Who Woulda Thought

It's been a while since we've had a guest blogger on here so we wanted to come back with something special. We have a buddy out here who's experience in Vietnam, although not exceptionally long in duration, has been expedited by the fact that he's assimilated so well to the local Vietnamese culture. There's never an occasion that doesn't call for flip-flops and shorts with him, and you can usually find him at the local "nhau" watering hole with a cigarette hanging from his mouth in an ever-so-macho way, barking commands at the workers, and ordering up a storm all in the name of a good time. It also turns out that he can put his thoughts into words very eloquently and that's why we've asked him to write for us so that you, the reader, can get a better insight into life in Saigon as a truly assimilated Viet Kieu. Without further adieu, here's what he had to say...

Who woulda thought that we'd all end up here? Bụi đời, all of us, just a dust of life, a speckle in the air, a kite without anchor floating by the whims of the wind. In elementary school, as we labored through our ESL classes and learned how weird white people were, we didn't have a clue about the context of our arrival or how our roots had been ripped from the soil and flung towards the sky. Our families were fortunate enough to find California; so many others were swallowed by the sea. Mất góc. In junior high, not quite hard or courageous enough to kick it with the gangsters, but not quite loser enough to disappear entirely, who would've thought that we'd all reappear here-- a gang of sorts-- but without the colors or the violence, reclaiming the corner they all said we had lost. Học giỏi. In high school, too focused on our future to see the footprints we left behind, too shy to talk to that girl we so badly wanted to take to the prom. now we know better, now we've moved on, steps ascending a staircase, dancing all the way to the top. Tương lai. College was a time of indecision. The world grew into a universe offering everything upon our feet. unsure of which path to pursue, but understanding more of what we saw in the rearview, we sped forward while looking back and accidentally collided with the past.

Việt kiều. 2011 and we're all in vietnam. Adults now and we see the full circle we've spun. We know the collective history of our kind, about wars and escape, about welfare and assimilation. We are tied by a common thread, the needle pushed deep into our spines. But like rocks from the same quarry, we're all shaped differently and have been shaped by different things. Nevertheless, our nucleus is the same and it's drawn to magnetism of vietnam. Sure, some folks with a surplus of morality might find the shit we say offensive, but that just means their sense of humor is too caged. Us? We're soaring without strings, the pull of vietnam serves as our guide, 8000 miles far and 8000 miles high.

Metta World War