Soon...
Today's post is a hodge-podge. How long has it been since you've heard THAT term? If your answer is "all my life", ask your parents... but only if you can't figure it out before the end of the post.
Click here for ANOTHER reason to stop eating beef:
"Giving up beef will reduce carbon footprint more than cars, says expert.
"Study shows red meat dwarfs others for environmental impact, using 28 times more land and 11 times water (than) for pork or chicken."
Video: Hanoi police hunt man for allowing dog to drive motorbike
Why am I unsurprised?
"Some places remain unknown because no one has ever ventured forth.
Others remain so because no one has ever come back."—unattributed
"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before"—Mae West
I wrote, in a number of previous posts, about my challenges with the Vietnamese language. I met a guy the other day who's only been here a couple months longer than I and his Vietnamese is impressive. He told me that he has a gift for languages, but don't ask him to do math. I'm really good at math and don't need that gift anymore... who do I see about swapping my math chip out for a language chip?
Most of you readers probably have little familiarity trying to learn a tonal language, so I'll give you a few examples. These are only some examples (and I'm sure there are others) of, depending on how you pronounce it:
1) tam could mean
- a shower (tấm)
- a toothpick (tăm)
- sheets (tấm)
- garlic (tỏi)
- I or me (tôi)
- sin (tội)
- head (đầu)
- strawberry (dâu)
- pain (đau)
- where (đâu)
- sugar (đường)
- street (đường)
- male (năm)
- 5 (năm)
- year (năm)
I know I've more than once asked the waitress for a shower. They've never said yes, though occasionally I'll get a toothpick.
I'm unsure if the colloquialism is the same here, but if I ever get slapped asking for a strawberry, I'll know why.
Five years is "năm năm" if talking about a length of time. If you're talking about five years old, that is "năm tuổi".
Just kill me now!
My says that my attempts to speak Vietnamese are "same same baby". At least when the baby speaks, people don't hold their hands vertically and rotate them rapidly (what I call the WTF)! LOL
Funny video:
"There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't."
Click here for an incredible motorcycle drifting video
This is a very moving video poem:
A few weeks ago, My and I flew to Đà Nẵng for a long weekend. One of the things we like to do, wherever we are is "di gau" (ride around—that's MY way of writing what I hear her say when she wants to do it).
As we were riding around Đà Nẵng, we stopped for a light and a Vietnamese man rode up and stopped next to us; about four feet away. Normally, I won't look around if someone stops out of grabbing range, though this time I did look over and I have no idea why. I'm very glad I looked, though, because as soon as he came to a complete stop, the man fell wobbled and fell over... in slow motion.
Fcuking drunks!
He was trapped under his bike and, as he tried to get out from under it, started flopping like a landed trout. A few people left their bikes in the middle of the street and ran to help him. My started to get off the bike to help and I stopped her. I said that he didn't deserve her help and that as soon as he got upright, he'd be off and riding again, possibly right at us. We got way out of there and out of his future.
Drunks on motorbikes are a problem here. Virtually every evening I ride, I get passed by someone on a fast scooter who's either wobbling or bobbing and weaving when going straight is a better option. The biggest problem I have is that they come up from behind so fast that they're hardly visible in the mirrors and even if they were, any evasive move on my part might put me in their addled path.
This ingenuity popped up on my radar last week and it is now how I fold my t-shirts (video):
The title of my next blog may be... "Not all those who wander are lost."—J.K.K. Tolkien
Speaking of blog names, thank you for your numerous suggestions for my possibly upcoming "Riding the World" adventure blog. At this point, the leading contender is Global Hopscotch. Unfortunately, www.globalhopscotch.com is taken by one of those squatting companies that makes money while not contributing anything to society—though that won't keep me from using the name.
This last quote I saved 'til now 'cause I'll lose a couple of you... I also took one word out of the last line to mitigate the losses. I have no idea who wrote it; I just agree with it.
Religion is like a penis.
It's okay to have one;
It's fine to be proud of it;
But please don't whip it out in public and start waving it around;
And PLEASE don't try to shove it down my throat.
Have you ever had a Buddhist preach to you about how you're going to hell?
I haven't and I'll bet I've encountered more of them than most westerners...
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