TADIOTO

A cold wind blew through Ha Noi - and the leaves were all on the sidewalks - what a beautiful scene.
It was leaves and leaves everywhere - around the old Thang Long citadel, I stopped my bike in spite of the young men in uniforms across the street.  They were guarding the Ministry of Defense […]

Price hikes in Viet Nam have hit consumers who lament about food costs up some 20% or so…. meanwhile:

VietNamNet Bridge 17 Feb 2008 - One doesn’t have to be an economic expert to notice the recent increase in living standards around the city.
….  It’s a tendency not difficult to spot. One just has to wander the streets of […]

Ha Noi’s warmed up a little in the past few days. Yesterday was sunny but by evening it was cold again.
Last night I sat outside at a restaurant, and this morning, my cold has returned. Friends from the news department at Viet Nam Television asked me to join them for a drink and dinner. We […]

Boat people leave, vowing
never to come back.  Some die,
some make it rich in the world.
They return now self-possessed on flights
that cast small shadows on the glistening ocean
they once crossed with thirst. 
On the old boulevards in the old Saigon,
they taste again a tangy custard apple, and dread
the traffic noise.  They gaze at the sun-drenched faces,
wounded to […]

A while ago, I posted some translations of poems by Vu Thanh Son, a former Ha Noi police officer who’s abandoned the party and now lives in Brazil.
I continue to re-read him and keep coming back to the one opening line of one poem.  My friend Wayne Karlin said, “Stop right there,” when I read him that […]

Tell me: what did you do today? Did you have breakfast? Did you forget the laundry?
Photo: Joao Silva for The New York Times
Did you vote?
 Photo: Akhtar Soomro for The New York Times
Is that a smile in the eyes belonging to the covered faces?
Pakistan - how do you live in despair and vote and hope?
In Kenya, a man […]

The cold weather here won’t stop.  It’s not too pleasant, but I don’t mind, really, reminding myself often that the Ha Noi summer humidity is infinitely less friendly.

A couple of days ago, I even defied the dreadful temperatures and took my motorcycle up to the mountains, a two-hour ride each way.  I was wearing long-johns, pj pants, […]

You have a vision. You build it. And it gets done. And naturally, you want to be in it.

But then, naturally, when the vision becomes reality, it’s already winter - the coldest year in North Viet Nam in 20 years.
Figures. Story of my life. 

It was around one a.m. in Ha Noi, and I was nostalgic.  I wanted a touch of San Francisco, you know, the old apartment, the old neighborhood, etc…,  and so was looking at photos of Fillmore Street.  I found this on the web, which I think belongs to Carlos & Ana Trevonio (?) of Barcelona, Spain:

Says a lot about race, […]

The solution is the problem. 

Don’t ask me how I came up with that, how I came to it.  You figure it out, spin it.  T’is the season for spinning.