1. Love the support and new followings, guys--thanks!
2. My green guitar broke. The bridge popped off the body right before the lesson. Like, as I walked through the door. Awkward.
3. Despite the technical setback, the guitar lesson went well, I think.
4. The Ho Chi Minh City Museum is worth a visit, at least to witness first hand exactly how little effort the government puts into maintaining it. The relentless deluge of red party propaganda on all the exhibits is just crumbly icing on the dilapidated cake.
Well, I'm happy to say I'm settling down nicely in the Saigon apartment, small and cozy as it is. It's interesting to compare my housing in Asia to where I just was in Arizona. My Hong Kong flat was exactly the same size as the closet in the master bedroom in Sahuarita. And the bedroom itself was no smaller than this whole Saigon apartment. The close quarters demands a fair bit of spatial economy. It kind of feels like we're living on a moderately sized boat, only sans briny air and tossing of waves. Lữ says that living in such a small space is good practice for when we live in New York together. I'm inclined to agree. Although, in New York I think I'll have my own room. For now, I've got a hide-a-bed that I plop down in the living room when it's time for shut-eye. They have their own room--but after they go to bed I have the rest of the apartment to myself, so technically I have the bigger space. Win! Heheh.
To describe the apartment, a picture's worth a thousand words; but let's see how far I get with a few hundred. The apartment is on the first floor, which is really just a case of semantics--the bottom floor is called the ground floor and the next is the mezzanine. You walk up two flights of stairs to get to the first floor, which makes this five story building seven stories in height.
The place is newly renovated, bright, and cheery, with eggshell walls and sandstone-colored tiles. A glass block wall sheds indirect daylight into the living room and onto blonde wooden furniture, which is where we install our butts to veg out in front of the flat screen t.v. that's mounted to the built-in shelving unit. On the other side of the couch is a small dining room and galley kitchen outfitted with the barest of necessities: a micro-fridge, a handful of utensils, pots, and pans, and a pantry stocked with the basics--fragrant Thai rice, finely ground Vietnamese coffee, spices. There's no oven, but there's a gas range, which is nice, although boiling the kettle puts a lot of heat in the room. But since the three of us can go outside to eat a whole meal together for a grand total of $2 dollars, we tend not to overuse the kitchen.
And then there's the bathroom, in which arguably the most important business is conducted. It's set with a pedestal sink, a glass-enclosed shower, and a double-flush toilet (small flush for number 1, and biggie for number 2; I can't for the life of me understand why we don't have those in the western US where water is so scarce). And! Not to forget, there's a certain spray fixture that deserves explanation; however, I'll save the details about that for a future post about water.
The last section of the apartment is Mike and Lữ's room, which has matching solid wood furniture and floor-to-ceiling curtains that drape across a sliding door to a balcony overlooking the courtyard below. On the balcony, our laundry drys on a rack, and a lotus plant with near elephant ear-sized leaves shoots out of a 10-gallon clay pot of water, mud, and duckweed. Lữ gets so excited to see how fast the buds grow--nearly an inch a day, at least.
Provender
- breakfast: bánh mì and chè đậu
- lunch: canh chua (leftovers from yesterday)
- supper: gỏi đu đủ khô bò and cháo
No comments:
Post a Comment