new years celebration. we ate outside constantly attacked by mosquitoes from the air and red ants from the land. it was a wonderful dinner.

afterwards jack, charles (an older scottish man who’s doing research here for his doctorate) and a large group from the agriculture department went to have a small party in one of their sheds.

these sheds house large tanks of water full of all types of fish. they’re doing experiments on them that i didn’t bother to understand. i’m sure lots of poking and prodding. the tanks are blue like candy and are as high as my bellybutton. the fish swim and dart in the dusty water. there was a turtle in one bucket that walked around aimlessly. his webbed paddles couldn’t grip the plastic bottom well.

we had three watches among the group of about ten of us. one watch was ten minuets fast, the other ten minutes slow and the third somewhere in between. we chose to follow the middle watch.

at midnight charles shouted, “happy 2003!” and we all stood up and shouted. charles, jack and i started to sing, “let old acquaintances be forgot and…” something else. i sure didn’t know the words but knew the tune quite well. our vietnamese friends quickly picked up the tune and sang loudly, without words.

we sat down and soon went to bed.

new years are a peculiar event. nothing really changes and it all feels like it should. today i feel as i did yesterday.

in any case, happy new year to all.

tonight i ate chicken feet. they were covered with some vegetables and spices. some onions and something else.

the man who ordered them said we were ordering chicken legs. i though, “um, chicken legs.” there were about eight of them.

i ate them after following the example of others. you put them in your mouth, bite off the toes and chew. there are three main toes and then the thumb. it’s hard to pick up a chicken leg with chopsticks. they are slippery and taste like rubber coated metal.

it’s hard to bite off the toes too. the ligaments and tendons get in the way and you end up chewing and gnawing around until chicken foot juice drips off your chin. you can hear when you’re successful. there’s a distinct crunch sound when you bite through them.

i was riding to my friends house on my bicycle when my pedal fell off. not the part you put your foot on either. the whole left side fell off in mid-stroke. i almost toppled off my bike as it clanked and skidded on the road. everyone stopped and laughed. i don’t know how many times that happens to someone in their lifetime. hopefully only once.

outside my house there is a manila colored wall with shards of glass embedded in the top. on the other side of the wall there is a small swamp. lately a man has put himself to work digging up the earth from the swamp and clumping it on the shore.

he wades out in the middle of the murky water with a cylindrical piece of metal. about as wide as his head and about as long as his calf. he wears only peach colored shorts dirtied by the water. his skin is a dark shade of chocolate. he’s been toasted by the sun. the man bends down and places the metal cylinder in the waist-deep water. he stands on it and jumps up and down.

after sufficient jumping he pulls the cylinder out of the water and heaves it to shore. it is full of mud and dirt. he dumps it out in neat rows along side his house. all day long he went about pulling mud up from the swamp and placing it around his house. all day long i read and watched him.

why is he working all day in the scorching sun to pile dirt around his house? i have no idea but i’m sure it’s a good reason. watching him toil in the afternoon heat makes me thankful that i’ve had such a wonderful life. i won the lottery of birth. it also makes me frustrated. this frustration has no direction and leads to cynicism. initially i want to hide from his strain. i could shut my curtains and read inside but i’d rather be fascinated by it all. i want to watch him long enough so that his bent brown body is forever scarred in my memory.

home is where most of your clothes are. i’m back home.

today jack and i strolled around long xuyen watching everything. people’s stares followed us like late afternoon shadows. it really is nice to be back.

we got our haircut today and it was quite an ordeal. the barbershop is equipped with eight red chairs with eight middle aged barbers lounging in them. four chairs face one large mirror and the other four chairs face a mirror along the opposite wall.

a very large man with a crew cut and a cigarette hanging limply from his mouth decided he would cut my hair. he hopped out of the char and fastened a large towel around my neck with a large metal pin. it was so tight that i could feel my own pulse.

i sat looking at myself in the mirrors. i could see jack sitting behind me and we both smirked at each other. the two large mirrors facing each other created a succession of reflections. they were slightly warped though and as you looked further and further back into the reflections things became more and more obscure. about three reflections back i looked like quite a fat man.

after giving sign-language instructions (my vocabulary for barbershops is limited in vietnamese) the man set off with the cigarette still slowly burning in his mouth. his stomach rubbed against my shoulders as he circled me chopping, snipping and buzzing. he finished and i looked like i was a twelve year old boy. i smiled, said he did a wonderful job and jack and i headed off again.

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