‘Cause I’m Mr. Highside

YES!!!!!!! Such a great movie. Although I *don’t* think it’s quite as epic as the first one, it was still an excellent cinematic experience.

And next Friday is X-Files! What a month this is going to be…

me: well if u want pho then we can go
me: if u want somethin else then im not hungry

Another SV gone, another sad day. Here’s a moment of the last and essentially only ride I ever took this bike out for. The bike I swore I would never sell and keep forever is another victim of the fickle and unstable reality I create around myself.

This is a greeaatt song if you can find it anywhere. I’ll be your best pal if you find it and share with me

Ricky Kicklighter - On and On

I still don’t really get lyrics, regardless of language. But it sounds nice.

> Clicky

It was 1am when I was distracted from my work by possibly one of the most touching movies I’ve ever seen. If you get a chance to watch it without reading up on spoilers, it’s much worth it. I only regret that I hadn’t paid attention to the beginning more, and rewatching it now having known the story would just not be the same. But I’ll probably try to find it to watch again anyways. You should do the same!

You know those myths about playing certain songs backwards to hear Satanic messages. Well this guy puts a few of them together, including a pretty funny one from Britney. The Beatles actually are a bit scary… enjoy.

> Clicky

fock I’m tired.

Technically it’s a new day so this can be today’s song. Yes I’ve been posting Asian songs ever since I’ve been back, but no mystery there, eh? I’m still rockaholic to the bone but searching for songs that I heard during my trip has me stumbling across countless other goodies. Sadly I don’t even understand half the lyrics in the Vietnamese songs, but that’s rarely ever the reason I like the songs I do anyways.

> Right click and save as

I haven’t written much about my recent trip to Vietnam. It was such a profound experience to have revisited the ‘motherland’ and actually feel it as such. I’m undoubtedly American to the core, but there is something about that country that makes me yearn to explore further. The people, the food, even the traffic, are so indicative of the culture. And not in a bad way.

Even though I had a fabulous time out there, I did leave feeling as if I had failed. Most notably were my little nieces and nephews that I miss so dearly. I was far from the role model I was expected to be. It’s sad that even at this age, I’m still a fun seeking beer guzzling goof.

But this is a little off topic. The point is that the one thing I did manage to take home with me was a stronger bond to the country in which I was born. Even little things I learned out there helped me understand why my parents are the way they are. So here’s a little piece (forwarded by my uncle in Chicago) reminding us about the significance of today. It’s a long read but since I post so rarely…

Living in Two Cultures

Andrew Lam is a California-based journalist, short story writer, and
National Public Radio commentator. In this interview, he shares his thoughts
on Vietnam and America.

How did you come to the U.S.?
I left Vietnam on April 28, 1975, two days before communist tanks rolled
into Saigon. My family and I were airlifted in a C-130 cargo plane out of
Tan Son Nhat airport and a few hours before Vietcong shells bombarded the
runway and effectively stopped all other flights from taking off. My father
was an officer in the South Vietnamese government and he got us passage out
of the country. He himself stayed behind and left on a Navy ship on April
30, 1975 when he heard on the radio that General Duong Van Minh, acting
president of South Vietnam, had surrendered.
I remembering spending a few hours at Clark Air Base in the Philippines,
wondering what had just happened. I also remember eating a ham sandwich and
drinking milk, my first American meal. It was the best sandwich I ever had
in my life though I didn’t like the milk. Next we flew to Guam where a
refugee camp was already set up to receive tens of thousands of Vietnamese
refugees. I was confused, frightened, and from all available evidence — the
khaki army tents in the Guam refugee camp, the scorching heat, the long
lines for army food rations, the fetid odor of the communal latrines, the
freshly bulldozed ground under my sandaled feet — I was also homeless. I
was 11 years old.
My family and I spent three weeks in Guam and then we went on to spend
another week in Camp Pendleton in Southern California. It was freezing
there. I had never been out of Vietnam before, and it being a tropical
country, well, I was not used to the weather, to say the least. We all wore
army jackets given to us by the GIs and mine reached down to my ankles.
Luckily, my family was among the first few families who were sponsored out
of the camp. My mother’s sister was living in San Francisco at the time and
she drove down and took us back to San Francisco with her. I went to summer
school and entered the 7th grade in autumn and became an American.

What was it like for Vietnamese in America when you came? What is it like
today?
There were no Vietnamese in San Francisco to speak of when I came here in
1975. There was my aunt’s family and five other families, and there were
diplomats or foreign students who remained in the U.S.. That’s how small the
Vietnamese community was here.
In school, kids always asked whether I had killed anybody in Vietnam
or had seen dead bodies and helicopters being blown up. It was interesting:
Vietnam was the first television war and though traumatized by that war,
everyone in America knows something about Vietnam. It gave me an entry to the
American imagination that was not otherwise available to a kid, say, from
Sri Lanka. The truth was that I had not killed anyone but yes, I have seen
dead bodies, and had seen burnt out helicopters and villages during the war,
being an army brat. I became a story teller. But after a few years, I fit in
so well with my American life that I stopped telling my stories. I stopped
speaking Vietnamese altogether. Not until college, not until I started
dreaming about Vietnam and my childhood again, not until I wanted to become
a writer that words came back, language came back, dreams came back, Vietnam
came back.
The America that received my family in the mid-70s was not an America that
could have imagined a Pacific Rim future. It was an America which had
retreated from the Far East, traumatized by its latest adventure abroad.
Vietnamese living in America had little access to Vietnam. It was the height
of the Cold War. It took six months, if at all, for a letter to reach that country. We
were cut off from our homeland in the United States. We adjusted quickly to
life in America because of it.
Luckily the first wave of refugees were among the crème de la crème, as they
say, of the south — doctors, lawyers, government officers, professors –
and, having experienced far less trauma than what Vietnamese boat people
experienced later on, and having no experience of life under communism
(where children of the bourgeois class were deprived of schooling) we
adjusted rather quickly in the United States. But we also managed to create
a little community and gathered for various occasions, most of which were
very political. We rallied each April 30 in front of City Hall in San
Francisco and demanded freedom and democracy for Vietnam and so on. We
celebrate Tet, Vietnamese new year, together. We mourn the loss of homeland
and the fate of being an exile. In other words, we share a particular
history, and were very close.
Much has changed a quarter of a century later, in a globalized and post-Cold
War world…
Today I can e-mail my cousin in Vietnam and I can send him money via a bank.
I do not have to hide it in a tube of toothpaste. And movement back and
forth between Vietnam and the U.S. is the norm after normalization.
Vietnamese newspapers in the States freely advertise flights to Vietnam and
phone cards so you can call home to talk to your grandmother anytime you
like. If we all considered ourselves exiles in the late 70s, only a small
percentage do so now. Now the picture of the Vietnamese community in the
United States is a very diverse one. There are still a staunchly
anti-communist faction, especially those who suffered life in re-education
camps and whose family members were killed by the Hanoi government. But
there are also foreign exchange students, tourists from Vietnam,
American-born Vietnamese who have no memories of the war, people who go back
and forth, and even those who went back to live and work in their homeland,
and so on. It’s estimated that more than 200,000 Vietnamese living abroad
return to Vietnam every year during Tet. I myself have gone back eight times
as a journalist. I am more familiar with Saigon than Los Angeles.
America, too, has changed dramatically. Years ago, for instance, it was
impossible to find fish sauce, the prime element of Vietnamese cooking. Now
you can go to Safeway and get it. Vietnamese and other Asian populations in
California have indelibly changed its cultural landscape. America is more
accepting of Asian cultures than ever before. When the Vietnamese monk Thich
Nhat Hanh spoke at Berkeley last year, there was standing room only, and
most of the people who attended were white Americans. Buddhism is on the
rise here and the longing for the Far East is growing. Witness the number of
Asian directors now working in Hollywood. What was once considered private
or ethnic culture is moving into the public sphere… I was interviewed on
NPR when Campbell soup decided to make Vietnamese pho — beef and noodle
soup. “How did you feel?” The interviewer asked. “Well,” I said, “it seems
inevitable. Think of pizza and burritos. Grandma still makes it best, but in
America, if it’s good, it’s appropriated and mass produced.” If I associated
pho with a particular geography, I have to change my mind. It’s an age of
open borders and perceptions are shifting very quickly.

As a journalist, what is your perspective on Vietnamese-American community
issues?
There are several issues that the community is struggling with. There’s the
language problem. The older generation speaks Vietnamese and the younger
English. This is particularly problematic when a person from the older
generation speaks no English and the younger person speaks no Vietnamese.
How can you communicate? There is a communication gap. Many books written by
Vietnamese in the United States are written in Vietnamese, but a generation
of Vietnamese born in the United States can not access them. Many turn to
libraries as a way to find out about their own history. But books in
libraries don’t address the South Vietnamese experience. The South
Vietnamese are losers in history and very little is devoted to their plight.
North Vietnamese have the upper hand. Hanoi rewrites history and that
history is now being accessed in the U.S. I met several Vietnamese American
kids who asked me to tell them how they got here. “Don’t your parents tell
you?” I said. And they said: “No. All they said is that we lost a war and
that’s why we’re here. I want to know more.” And they should know more. The
responsibility of the older generation is to translate or have their works
and testimonies, i.e.. life in re-education camps, boat peoples’
experiences, adjustment to American life — translated so that it’s
accessible to the new generation.
The other issue is the question all diasporas tend to ask: how to sustain a
community over time? There are several diasporas that the Vietnamese
community can learn from: the Chinese, the Jewish, the Indian. These have
been in existence much longer and can provide models for fledgling ones.

What are some of the areas of difference between Vietnamese and American
cultures?
I think Americans are fond of saying “I love you.” Vietnamese are not.
Vietnamese don’t share words of affections very easily. In fact, it was
unusual to see in Daughter from Danang the mother being overly affectionate
and saying “I love you” repeatedly. My mother who loves me dearly never says
“I love you” in such a way.
It’s more typical for Vietnamese to demonstrate affections through gestures.
When I went home to visit my parents, my mother would fry a fish as it’s my
favorite dish. And to show her I love her I would have to eat the whole
fish. When I won a journalism award a few years ago, my father was very
proud. But he couldn’t find the words in Vietnamese to say this so finally
he shook my hand (which in itself was very unusual) and said in English:
“I’m very proud of you, son.” It was the first time I heard him saying
something like this and it was in English. In some way, English is used when
Vietnamese words fail us. And they tend to be words like proud or love.
Many American-born Vietnamese have complained to me that their parents don’t
love them. “They never say ‘I love you’ to me,” they’d say. But they don’t
understand: it’s not the standard practice in Vietnam. You have to read
affection through gestures and actions.
When I first came to the United States, I also failed to look at teachers in
the eyes. In Vietnam it’s a sign of disrespect when you look at someone in
the eyes. In the United States you are shifty if you don’t look at people in
the eyes. Even now I tend to shift my focus when I look at someone too long
in the eyes. I feel as if I am invading their privacy. Strange but true.

What cultural differences have caused the most difficulty for Vietnamese
immigrants to the U.S.?
Vietnamese culture puts a strong emphasis on being part of the We. Your
individualism is below the need of the many. This is how families survived
traditionally. Children are duty-bound to take care of their families. When
I went to school at Berkeley, more than half of the Vietnamese student
population majored in computer science and electrical engineering. Many told
me they didn’t want to. It was competitive and difficult. A few wanted to be
artists or architects and so on, but their parents were poor or were still
in Vietnam. They needed to find a solid footing in America in order to help
out the rest of the family.
America, on the other hand, tells you to look out for number 1. It tells you
to follow your dream, to have individual ambition. Take care of yourself
first. Go on a quest. The Vietnamese American conflict is one where he has
to negotiate between his own needs and dreams with that of his family.
I myself was lucky. My parents found jobs and moved us to the suburbs when I
was in high school. I didn’t have to make money to send home to someone in
Vietnam. I was the youngest in the family. There were no big demands on me.
I was free to decide what to do with my life. But if my parents had been
stuck behind in Vietnam and living in the New Economic Zone, I would have
been an electrical engineer by now.
In some way, for Asian immigrants, to learn to negotiate between the I and
the We is the most important lesson to learn, a skill much needed in order
to appease to both cultures.

Immigrants always face the challenge of how much to assimilate to American
culture and how much of their native culture to keep. How has this played
out in the Vietnamese American community?
I think in many ways normalization with Vietnam has helped boost a revival
of Vietnamese culture dramatically. I know young Vietnamese Americans who
went back, or visited for the first time, and came back speaking Vietnamese
whereas they didn’t speak a word before. These totally Americanized kids
suddenly feel connected to another place and it gives them an edge over
their American counterparts.
I think all Americans would love to have another country connected to their
history. Ireland, Italy, China, whatever. To have a hyphen connected to your
identity makes you feel cosmopolitan and sophisticated, a bridge to some
other place. You have something that you can call your own. This is a recent
phenomenon. Before the idea of a melting pot was still the aim, at least by
the institutions. But now it’s chic to be ethnic, to speak another language,
to feel connected to another culture, to another set of values, to a
sensibility. It’s a post-modern age where options are far more available
than they were to someone who lived in America in the mid-20th century. And
far more individualistic. You pick and choose. Stay traditional as you want
or be as modern as you want. Options are available at your beck and call.
Besides, the pressure to assimilate is no longer as heavy as before. If
anything, all Americans are learning to assimilate to new cultures that keep
showing up at the American shores. In San Francisco, blacks, hispanics,
whites, all know how to use chopsticks. Go to Bolsa in Orange County and see
non Vietnamese eating pho and buying Vietnamese groceries. My mother
complains that I speak too much English in the house, but as the most
conservative member of our family she, too, has changed. She goes to the
gym, does aerobics. She prays to Buddha, but bets on football. I don’t watch
football, but she’s fanatic. So who’s more American than whom?

Is it true that one of the areas of cultural divergence is the relationship
with authorities such as police?
Yes, that’s true. The problem is that in Vietnam you cannot trust the
authorities. In dictatorial countries, there’s no good news when the police
come calling. You function best when the authorities leave you alone. And
worse, in poor countries like Vietnam, petty corruption is a daily event. A
cop might stop you and say that you have violated some traffic law. What he
means is: “Give me five dollars for breakfast and I’ll let you go.” The idea
that the authorities are on your side is such a novelty that it does not
occur to the newly arrived refugee or immigrant to the United States. If you
call the police they might arrest you instead of the criminal. There’s
always a risk as everything could be deemed illegal in Vietnam (and nothing
is). Everything can be settled with grease money.
It takes a while to learn to live in a civil society. It takes a while to
have the idea that the police work for you sink in. At least that’s the
idea. In some neighborhoods, the inner city, for example, that may not be
true. Also, many Vietnamese are afraid to fill out forms. Census or
otherwise. They have this fear that the government will know everything
about them and will use the information against them. And even in the United
States, given the post 9-11 scenario, there is some valid justification for
that fear.

Another is in the difference in health and mental health issues?
There’s a big difference. You must understand that traditional Vietnamese
are Confucian bound. We worship ancestors. We light incense and pray to
Grandpas and Grandmas long dead. That is to say, we talk to ghosts. Once I
worked as an interpreter and there was a case where a Vietnamese woman was
suffering from depression and told the psychologist that she kept seeing her
dead husband. He thought she was having some kind of disorder. But I told
him it’s actually typical. Mind you, I was stepping out of bounds as an
interpreter, but I couldn’t help myself. My grandmother, when she was alive,
saw her dead husband, in dreams, or late at night sitting in his old chair
for a brief moment, and there was nothing wrong with her. Practically all
old people talk like that lady. It was a way for her to say she mourns her
losses. It took a while, but I think the American psychologist came around.
They have to: they can’t put an entire population in the insane asylum, can
they?
The other classic example in terms of health problems is the one that I’m
sure that’s well recorded in medical school. A little Vietnamese boy showed
up in school with red marks on his back. “Who did this to you?” the teacher
asked. “My father,” he answered. His father was immediately arrested. Having
no idea how to explain what he did, his English limited, and lacking money
to hire a lawyer, he ended up serving time in jail. He was so frustrated he
hung himself. What he did was a typical thing: Vietnamese practice cao gio
– a kind of therapeutic massage for people who come down with a cold. They
scrape the skin on your back with a spoon or a coin, using an ointment. He
wasn’t abusing his child. He was helping him, but nobody believed the man.

Had the U.S. prepared at all for addressing any “culture shock” that the
airlifted Vietnamese children might have experienced?
I think there was an assumption on the part of the Americans who wanted to
adopt those Vietnamese children. That they will assimilate
< ../filmmore/ ps_record. html> and become Americans
< ../sfeature/ sf_trudeau. html> . That they will forget Vietnam. That their
personal history is not as important as the new reality in which they found
themselves. What they were not prepared for is the hunger of memories. Many
of those babies may adjust well to America as adults but they also long for
their Vietnamese past. They want to know where they come from, who are their
relatives, and how can they learn to connect to that past. They will always
look, they will always search, they will never be satisfied until they have
all the fragments of their life put together. It’s an inevitable human
impulse.

What parts of Vietnamese culture do you see thriving in Vietnamese-American
communities?
The wedding is the biggest event in Vietnamese American community. It’s the
time where people dress up, meet, exchange information and show off their
children, meet new people, and so on. Vietnamese in the U.S. live for
weddings and a typical wedding has about 300 people at the reception. Five
hundred people came to my brother’s wedding and it’s not the biggest. People
invite themselves. They want to come.
Vietnamese newspapers, television shows and magazines are thriving. So much
so that the San Jose Mercury News has a Vietnamese language weekly.
Vietnamese read quite a bit and they thirst for information regarding
Vietnam. Go to any Vietnamese restaurants in the Bay Area and you’ll see
three or four give-away newspapers full of news on Vietnam.
Vietnamese love their Vietnamese singers. Some Vietnamese American singers
make quite a bit of money singing in Vietnamese communities in Los Angeles,
San Jose, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, New York. Tickets can go as high as
$40 a pop.
Food is thriving. Vietnamese restaurants are packed. I know a Ph.D. student,
an American-born Vietnamese. She speaks very little Vietnamese and is a
feminist and a vegan. But she has a dark confession: she eats pho soup.
Sometimes she can’t help herself. She’s got to have that beef broth.

There are no words to describe this!

It’s funny how I’m king of tummy aches, yet in the countries where I’m most likely to get them, I actually felt better than I normally do. Had drinks with ice in it, raw veggies, quite the impressive assortment of snails, and yet no stomach problems. It took all of 2 days back in the states before I was back on the Pepto. Quite the mystery, eh? Of course my cousin had me dewormed my last day in Saigon.

So maybe there’s a little jetlag…

Arrived late last night and woke up at noon today. Pretty much my normal routine out here anyways so I guess there’s no jetlag

I was gone nearly a month, running around, seeing things, eating things, meeting people. Still too exhausted right now to really say much, except that I’m blessed with a beautiful welcoming family that sadly lives an ocean away. It’s nice to be home but a piece of my heart is still out there in VN. Always will be I suppose.

My 2 nieces.

Been meaning to post my itinerary but I don’t actually know what it is… but in 9 hours from now, I will be boarding a plane for Hong Kong. Then we will spend several days there as well as Shenzhen. Then from HK, it will be a flight down to Saigon for a few days, hopefully laden with all sorts of goodies. Then up to Hanoi for a few more days, before finally coming back to Saigon for the rest of the trip. Total journey: 3/16-4/4.

A trip of this length would normally merit tons of pics, but I’ll be bringing my camcorder only this time. It’s significantly less convenient for my beloved candid shots but I’ll try to be diligent. Now off to bed… 4 hours left to sleep before heading to LAX. Wish me luck!

I’m plagued by incessant stomach pains again. As usual, it’s always inflicted only by myself. There was a yogurt in the fridge today that said Sell By 0208. Does that mean Feb 8, Feb 2008, or the 2nd of Aug? The August answer was the most appealing. For a while anyways…