Earthquake!!

Delirious from lack of sleep, it took me a few moments, and the effort of looking around me to gauge other people’s reactions, to twig that the gentle swaying sensation I detected was not a figment of my imagination.

It was twenty-five past two. I was sitting in the cafeteria on the ninth floor, just tucking into my Cajun chicken sandwich. 200km out to sea, and 10km down, (ref:European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre) tectonic plates shifted a bit to rustle up a 4.7 magnitude earthquake to lift us out of our pre-Tet torpor.

It was a relatively small earthquake, lasting no more than a minute, and it produced a not unpleasant feeling that the building was swaying gently in the breeze. Two of the younger teachers (who clearly don’t have my vast experience of such things) got quite excited but I remained unfazed and soon turned my attention back to my sandwich.

But it does leave me wondering if maybe I am a factor. When I first arrived students told me that Vietnam doesn’t have earthquakes. Am I some kind of seismological jinx? It occurs to me that I’ve now been in Vietnam about the same length of time I’d been in Japan when the Niigata Earthquake happened in 2004. And I’d been in Italy just a couple of months longer than that before the Abruzzo Earthquake in 2009… Oh yeah. Stick with me, baby. I’ll make the earth move for you…

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I was, as I say, delirious from lack of sleep (always a good starting point for yet another set of peer observers in your class – my beginners are beginning to feel persecuted). And this time I know exactly who to blame for it – my landlady.

Nice woman, very helpful, but a bit of a faffer. And, like most Vietnamese it seems, she’s a ridiculously early riser. So it came as no particular surprise on Monday when she texted me offering to come round at 7.10am the following morning and collect the documents needed to re-register my residency with the local police.

Wonderful. Tuesday’s my day off. I do have to go into school for a workshop but that’s not until three. Do I really have to get up and drag myself downstairs to meet her sooo early? And, for a bonus round, all being well, she’d return at the same time on Wednesday morning to bring the documents back.

Now, there is one teensy-weensy little problem with this master plan. My passport is currently in some undefined location getting my visa renewed. Not sure the police will accept a photocopy. Hmm… oh well, we can try, and here – take my work contract too, legend has it that sometimes they’ll accept that instead.

7.10am ticks round and up she scoots on her scooter. She looks at the photocopy of the passport and frowns, pointing at the expiry date on the visa – 23^rd January. ‘It is old’. Yes, I know. I told you. My passport has gone away to have the visa renewed. Did she think when I said photocopy that I’d somehow manage to get one of a new visa I don’t have yet?

Anyway, off she goes to try her luck with what we've got. I hear nothing until I get to school later in the afternoon. Another text. ‘Sorry. The police won't accept photocopy and work contract. Please let me know when you have new visa.’

- So, are you still coming back tomorrow morning?

- No, I will wait and keep things until new visa comes.

- Right. OK. But what if the police come to the flat in the meantime?

The police periodically do sweeps of apartment buildings, checking that all the inhabitants are registered with them. With no passport, no visa, no work permit, no registration book, and now no work contract, I start to have visions of being thrown into some communist jail for the rest of my life, or being deported to die in a British snowdrift like great-great granny Mills…

- Don’t worry. If they come, just call me. I will talk to the police.

Then sometime later another text:

- Maybe I will come 7.10am tomorrow and give back work contract.

‘Maybe’??!! What do you mean, ‘maybe’?!! Do I have to get up at 6.30 again just on the off-chance?!!

Grudgingly, I set the alarm. I sleep badly, tossing and turning with an increasingly sore back. 6.30am the alarm goes off. I crawl out of bed and struggle into some clothes. 6.53am a text:

- Sorry, today I am busy. I will come 7.10am tomorrow.

Somehow I refrain from telling her precisely what I think of that idea and instead politely negotiate a postponement until 8.30am on Saturday, when at least I have to get up early anyway.

Signs That Tet Is Overdue

Signs that it has been a very long, tiring, sickly month since being told I hadn’t got the AC job, and that the Tet (New Year) holiday next week can’t come soon enough:

• The most interesting thing I could think of to write about last week was the purchase of a frying pan.
• A growing sense of paranoia and frustration at the lack of movement on all my strategic plans to get that next AC job. Coupled with lethargy from this cold that just won’t shift.
• I had to spend the whole of Sunday plugged into my iPod whenever I was in the staffroom, to stop me ripping someone’s head off. As it was, I managed to make an eleven year-old girl cry.
• I didn’t bother adapting or finding anything more interesting for my S6’s (13 year old advanced class) but made them do the book’s long (and very boring) listening and writing exercises about the Incas.
• Last weekend a trainee TA was treated to me jumping up and down and flapping my arms in front of her, shrieking ‘Stop running away from me, I’m trying to talk to you!’ She’d obviously got it into her head that when monitoring we couldn’t both be in the same part of the classroom at once.
• Waking up to dense white smog every morning is pretty depressing. To British eyes it looks like a cold, wet, miserable day in November. Only warm. And with more carcinogens…

Smog

• I’m missing Italy… Yes, you read that right… I’m missing Italy. Or more specifically, the light, the clear blue skies and the sea. Briefly worried that I would have to get Baggy, Oye and Jacques to give me a good email/skype talking to, to stop me teetering over the edge into checking flights to Rome.
• Instead, I’ve been spending late nights downloading Laura Pausini and Tiziano Ferro tracks from iTunes. Whatever that admission might do for my street cred, it’s actually been strangely soothing. A couple of days of those two on the iPod and I now feel much better.
• Some of the neighbours held an all-day party in the street yesterday. By the time I went to bed their out of tune singing was quite endearing. I was tempted to go down and join in.
• The neighbourhood kids have developed their own local version of Welly-Wanging… Flip-flop Flinging. All very professional and competitive, with lines chalked out and everything.
• And (fingers crossed) perhaps as Saigonites escape the city for Tet, the traffic will clear and the smog will lift – there are already traces of blue in the sky. Might not need to head back to Italy after all…

Chúc Mung Nam Moi 2011!!

Eureka! A frying pan that works!

I should perhaps explain. In the last few months Little Sis and I have both found ourselves in new apartments with kitchen hobs that refuse to cooperate with the other kitchen utensils. In other words, we have both unwittingly acquired induction hobs.

I didn't discover this until Christmas when Rachel tried to do some bacon in my new frying pan, only to have the hob just sit there, beep at us for a bit and then switch itself off. Since then I've been fretting about investing in any more pots and pans until I know exactly what I need. And not knowing the Vietnamese for 'induction hob' was a bit of a drawback.

Anyway, finally tonight I made a foray into the Japanese supermarket on Le Thanh Ton and found a whole range of frying pans bearing an I H symbol. Could this possibly stand for Induction Heat? The Vietnamese shop assistant giggled an apology. 'Sorry, I don't know. They're Japanese.' 

So with fingers crossed, prayers offered and good luck wishes from the British couple queuing behind me, I bit the bullet and bought one. And hey presto! I've just dined on a properly cooked fried egg made by my own fair hand! Yippee!!

Matt & the Lion

Not me or Vietnam, but can't resist! 

With Debbie temporarily back in the UK, Matt seems to be having a few boredom/sanity issues, if today's post on their blog is anything to go by...
http://ontheroadwithatoad.blogspot.com/2011/01/day-121-turkey-1712011-antalya-trip-to.html

Brilliant! Personally, I think he should continue the blog in a similar manner for the rest of their trip. Maybe a different poem for each town en route?!

1000th Visitor!

Sometime in the night this blog got its 1000th visitor! Not bad for just 2 months. Don't know who you are, but welcome!

Odds and Ends Cluttering My Head

• My TA tonight (quite genuinely) admired my shaggy mop (must get it cut soon) with the words, ‘Hmm, maybe when I am your age I’ll have my hair something like that!’ Don’t think she really understood the strange hysterical edge to my laughter….

• The building site opposite my apartment block has sprouted a circular double wall of tall metal poles and pilings rather reminiscent (in the dark at least) of an early Norman Motte and Bailey castle.

• Why does the flag counter at the bottom of this page bear little or no resemblance to the visitor stats provided by Blogger? Where is the Venezuelan flag Blogger indicates I should have? And why has the Australian one disappeared after just two days and been replaced by a French tricolour?

• In case any of you care – Vietnam is currently clamping down on Facebook again (not to mention the BBC so I can’t look at The Archers website). Even at work FB is more difficult to access, so I’m limited to old-fashioned email and Skype for contact with the outside world. Going slightly Cyber Stir Crazy.

A Bad Day

If the end of the previous post suggested the New Year got off to a bit of a miserable start, it has to be said that it didn’t immediately start improving much either.

The sore throat rapidly developed into a nasty stuffy cold complete with headaches, loss of lung capacity, broken sleep patterns and a lack of enthusiasm for anything very much other than lying on the bed with the balcony door open letting the breeze flow through.

So Monday 3^rd January was, all in all, a pretty miserable prospect on paper. The abysmal End-of-Course tests were finally marked and reports written with sinking heart. This adult class has always been somewhat problematic. While observers have said that the students do seem to like me and want to go with me on the activities I set them, it took me a long time to feel that connection myself. This isn’t helped by the graveyard shift time of the lesson (7.30-9.30pm), my difficulty learning Vietnamese names and the fact that half of them never turn up. (One girl made it to the exam after missing the whole of the previous 6 weeks!) And then (the day before the AC job interview) I was told that someone in the class had complained about me – not enough correction of pronunciation (there is, I’m just too subtle for them), no clear focus to lessons (we’ve been on revision!!) and that I was late (LATE?!! ME?!! What? I’m never late for class, and frankly even if I was, they’re so late themselves I’m surprised there’s anyone there to notice). So, you can imagine my feelings about breaking the news to them that even those few who had actually passed had done so with less than flying colours.

Then sitting in the staffroom wading with treacly head, aches and pains and whatever, trying to plan the evening’s lessons, admin staff kept returning bits of the scores and reports to me, telling me I hadn’t needed to work out the percentages myself, and checking them all over again – which made me feel like an idiot. And these marks do seem very low? Yes, well, throw a KET (pre-int level) exam out of nowhere at an elementary class, and what do you expect? This disconnect between ability and exam has been something of a bee in bonnets all week, and not just with me. Hence the lesson plan and the resolution to incorporate exam practice a bit more into the classes. Thing is they are only General English courses. They’re not actually intended to be exam prep – so why use the tests at all?

The post-mortem itself was every bit as uncomfortable as I expected it to be, though to give them their due they didn’t turn it on me. They were just shocked and disappointed, comparing notes with each other. It wasn’t much of a surprise a few days later to hear that the next course has been postponed until the 21^st through lack of interest. But, in fact, they did forgive me enough to take me out to dinner.

We went to a close-your-eyes-and-try-not-to-think-about-the-cockroach-you-just-saw-scuttle-under-Tuyen’s-chair pavement seafood restaurant. Actually, cockroach notwithstanding, it turned out to be a very enjoyable evening. The food – various things in shells and claws that once belonged to things in shells – was excellent, particularly something called So Duong (?) which had cooked the inhabitant of something like an oyster shell in cheese (yay, for that French influence!). With the food cooked there on the street it came to the table so hot you couldn’t even touch the shells. In fact, one was so hot I dropped it and it scalded my knee as it bounced off the table onto the floor (no sign of cockroach doing victory dance)!

So, with the beer easing my sore throat, the horrible day did eventually end on a bit of an unexpected high.

New Year's Weekend

Rachel flew back to Tokyo on New Year’s Eve, leaving me to rattle round a rather quiet flat on my own. My local xe om drivers joined me in waving her taxi off to the airport – they’d been losing work while she was here. But at least they’d managed to keep themselves occupied by building a very pretty but essentially pointless little wall along the stretch of waste ground where they usually sit. Surprisingly, Rachel had been reluctant to take xe oms, insisting instead on going everywhere on foot or by four-wheeled taxi. And there was me expecting my intrepid friend to be up for renting a bike of our own.

Thursday 30th had been spent quietly pottering round the flat and discussing the impending doom to be visited upon my students when I give them their test results back. As a result of this abysmal test, and by happy coincidence a useful starting point in the campaign for the next AC job, Rachel had arrived back from Hoi An to find me writing a lesson plan aimed at familiarising our general English students with Part 2 of the KET Speaking Test.

Later we wandered down into town via the botanical gardens, which, contrary to what Lonely Planet seems to suggest, are not separate from the miserable zoo. We used the returning humidity as an excuse to escape as quickly as possible (despite the temptation to follow the signs pointing to Giraffe WC).

Next stop Ben Thanh Market. Here we walked (literally) round and round in circles as she negotiated a bargain price on the souvenir lacquered plates and coasters she wanted. I’m not a big fan of markets generally; standing around in a crowded covered market is not my idea of fun, but Rachel’s eventual purchases were very nice, and miraculously they did fit into her rucksack when she packed later that night. It being her last full day I even allowed her to take me to the final geocache on her list when we got down into Backpackerville, but not before I took her to a proper shop and demonstrated the art of not negotiating the 160,000 dong (£5) for a print of an old propaganda poster exhorting the masses to ‘Grow Lots of Coconuts’ (or so the translation label claims).

Back home at the flat, we finally made it to Papaya, the really nice restaurant across the road – according to its website a local woman spent years working as a chef abroad before returning to Vietnam and setting up business here in her old neighbourhood. The food is really good (we particularly recommend the Stuffed Pumpkin Flowers and the Tender Beef in Lemongrass) and also pretty cheap – 2 beers, 2 appetizers, 2 main dishes, 2 portions of banana fritters and ice cream and a bottle of water came to about 330,000VND (£10?).

New Year’s Eve was appropriately dull and overcast (but no less humid) to celebrate Rachel’s departure and my own lack of enthusiasm for the festival. New Year’s Eve has to be pretty special for me to enjoy it. My normal instinct is to batten down and ignore the whole thing. So I must confess to a certain sinking feeling when I found myself replying in the affirmative to Louise’s text asking if I’d be going to Mike and Hannah’s party. Nothing against them or anybody there – just don’t like New Year’s Eve.

And the day itself always seems to be waiting. One long wait for that chime at midnight. And if you aren’t caught up by the anticipation, then there must be something wrong with you.

So I faffed the day away, doing nothing very important or useful, although I did finally get my UKNova account set up so that I can download proper telly without paying iTunes all the time. Though needless to say, in my usual way, (haphazard, hit-and-miss, teach-myself-by-doing, getting-it-wrong-curling-into-a-ball-then-trying-again) that alone took all day.

Eventually dragging myself away from Upstairs, Downstairs, the party was actually worth going to just for the experience of getting there. It is probably the first time in my life that I have wished a taxi driver good luck for the return journey. If Rachel and I had thought the crowds on Christmas Eve were mental, it was nothing compared to NYE. It is 3.1 kilometres from my flat to Mike and Hannah’s (I know because that’s what it said on the taxi meter), a straight run down Ton Duc Thang along the riverside. A clear run home when I left at 5am took 10 minutes door-to-door. On the outward journey it took us that long just to get round the roundabout by the ferry pier. The whole journey took 45 minutes through mostly stationary scooters, pedestrians and an awful lot of rather over-optimistic coaches. They were all gathering on the riverside for the fireworks at midnight, which ironically after all that effort I didn’t get to see because Mike and Hannah’s flat faces away from the river!

New Year’s Day dawned (not long after I got home) as dull, overcast and depressing as its predecessor. I think at some point I attempted to leave the flat for a walk, got as far as the corner shop and gave up. Lack of sleep left me stressing about all the prep I needed to do for Sunday’s kids’ lessons, and all the marking and report writing still to do for that abysmal test. And I was starting to get a sore throat as well. Yep, a really great start to the New Year, full of plans, hope and anticipation.

Happy New Year and RIP Nigel Pargetter

Happy New Year!

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a week or so - blame a nasty cold, New Year Blues and the death of poor old Nigel in The Archers!

But the cold is getting better slowly, the house is looking tidier again, the sun is shining and iTunes seem to have mislaid Friday's episode of The Archers. So as soon as I've re-read this article about getting the kids to make their own classroom resources (for an action research-y workshop next week), finished writing up the KET speaking test lesson plan, and got my money changed for the rent on Tuesday, ... I should be back in action very soon!!

Ciao!