[] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 8:22pm
i am moving

i will do something

i am the enemy

nothing left.

some people talk a lot of shit, yet they’re exactly what they hate. you go and spend that money. at least i am at grips with my hypocrisy.

i’m out to change and the beauty will come with each life, mine being the most mundane but it’s all i got.
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[] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 3:04am
dog meat shhh don’t say it so loud someone might hear
look out for the motorbike! slight crash, a moment of pause, then a falling down, fuck he ripped his shirt and he’s got a red mark on his chest
dark roads, familiar faces, warmth of family laughter
almost, not quite, i
you love your son but you’re not happy? dip the spoon into the Pho soup
might be ok even if i’m not. we didn’t have the opportunities you did

cut to smiling, diagnosis?

as long as i keep moving…….
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[] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 3:59am
a long time ago i was on a train bound cross-country, from New York to Cali, three straight days of mountains and perpetual motion and waves of odd people coming on who were Americans and i guess i was american too. it’s funny how we think back to the things that mean something to us, but we can’t always understand why those things meant something to us in the first place. i am in Vietnam, and i wasn’t meant to see some of the things i saw, because i didn’t live their lives, the vietnamese. these people, faceless and without identity, they all talk about finding your roots, about learning the language your parents bore on you and blah blah blah well they don’t know shit. i’m so far from American and never was i close to Vietnamese so i’m where i was when i left, just floating dead on in the middle. i chose this path for a reason, because i knew i couldn’t leave even if i wanted to, not until i found everything, until the truth came out painful, from wounds that have to be disturbed over and over again.

human beings, eyes like glass, gone, and skin scabbed from needle marks, acting like animals because they’ve lost the will to be human anymore.

some of them are children, younger than you can ever imagine.

i’ve lost my innocence and sense of justice in this place, and i’m still alive, barely. you don’t know the danger of seeking truth, and if i am still alive i will tell it to you, entry by entry.

fists clenched, that’s how you go into fights. when it’s over you wipe your brow, sit and breath, bask in the act, and then get up again, fists clenched. i chose to fight alone, and alone i’ll fight. i am not a good person, and i am not fighting for the world. i am just fighting for myself. i miss you all, but you all were merely actors in a play. i wish i could come to grips with that, the fact that i too am just another actor, in a just another fucking play.
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thoughts on the grill [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:08am
looking back on this blog i’m quite surprised at the length. this thing is crammed with words, words repeating, sad words, happy words. i think to date only a few people have read the entire thing and i wonder what they think about it all? their vision of London and Vietnam has been given through my eyes, a faulted human just like every other fool out there.

i had been working on a business plan for the past 6 weeks and finally finished. me, the computer science major with aspirations of wandering the world teaching english, i wrote a business plan that, after everything is said and done, will number close to 40 damned pages. the business plan is for money, for investment money, so a group of people can spend money in order to make more money. so they can buy shit they don’t need and die in a better state than the one they came through. i remember getting paid, and for some reason money struck me as horrible. the smell, the look, the idea of people stepping over each other just to get a piece of it, made me sick. and as entrenched as i am in business right now, money still digusts me. i spend money to make money, i spend money to eat and pass the day, and i feel guilty everytime i do. the only time it feels right is when i take everything in my pockets and shove it into some street kid’s hands. but when you think about it, that money isn’t doing shit. nothing does anything.

there’s a janitor woman here who always wears the same light blue shirt and pants. she looks almost like a doctor in the pale uniform. i see her throughout parts of my day, sweeping the stone floors or cleaning some other part of the building. she smiles a lot and talks to everyone. people would call her “nhie^`u chuye^.n”, someone who gossips and is intrusive with her need to know. sometimes i think she’s a spy from the powers that be, making sure our company doesn’t do anything excessively wrong. and other times she’s just the janitor lady, her life imagining itself into my mind. she watches the television in the glass house when she’s free and comments every other minute, sort of like my mom. i’ve been here more than 4 months and i don’t even know her name.

my relationship with my cousins and uncles has slowly settled into an ambiguous state where i’m not sure if they hate me, see me as a fool, or accept me as the one who’s right. when i first came here they slacked off all day, chatting online, doing as they pleased. no one dared to say anything because they were family. and somewhere along the line, among the fucked up things i saw and experienced, something snapped and everything changed. at first they welcomed it.. knew that it was what needed to be done. no more messing around int he office while people worked. put in some help when help’s needed. but after awhile, the responsibility lapped them. there’s a distinct difference in how the vietnamese view life. if given the chance, they’d coffee their days away, spending what little money they had on things that could never make them more money. once, i had moved towards this idea. take life easy, smell the roses, relax and enjoy the sunset. you only have one life to live right?

and then the dirty child hands came, the gaunt faces of grandmothers and grandfathers begging, 15,000 prostitutes with wasted futures. those who didn’t choose their lifestyles, and those who did, and a conglomerate of confused motorbike honking. in college i read a lot, felt i could do something and change the world. you don’t change the world… the world changes you and what you become after affects the world. affect.. not change.

today a girl came in to start work as my assistant. in a few more weeks another person will come and the three of us are going to try to get this place called Japan to do business with our company. it’s so complicated, so crazy, so simple, so sad… this world we live in. i know once my blog held objective descriptions of faraway places and the faces of sad little children. i haven’t seen the orphans with the broken bodies and devastated skin for more than a month. i abandoned them, because i didn’t have time, because of business. 6 months ago if i had heard this, i would never believe it. i am still fighting goddammit, i am still fighting… the nights pull past midnight and i’m still fighting, still believing that change is possible. the methods have changed but i’m still here.

a few days ago a small child fell asleep and put his tiny feet over my legs. just the sleepy hum of rain on a car, an old friend, and a moment without the pain. my past often comes to me and it’s odd that they seem to push me farther everytime i visit them. i remember the stupidest details, like laying on top of a frozen lake among snow, running through a forest at the peak of night, watching an amazing meteor shower from the top of mountain clearing, stupid little jokes various friends have shared with me and i with them. i remember the pain i inflicted on others, the fucked up shit i did, the good shit i did, the times i felt human and the times i felt like nothing. i imagine everyone else ot be the same but i have no right to speak about anyone else. my blog.. it’s become nothing. i want to understand all of this… put order to chaos of seemingly irrelevent experiences that lead up to an equally irrelevent existence. what the hell is the point of anything?

my past often comes to me and keeps pushing me away. as if it wants me to move on.
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a planet set apart from a planet set apart from a planet [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 2:45am
i shove a roll of toilet paper, a Nam Cao book, and my trip journal that i barely write in into my black knapsack. today i visit my friend from college, who just arrived in Vietnam a week ago. Tay Ninh, a 2 hour drive to a place half countryside and half town.

in the small minibus that looks like it’s about to fall apart, i am squeezed against the window as the workers cruise around the street, shouting at people to come and take a trip to Tay Ninh. there are 12 seats and they manage to swindle 15+ people into the small vehicle. the young men with the sweaty backs shout at passersby and the woman next to me curses them.

“why don’t they just go? this thing can’t fit anymore people? money grubbing assholes…”

i pass out from exhaustion and wake up in the sleepy town of Tay Ninh. i get dropped off, negotiate a meeting place with my friend’s aunt, and wait at a gas station. the girl working there looks like my friend, making me think maybe the whole town looks like her.

my friend pulls up in a brand new car with her aunt (holy crap her aunt is loaded) and it’s like we only met last week. old friends are like that, like another friend once told me over a ridiculously expensive double cheeseburger in London. your true friends, you can see them anytime and it’s like you never left. we pick Chom Chom fruits and i make fun of her for her unease with the unflushable toilet. and then i make fun of myself for not wanting to use it either.

on the road towards an amazing countryside river scene i can’t, and won’t, bother to describe, we see crowds of people on both sides of the road. the car i’m in slows down and i murmur, “what’s going on.. must be an accident.” as we pass my curiosity possesses me and forces my head to tilt up, allowing me to peer over the window. i see bare feet and black pant legs, people standing above and looking down, just like i was looking down. a bright red trickle of blood across the man’s sole shocks me and the sense of DEATH flashes across my eyes. my friend gasps. i look to the other side at the other crowd, and see another pair of legs, motorbike lying by his side. more blood, more people staring down, me just like everyone else.

i cannot see their faces.

“why isn’t anyone doing anything? why doesn’t somehow drive them to the hospital?” i repeat over and over, in a low voice, a weak and defeated cry to no one in particular. i want to shout at my friend’s brother to stop the car, so i can run out and do something. i read in a book once that sometimes no one drives the victims to the hospital unless they know them. or unless a foreigner offers them money. if they wait for the police, they will be dead by the time the ambulance arrives. i want to shout, to stop the car, to offer someone, anyone, money to get these two guys to a hospital.

“someone’s driving them!” someone in the car says. i look behind and see an old man with grey hair and stubble on his face, a sweat-stained shirt clinging to his tired looking body. behind him sits a younger man, and across the younger man lays an unconscious man, blood streaming from his face. something in me breaks and i shrivel up inside. from behind him comes another motorbike, also with two people, and the second victim lying across. my friend’s brother mentions something about this being a small town, so people know each other. i ask him,

“if no one knew the guys who were in the accident, would they drive them to the hospital?”

my friend’s brother replies, “no”. i know it’s not the case always, but it still drags my mind down to the ground, below the car. i look back again and see the old man with the grey hair and beard stubble, a tired yet determined look on his face.

“there are a lot of things i don’t like about this place” my friend says. she hasn’t been back for over a decade and now she is beginning to see clearly the little facts of a larger picture that doesn’t always fit with the ideal.

a cop asking for money. a temple, with the design of a supreme eye representing god, a religion that worships Mother Theresa, Jesus, Hindu deity Brahma, Thomas Jefferson, and Winston Churchill among others. a mentally and physically retarded man in a white robe, smiling at me and scaring the kids, bowing and gesticulating with clasped hands towards pastel colored stone lions.

i arrive back to the company to see my relatives hard at work, putting together the plan i had devised to “increase efficiency and productivity”. i shove down a pizza i order and roll up my sleeves, helping them hammer nails and drag tables across. a sense of peace swirling in the middle of some horribly dark reality, putting to fact that i am on a planet set apart from a planet, set apart from a planet.
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field mice, porcupine, deer, and yesteryear’s presuppositions [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 1:22am
being multiple is
being human

watching square houses trolling by
like my life
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[ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 3:09am
there’s talk about something happening, and then it happens. you can’t plan for things like this.. like the cliche that the profession chose you, not the other way around, when you know deep down it was a mutual love affair.

a chance the company could go under in one shot.

a chance the company can be worth more than i will ever be able to make in my lifetime.

i’m still alive (for now).

a man is slamming, gracefully, two small hammers onto rocks shaped to form perfectly melodic tones. the notes move in slow harmony and cascade back and forth. then, the slowing of tempo and a lull to false peace. he is leaning over the rocks, tapping each note with steady precision. the vision of myself and the world rises before me, an emotion, a feeling, a sentiment which cannot be visualized. i feel tears rising up to my eyes as the grey-skinned face of a girl with a hard-back stares at me from behind my own eyes. enlarged heads with enlarged eyes shouting my name. so far away. i am inside myself, spiraling down and up at the same time. it is something i can never explain, that force which had moved me here. not thoughts.. not imagination.. not even ideals. it’s the feeling you get when you hear that your grandfather has passed away, the peel of your mind as you watch children cross flooded streets wearing rags and a beaten cap. i see it everyday, along with my hope for a future that can never be reached, alongside my relatives who will never understand that efficiency is what will save their country from certain poverty. they don’t care, because they’ve got it good, in 3 square meals and hopes of a family. 2.5 kids, someone to give a shit for you if you die, meaning in this worthless world. for someone who’s seen the reality of love, the complete and utter bullshit of it, and the absolute power it has to make all things right… where do i go?

“so you’ll work on Japan ok? if things go well and you get close to getting a contract, we will fly you over there.”

i’m a speeding bullet, heading straight towards myself. i can’t claim to know myself and can’t say i really ever knew where i stood. i tried to find myself in my friends, my family, and even in love. in the end i see nothing but everything, my life flashing before my eyes every morning as i wake. it has been 5 months since i graduated and left America to “follow my dreams” and i end up flying and falling, falling and flying, writing nothings in a blog that, truly, no one reads anymore.

today the singers in their costumes sang and their voices stabbed me, over and over, and if i had blinked once more i would’ve cried for the tiny hands that once reached for my face.
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[ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 10:14pm
10pm and i’ve worked straight from 9am, and i’ve got so much to do, so much to do. i’m reading up on integrated supply chain management and suddenly the song i’m listening to tears me down the middle. bombs drop, people scream, and death is everywhere… all over this world. those kids in the orphanage with the broken bodies… why does nobody care?

why did i leave them?
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[ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 10:14pm
from inside the small room the rain sounds like a roar of voices. tiny voices, big voices, crying sad voices. a clanging of metallic purity penetrates the glass doors and i hear the tapping of metal on metal, a boy somewhere, tapping to let people know he can run and get them a bowl of soup in this drenching rain. a woman with a conical hat pushes a shoddy looking cart down the street, water tumbling down. it is like a symphony, the rain and the clanging of the metal, so clear and resonant i pull in a breath of air with a gasp. my stomach is knotted, i’m dizzy, and the world seems to change at a phenomenal pace. i had read a journal entry of the moment right before the plane landed in Saigon, in a notebook, and it was so different. where had i gone? i ended the entry with “life’s not life without a fight”, and in response to myself i wrote another entry today, proclaiming i’m still fighting. to attest to that, my body is telling me something’s up, the 10 hour workdays peeling my mind dry. yet, i love it. target markets, conical hats, break-even analysis, calls for trash, Vietnamese-american chatter and glimpses of my past. how did i get here?

in the chinese district my uncle points out the fact that the chinese have been here for centuries, have assimilated yet kept their language and customs. vietnamese words mix with chinese characters and the smell of roasting pork hits me hard. like chinatown, nyc, except 5 times as large. inside the restaurant a rough sized woman stamps her feet firmly with each step, lurching forward to take our orders. her dark eyes bore into me… i am falling…. falling.. and then some vietnamese, some chinese, and an old woman slowly shuffles in. a bag to hold the lottery tickets she is selling hangs close to her stomach. my mind swims out and i think about the company, about making a new beginning, about hitting it big so something can happen. about one day being able to give $1000 in cold hard cash to the small dirty child with the plastic bucket used for begging, just because i can, just because the thrill of the insane is what makes life worth living. something, anything. the leisure days of sipping coffee have been replaced by frenetic rushes towards something amazing, something i never quite understood. i have $200 in my bank account, a nagging feeling that in 10 years i may not be alive, and always the dreams of tomorrow. i want to keep this blog updated, i want to tell everyone the insane shit i’ve seen and thought, the things that have happened. but i can’t. even if i had time, it’s all lost on what-ifs and situations that would be misunderstood for all who cannot see this. vietnam is not what you think it is, it’s not even what vietnamese-americans think it is, people who have lived here for so long. because i watch my family and friends return and they are no longer connected to this, to the dirt and brightness and grime and to hard truth. there is no reality but the one that people here are living. i have the faint feeling my parents, and countless others, have lost that reality when they left Vietnam. i never grew up here and it’s coming back to rip me apart, make me face who i would’ve been, what i could never be, what i would never want to be. i have this blue packet of paper that says i was born in the US and that i’m an American citizen. i’m going to take this piece of paper, and everything that’s inside my foolish brain, and i’m going to fucking do something. because i can and they can’t, because i have and they don’t. because frankly, there is little else left to do.

i research and write business reports and plan for profit, and i give everything in my pockets to beggars. i spend money in the fancy districts, and then i eat with the locals with whatever i have left. i am a fucking contradiction, what i’ve always known myself to be. you can’t feel truth because truth is, in itself, a contradiction. you have to accept that everything you believe is false, to even begin to realize the amazing reality of this world.

the ragged vietnamese pop music comes out low and without bass but in my mind i’ve got the melody of a sad song sung decades ago, from a time when bombs dropped and people sold their souls to save themselves. from where my history calls me, a place i can never reach.
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erstwhile finger cup, two speeches at a seminar and business suits to go all around [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:50am
out of nowhere the small girl in the jean jacket and ruffled hair appears from the dark air in front of us, a cute face on a confident gait, 6 years old maybe. im shovelling fried frog legs and scrambled fried fish into my mouth, rice coming in after. food’s become a sort of distraction for me, taking me away from the work that has pretty much consumed my life. funny how things happen… once i looked down on business as a fool’s game, a steady climb up an unending ladder that would eventually end in unhappiness. quite possibly a mid-life crisis somewhere along the line. but i’ve had my mid-life crisis, am having it now… the way i drive and spend my days, i don’t think i expect to live past 30. she struts up to the table, her coolness stopping my hands holding the spoon with the rice in mid-air.

“mister, i’m gonna drink this tea ok.”

more of a statement than a question, pudgy little fingers reach out and grab a small and white plastic cup, the color shaded light brown from old age. she pours a bit of tea into it and drinks it slowly, watching me with her cool eyes. finally, she finishes drinking and puts the cup back in its place, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her jean jacket.

“some good tea huh?” i ask her. short-stout laughs and adds, “so luxurious, just coming and drinking like that.”

she watches us with her eyes as she steps to the side, to get out. pointing her fingers at my sweet orange drink (a sugary concoction by the name of Twister, 1/3rd the size of the foreign brand Cokes and Pepsis), she asks with a slight push of conviction,

“what’s this?”

i follow her fingers to her face, a face not smiling but not frowning either.

“it’s orange drink. some good tea huh?” i reply. she steps off and walks past the street, the vendor smiling at her as he’s bringing food to the other tables. i follow her half-stomping walk back to a small stand by the edge of the street, cigarettes and candy stuffed inside a metal container with wheels. carefree, innocent. an old woman in pajamas sits on an old lawn chair, talking to some other woman. i smile for some reason, a smile to break from the flurry of activity that fills my days, a distraction from the bigger dreams and pervading sense of duty.

i’ve been working close to 10 hours a day, taking things that were once mediocre and ugly and transforming them into something polished and worthy. it’s not the money really… even if this company explodes i don’t think i’ll expect to make more than what i’m making now, which is peanuts to what i could be making back in the States. but it’s that dream, that glimmering brass ring just out of reach that pushes me. i remember my time in London, chasing that ideal, coming here to Vietnam for the first time and feeling shocked as i walked down the dirty streets. i was afraid, in awe that i was actually doing something i thought of and wanted to do, not what someone else expected. the business could get big.. really big. and although i hated business, i am now in a position to finally affect something, bring to Vietnam what it so desperately needs right now: American-style efficiency to rake in the dough and to give people some livelihood.

short-stout and me, we run errands like crazy sometimes. i’m not sure why he does it. he said to me the other day, “you know, living by yourself away from family, you live a kind of ‘vo tu’ existence. you don’t think about the future and just live for the day.” and even though every action i perform is rooted in the implications of the future, of days where i can see my students again and not feel heavy in the chest, of the time when i can do something instead of wither at the sight of deformed hands and feet, i nodded and replied,

“there’s nothing wrong with that man.”

because the sun comes up tomorrow regardless of what i do.
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underside mirages [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 3:41am
the little girls stay in step with the tall foreigners, foreigners with light skin stretched luxury-taut over crew cuts and slick shavings, upon flowered shirts and cargo shorts.

“you buy you buy? you buy you buy?”

it’s nearly 2am in the morning and there are children with candy, lighters, odd bits and ends, ready to sell little shoddy convenient goods that make no difference whether they exist in your hands or not. one girl with short cropped hair down to her chin catches me watching her and comes over. her little hands offer something which my mind forgets, because i’m too busy swirling in her young baby face. can’t be more than 9. 10, maybe. i shake my head no and point to old-awkward uncle.

“ask this man, he’s a returning vietnamese, he’s filthy rich.”

the girl turns to old-awkward for a moment and meets his laugh. she swings immediately back to me, arm still reaching out. i point to my uncle and she turns back to him. finally i ask her,

“why are you selling so late?”

“because we need money for the rent,” the girl replies matter-of-factly.

“wow, you kids living by yourselves, paying the bills and stuff huh?” i joke. out of nowhere i find myself saying, “you know what you have to do? you have to make it look like you’re hurt, pretend to cry.”

i make boo-hooing sounds and she giggles. another girl with long hair tied in a simple ponytail, holding a plastic bin of goods, stops pestering one of the foreigners and looks over.

“and you have to pretend like you’re sick, real sick. like this..” and i bend my right foot at the ankle, dragging it across the ground. a quick drag, limp, stop, another quick drag. the girl laughs and her selling face vaporizes.

“like this? like this?” she asks, dragging her foot across the ground. the sound of flip flops on the concrete echo the sounds of sweeping i hear sometimes outside my window at night. her friend bursts out in laughter and also mimicks having a hurt foot. i smile, and continue,

“wait! wait! you have to stick out your hand too, you can’t just drag your feet. man, this is your profession and you don’t know anything.” i then stick out my hand, dragging my feet on the ground. one of the dance-bar prostitutes walks past me, smiling at us goofing around, a sincere smile breaking a face normally stone cold with determination to make the buck. the foreigner, who had previously ignored the little girl out of habit, is now looking amusingly at the small spectacle of a gawky vietnamese kid teaching street kids lame tricks. another small girl is behind the two girls. soon the three are all laughing and joking, copying my technique.

“and finally, you have to stick out your tongue. like you’re really sick” i add. i stick out my tongue, drag my feet across the concrete sidewalk, and make grumbling noises. the foreigner continues to watch me, a bemused expression on his face. the girl with the cropped hair breaks out into laughter and grabs my arm. i flinch for a second, touching my pocket lightly to make sure everything is there. when you live in this place for this long, you learn a few things… and one of the most important things is never trust street kids with stuff in your pocket. but as quick as my fingers brush my pockets i release and we are back to the game. a moment of shame for suspecting a little girl for pickpocketing me but this is society, this is reality, like the reality of these girls. they continue to drag their feet, sticking out their tongues and laughing.

“like this? like this?” they ask me. their questions sound like cries for attention, like the ones i used to hear from fat kids at the town swimming pool, yelling at their parents to watch them dive into cholorinated summer water. a moment of normalcy, in a continual blast of grimey “you buy”s under the cover of a vacant Saigon night.

their cries die down and i have given myself away. short-hair girl puts out her hand.

“how about 20,000, for the three of us?” i laugh and give them everything in my pockets, something like $3. they go back to their work, “you buy you buy” ringing down the nearly empty streets save for the late-night partying foreigners. they then move back to the front of the dance-bar, away from the men pushing out motorbikes from a parking garage and away from the pack of foreigners. i look at a grimey toddler squatting against the wall near a cement pot, an older woman with clean pajamas squatting next to him. i hear high-pitched laugher and follow the sounds back to the three girls, far off. the are dragging their feet and giggling.

on the motorbike me and hipster go, following short-stout and old-awkward. the fire of living three lives and being two cultures flames outward into my hands gripping the accelerator and i twist the handlebar, slam the gears, fly past short-stout and old-awkward. a taxi with drunken asian couples on the left, the driver looking at the road ahead. i speed up next to them and out of my lungs comes loud shouts of pure emotion, “WHOOO!!!! WHOOOO!!!” we fly beside them, roving back and forth.

i laugh from the bottom of my heart and laugh and laugh and laugh until there is nothing left to laugh about. the needle on the odometer shakes past 60 km/hr and the taxi disappears behind us, like the thoughts of rationality i once had.