Planning for a vacation part 2 ...

We've been back to Viet Nam quite a few times already in the last eighteen years. The first trip back home was in ninety three. Back then, Viet Nam had not yet changed as it is right now. The country was in disarray, as the Communist government could not decide which way to go.

That very first visit was extremely hard for all of us. We had not prepared ourselves to deal with what we saw around us. People were so poor, they did not have enough food to eat. Young kids and old people were begging every where. They fought for the left over which the customers barely finished, left on the tables at the restaurants. The government controlled everything from big to small, from the luxury to the cheap. Nothing you could buy without rationing cards issued by the local government.

Bribery, corruption, and embezzlement were happening every where, and at every levels. People used to say: "big dogs take big bites, small dogs take small ones", and there would be nothing left. Money could buy anything, exactly anything at all. Money could even tip off the balance of justice. 

We used to be a rice export country, but then people did not have enough rice to eat, because working for "Hợp Tác Xã" run by the government gives people the same earning. Who needs to work harder for the same earning as the guys next to you who just only need to show up? Thinking about those times make my heart ached, because my wife and I had to endure a few years of it. There were never enough food for a single meal a day. And white rice was only for the rich people.

They finally found out that strict Communist's ways would not only bring the country's economy down to its knee, but also get the country into a great disorderly mass.

The "Đổi Mới", or Economy Reforms initiated in ninety six has shown the results. It's been getting better and better as the years go by economically. Nowadays, it's hard to find a beggar in any cities beside the front entrance of the church or Buddhist temple.

The people in big cities are having more and more and they start to worry about how enhancing their life styles beside feeding their children. I've seen travel agencies popped up every where like wild mushrooms after the rain. They also are looking for better education for their children. Going study abroad is a norm nowadays for the business people, and their young college bound children, with destinations like Australia, England, Singapore, and even the US.

Bringing foods to the table is no longer number one priority. Luxury items which nobody dared to dream before now showing up all over the place. Many people now own the latest model automobiles, yachts, and even small jets. Regardless of, it would cost three times more for import and luxury tax than we would pay for the same items here.

Last year, I saw it with my own eyes that there were more Bentley, Ferrari, and Porches in Sai Gon alone than in Orange County Southern California. I wouldn't say that people in Sai Gon were richer than us here, but a few of them are having a lot more money than an average Joe in America.

At first, on those travel tours I booked in Viet Nam in the late ninety, only Vietnamese who came back home from abroad called "Việt Kiều" or oversea Vietnamese could afford. Then more and more, Sai Gon people started to mix in. Now the tours in Viet Nam would have a mix of half and half, and the trips abroad would be a third of the tourists from Sai Gon, and the rest are people like us.

We used to spend around ten to fifteen US dollars for a good meals for the four of us. But not any more, like everything else, inflation and the drop in value brings the dollar down tremendously. Now it costs more than five buck for a single meal. A treat in a nice restaurant for four would cost us anywhere from forty to sixty bucks easily nowadays. I remember the first time we got back to Viet Nam. We brought the whole clan of twenty five relatives with us to a nice sea food restaurant, and after a very luxurious meal with two cases of European imported beer, and the bill was a mere little less than two hundred US dollars.

Last year, it was totally different. We had to spend a lot more for a lot less. But Viet Nam listed as one of the five fastest growing economies in Asia, could afford it for its own people. They started bringing more and more imported luxury items from all over the world. People now want to get higher education to compete with the most fierce competitors surrounding them. And they all want to equip themselves with the latest technology knowledge and understanding to perform this task. They want to catch up with those advance countries in Asia like China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. One of their advantages is the vast number of young people for all kind of labors, from intellectual to manual labors. Viet Nam has one of the highest ratio of working-age population, roughly over sixty five percents. Only a little over six percents of the population are sixty five years of age or older. It's sad to say but is true, they still have a long way to get there.

I don't like to sit still during our vacation. We've traveled a lot. I love to go to far away lands. We are lucky to have a chance to visit places like Taiwan, Thailand, Korea (twice each), Hồng Kông, Malaysia, and Singapore. We have not visited China yet, but it will be on our list this time. In our own birth country, we have had the chance to travel almost every corners of it except the very Northern tip of Laokay, and Sapa ...

Some places we have visited more than once. Others famous places we have visited more than twice. So far, we have been spending times from the very Southern tip of Viet Nam, with places like Cà Mau, and  Hà Tiên to the North, with places like Hà Nội, and Ninh Bình ...

Our plan for this trip is spending at least seven days in China, to stop by these big cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Guangdong province. There is also a short trip to Bangkok, Thailand. The last time we were there was in the year two thousand. If we could book a ten day trip to Japan, then it would complete our journey perfectly.

Within three or four weeks, we'll be on our way. Viet Nam here we come.

Planning for a vacation part 1 ...

The last few years, my wife and I spent our vacations during the Lunar New Year month in Viet Nam.

It's very hard to explain the joyfulness, and the happiness of the love ones back home when they all come to the airport to pick us up. We jokingly call this "the packages receiving day".

We always bring home gifts, and stuffs for everyone. The contents are good enough for two boxes weigh more than a hundred pounds. But no matter how carefully we plan it, there will be something missing after we get there.

Our vacations usually last for a bout a month, not counting the travel times.

The two weeks before New Year are the best. Everybody seems to slow down tremendously. Vietnamese people plan to celebrate their New Year in a big way. Believe it or not, from rich to poor, from young to old, from big honchos to low level workers, everyone would take at least a week off to celebrate the tradition January-month-off-for-the-New-Year party.

Businesses either close down or slow down. Ten day to a week before New Year, Sai Gon's population drops to a half, because people flock here for the abundant work during the year, from all over the country start to go back to their root villages to share their New Year celebration with their love ones as well. And this number is huge. It could be more than thirty percent of Sai Gon's population, roughly anywhere between three to five millions depend on which survey you are looking at.

People start cleaning their house thoroughly. After that, they start fixing, wall painting, and decorating every things from the kitchen to the main room in front. The job could take a few days. They only do it once a year, that's why.

The women have to go buying and stocking up enough food, and drink (alcohol and beverage) for a week or so. If you don't stock up, there won't be anything, anywhere to buy, because all of the businesses will be closed a day or two before, and maybe up to ten days after the first day of the New Year. Closing down the business for more than two weeks to celebrate New Year is not common, but not unheard of.

A few days before New Year are the time for the borrowers to re-pay their debts to the lenders. They don't want to carry the debt over to next year in believing that no matter how small your debt is, carrying it over will make the whole next year a bad year. In paying your debt off, the next year will be your debt-free-year. Of course, if in case you don't have any money, and you can't pay, then you have to go hiding, because the lenders will make it very unpleasant for you these days when they catch you.

The last few days of the year, the city turns very jubilantly noisy. People go into the street to shop, to buy materials for decoration, materials to make the tradition of "bánh chưng, bánh tét", "mâm ngũ qủa" those special display of fruit plates, and "tet" rice cakes. No matter how poor you are, during "tet", you have to have at least a few of these in display, and in showing appreciation of the memories of the deaths, and to share with your relatives, neighbors, and friends. Depending how big you want to show off, these tasks would take days if not weeks to complete.

There are so many tradition in preparing for the New Year celebration, it would take a few hundred pages to describe these traditions and  customary practices. I'll leave it for the professional writers.

Our plan for this year vacation won't be during the New Year. We miss it by about two or three weeks due to the renovation of our restaurant. The architecture and contractors have been dragging their feet for too long. We can only make it two or three weeks after. We'll miss all of that this year.

Was it a good or a bad sign? Will our New Year bring us luck or misfortune? blessing or damnation?
Only time will tell but I don't believe it anyways. I am a Catholic.

We always make our stop in Viet Nam during our vacations, but we don't spend too much time at our home in Sai Gon. We use it as a base, a place we can come back to after a long distant trip to recharge.

We decide that this year we have to go to places we haven't gone in the past, like China, Australia or maybe the Philippines. If time is an issue, we may have to re-visit Thailand or Hong Kong or Taiwan in shorter trips.

There's also one place in Viet Nam we haven't visited, that's Sapa, the northern tip of Viet Nam. We missed it the last two times visiting Ha Noi, and Ha Long Bay.

Thirty day spending for a vacation is long but sometimes not long enough when you have so many things you want to do. Preparing for the trip will be started soon in the next couple of weeks.

CHÚC MỪNG NĂM MỚI - MAY MẮN PHÁT TÀI (Happy New Year)

No more SNOW, at least for now ... :D

A few days ago, the local weather forecast indicated it would be at least five to eight inches of snow falling on the next Tuesday and Wednesday. The city's trucks already are running around to spray a mixture of salt and chemical to keep ice from forming on the roads. They also predicted that it would be in the low thirty during the days, and in the low twenty during the nights. Dang, will it ever be getting warmer around here any more? I asked myself.

We prepared our stores, and our employees to get ready for closing on those two days. The food would need to be rotated, and watched more closely to prevent spoilage. The schedules had to be changed to accommodate their hours worked. We know so well that our employees, most of whom Spanish speaking immigrants, depend on every hours they have every week. They live paycheck by paycheck so it will become really tough for them to adjust to the short checks. They have to worry about where or how to fill in for the missing money during those short work weeks.

People always take things for granted. Out there, many people have to count every dollar they earn, hence, if it's a hundred dollar short for the week, they'll be struggled big time to recover. Most of the times, they have to borrow for that. And unfortunately, it takes them a few weeks or a month or even longer to recover. Our workers are very hard working people, but in return they earn very little (minimum wage) due to language, and unskilled problems. Most of them speak very little English if not at all, and very few have any trade to work in any industries beside serving in restaurants. They prefer to work in the kitchen. Working long hours is not an issue to them, as long as they can find a decent or fair pay.

More than half of our workers have been working for us since we bought our restaurants. If they don't have to move out of the area, they stay with us. We know each of them individually, who came from where, and who still have family to support back home. This is a tremendous achievement because the turn over ratio for this kind of job is very very high. Owners and managers in the fast food industries can never retain their minimum wage workers for more than a few months. They come in the front and sometimes go through the back on the very same day.

Lucky for all of us, the weather getting better toward the weekend. And by Sunday night, they changed it to a single snow day Wednesday. On Monday morning, the weatherman announced that there were only light rain on both days. All of the sudden, the temperature is getting really warm to compare with the last couple days. They were in the low fifty during the days, and in the high thirty at nights.
To day is Wednesday, and it's raining lightly throughout the day. The temperature is pretty warm. Hooray, everybody back at work in full swing. Everybody is happy include this owner.

We are ready for the next step, which is the renovation of one of our stores this coming month, February. To take advantage of the situation, we are going to take a long vacation. Yoo-hoo ...

Growing up in this country ...

A long lost friend called me yesterday after a couple of years disconnected. After a short chit chat to get re-acquainted, he let me know the reason why he called. He needs someone to lean on during a crisis.
It's good to know that someone still trusts and feels closed enough to you to share their very deep, and private problems.

I wasn't only lending him an ear for a couple of ... hours, but I felt for his pain and suffering as well.
His daughter-in-law had left his son with their only child which is just barely over a year old.
They are now fighting for custody, and visitation rights. The fight spills over to both families now, and the little kid was in the middle of the storm, and I was and still am, his son's God-father. What a mess!

What am I going to say to him now? How am I ever going to see my God-son's child again? He is such a beautiful, smart, cute, and loving baby. It's hard to imagine him growing up well with only one parent, specially his mom is still a little kid herself, because she is not yet twenty years of age. The mom is still so young, of course she will one day re-marry again.

Growing up nowadays in a normal two parent family is hard enough, I can't imagine how life is going to be for the baby from now.

Not all of the children grow up in a single parent home to be bad kids, though. But it is going to be extremely difficult. We have had a beautiful girl in our lives we treat as a daughter, whom grew up in a single parent family. Surprisingly, she's grown up to be one of the nicest, and successful woman I know of. She finished her education even though she struggled here and there for self-support through school, and graduated at the age of twenty five. She now married and ready for her dream family.

Anyways, I understand for many parents of the generation-in-between like me. We are the bridges of the old people who came here, could not adjust, could not adapt, would not understand the new cultures and traditions, and the young ones who were born here, or came to this country at the very young age. Even though it's still very hard, and confuse sometimes for us to pick and choose. This is what they call, it's between a rock and a very hard place.

For example, before my daughter got married, I found out that the American marriage tradition was the girl's family's responsibility. We had to pay for everything (all the wedding ceremony's expenses). The husband to be not just only taking home your daughter, but paid nothing in return. So if you have a daughter ready to marry, make sure she asks for the biggest, and most expensive diamond ring she could get from him. Better yet, prepare a prenuptial in which you have a not-to-pay-for-the-wedding-tradition escape clause ... :).
Now lets get back to the main topic ...

With all the changes and differences between their home traditions and the new environment they grow up with, it's no wonder the generation X finds it extremely difficult to make everyone happy.
Beside, there are so many distractions they have to face, in which their parents had never had to endure. Back home, we had to worry about one thing beside schooling. That was chipping in to help out the parents taking care of the family's tasks, and choirs. We could not find an after-school job, so whatever we could do to help out, was always things that we could get done around the house.

We did not have too much free time.

There were no peer pressure, because nobody had more things than the others. We were all very poor, so having a chance of going to school, and having two meals a day was more than enough already.
There were no sex pressure. We did not know how a girl's (or a woman) body was like until ... marriage (mostly).

We never had enough money for anything so having money to buy drug or alcohol was not even an issue.

Many of us had a chance to view for the very first time, the semi-naked-body-of-the-opposite-sex only after we got married. And most of the time we were too shy to open our eyes fully to catch a glimpse of a rare display of flesh from the spouse.

Getting pregnant before marriage was a significant rarity, and was considered a fatal mistake, with which the punishments were so harsh that would last for years. Therefore, some of those girls who found no escape, had to take their own lives to get away from facing a lifelong punishments.

When I was dating my wife during the early seventy, it was very similar to what you see in "good morning Viet Nam with Robin Williams". We were allowed to go out only for two or three hours max, with supervision, and watchful-eyes by a couple of younger siblings. There were no chance to do anything else beside talking. Holding hands happened only long after a few months of dating. A peck on the cheek was allowed from the girl only after a proposal of marriage. Lips locking or French kissing were unheard of, and so yucky anyways.

That's good enough for now ... :).

Young people nowadays have to face lots of distractions at the school, and at home. They were growing up in a family that both parents are busy with working. They were in a household with only one or two siblings. Some are all by themselves. The clashes of different life styles, cultures, traditions, and moral values confuse them so much they don't know how to separate and adjust.

The amount of free times spending in isolation, and with no-supervision is posing a great danger to teenagers. This problem alone has caused so much ruin, shattering, and destruction to families that both parents spend too much time away from home. These youngsters have to deal with alcohol, drugs, and sex pressure every day of their lives without guidance.

In return, they are awarded with more money, with free access to poisonous materials in videos, internet, "smart" phones, and inappropriate magazines which promote, and glorify the unacceptable life styles of drugs, alcohol and wild sex. The trend for a young couple to move in and live together without marriage is growing higher and higher, and so with the divorce rate. Do you have any idea of the divorce rate in America in 2010?. It's close to 50%. This is the number for married couples. How about the people live together without marriage?

I am not judging anybody. I am just showing the differences between then and now. I am trying to point out the dilemmas, the predicaments, and the challenges that young people have to deal with nowadays.

Long lost ... (ex)students

Yesterday, a high school classmate found me on Facebook, sent me a want to be friend email. After my confirmation, all of a sudden, there were hundreds of Facebook links showed up. I found some long lost friends from all over. What the new technology can do nowadays!

The most interesting link is the Facebook of Christine Nguyen, my dearest God daughter from whom I haven't seen or talk to for a couple of years.

We got connected in a few hours. After that day, there were a few more showed up. They were Kim Nguyen, and Cathy Trinh. When I saw their latest pictures, i recognized how old I was. It's been more than 10 years since they were sitting in my Confirmation class.

There are few more I haven't connected yet, but I hope it would be soon.

I remember it's just not too long ago. They were all around fourteen or fifteen, obnoxious, noisy, emotional, and ... impulsive. And now they are in their mid and late twenty's. Many already graduated and have their own lives. A few are still in school for higher educations. Most are working and supporting themselves if not helping their family here and there.

It brought back all the memories. The two year programs we spent studying, and growing together in our faith and in Christ. I found some of the more than ten year old pictures I took for them in their retreats at Big Bear Mountain. They look so different now.

I was sitting here in my living room with the heater running full blast. The temperature outside dropped to the low twenty. The sky was gloomy, just like then up in the mountain. We normally booked our retreats during the weekends of earlier winter. The weather at Big Bear were usually cold and gloomy.

I remember one year I was on one of the retreats when the bus we were on, ran into a ditch, and got stuck. It was cold, wet, and really windy. The sun started going down quickly so everyone had to get off the bus and walked almost a mile in that condition to our camp without much of our luggage before it was getting dark.

Some years that we were lucky enough, we would have seen SNOW. For these kids, who grow up in a warm weather of Southern California, snow is something you don't see often, if not at all.

Oh, well, there's a saying that good things go by fast.

Fortunately, at least I have something to remember when I retired, right.

It's getting colder after Christmas

Oh boy, can it get any colder?

I had come to North Carolina a few times during the 90s and 00s, and the weather had never been this cold. I guess that just like a marriage, once the honeymoon is over, then you'll hafta face the music.

This year, the winter came during the fall. The temperature at night sometimes dipped into the low twenty. A few night it went down to as low as fifteen degree Fahrenheit.

When I see the city trucks running around to spray a brine of salt and water onto roadways to help reduce ice forming, then I know it's going to be really cold.

Late December when the snowstorms were coming in abundant, during one night, it poured down more than a fifteen inches of snow. I woke up in the morning, looking out of the bedroom's window, the whole area were covered over by a thick white blanket.

When I was young, I could handle the cold very well. But nowadays, it's getting harder and harder. I am longing for the day I could move back to California. That's the reason why I always want to have a couple of month long vacations during the month of January and February.

Funny though, when it snows, you feel a little warmer then before.
It is the most beautiful scene at night, when all of the Christmas blinking lights are on under a lingering falls of snow. Nothing can describe its fully beauty.

This year we decided that we, only the four of us, were going to share the Christmas night together, with absolutely no guess. 

We've had so much to talk about as a family. 

We've had many plans to discuss about, and of course, no outsider would be allowed, period ... :).