Wheaton
I am in the middle of sketching notes or thoughts for a couple
of different posts, but they're not going to get done tonight. My
thinking has gone all askew (and that is pretty unkewed). So I am going to sweep all these notes and
unread articles aside, for a moment, to write instead, that my friend
Tran is back from her month long trip back to Vietnam. She had
gone with her parents to visit her older sister and her family who
still live there. Everything is different from when she lived there, she says -
she left in 1994. The landscape - everything seems to have
been rebuilt, or realigned, both in Saigon and in the town down south
that her father grew up in. They had trouble finding the spots where
they had lived, it looked so unfamiliar.
The culture had changed the people didn't seem the same. There were factories, hotels and bars; places of entertainment,
but only for the rich - there were more of them. All the jobs that are
to be had, in those hotels - go through them. All the people from the
communist party. She had gone with some anticipation and trepidation,
wondering where home was, but there was nothing there she remembered,
none of her friends. Home, she has decided, is in Wheaton.
A sample of our conversation today: "They have 7-up in Vietnam
but they don't call it 7-UP." "Oh, What do they call it?" "'Baht(?)
up'." "Umm, what's the word for seven in Vietnamese." "'Baht'(?)." "And
there is a big '7' on the bottle like there is here, right?" "Yes,
why?" Suddenly I suspect I've been subtly set up somehow. But she just
smiles.
A brief aside: Mir (of Dim Sum Diaries) had written in a comment,
that when she worked in DC some years ago she had known a Tran Nguyen
at USAID, (which is different from USIA) . Tran says she did work there
for a while, maybe it was her. I will continue to sort this out tomorrow.
8:59:41 PM ;;
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