Language lessons start on Wednesday and I find this a great chance to actually rant about my plight here in Hanoi—or how much I have overused the sentence “toi khong hieu (I don’t understand).”
My mental notes in bullets:
- I always see days where finding someone who can speak in English a blessing.
- I resuscitate the paralyzed social butterfly in me by speaking to French/American-looking people that I bump into cafes. Yes, I am a freak like that.
- I don’t intend to be offensive when I say this but talking to the Vietnamese in English feels like doing RareJob again—that online English tutoring job that I used to have back in my university days (hey, RareJob could make good business here in Vietnam). Whenever I talk to someone, I have to speak slowly and kill the machine gun-like talking machine embedded in my body. I have to speak simple English sentences and in slow paces. I have to hibernate that crazy part of my self that shoots puns, sarcasm, and green jokes; these could potentially offend anyone who selectively understands every word that I blurt. And unfortunately, there’s no way for me to ask someone to repeat what they say because I don’t know what “mo ichido onegaishimasu” is in Vietnamese.
- Typical conversation: “If I decide to go to the center (of the city), what do I tell the taxi driver?” I asked someone whom I can’t name just yet. “Yes,” she replied.
- Communication has proven itself to be the biggest challenge for me so far. Food comes next (but I’ll talk about that next time).
- I saw this coming the moment I left my comfort bubble: the English-blabbering Filipino was temporarily shut up in Thailand and almost completely in Vietnam. So you can just imagine my desperation when I found the need to rant in rapid English (this is something that I do for catharsis back home). I was walking from my Vietnam newspaper office to home when I saw a bunch of French people eating noodles by the pavement. I barged up to them like the creepy Filipino freak that I am and started ranting.
- “Apparently, if I say a street name with a different tone, I could end up being driven somewhere else entirely. And the unfortunate truth is that I don’t know how to control my tone; worse, I’m not learned enough to distinguish different tones,” I ranted.
- To keep my sanity, I sometimes also call Levi–as I normally would when I was back home. Crazy minute details of daily life are our conversation starters. The sucky part: there is a split second delay of the transmission of our voices; lag on voice calls makes me want to punch the sun.
- I always heave a huge sigh of relief every time someone answers yes to my question “Do you speak English?” I overact sometimes.
- I also wonder what translators think about. I was in a conference last week and I had to wear this headphone thing. I feel so lost.
writing detours 