as well as less motorbikes/scooters enable cars to go faster than the 20-30 mph in Vietnam.
• lines/queues - people actually respected this concept rather than squeezing into every nook and cranny that they could in order to get in front of you.
• mass transit - getting a taxi to get around town gets old, and sometimes I just want to be an anonymous person in a crowded car to people watch without having to sit in traffic.
• sweet fruit - there are mangos and all sorts of tropical fruit in this region; however, Vietnamese tend to eat the more sour/bland type fruits, dipping them into chili/salt or chili/fish sauce concoctions rather than eat the riper/sweeter version of such fruit.
• chains - we have KFC, Subway and Dominos, but the regulations, market protection and/or access to supplies, including distribution channel and infrastructure, have increased the entry costs for businesses like McDonald's and Starbucks. Gosh, I sure miss the Mickey D's french fries and sundaes.
• quietness - if you don't pay close attention to the words, the intonation of Thai is very similar to Vietnamese. Yet, it seems as if Vietnamese have a tendency to talk over their counterparts, resulting in everyone raising their voices trying to outdo each other. This makes for a very loud elevator ride. Thai people seemed to have a gentleness about them from their helpfulness in the outdoor markets to their tone of speech.
• array of entertainment - HCMC has a number of bars, restaurants and clubs that can keep a girl's schedule pretty busy; however, there are times where I miss having a nice lounge or places for pure entertainment such as Broadway shows, musical/variety shows and the typical red light district that is for both genders. I haven't found the Patpong of Vietnam yet.

A friend asked me this week if there are things that I miss to put in a care package. I have a wicked sweet tooth so like to bake rather than cook. I insisted on finding a place with an oven, which is not common here. I always hated the taste of milk. Growing up, mom always made us drink a glass of milk every day before going to school, claiming that milk (despite the short genes that I inherited from both parents) would make us grow. We tried everything from chocolate milk to strawberry powder to make me tolerate the taste. Yet, I still would try to find ways to not have to drink it, including pouring the glass of milk that my mother had set out before she went to work down the drain, of course until my brother ratted me out.

So it was a bit ironic that the first thing that came to my mind of what I miss when my friend asked the question was fresh milk. The pasteurized milk with shelf life of multiple months just doesn't taste the same with cereal. My baking recipes also would need to be adjusted - all of a sudden it makes sense why my friend Rae had a tough time with making cupcakes, cookies, etc. while living in France where they also had the shelf milk. I'm going to have to find guinea pigs for eating my creations while I experiment with the local ingredients in my American recipes.

Factoid: Lack of access to lactose products like dairy products has resulted in more than 95% of those in Asian countries genetically being lactose intolerant. Luckily, I can still enjoy my ice cream cravings; however, there are times where I wish my mother would accept her lactose intolerance and not subject us to the repercussions. 😜

what's your sign?

Next weekend commemorates Liberation Day and International Workers' Day, which means we get a long weekend. While the places to visit here are so vast, being procrastinators practically ensures a local vacation and/or some creativity, as flights are booked months in advance, so we were limited to a few locales, of which one was Cambodia. While getting on a scooter and driving aimlessly would have been an interesting adventure, I was advised that it wouldn't be a good time to start learning. 

Although gambling here is just as big of a vice as any other country, the limited casinos in the country are limited to foreign passport holders in an effort to encourage locals to not gamble their limited income away. However, when there is a will, there's always a way so locals will go the short distance to Cambodia to have their casino fix. With that in mind, we decided to avoid the crazy tourists at the Cambodian casinos and head to Siem Reap for a 'mates weekend' [Aussie English].

Somewhere in passing on recommendations on Siem Reap activities, a comment was made regarding an 'accountant's' personality. For those who make assumptions about me based on categories that I fall into - age, gender, ethnicity, zodiac sign, profession, title, etc. (trifecta), they will tend to be wrong and disappointed. Perhaps because of this conflict between assumption and reality, a number have remarked that I'm a complex person, when ironically, I view myself as pretty simple - what you see is what you get.

There is one category that seems to fit me a bit better - Myers Briggs. While I took it late in life during a management development program, I think it would help people interact and understand others better if this was ingrained earlier, similar to knowing your zodiac sign. There are numerous apps that address this, including one that my company is building. Imagine using that app to help one pick up someone in a bar based on recommendations on how to best interact with a personality type. There's a market there.

My friend ended up taking a quick version of the test, which became a 'things you should know before we travel together' comical exchange, including quoting bits and pieces out of context from various summaries. One blurb reminded me of something a fortune teller here recently told me regarding the shape and size of my lips - when I love, I love passionately but when I'm done with the relationship, I am so done and never look back. There must be some correlation between lips and Myers Briggs.

Once the INTP has committed themself to a relationship, they tend to be very faithful and loyal, and form affectionate attachments which are pure and straight-forward. The INTP has no interest or understanding of game-playing with regards to relationships. However, if something happens which the INTP considers irreconciliable, they will leave the relationship and not look back.

So the typical accountant is an ESTJ (which many believe George W. Bush falls into this category). Note the number of differences even in the acronyms - so while I always thought that my struggle in my career had to do with either gender or ethnic differences/ceilings, the reality is that I just come from a different mold. The end of the exchange was 'You get compared to Albert Einstein. I get compared to Madonna! That's funny as hell!' He later retorted, 'Does this make me a prima donna?'

Then again, my ex and a number of people, who have known me for years, have likened me to Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the girl with the dragon tattoo). I will admit Albert Einstein is a huge stretch. 😉

seeing green

While there was no parade, a number of people still took off of work or left early to start their liquid diets for St. Patty's. O'Brien's is one of the few Irish bars in Ho Chi Minh City. It is owned by a French Vietkieu and was packed with a lot of Westerners.

The owner had a lucky draw (i.e., raffle) with prizes donated by the local Friends of Ireland. Because it was so packed, and my friend knew the owner, we ended up sitting at his table. As people came in, he would try to stop them to give a raffle ticket. It turned out to be an interesting social experiment - many assumed he was a local trying to pawn/sell them something, some ignored him and kept walking, a good number couldn't believe that the tickets were free and took out their wallets, and one woman actually thought he was trying to give her his bill to pay.

Near the door, people would deposit their helmets on a table. Throughout the night, the table would go through periods of being emptied and replenished of helmets. As we were leaving around midnight, I noticed that they were thinning out. As if crossing a street wasn't a challenge already, it occurred to me that a drunk driver on a scooter somehow had to be more dangerous than one behind the wheel of a car. 

We did end up winning a fishing excursion in the Saigon River, which is the equivalent of fishing off of the Hudson River. It's a toss up as to whether you would catch polluted fish or a dead body. Guess that's the luck of the Irish, mate.

al fresco to go

I had to work late last night because of a deadline. A coworker/friend got on instant messenger after putting her son to bed, and asked me if I had eaten yet. In the relatively short time, she has gotten to know that I eat late (NYC habits). Since I'm still in temporary housing, my kitchen is not fully equipped for late night mac & cheese or ramen noodle excursions. I lost track of time and had not gone out to forage for food. She asked me if I wanted pizza. While I've eaten Japanese, Malaysian, French, Chinese, and even Indian since I've been here, pizza, especially one that delivered, was not something I thought was readily available. Of course, I wasn't sure if this was going to be Italian (or even American) pizza or a local version with soy sauce and tofu. Cheese is usually pricey here as milk products are not usually plentiful, which explains the high percentage of lactose-intolerant Asians.

While Domino's maintain its 30-minute guarantee (even on a scooter), it's last delivery order is at 9:30pm. So my friend called a number of establishments (turns out her Canadian husband has a number of them on speed dial) and placed an order for me - a 'shrooms thick crust pizza. The delivery man handed me the following...

Yes, that is 6 packets of ketchup. My excitement quickly turned into a stomach-churning fear that I was about to eat bread with ketchup. I don't know if it was the prospect of food at 11pm or the loads of garlic that was in the sauce, but it sure was yummy! I did solve the mystery of the ketchup packets. Supposedly, people in the South like things sweet, the Northerners (Hanoi) like them salty, and those in the middle are all about spicy. So the ketchup was to add some sweetness. Clearly, I'm in the right place given my vice for sugar (after all, I put 6 sugar packets in a cup of Lipton tea), or perhaps that explains my propensity since I was born here.

Good thing my kitchen is equipped with an oven (third time's the charm) because I've never been a fan of nuked pizza. Although I know some who enjoy cold pizza for breakfast, it's never been my cup of tea, but I may have to try ketchup on it tonight. When in Rome...

me love you long time (part 2)

In a country where most single people, and many married couples, still live at home with their parents, is there such a thing as privacy? The sidewalks are crowded with young people entertaining each other in their 'mock' living rooms - playing cards, scrapbooking, 'chit chatting'... The early worm stakes spots where there are stools and near street vendors. Others lay out sheets of paper/old posters for groups of friends to sit on. There are even parking areas near these sidewalk spaces for people to have someone watch their vehicles. While I'm constantly amazed at the many uses of a motorbike/scooter over here, which I will cover in a future post, some opt to use them to stake claim on other parts of the sidewalk. Alas...the love machine!

When the sun goes down regardless of the day, parks and other public places are filled with couples 'parking' on these love machines. The borders of these public areas are lined with them but I'm told that the deeper you go into the parks, the more there are as it tends to be darker in those places. There are a number of establishments that also rent rooms by the hour for the equivalent of USD 2, which at face value seems a reasonable option lest one forget the low average salary in this country or the condition of such rooms. Perhaps there is a higher tendency for exhibitionism and voyeurism here, or perhaps it is the dirty American mindset that would assume that there is more than just a private place to share a moment together with simple conversation.

Regardless of whether people get hot and heavy or sit and chat, how do they balance on the kickstands of them dang things? Another item to put on the bucket list.