Saigon to New York: Perpetual Sunrise

i was a stranger, surrounded by japanese like a raw fish or a new tentacle-rape comic or a used panty dispenser, and felt just as uncomfortable. flying into the sunrise, the sun hung low in the sky for most of my voyage home on a june 10th that began 36 hours before it ended. but what felt truly strange about this journey was that i would have preferred the company of a plane full of vietnamese charlies, commoners and communists alike, rather than these alien japs. and yeah, contrary to popular belief there's a difference you god damn racists.

yes i've come a long way. in the 8 months i spent in vietnam i learned that asians, indeed all people, are like rice. at first you think all rice is the same: squished (almost squinty-like) pellets of starch grown for the consumption of the starving masses. no style, no flavor, no reason to expect this boring old bowl of rice to be any different than the last. but then you discover that there's not only white rice, but also yellow, and there's even more of it than white rice. and even though you suspect that they're quite a bit dirtier and you can't understand what the fuck they're saying with their sing song hong kong fooie way of talking, you're just so damn tired of white rice that you scoop up the smaller, more resourceful yellow rice, shove'em into your mouth, and chew'em until your belly's full of those tasty little fuckers. then you check your watch, say you've got somewhere to be, and go. and that's pretty much how i feel about people.

sorry, metaphors get mangled when i'm hungry, but luckily it wasn't long before i was flying over the enchanted island of consumer electronic ninjas and tree spirit automatons. at first i was excited about being in japan, if only to transfer flights, but when they're fucking feng-shui houses and fuel-efficient sub-compacts came into view, i became overwhelmed with an urge to drop an atomic bomb. well, not a real one. maybe like, a giant water-atomic bomb. some kind of... hydrogen bomb.

the bong of a gong reverberated throughout the plane when we touched ground. fuck the japanese are big. or at least that's the way it seemed coming from vietnam. i distracted myself from the horrible realization that i would once again be considered a malformed midget by buying some candy, and then spent the worst 800 yen i ever spent in my life on a pitifully uninformative issue of newsweek (the future of television my ass). then i sat down in a robot chair that tried convincing me to spend 100 yen so it could vibrate me. naturally, i slapped it across the head rest and moved to a less forward chair to take a brief nap before my plane took off for jfk.

the 20-something hours i spent sitting in an airplane were comfortably uneventful, due in no small part to my prime real estate next to a window and an absent seat to the other side of me in both flights. the biggest event of the whole journey was when the guy sitting a couple chairs next to me got smacked in the head by the passenger in front of him who was apparently quite eager to recline his seat. shitake! the time i didn't spend sleeping (most of it) was spent cursing out that ricoculously expensive newsweek until i figured out how to work the monitor with a little over an hour left til arrival. then i watched the end and beginning (in that order) of million dollar baby, hoping the whole time that hilary swank would become pregnant and give birth to a million dollars as clint eastwood exclaimed, "jackpot!" but the plane landed before i could catch the middle so i guess i'll never know.

i slid past customs without a hitch, which was rather fortunate because i had a whole bag full of communism that they never even checked. say goodbye to your "free markets" and "free speech" and "free samples" all you suck-ass americans! ahhhh but my disdain for freedom instantly subsided when i saw both of my sisters and blatt holding up a sign with some random gook talk on it (tinh tu danh tu!) yes, welcome home indeed. hugs all around and, when my parents returned from either pooing or peeing, a second round of hugs. as we made our way past all the fatties to the quad-wheeled enclosed personal transportation units so common on this side of the planet, i anxiously waited for someone to make the inevitable comment about the extraordinary weight of my largest suitcase so i could unleash something i had been sitting on since somewhere in the pacific. no, not a wretched bubble of slow-stewed stool. a joke. behold!

"how else was i gonna get her past immigration?" then i kicked the suitcase and said, "you ok honey?."

classic, aging beautifully like a dry californian bordeaux. it was good to see that the people, places, and jokes haven't changed too much. we went to john harvard's for lunch, a restaurant somewhere between the applebee's/chili's fare and a fancy pants place, but then again maybe it's just the cloth napkins. there i ate approximately 6 bites of a massive chicken sandwich (even the chickens here are fat) on a plate overflowing with a farmful of fried potato sticks. kenny lake showed up a little while later and we exchanged our impressions about our recent teaching experiences. i told him how lucky i felt to be teaching there, working with students and teachers who i knew not as such, but as friends. he told me about how he'd told a student that he'd end up in jail one day after the toocoolforschool 9th grader called him a faggot, and then about the fidgety black student whom his observer advised him it wasn't ok to call a "jungle boy" when he had actually called him "drummer boy."

fuck i love this place. it didn't feel at all weird to be home, once again surrounded by family and familiarity (though i'm sure my sentiments will be different the next time around when i leave the nam for good). sure the people here look different and don't speak with vietnamese, or australian, or south african, or korlean accents, but they still make me laugh. and yeah my house is surrounded by grass and trees, not jeans selling, ban xeo making vietnamese, but i still have a comfortable bed to sleep in. the only thing i've found that will truly take some getting used to is being able to understand ambient conversations.

"that house on maple, on the left just before four winds, has a beautiful lawn."
"yeah, it really looks great. i see the man out there almost everyday."
"it must be the fertilizer. you know, i'm using a different brand for the first time. i just had no luck with that scots."
"i know and you can definitely tell. i think this is the best the front lawn's looked in ages..."

[5 minutes and billions of blades of grass commented upon later...]

"ok well it's almost midnight and i'm pooped. goodnight, mom. goodnight, dad."

upside-down again for the next 7 weeks.