TADIOTO

When I moved to Ha Noi 6 months ago, I knew two things for certain.    
First, friends would visit. Ha Noi’s a trendy destination.   
I was right, but didn’t know I’d have three or four visitors a month: friends and friends of friends, art collectors, businesspeople, journalists. They come from London and Beijing, Seattle and San Francisco, New York and Paris, [...]

Guest comes over, looks at the thing on the wall, and goes, “Nice nipple.”    
You’re annoyed, of course.        
 
It’s in fact a really cool neon Buddha that the artist Nguyen Quang Huy made for me.    
http://www.asianartnow.com/nqh__1.html   
 

Item 348:
You’re at a restaurant.  You order chicken with lemon grass.   
They bring you something you don’t recognize.  It sure doesn’t look like chicken.  

You say, of course, “I didn’t order this.”
Waiter goes, “Well, what you ordered ain’t so good.  I brought you this instead.”
You know… 
 
You’re not supposed to think for yourself. 

Annoyed in Ha Noi item # 259:  
Had a discussion with a policeman recently: he’s my “security minder” in Ha Noi, and I complained about the six months that have gone by, and still I haven’t been issued a visa as a resident journalist.  When in Rome, wait like a good Roman, he said.  Actually, what he [...]

Neil Young sings, Do your senses tingle and take a chance? Let me come over, I know you know: When you dance I can really love. 
   Dinh Y Nhi, Gouache on Paper 
Abu Ghraib… When you dance, I can really love…  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5966uer6wE&feature=PlayList&p=BB521849A5B68466  

cracked down on a nightclub in Ha Noi a couple of weeks ago and detained 1,500 people, a lot of people were put through blood tests.  Heroin and ecstasy among the blood samples.  So the New Century has closed down – for staying open past midnight.  Meanwhile… 

 
the cows didn’t come home. They’re still at the local [...]

And you’re in and out of the shower all day… 
  
who needs hair?  “Thug from outterspace” is one way to name this. 
 

and happy to revive this website. 
I’ve been back to the US three times since moving to Ha Noi and have neglected this website.  
It’s been great to be at the San Francisco Int’l Asian Am Film Fest (back in March) – and see kind friends there, in Los Angeles a few weeks before, and on my recent [...]