After the Ball

I have to apologise, Blogspot is censored in Vietnam so I can't actually read what I write, so I can't remember what I've written so you may get some repetition.

Saturday night was a triumph for my new employer

They organised a concert involving all the edutainment groups from their projects up and down Vietnam. They hired a 600 seat auditorium and sent invitations out - 5 days before the event. And the hall was full, the TV network turned up and everyone had a great evening.

Over 70 people took part on the stage. The quality was excellant and I did such a good job of standing in the doorway smiling that the whole team is going away 300km to a beach resort next weekend, for the whole weekend, to celebrate success. Craig Farina - take note.

For my part it was my first contact with people who actually have HIV and AIDS. Whilst a few of them were clearly unwell and fragile the majority were lively, determined to get the best out of life and very talented. I had a great evening, after which we again tried to perfect the art of 7 people in Daiwoo Matiz taxi.

The first week at work has been good, everyone is extremely friendly, they all want to improve their english skills and more marriage options are emerging every day. I now know my boss has a masters in business finance and economics (what am I doing here?) and that she is as astute as any senior manager I ever worked with at Boots. My honeymoon lasted until last Thursday when she asked for a meeting, handed me a project file and told me that I was presenting the following Monday to a group of about 50 people representing 15 organisations including DFID, UNAIDS and the US Government. My final challenge was to present 8 minutes content in 5 minutes (only a native english speaker could achieve that).

So the next 48 hours was spent learning about the project, how it was set up and what it did.

To take my mind off the coming presentation I headed out to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum on Sunday with Mike and Derek. I then got thrown out when the guards discovered the security check point had not confiscated my camera! Separated from friends and my mobile phone I walked back across town accompanied by Hong, a local with pretty good english who was determined to get me on his motorbike. He failed.

I could tell you lots of things, but I'm distracted by the fact that a guy keeps trying to get into my hotel room - he is knocking on the door now. Last time I opened the door he came in, closed the door and sat on the bed! I have no idea what he wants, and I hate to think what it might be. Now he is outside stripped to the waste. He speaks no english and I not enough Vietnamese to understand what he wants, other than to sit on my bed. So I think I'll leave him outside and do some more language practice. More soon!

The pool

The pool was a different experience today. The changing rooms were full of mosquitos and there were slightly fewer people, though the visibility underwater was no better than last time. The difference is that I have been noticed

There are two guys in their 60's who are serious swimmers. They have speedo type trunks, rubber caps and goggles. I noticed them watching me the first time I went swimming. Today they were about three lanes away from me when I got in the water and by the time I had done ten lengths they were in the same lane, watching.

When I reached their end of the pool one graciously swept aside and indicated with his hand that I should pass between them. I did so, turned and swam off. I could hear vaguely amused comments behind me. Next time I got to their end one of the them swam out to meet me and then walked backwards in front of me waving his arms and making encouraging noises to make me go faster (they both swim faster than me), he then applauded. After this I switched to front crawl, which no one here can do to an even mediocre standard. As I swam away the noises now sounded distinctly approving and as I swam through a group of lounging teenagers at the other end of the pool I received a "vewey gooood" and lots of smiles.

I can't wait to see what happens next time I go, that is if there is a next time. Today I swallowed a mouthful of the opaque liquid which inhabits the pool. My excuse is that I was in collision with someone who was swimming back and forth ACROSS the lanes.

I finished today attending one of the last rehearsals before Work's concert tomorrow night. There are 70 participants, all HIV positive many with real talent and all with masses of enthusiasm and energy everyone was having a great time. I finished up helping with timing and continuity, apparently the concert has to run to time and finish before the football starts or the audience are likely to walk out!

With the final dress rehearsal in the morning and the concert tomorrow night it looks like the review of my presentation on Monday will actually happen on Sunday, still offices here are all open 24x7 since it is cheaper to employ a guard than buy good locks or an alarm. Time for a beer.

Life in the fast lane

No this is not more about my internet connection, its more about swimming.

X is the careers officer at work which means he organises vocational training for people with HIV and AIDS who are in one of the centre's projects. He is also a bit of a match maker. The first time I sat next to him at lunch he asked me how old I was, if I was married and when the word divorced was mentioned his eyes lit up and he looked me up and down carefully then tweaked my bicep and started asking questions about why I looked so unfit. He then asked if I would like to meet his wife's sister and if I liked vietnamese girls, to which I diplomatically replied that, in the circumstances, I thought there was no right answer to that question. If I said yes I would be destined for the vietnamese equivalent of blind date and if I said no he, and the rest of the (predominantly female) team would be insulted.

He nodded with a distant look in his eyes and then showed me the correct way to hold my rice bowl.

The next time we sat together he asked if I liked sport and proceeded to tell me all the things he did. I told him I'd been swimming the previous morning at the pool near the hotel. He said he liked swimming and where was the pool. With the aid of a map and an older colleague, who speaks better English we worked out which pool it was. He immediately said he would meet me there the following morning at 6am for a swim. I accepted the challenge, feeling I was still being tested out for some greater purpose. All afternoon whenever he passed my desk he reminded me of the date.

I arrived at the pool dead on 6am, it was as frantic as on the previous occasion. I waited by the entrance until five past then went in, changed and swam my 1500 metres. I left at 7, still no sign of him. Later at work he explained he had got to the pool, there were very few people and hardly any water in the pool, I was not there so he went home. I don't know what to believe, but I do have mounting evidence that vietnamese cannot read maps or navigate their own city. Just take a taxi and show the driver a map, he will study it with a stern expression, nod sagely say a few Ahhs and then set of with confidence which lasts about half a mile, then he stops and asks for directions.

Anyway we have made a date for next week and he is coming to my hotel to pick me up.

Life in the sauna

Firstly - THANK YOU to everyone who has sent me an email since I started the blog. I have not replied because life has become more complicated since we got back from Hoi An.

At 5.30am in the morning we booked into our new hotel and by lunchtime I was realising we were no longer in a tourist zone. Since we moved here no one has tried to sell me anything. The opium dens which pass for internet cafes are slow, smokey and full of kids playing computer games and loud music. Censorship is also evident in that I can't access things like hotmail or my blog.

The hotel provides internet in the room. Its taken me a week to get it set up and the technically minded will appreciate my problem when I say it connects at 37kb ps. For the non-technical that is SLOW!

So I have not replied to any emails of late, though I have been reading them between time outs.

I started work this week. Work is a really friendly place and operates like a small business. Hence costs are an issue, so there is limited internet access at work and the economy drive extends to not using the aircon unless it is really hot. Tim (my yoga teacher) always says "sweat is good" I hope he is right 'cause I'm producing lots.

I had a sureal Boots moment when the subject of clean desk policies came up at the weekly team meeting and much debate took place about the time lost clearing up each day.

My honeymoon lasted three days where I just read papers and talked to people, partly because that is what I was supposed to do and partly because Work have organised a major concert this weekend - 600 in the audience but in true vietnamese fashion the invitations only went out on Monday! Everyone is running round like headless chickens and working late. No one wanted to talk to me. Even the finance manager was deep in month end reports (its only the 19th! even Fran didn't get that caught up)

However that all ended this morning, the director and my boss asked for a meeting and then explained that work was part of a group with a project funded by the US Government. There was a meeting on Monday next (two working days away) of the 22 organisations involved in the programme and a presentation was required on the progress of work's part of the programme. She could not go, the presentation had to be in English, no one on the staff was good enough to deliver it in 5 minutes - guess what is coming - so could I do it. Here are the project files, a colleague will support me to prepare the flashy powerpoint stuff and I'm presenting about 11am on Monday. Hmmmm. We then discussed the English expression "in at the deep end"

In the afternoon, my mind swimming with project documents, we went out to meet people who actually have HIV and AIDS. These are all performers at the concert on Saturday, drawn from performance arts groups set up as part of work's projects. They were great and soon opened up to tell me (through an interpreter) exactly what they thought of anything and everything. I got a few quotes for the presentation and then it was back to the office to work with one of the translators until 6.30pm. So we have tomorrow to do the presentation and then do it on Monday. Should be fun.

I'm going to close now as the internet will time out any minute. It may be weeks before I get the blog working properly so please bear with me. Oh - about prestidigitation. Its a French word for conjuring. The relevance being that Saturdays concert will include a guy who will conjure with condoms. My life is so full these days.....

Return from Hoi An

Its Sunday and I've been to bed twice already. The train journey to and from DaNang was not as bad as expected. The carriages were air conditioned and the "hard sleeper" beds were surprisingly comfortable for what was effectively a wooden door laid flat with an inch of foam matress on top. Breakfast was provided in the form of a Vietnamese pot noodle which tasted much like an English pot noodle and a lunch or evening meal was also provided looking very much like airline food served with chopsticks.

We were an hour late leaving DaNang and so arrived in Hanoi about 5.30am. I'd had about five hours sleep on the train and took to my bed in our new hotel for another three hours as soon as we checked in. A cockrel somewhere in the neighbourhood tried to deny me this last sleep, but my body overruled him and I was out like a light.

Hoi An was very much a holiday resort. The hotel VSO had secured with some kind of discount deal had everything, pool, gym, bars and an enormous breakfast buffet. We ate well and drank well and did a bit of work in between. The biggest thing I got out of the four days was to meet nearly all the other volunteers working in Vietnam and learn what they are doing and what they think of the country.

Its a relatively small number who have actually achieved any competence in the language, so I feel better about that. Most work through interpreters, all have some tales of frustration to tell including the odd occasion where the bag has been packed to go home before normal sanity has returned and tempers cooled. I have much to look forward to!

Measurement and evaluation is a hot topic with VSO at present. I have a feeling of Deja Vu - all those months of projects at Boots trying to work out the ideal measures to fit everything without the process taking over the world. It looks like we are about to do it again. I'm still trying to understand where it is lead from. I suspect donors wanting information to reassure them their money has been well spent are the core cause of this interest, but there is some truth in the need to understand how things are going. I hope I can find something which works and does not take too much effort.

Nerves are a little in evidence. Tomorrow is my first day at work and where I find out what the reality is. I'm still looking forward to it, but there is a little anticipation creeping in. Undoubtably I will return to this. But today I leave you with the question - what is prestidigitation?

The last train journey?

Today will be something of a milestone. At 11pm tonight we get on the overnight "hard" sleeper to DaNang on our way to the annual VSO country conference. It seemed a good idea at the time, especially as flying involved paying the difference between the two fares, but as the time draws closer I do wonder..... Part of my trepidation is the fact that my ticket says I am in coach 4 berth 29 level 3. Ah, said Chung - you are close to the roof, cool with the skylight open. Another part of my discomfort is that this is the "hard" sleeper - their term not mine - hardly the best of marketing. And finally it has sunk in that this journey is 15 hours!

There is good news too though, when we get back we move to a new hotel which is near where I'll be working and supposedly has internet in the rooms, that will be a big advantage. AND we have just heard that we have secured a fantastic house in the centre of Hanoi which will be available the first week in July. It has four bedrooms, several storage areas, lounge, kitchen diner and two balcony gardens on the third and fourth floors. It is big and at the end of a cul de sac. I have my fingers crossed as I am still struggling to believe we have managed to get it. The asking price was above our budget, but we obviously have honest faces as the landlord has accepted our offer after an hour of face to face haggling.

Finally we spent the whole of yesterday in a workshop with our new employers discussing our roles and targets for the first six months. As expected the brief we got in the UK was not entirely accurate. In my case "Public relations" work turns out to be build a website - something I know nothing about. Still I've got until December to work it out.

I'm looking forward to starting, but it will not be without its challenges. The whole organisation works open plan, which is the way I like it, and the main communication medium is a full team all morning meeting each Monday - in Vietnamese! Hmmm.

I have another volunteer working with me for the first month. He is from England and has worked in development for over 30 years - a fanastic information source for me. He is also the first BESO/VSO volunteer in Vietnam. BESO being the old business executive scheme which sends managers out for between one and three months to meet a specific need.

Anyway this will be the last entry for a few days as the conference will require all my concentration and beer drinking skills.

One or two people have emailed me asking how they post comments on the blog, the answer is I don't know. Its taking me a long time to work out how this thing works. I think you have to register as a member of this blog, but I may also have got the settings wrong. When I work it out I'll let you know. In the meantime if anyone out there works it out first then please let me know!

I've joined the world of Bloggers!

So what do I do next? Write something I suppose. I find it hard to believe I've been here for three weeks, had over a dozen language lessons and learned... well... nothing - even my pronunciation of the word "I" gets criticised and if I try to say something more complicated people just stare at me in disbelief. He's not speaking English, they say to each other, wonder what language it is?

I'm getting used to being here and a few of the bigger differences between this world and the one I left in Nottingham. For example being touched by men - Hung held my hand as we walked out of the airport when we arrived, a few days later a taxi driver stroked my back as I stood waiting to cross the road. The local pub landlord - who thinks we are Germans - gripped my knee as he asked me in half German half Vietnamese where one of our party was last night. Its nothing to worry about, they are just being friendly and some people just want to touch a westerner.

Traffic is a revelation. No one looks before they do anything, they just assume everyone else will move out of their way. No one stops at red lights and you have to look both ways when crossing a one way street. Pavements are for shortcuts and parking your motorbike, the white line is to help you stay straight so you should drive straight down it and the hundred people behind you sounding their horns are not trying to get past, they are just being friendly.

There is nothing which cannot be carried on the back of a motorbike and even a pushbike can handle a fridge freezer! Nominally they drive on the right here, so the best way to turn left is to get on the wrong side of the road, then people can go round you without getting in your way. This includes dual carriageways. After all it doesn't make sense to drive past your turn off and have to come back to it, does it?

I've eaten roast frog (the whole animal, not just the legs) roast Egret (more energy consumed opening it up than derived from eating it), shelled whole king prawns with a pair of chop sticks and got used to the idea that the small prawns are easier eaten whole, forget the shelling its not worth the effort. I've come to realise that if vietnamese women bought food processors they would have nothing to do all day and I've realised I am again in a country where nothing has a fixed price.

Speaking of prices, beer is just over 10p a pint and I can get a good meal on the street for 30p, however my living allowance is about five pounds thirty a day and that includes everything appart from my accommodation costs. I just bought a made to measure suit for 53pounds, ten days allowance gone!

Anyway, that is enough for now. I need to find out more about how this site works, customise it get some photos on and tell you all where to find it.

More later bye for now.