Sunshines, after many rainy days

The sunshines finally broke through the dreary rain and the insufferable humidity on a Saturday afternoon, as the winds dutifully clearing out the remaining bits of cloud. Hanoi remerged, bringing out an apparent joy in the eyes of all the patrons here at highlands opera house cafe.

As I resumed my familiar occupancy with a cup of hot earl grey to defy the every-so-often brisk of wind, my mind started to go into zone-out mode in preparation for a list of weekend readings ranging from FT Life & Arts to Economist to How to Spend It (the "it" here is assumed to arrive sometime in the future, if I keep up with my hardworking). Yet, somewhere between the news of the US nomination to the WB Presidency and a beautiful profiling of Haider Ackerman, I found myself taking in too much white noise as opposed to filtering it out as usual. That was when I realized that my strategy for Vietnam Survival may not work out so well.

Before I came back, I had developed this spectacular plan of curling up inside an invisible bubble where social disturbances would not destroy my sanity. I would emerge in one piece, with my career and relationship well on track. Boys, is that hard!

As much as I tried to overlook the little gimmicks here and there to steal a few thousand vnd from me, or the dirty tricks and comments my local colleagues threw every so often, I couldn't avoid the ugly sights that were very much in my face. They were the sad sad looks of gay men at the bar, unaware of who among themselves would be pressured into getting married to a strange woman in the near future. They were the tireless concern of mothers of where to find safe fresh produce for their kids. And they were also the frustrated hands throw up to the air of my colleagues feeling they couldn't understand the process (and reason for failures) of reform here. In every aspect of the city life - be it social, physical, or institutional - steam is coming out and it is just a matter of time when it all explodes.

Should I have a new responding strategy? Maybe. But on a nice day like today, it is just true to the La Vie est Magnifique spirit to enjoy it first. Maybe out of the good spirit, some wonderful solution, like that beautiful sunshine, will come.

Or I just have to believe it will.

Photo Credit: image.dothi.net

Last morning before Tet

As I stepped out the house on the morning before Tet, I was greeted by a crispy cold breeze and an unexpected silence that I had sorely missed for so many years - that of an old time's Hanoi with which I grew up and came to love.

Over night, the streets have suddenly been cleared out, leaving the breeze an empty space to play with the crispy dried leaves that had browned up the ground after the rainy night before. Despite the wool scarf wrapping around my neck, a naughty wind sneaked into my collar and sent a tiny chill down my back, just enough for a soft "sss" to escape the lips reddened by the cold winter weather.

Riding along the deserted streets, I couldn't help replaying in my head the long journey I had been on this past year, starting with Kinshasa, then Nairobi, Bujumbura, Paris, then DC-Bangkok-DC before the emotional rollercoaster upped and downed through out the summer and ended with my return to Hanoi. Yet, as I tried to think back to these unfortunate events, all I could remember was how my friends had gone out of their ways to help me. All I could remember was the laughers we shared. And most of all, I remembered the amazing boyfriend who called me every day we were away . In these tough times, I have really come to appreciate the wonderful support network that I have. Life is always unexpected like that, and knowing that there are friends you can count on is really half the courage you need to overcome anything life throws at you.

The winter in Hanoi suddenly felt so warm.

Photo Credit: photosdiego.com