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.
This holiday season was spent with family and friends. My brother and his family were in town, so I was able to spend some time with my nieces. They are growing up fast :)
We all went Danang to visit more family there. Here is our Weekend in Danang together.
As for the evenings, when it was the kids bedtimes, I would meet up with friends at all the various holiday events around town. As you'll soon find out, at the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, it is a party town for the young professionals crowd. Not much of a family oriented kind of place.
And my New Year's Eve was spent with some of the creatives in Saigon. Art rules :p
Hello. Wow, I didn't realize there were so many people who actually read my blog. Sorry for not posting of late. I've been using Facebook instead because its been so much more convenient to share and tag photos. Also for some reason, I have not been able to access Blogger at work between classes, when I'm the most reflective. They seemed to have blocked the site completely ...
Anyways, now that you have brought it to my attention, I will resume posting on my blog again. Do accept my apologies and expect more frequent posts from now on.
