Embracing the Fishbowl

Some random pics unconnected with Living the Fishbowl Life:

TIM:

Okay, so I know it's a small world and the world is shrinking and all interconnected, but it's still disconcerting when, in the space of a week, two separate people in my life who are not my Facebook friends tell me where I was and who I was with.  

The first was my landlord, who is working with me to plan some concrete construction on the roof of our house.  He mentioned the Vision Cafe, where we volunteer for English Clubs, and said that his wife saw us on Facebook.  It turns out she is FB friends with one of the people who was at Vision Cafe and who took a selfie with us and posted it.  I can only hope that the comments under the pics were complimentary, but I really have no way of knowing what sort of things are being said about us in the pics floating around.  We take lots of posed selfie shots with our new Viet friends, and we know they're going to go out on social media, but it's still disconcerting when my landlord knows where I spend my evenings volunteering.

Then the other was my college foreign affairs office.  That one was eerie, because she said sort of in the same breath: "I see you are spending time with students making dinner in your home--I saw it on Facebook--we have a problem."  Okay, I'm going to be honest: that one freaked me out.  I don't have any idea what connection she has with the students who posted about making dinner with us, but apparently news about the Chases isn't hard to find.  And the problem?  Yikes!  It turns out the problem is entirely unrelated to our making egg-meat-veggie wraps with students.  The "problem" was the office wanted help with translating something from Viet to English, and yes, I'm happy to help.  Whew!

It's surreal, to be a foreign celebrity here.  It's very like when we lived in China in the 90's, but the explosive element of social media really adds an exciting element to the story.  (One anecdote from China, then I'll sign off):  We had learned how to order a certain favorite dish in the campus canteen by asking the waitress to repeat it for us again and again.  Later we discovered that all we'd been saying, in carefully practiced tones, was "cauliflower-with-starch."  Even later--a week later--we were at a market not far from our apartment and a lady that we'd never seen before patted a head of cauliflower and smiled and pointed to us and said "cauliflower with starch" and chuckled.  Yeah, we are cause for much amused conversation, where ever we go.  Today people on the street were pointing and chuckling because I was walking with Janet and I was the one carrying the shopping bags.  We clearly don't have the gender roles well established in my family, they'll tell their friends.  Ah, well.  The price of fame.

~Tim