Man on guitar is a teacher of literature. At the table and not pictured, there was also a professor of Chinese and Nôm, a defunct system of Vietnamese writing that requires fluency with Chinese. This professor said he was a fan of my Vietnamese poetry and prose published around 15 years ago in Germany-based Talawas and Australia-based Tiền Vệ.

The kid is Lynh Bacardi's son. Today, I bought him an ice cream, took him to a Buddhist temple, then we borrowed a black dog near Cafe Ca Dao to walk the puppy around, twice. Still, he bit me, the kid, not the dog! I taught the kid a Saigon expression, "Hết xí quách!" Literally "out of stewed pork bones," it means "I'm exhausted."