fashion faux pas

Jean tights, crocs heels, and combovers are a few fashion faux pas that usually have me questioning the decision making skills of the person sporting such fashion. Yet, as silly as socks with sandals (unfortunately, my mother sports this look at times...ugh!) or hose with open-toe shoes look, the local fashion of the big-toe sock with flip flops just drive me batty!

Many wear these socks to protect their feet from a suntan. Some wear them to keep their feet warm. In either case, perhaps they should not be wearing flip flops in the first place.

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.

all-purpose tool

One day while in an elevator, I pointed out to an expat that Vietnamese will generally keep their hairy moles, especially on their face, and not trim the facial hair as it somehow represents luck. He then asked if that was why the men had long point fingernails, primarily the pinky. Yeah, ummmm....no. The man next to me on the ferry today happen to have all his fingers long and pointy. Some have argued that it is similar to Asian women's desire to be white - i.e., a sign of wealth as people with long nails are less likely to do a lot of manual labor (see quest for snow white). While that may have been the case many centuries ago or perhaps an urban legend to make it seem a status symbol of sorts, the reality is that it is for more practical reasons - picking noses and cleaning out ear wax.

That sure makes one think twice before shaking someone's hand when noticing the long pinky nail, or better yet, when that person is making the sandwich that was ordered at Subway.

a minority of minorities

I read an article today: Some Asians' College Strategy: Don't Check 'Asian'. While I understand the merits of collecting individuals' data such as gender and race, I have always been against the usage of such data though to make decisions such as quotas, etc. Many decades or centuries ago, that may have been a necessary evil to level the playing field but it should be a secondary factor, after other merits have been accomplished rather than a primary.

Growing up, the push in the American Vietnamese community was always for every kid to be a doctor. It did not matter which type, it was just important for parents to boast that their kid got into the medical profession, and if they could not get into one field, they would keep taking their MCATs and applying to various schools until they got in somewhere. It became disheartening to see the impacts to the children and how they were judged later in life: even though the person may have wanted to be a veterinarian because of his/her love for animals, it was presumed that the person got into that field because he/she could not get into a real medical school. I never liked the scene and the environment it created for the next generation (see me love you long time (part 3) and code of silence (#sue, #secretsociety123)). It drove me away from the field of medicine entirely although I always excelled at science and math and would have been a great forensic scientist (picture CSI).

I never understood the appeal of doctors to the community. It was always doctors, but if you couldn't do it, lawyers were also acceptable. Why? Where did this idea come from? At some point, I thought it was because those professions were very wealthy in Vietnam. However, during my family's first trip to Vietnam in the late 1990s, it was very obvious that doctors were poor and worked hard - they had to have chosen the profession for the pure desire to help others rather than for financial gain. Lawyers are practically non-existent in a country with a lack of an established court system that isn't mired in corruption. As for the push for education, kids were taken out of schools to do odd jobs to support the family and even married off so that the family didn't have to support the daughter anymore (see it takes a village (part 2)). Families who have connections actually push children to specialize in some field where they can obtain government jobs since it is well known that the financial gain is not in the salary but in the briberies - even to the point that people pay officials to get the position in the first place. Families with money, which is usually because of a tie to the government, would send their children abroad to study, and usually the children would return at some point, to take on a government position.

So the push was not because of the culture that they came from, it was the opportunity that they saw in the country they now adopted. Doctors and lawyers were viewed as the affluent individuals in America. While they wanted for their children to be successful and have the wealth that they struggled to have as immigrant parents, the pressures and competition have done a different type of harm to the first generation of immigrant children. Asians had to excel more just to get a fighting chance to get into the same universities as their Caucasian peers simply because the people they were competing against were not the Caucasians or other ethnicities, it was their own kind. The bar had been raised, and that's when the statistics that these universities collected and used to fill the Asian quota clearly disregarded that the population that met the primary metrics was significantly larger.

My entire life I was treated as a minority in a small town in Texas. Yet when it was time to apply for universities, I no longer qualified as a 'minority' on minority scholarships. Native Americans who have been in the country the longest qualified yet Asians, one of the more recent ethnic groups to the US, were not. This was another form of discrimination in that some people in their infinite wisdom did not view that Asians had hardships when it came to education. Just because my parents instilled in me to 'keep studying' even when I finished homework does not justify that I did not go through some form of hardship. So not only did I not qualify for a minority scholarship which I sorely needed given my immigrant family's financial situation, I was also discriminated in that Asians in most schools still had to meet a quota, regardless of the fact that significantly more were vying for the few slots allotted to the ethnic group.

For those reasons, I banned the University of Texas from my short list. Both my siblings went there, and my mother even cut off my education funds until I transferred back to there. Yet, on principle, I refused to go to a college where I would be treated as a minority but not be able to benefit as a minority in the same fashion as the other minorities. The double discrimination was debilitating. To this day, I also do not check certain boxes - while the company says that a people survey is anonymous, if in checking the boxes, it is clear that I am the only Asian female partner in a particular function in a particular office, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the anonymity has just got thrown out the window. Even in Vietnam, while Asian may not be a factor, it is pretty easy to figure someone out in a small office based on the numerous statistical questions, which eventually would discourage honest feedback. The fear of retaliation is another debilitating factor to counter the power of anonymity.

in a blink of an eye

I have been to a handful of weddings already. In some cases, I've been invited to a number where I barely or did not even know the bride or groom. Actually it is just the reception that most people are invited to. The ceremony itself is usually in front of a small gathering of family and close friends whereby the groom's family goes to the bride's family's house (since women usually still live at home until they are married) in order to bring her to her new home. A small ceremony in front of an alter of incense and dead family members is performed to receive ancestral blessings. In the US, many Vietnamese have some form of this ceremony and in many cases, modified with a church wedding or similar ceremony.

However, the one thing that still amazes me is what I call the "eat and run" behavior. Vietnamese usually give money rather than gifts. This in many cases, turn out to be a huge money-maker for the bride and groom. As there are given protocols for the sum that is gifted, many couples would pick venues or times that are more cost effective to maximize the profits. More so in the North than the South, this may also entail holding receptions during lunch or afternoon of a weekday, causing people to take off of work in order to attend since restaurants are usually cheaper then. The couple is busy greeting each table to toast and collect the money envelopes. Courses are usually timed to give the couple enough time to make the rounds, but as soon as the last course is served, which is usually fruit (no wedding cake, as that is usually made of cardboard for pictures), people start leaving. At this last wedding I went to which had approximately 40 tables (or 400 people), an individual had stopped by to say hi and bye to a friend and me. By the time the 10-minute conversation was over, we were the only ones still seated at any table. The room had literally cleared out in a blink of an eye.

Another tradition that baffles me, especially after my exposure to American weddings, is the number of those wearing white. Despite this picture, the bride does wear white...well, she wears anywhere from 3-5 different outfits, all rented of course. When it came to the bouquet toss, which is an adopted tradition as it wasn't at the other receptions I attended, swarms of young ladies in white showed up. In fact, they were all in white. It occurred to me that this may have been their way to notify men as to who were available. Needless to say, I was not in white.