January 30th 2011

January has nearly finished and it's Tet in a few days - Thursday 3rd; and Tet Eve is Wednesday 2nd when the excitement really starts.

What's happened over the past month?


WORK
Our Director of English Programs left the country yesterday, and so did the Assessment Coordinator, to other positions in Australia and New Zealand. Work will feel very strange without then there. No-one has been assigned to replace the Director, but a temporary replacement for the Assessment Coordinator has been found. We do have an Acting-Director.

I pick up another class of Vietnamese Government officals. they seem like they are at a slightly higher level of language ability than my current Intermediate class. I'm going to base the enxt ten week syllabus around teaching grammar first and foremost and as early as I can in the next ten-week period - so that whatever employment-related material I bring in can also be looked at in terms of revision of the grammar items we've already covered, as well as discourse etc.

SHOPS
The shop next door to where I live has sold for a million US dollars. It's large enough to house a four wheel drive and about 4 rows of empty boxes - and that's it!!! The new owners have been rendering the space in concrete, and my landlady has taken the opportunity to render the allyway walls and put down floor tiles - also in the alleyway. Because the previous owner's property was joined to hers, the previous owner's permission was needed before my landlady could do anything; and he wouldn't give her permission.

I went out shopping twice yesterday to store up on groceries for the Tet period when the shops are shut. The first grocery store (Fivi Mart) had quite a few items left but no vegetables. Even though they aren't as fresh as the markets, it's cheaper for me, because everybody tries to rob Westerners by asking exhorbitant prices. When I first got to Hanoi one vender asked for about US$20 for a pair of rubber thongs. One the way hone there was an incident (see ACCIDENTS NAD NEAR MISSES below). Next I went to the supermarket at the plaza at the bottom of the lake. Barely anything on the shelves!!! Rows and rows of shelves were empty. Nothing except about 5 packets of Kim Chi in the fridges. There were a few vegetable, so I bought them.

ACCIDENTS NAD NEAR MISSES
Hit
Tingay and I went out to the Sofitel Horel for brunch last Saturday and decided we'd walk up tp the BookWorm bookshop north of Lake Tay Ho.

We waited on the kerb for a break in the traffic. Finally there was a break, I glanced to the right, just in case - nothing coming and stepped out into the middle of the road. I glanced again to right and saw a motorbike speed around the corner on the wrong-side of the road - the driver was talking to his wife on the back, and his head was turned. I was too far out in the middle of the road for him to worry me, but I turned to see where Tingay was, and saw him plough into her.

I watched his bike fall over and the three people, the driver, the wife and the child splay out from the bike onto the road. Then I thought "Where's Tingay?" She was lying face-down in the gutter.

She got up and we went back into the hotel had a cup of tea. As we sat there her arm started to hurt whenever she moved it, and her hand was swelling up. So we took a taxi to SOS where they xrayed her arm and found it fractured on the elbow - but they didn't have plater bandages. So then we took another taxi to the French Hospital where they bandaged her up.

Near miss
As I was walking home with the groceries yesterday and was only about 15 meters from my door in Hang Bac Street, a motorbike with four young men on it zoomed through the intersection ahead and then hit a parked mototbike about two meters in front of me, it careered up onto the footpath. I didn't have much room to move but I managed to move enough so that the bike fell against my legs and four men fell off, also against my legs. I'm glad I wasn't any nearer to the stationary bike.

The owner of the parked bike came out of a gold shop and started talking earnestly to the young men. They tested their legs - gingerly putting weight on them to check for broken bones, then just took off on their bike.