Due to my current workload, I am taking a break from any form of blogging altogether. I barely have time to put in 8 hours of sleep a night, so something must GO. Unfortunately it will be this blog for the next three months. Hopefully in three months I wil have adjusted to the workload and be able to make time for blogging again.
This is the first year that I've spent Tet in Saigon. When you're not around family, there is not that much to do this time of year. Most of the shops and resturants are closed, since everyone has taken the holiday off to spend some quality time with the family. I've been out and about, roaming the streets of Nguyen Hue, which has been decorated with thousands of flowering blooms, lights, and statues of rats. (Will post pictures soon) Along the way, I met Hoai Linh, a famous Vietnamese comic who has a tendency to dress in drag for his skits. Bumped into a few photographer friends and spent Tet Eve chatting with them about their work.
One the first, my landlady invited me to have breakfast with her family. She's been very nice and sees me as part of the family. I just don't like imposing. Later, a friend asked me to have dinner at his grandmother's place. She is a sweet eighty year old grandmother who just can't sit still and will always comment if she thinks you're doing something improper.
As I am bending down to get something from my bag, she stares at my chest and says "You really need to wear more so you don't get sick..." Ummm... I was also wearing a jacket... Instead of a tank in this hot weather, I guess I should really be wearing a turtleneck. Sigh...grandmothers.... My friend found it extremely amusing.
I should be used to it by now....comments about my chest and bum...since all the other vietnamese women here are skinny sticks. Eat people, eat!!! There is so much food here, why don't they gain weight?
Footage from the My Chemical Romance concert. It was quite fun. Crazy the amount of people that showed up, but don't take my word for it, see for yourself:
As mentioned in the previous post, there is a following for metal music here in Vietnam. One of my former students asked me if I would be attending the Unite 08 concert featuring the band My Chemical Romance. Wow, really? MCR is coming here? I actually like this group. She even offered to win free tickets for me. So sweet of her. The tickets are not being sold but are instead being given out as prizes to games being played in the bars around town during the week of 1/12 - 1/19. The concert is being held on 1/20 and is sponsored by Tiger Beer.
The beer companies have been sponsoring a lot of music events lately. Just last month, Heineken brought world dj Ferry Corsten to liven up the Christmas festivities. Hopefully this trend continues and Saigon will be able to host more concerts, so people don't have to fly off to Singapore or Hong Kong any more to see artists that they like.
This week has been a bit enlightening. First off, I went to the movies with a friend to watch Ben Stiller's "Heartbreak Kid". There was a sex scene in the movie that lo and behold was surprisingly not cut out. What the??? Vietnam is quite conservative and usually any form of nudity is ripped from the movie before it is shown in the theater. But in this case, you could see the woman's entire breasts...there was even dirty talk and translations for the dirty talk. Oh my..... Whoa.... totally didn't see that coming.....
Yesturday, there was an artist talk by Uudam Nguyen at San Art. I didn't know who this artist was but a few friends had asked me to come, so I did. It is most likely one of the most phallic artist talks I've ever been to. I actually felt bad, but couldn't help laughing sometimes, when the translator struggled with how to translate words such as "Got Fucked" or "Dildo". I mean those words and the concepts associated with them don't come up in public conversation often here. I found his later work and more conceptual pieces interesting though.
Another thing that I never expected to do in Vietnam was attend my first and most likely only Metal concert. So surprised that there is such a huge underground following of this genre here. I wonder why? Again, friends were going, so I tagged along to see what it was all about. It turns out that one of my former students was in a metal band that was playing that night. He spotted me and excitedly said that they would be the 3rd band on. I nodded.
All I can say about the experience is that it was Loud, I saw a bit of Moshing Action, and after 30 mins decided that it gave me a headache. Yes, so I did not stay long enough to see my former student's performance. But hey, its turns out its just not my kind of music.
