[Coffee Saigon in Pakse on 4/24/23]
In Pakse, I frequent two cafes, for conversations overheard as much as their coffee with condensed milk. People delight in composing language, and hearing the same. Bantering soothe and nourish the soul. Laugh tracks received in the dark are for the insane.
This morning, for example, I leaned back against a wall, with sweat running down my face, to listen to four Vietnamese talked about this and that.
First, they mentioned a woman who had just found a job selling something for 100 thousand kips [$5.47] a day. From their tone, I could tell it wasn’t great, but it beat having no job.
Then they talked about lottery tickets, with a thin woman in her late 40’s saying, “If you win, where do you go? I don’t even know.”
After telling her, a short, fat woman with tattooed eyebrows said, “If you win, you can afford the fare to get there. Don’t worry!”
A third woman with a huge belly then said, “The other day, I ate a bowl at Huong’s place. Afterwards my stomach kept going ooh, ooh. It didn’t really hurt, but it kept going ooh, ooh.”
Tattooed eyebrows, “Huong probably reheated a broth that was two, three days old.”
Thin woman, “A week old.”
Tattooed eyebrows, “Her noodle soup is good.”
Huge belly, “It kept going ooh, ooh.”
Wizened man in his 60s jumped in, “Maybe you’re pregnant.”
Delivered deadpan, no one laughed, then they talked about something else.
What’s the significance of all that? Not much, really, but people go mad when denied such shared normality. That’s why lockdowns and compulsory mask wearing are state enforced madness.
On 4/19/21, Eve Peyser published a revealing article in New York about “forever maskers.” It begins:
Robin Argenti cannot yet envision a future in which she doesn’t wear a mask. “We don’t know if it is going to ever be over,” the 57-year-old resident of upstate New York said of the pandemic. She’s in poor health, and concerned that with the emergence of new variants and the “millions of people who refuse to get vaccinated,” the country will never actually overcome the coronavirus. “I will be masked up for many, many years,” she said. “There are too many unknowns.”
As more and more Americans get vaccinated, the end of the pandemic feels palpable. Most people probably cannot wait to cut out the social distancing and take their masks off. I can’t wait for the day when I can walk down the street and look at a sea of strangers’ naked faces. But there are some people like Argenti who say they plan to make mask-wearing a part of daily life, even after the authorities give the thumbs-up to bare your entire face.
Though Peyser stated she couldn’t wait to take her mask off, she could understand forever maskers like Argenti, who feared Covid would never end. The only solution was universal vaccination, which makes no sense, if looked at rationally.
If half the world refused to be Jewjabbed, only they were in danger of sickness or death, with the “vaccinated” perfectly safe, for the word means to be provided with immunity against a disease.
That’s, like, first grade English, except such kids are now only taught by cross dressing freaks about 72 genders. By the time they’re ready for college, the brightest among them will have all 72 memorized, I’m sure.
So woke, they can immediately define each whenever asked by anyone anywhere.
“Aerogender? Shit, babygirl. Oh, sorry, I’m just kidding… That’s one who can be any of 72 genders according to their environment, so they’re one gender in a vinyl paneled room with a fan, and another when caught in a summer rain around 3PM. After 3:15, though, they’ll shift to another gender, and so on.”
“Gender witched? That’s a person who is nearly convinced they belong to one gender only, but can’t decide which one, for there are so many, all wonderful. On my worst day, I’m gender witched. Most of the time, I’m heal gendered, which means my sexuality brings me peace, calm and positivity, and don’t you dare call it incessant masturbation!”
If even a genius linguist like Noam Chomsky can’t grasp “vaccine” and “immunity,” what chance does anyone have? Certainly not Ron Unz with his 214 IQ, nor the always reassuring Rochelle Walensky of the CDC.
Charles Cullen was a nurse who may have killed hundreds. Jailed in Trenton, he confessed to nearly 40 murders. Though Walensky is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, at least, her fellow Jew Merrick Garland won’t prosecute her.
Jewish Chomsky met with top shelf Jewish pimp Jeffrey Epstein. The Satanic creep specialized in procuring little girls for old men. Perhaps this explains why Chomsky gets so much wrong? When asked about this, Noam snapped, “It’s none of your business!”
Chomsky also did a skit with Jewish racist Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen has made millions from mocking Central Asians and whiggers. It’s OK, he’s Jewish.
A Jew, John Milius, can also slander Vietnamese outrageously. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, “We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile.”
Though entirely baseless, it’s taken by fools as fact, but these chumps also believe in gas chambers, miraculously collapsing skyscrapers, US presidential elections and Jewjabs, etc.
Hey big shot Viet Thanh Nguyen! Since you’re regularly in the New York Times, would you mind discussing Milius’ racist insult? Perhaps you will defend it as poetic license or a parable leading to some greater truth, but I’d like to hear your reasoning. On a personal note, let’s knock down a few together soon in Saigon, Vung Tau or, hell, wherever, but certainly not in San Jose, for I ain’t never coming back that way.
It’s noon. Sitting outside Lankham, I’m sharing a table with a mentally ill Lao, wearing a mask. He’s an oddity. Most Laos don’t bother.
A while ago, there was an Irishman, Swiss woman and Dutch woman, all under 25. Overhearing them talking about dreading to go home, I engaged them. Though knowing no Lao, just like me, they love being around people, which is so easily done in Southeast Asia.
Last month, I met an 18-year-old German woman on her first trip to Asia. Next year, she’ll return to Don Det, exactly.
Here in Pakse, I can talk away, for there are Vietnamese speakers everywhere. Mostly, I just listen.
Profiling the ice cream girl turned hotel owner yesterday, I didn’t quote her, for it was hard enough to remember her facts. Some of her word choices, though, are very memorable, but this you’ll get from everyone, if you’d just listen.
When one of her sons got a scholarship to the US, he was offered an even more generous and longer one to Australia. As he hesitated, she reminded him the US was the “world’s big brother” [“đại ca thế giới”], with đại ca a humorous usage, for it’s most often heard in kung fu or gangster movies.
From đại ca, she made an even funnier leap, for she said the US was a đại quái, meaning Big Monster or Big Monstrosity. Though it was just a playful alliteration from ca to quái, it also rang true.
When I said to those young Europeans that laughter is often heard in Laos and similar countries, they knew exactly what I meant, for it’s much rarer at home, and rarest in the Big Monstrosity, which one of them had already visited.
I also said that in sane, healthy countries, children are often seen playing in public, unattended. I saw enough of that in Europe.
[Tirana, Albania, 4/8/21]
In the US and South Africa, though, it’s not very common or safe, but hey, as the World’s Big Brother, Uncle Sam must know what he’s doing.
How fitting that his avatar is Joe Biden, father of Hunter and husband of Jill, who’s insisting he’s doing great. Joe brings stability, Jill claims, even as everything outside her boudoir is ransacked or burnt down, mostly by teens, of course. Youth is the future!
That’s America’s first family. The world sees all this. There is hope.
2 comments:
Mr. Dinh, is there anything about America that you like and miss?
Hi,
I should write an article about this. There was plenty I liked about the US but nothing I miss, having left in June of 2018. Before that, I had had two 2-year stays overseas, plus another lasting five months. So I'm rather well practiced at living outside the US.
That said, I wouldn't mind seeing many American places again, so I can understand better what's going on. Besides Philadelphia, I would like to revisit New York, Chicago, New Orleans, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Missoula and Wolf Point, etc.
I have few friends left in the US.
Linh
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