Personal [Driving] Space

[Tim]

I actually don't notice too much difference in face-to-face personal space here--I'll have to ask my kids if they notice it and I'm just wearing my Asia-eyes to not notice.

However.

This morning I was biking back from the market (a pomelo, 5 kilos of rice, a bunch of bananas, and a roll of trash bags in my basket) and I noticed that my sense of personal space on the road has dramatically shifted and reduced in these last couple of weeks.

In the USA we "drive for the other guy."  My dad is pretty wise about defensive driving, and he told me to never assume that the other drivers were paying attention and 100% sober.  So back home I drive defensively, too, and have my eyes all over the road.  That doesn't really work here.

My sense of personal space is shrinking.  Now it really is limited to just what is 10 feet in front of my front wheel.  I don't try to anticipate what the honking taxis are doing or whether the old lady pushing the heavily-laden bicycle is going to suddenly decide to turn left into my path.  If she does, I'll stop or go around, but my sphere of active awareness is shrinking.  I still have peripheral awareness, for sure, but ... it's connected to the idea of "personal space" in some way.

If you are in the room with me, I'm aware of you, but only peripherally.  Until you enter my personal bubble and now I have to engage with you in some way.  Not that I don't like to engage with people, I'm just saying that while before you entered my personal space I was aware of you, now I'm AWARE of you.  I'm watching your face for intention, I'm calibrating my extended hand so that if you go for a hug and I go for a handshake I can retract it and pretend that I was going for a hug, too.  That sort of thing.  We're in each other's personal space, and we're aware of each other.

On the road, on my bike, I notice that my personal space is shrunken.  The guy zooming up with a cigarette in one hand and a cell phone in the other doesn't bug me.  He got his tire into the space first, so I give way.  I'm not really looking behind me.  The taxi is honking to let me know that he's there, and that's okay.  I'm still aware of lots of things, but I'm engaged with far fewer.  To enter my driving bubble you have to be a) in front of me and b) quite close.

I never knew until today that I could differentiate between awareness and engagement in regards to driving.  I just realized, though, that the traffic far away from me (25 feet) is not really my problem nowadays.  That's what allows me to plunge headlong into intersections (there are no stop signs in Viet Nam, to my knowledge) to turn left.  I am peripherally aware of the taxi and the oncoming 5 motorbikes, but they're not really in my personal space yet and I got my wheel in the intersection first.

That's it about personal driving space.  Just a reflection.

Did I tell you how absurd our garage is?  First of all, it's AWESOME to have a garage.  Most families bring their motorbikes, bicycles, and even cars (those that have one) into their first-floor living space.  Our garage is awesome because it's actually a garage.  But if there are 5 people in a Viet family, dad is going to have a motorbike and mom is either going to have a second one or she'll have a bike with a flat rack on the back tire.  So that's it.  The family of 5 is ready to go out whenever they need to on those two vehicles.  When the kid enters high school they might buy her a bicycle or an e-bike, but she has to be a certain age to drive a motorcycle.

In our garage we have 5 bicycles.  We are Hilarious.  The only other buildings with 5 bicycles parked inside ... are selling bicycles.  Nobody comes to our house who doesn't say "Whoa!  Five bicycles?  Why do you have so many bicycles?"  The answer "we have 5 people in our family" doesn't really answer their question.  The answer to their question is that we are not Viet.

Probably this week I'll get a motorbike.  For reals.

Shrimp with Viet friends.  Both Michael and his friend, Theo, are 12.

Waiting for a taxi after games and swimming at Red Beach.

Daniel riding.  Our house is on the right.  Teo's house has a silver car parked in front of it.

"Forget to Smile"??  Today I saw a girl wearing a Hello Kitty shirt with happy cartoon characters and the words "I'm not okay" in bold.  What does she think that means??

The Old Woman

[Daniel, Age 11]

Good morning America! Or evening. Stupid time zones. And I'm pretty sure only 3 people are reading this. Anyway, nothing major has happened yet in Vietnam. though I do have one fear. THE OLD  WOMAN!!!!! And I mean OLD woman. Apparently I am the cutest western boy they've ever seen. One time in the market a 95 year old lady pointed at me like she was using the force. I just turned away 'cause she crept me out. Then she started walking my way. I walked away. But she kept following me. "Mom? Mom?! Mom!!" I warned. I went 20 feet away. She eyed me. Then she went back to her seat.

An other time when I was biking at top speed an other old lady reached out and tried to touch me. I almost crashed. Now I'm very cautious of old women. But there's one more danger-THE COLLEGE AGED WOMAN!!!!!!!!!!! oh the selfies. They line up for selfies with me. I hate them. One time at the beach some high school girls wanted to take a selfie with me. So I ran away. And get this. they chased me. Eventually they stopped but I swear, I would have punched them in the face. So that was embarrassing. I stay at home from now on. BYE!

Learning Viet

[Tim]

I'm white.  Therefore I must not speak Viet and everything that comes out of my mouth is any language other than Viet.  So it's really hard to convince someone that I'm speaking her language if we're not in the context of some familiar conversation.  However, a familiar conversation like a customer/shopkeeper dialogue is enough context so that my Vietnamese can be understood as language.

When I say something she expects to hear, like "how much does it cost?" she can understand my Vietnamese and will respond with some quick numbers that I repeat immediately so she knows I heard her, but it takes me several seconds after I've repeated them before I compute what I've just said and the readout of the numbers appears in my head.  I'm not talking about calculating the cost in USD (which is to divide by 22,000 whatever number they gave me)...just computing the verbal sounds so that they make numbers for me in my head with the right number of zeros and commas.

So I say, in my best Da Nang din Viet, "how much?" while pointing to something I don't want.  Preferably something that I already know a rough price for, so I can see whether she's going to want to gouge me or is fair-priced.  She says the answer, leaving off the last three zeros.  So if it costs 500,000, she says it costs 500.  The smallest bill in my wallet is 1,000 Dong.

I repeat 500, keeping my facial expression from revealing that I don't yet know what I'm repeating.  I hope.  Finally it dawns on me that I've just repeated the words for 500, and I point to the bookshelf that I was really wanting to buy in the first place and ask again, how much?  Since I now know what ballpark we're going to be in, her response makes a lot more sense to me, and I can usually know what number she says even as she's saying it.  I purse my lips and look knowledgeable (I hope) and move on.  Later I'll come back and ask again, but since a) I don't yet know how to say "can you go any cheaper?" and since b) bargaining doesn't really seem to be the way things are done outside of the tourist zones of the city, I don't bargain.  I just pay up or walk away.

Most of my Viet so far consists of numbers and streets and trying to say the name of my foreign language college.  I still get giggles on that one.  Last night we had some Viet friends over (4 recent grads that we met at Vision Cafe) and they wanted to know where I bought something.  I told them the name of the street: Hung Vuong.  It's a pretty major street in central Da Nang, but they looked at each other confusedly.  I described where it was; still confusion.  Finally, and I'm not sure what tipped her off, but one of them exclaimed "Ah! Hùng Vương!"  And they all repeated the exact words I'd been saying, chattering away as if they'd discovered some secret.  Giggling.  I often think of a quote from Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice: "Ah well, what do we live for but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them, in our turn."  I do more providing sport for neighbors than the other way 'round, of course...

At outdoor restaurants an independent vendor of fruits and snacks often walks by, hoping to sell to the diners an appetizer or dessert to supplement their meal.  I bought a leaf-wrapped packet, expecting a sticky rice of some kind inside.  It turned out to be mystery meat.  Pickled mystery meat.

 We are learning things every day, and we are able to apply each lesson to the next experience.  That same evening we were at someone's house for dinner, and the pickled mystery meat appeared again.  The whole family had been watching my facial expression from the first experience and didn't need to independently verify whether they'd like it or not, and we were all able to discreetly avoid the pink, gelatinous substance while exclaiming exuberantly about the other foods on the table.

In other news, we ate frog last night.