life in progress...

uncensored

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.

posted by snowtweety @ 1/18/2008 12:09:00 PM