The video itself is amazing, and I especially like it since off late I have been kind of hunting down stop-motion animation videos. The music, which is exclusively made for the video is also pretty nice. But what made me sit up and write this post are the comments that follow the video.

Now I know comments in YouTube can be quite lame at times. I have seen literal wars take place between people of two countries (don’t make me say the names) through comments posted on something as harmless as a music video. And I have actually never posted a comment on a YouTube video myself. But when viewers of the above video started raving about how books will become obsolete and that in the future everything will be digitized, or about how books are not worth cutting down trees and so on, I couldn’t take it anymore. I suddenly remembered a piece of prose we had studied as a part of our English course, sometime in our 6th standard maybe. It was an excerpt from some science fiction in which two children find an actual physical book and don’t know what to do with it since they had never seen anything like that. At that point of time, it seemed laughable and far-fetched. Digital books? Books that don’t require paper? (You must understand, that was a time when we were barely learning to switch on a computer and switch it off and write instructions in BASIC language)

A decade and half later, I am flipping pages of books on my iPad. I even have a book on nature that shows me videos and provides me with commentary. And I am amazed at how just in fifteen years the seemingly impossible has happened. Suddenly, I am scared. Like I have never been before. What if that actually happens?

Agreed, ebooks have made reading so much easier for us. I am all for digitization. I mean, I read “Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix” on the tiny screen of a Nokia N70, in which I had to scroll from left to right and then back to left and then down and repeat the process again and again for all of the 766 pages, all in one night. And I am grateful for it, because that was when I couldn’t get hold of the actual book. I have a veritable library in my laptop that ranges from all the classics to the entire collection of Enid Blyton to rarities like Asterix and Obelix comics; stuff that I could never have owned physically, not yet. That someday I will write a book and buy an entire library with the money I make from it is a whole different point. But coming back to my collection, all I know is even the knowledge that I have all of it at my disposal is nothing, but nothing, compared to opening one book and sniffing at the pages and knowing that what I have in my hands is going to transport me to a whole different world. That once I am done with the pages, I will have added something to my life. Maybe a little bit more of imagination, maybe a whole new perspective on something, maybe something to think about. Whatever it is, I have all of it, right in hands. I can see it and touch it and feel it: the anticipation and the feeling of possession.

Agreed, I have also let out yelps of joy after having found an ebook I had been looking for, for ages, and have spent hours sitting in front of my laptop scrolling down page after page, and yet, when I finish a book, I invariably have an aching desire to buy it for myself. That Flipkart is what I miss the most about India should say something. It was something, to tear open the package and smell the fresh new pages each time a book was delivered. Because each time I smell a new book, I am reminded of the beginning of school sessions, when fitting brown paper covers on all the new textbooks was a festival in itself, and reading all the prose pieces in the English text books as soon as possible an absolute necessity, of book fairs and blessed discounts and mostly of my personal paradise, book shops.

I had a pretty nerdy childhood, I admit it myself. While other kids my age were playing hopscotch and hide and seek, I was drinking ginger ale and having egg sandwiches with The Famous Five, knitting socks sitting by the fire with The Little Women, and laughing at what a klutz Archie is. Since most of our books were hand-me-downs from cousins, I had even then developed a fascination for old books with their yellowed pages seeped with memories of their previous owners. I have even owned books so old their pages had started becoming brittle. Books that were scribbled on, books that had pages torn off so that most of the story was left to my imagination, books that didn’t even have a cover so I didn’t know names of: I’ve had them all. And in my heart, the only smell that can beat the one of fresh new pages is that of old pages. Old book smell makes me think of Dad’s bookshelf, and old doctor-nurse romances being stealthily read, of library books being given out in school and waiting with bated breath to see if the desired book was not already lent out to someone else, of digging into an old trunk to find my own childish doodles on some old favorite book (with “Maths With Mommy” topping that list, being the first book I ever read).

Beat that, ye digitized impersonal PDF-ed (or ePub-ed or whatever) excuse of a book. You can never lie on my tummy, opened face down, while I doze off still thinking and dreaming of you. You can never have on you scribbles from the time when crayon seemed like the greatest invention. You will never be mine, to be possessed, to be loved, to be caressed and displayed proudly on bookshelves. You will only ever be a book, and nothing more.

Written with undiminished fervor for the cause of an endangered species: the book.

Oh, I have an auntie, an auntie Monica,
And when she goes out shopping,
They all say “Oh-la-la”
Because her hat is swaying, swaying to and fro,
Because her hat is swaying, swaying to and fro.

The next verses were sung by replacing the word hat with feather, skirt and bag and so on, and each time the verse was sung it was accompanied by a fitting action. I had to swing an imaginary bag, play with an imaginary feather, rustle an imaginary skirt and so on. If I may say so myself, I was quite a singer and an enthusiastic one at that. I practiced all night and the next morning, and even on our way to school my mother patiently listened to my relentless iterations.

In school that day we were given two periods off and lined for the competition. I think it had something to do with us being arranged alphabetically, but I was one of the last ones to perform. And as we sat down and the competition began, I realized that none of the other girls were performing action songs so much as just singing any song they fancied. I didn’t spare much thought to it, and even though I vaguely remember toying with the idea of going there and belting out one of the many songs I had mastered by then, when my turn came, I performed nothing but my action song, down to the last rustle. I remember feeling nervous, not because of my performance, but because everybody was looking at me like I was crazy. I had almost fumbled somewhere in the middle but I kept singing and dancing right till the end. Just because my Ma had asked me to do so. And in my eyes my Ma was never wrong. At that time it must not have felt like a big deal, but now when I think of it, it must have taken quite a lot of courage for a seven year old to do what I had done. Or maybe seven-year-olds don’t really know the concepts of the awkward and the embarrassing.

Needless to say I didn’t get a prize. Not even a consolation. My teacher informed my mother that because none of the other participants actually came up with an action song they decided to declare it just a singing competition after the event was over. I am sure I must have taken this to my mother. I am sure I must have insisted “But the calender said Action Song Competition Ma!” and I am even sure my mother had found a way to console me. Just like she always did.

I am sure my sister, who studied in the same school as I, would not think differently when I say that we led a somewhat different and at times difficult school life. Being a teacher’s daughter isn’t the easiest thing on a student. It meant being put under a microscope all the time. It meant listening to subtle taunts of classmates about being teacher’s pet. But most of all it meant having to stick to the right and going against the grain at times to do that. And all the while Mother stood by us. Pushing us to do the right thing, putting us through tougher ordeals because we were her daughters. I remember at times yelling out “You wouldn’t do this to any other student!” to which Ma would reply, “No, but you are my daughter“.

Sometimes I feel I am still doing an action song and making a fool of myself in a world where the rest are gracefully singing. Times like this, I can only think of my mother, and how she molded me and prepared me to go against the grain. For all those times you made me stand up for myself and for what’s right, thank you Mamma. And I can never thank you enough for teaching me how to perform action songs even when nobody else is. Just because it is right.

There was a time when I could reply to people talking to me. When I could read anything that was in front of me and understand what it meant. When hand gestures were more of an accessory than a necessity. When I could decipher the finer nuances of sarcasm and rhetorical, misnomers and juxtapositions in seemingly lame conversations. When signboards were more informative than confusing. There was a time when I simply knew and never cared to ask myself how.

Ah, those were days!

What would I not do now to be able to simply read a signboard and understand what it says? To know what the person talking to me is actually saying? Everything that I had taken for granted now feels like the hardest thing to do. The strongly expressive person that I am, I could never hold back compliments when I felt they needed to be paid, regardless of whether I ought to or not. And now I find myself fumbling for words even to extend basic courtesy. Even if I did know the words and said what I had to, I can never understand the reply! I start pretty confident and smug, specially when the husband is around, and on rare lucky days I get by without any incidents. But then there are days when after a few minutes of fumbling I am back to “Tôi không biết tiếng Việt!” (I don’t know Vietnamese!). I learn new words every day, and retain some of them. And yet I am nowhere near understanding how the language works.

The thing to be noted is that out here everything is in Vietnamese! Newspapers, magazines, books, signboards, menus, product labels, everything. I can never imagine Assam like that. And indeed, Assam isn’t like that. There might be rundown shops with “Bekari” instead of “Bakery” written on the signboards, “Welcome” might end up more of a “Wellcome”, but boy do we like to flaunt our English. I have been thinking a lot about how it would be if everything in Assam were in Assamese. On the upside, a lot more youngsters would have known how to read and write Assamese better. And on the downside, somebody might have been writing this post about Assam now.

It is amazing how we have indeed embraced so many words from English into our language. For example, in Vietnam, the word for “number” is “so”. When I get into the taxi my driver will ask me the street name and then say, “So bao nhieu?” (What number?). Even though the Assamese for “number” is “xonkhya” we never really say, “Tumar mobile xonkhya tu diba neki?” (Please give your mobile number) or “Eikhon baru kei xonkhya bus hoi?” (What number bus is this?). Despite having exclusive words for everything we still choose to use English words. Even when saying “Sorry” we never say “Khoma koribo” unless it is very formal. And the best part is people don’t really have to learn English to know what sorry, or for that matter thank you, is.

I am pretty sure the next time I go to Assam I will be far more appreciative of our language than I was ever. I am also sure it will be reassurance each time I read and understand something as lame as “ইয়াত ভাত মাছ পোৱা যায়”. And most of all, to be able to talk to everybody. It took me two thousand miles and two months away from home to appreciate what I had never done before: the Broca’s area and the Wernicke’s area of my brain.

To language! To understanding! And to understanding language!

Before everything, let’s get the traditional out of the way, shall we? A very happy new year, and a much belated merry Christmas, since I wasn’t around for that one too. I spent my Christmas eve cooking for six people. Now this might not sound much, but take into account the fact that I still have only Tupperware in my kitchen and a total of one frying pan and one saucepan and one shallow pan. Then take into account the menu, which in itself was a Herculean task of permutations and combinations since my guests included non-veg-fish-haters, non-veg-fish-lovers, veg-fish-not-eater(obviously) and non-veg-meat-lovers. What you get is a frantic housewife and an indulging husband spending the whole day in the kitchen. But then I now kind of understand why each time we had guests for dinner my mother would never be satisfied until the table looked like a veritable Eight Puzzle (you know, the one where you got to move all the other pieces before you get the right one in place?). It is all about watching your hard work being paid off in smiles and second helpings. And just to avoid conjectures regarding how these days I am only about cooking and cleaning, here is where I wrap up the housewife stories.

And that’s because, ahem, I did end up with a job. When I wasn’t looking for one, too. If only I could say I still have it things would have been perfect. But then, when are things ever perfect, eh? Coming back to the job. I was to teach English to TOEIC (Test Of English for International Communication) aspirants who have very basic communicative abilities when it comes to English. The hours were a little inconvenient; three hours in the evening, from 6 to 9. Which meant when the husband wasn’t home, I was, and when the husband arrived, I was outside. For two whole weeks I struggled with lesson plans and occasional morning classes and tried to juggle everything, after which it all suddenly stopped. Once my scheduled classes were over, I became redundant. But well, I did learn a few things from my teaching stint after all. The first and all important one is that I really enjoy teaching, which is why I am taking a CELTA course (Certificate for English Language Teaching to Adults) next month. I had to complete a pre-interview task and go through an interview and I have now a 35 page pre-course task to complete but I couldn’t be any happier. The second thing that I learned from my teaching stint is that learning a new language is nothing, but nothing, compared to explaining the whys and whens of English to students. Take the meaning of the word “deserve”. I tried telling “be worthy of” and got blank looks. I then tried looking up worthy in simpler words, only to get “deserving” as the meaning. Beat that if you can. With the dictionaries taking me on a merry-go-round, I had to resort to examples and what not just to get the meaning through. And even now I am not sure if they really got it. I mean, what are you supposed to do when students throw something like, “Why do we say 50kms away from something and not far from something?” at you and then look at you as if you are this all-knowing walking English Grammar book? (I now know that we don’t use “far from” with measurements. Don’t ask me why, please!)

Tangled and involved in English like this, I didn’t even realize when the old year sighed and turned and made way for the new. Maybe part of it was because I had already surrendered to the fact that the new year would be no match for the last year with all its monumental milestones. We did celebrate the new year’s eve though. Visited the annual flower festival and then partied the night at an overpriced restaurant. I wish I could spare more details without involving the husband’s public image, but this should suffice, I guess.

Here’s to the first post of this year, finally. And here’s hoping I never have so many things to do that I can’t find the will to write about them. Ciao!

Sometimes, if I am lucky, I remember a happy song or stumble across one, and “that heavy thing” finally lets go of me before I end up a mopey mess. And then there are days like today, when homesickness wraps its tentacles around all around me, and it takes lot more than just a song. I walk about the house trying to find things to do. Pick up a shirt here, fold a towel there. Stare accusingly at the humming refrigerator for a few minutes and sometimes smack it angrily to stop it from being so loud. Tut-tut at the scattered DVDs and re-arrange the remotes lying on the table for the umpteenth time.

Before I know it, it is mid-morning, and I saunter back into the kitchen. When nothing else works, I turn to cooking. I open shelves, pull out drawers and stack the cans on the kitchen counter. And with a flash in the pan (literally), I am transformed from a homesick girl aching for home and a husband who would stay with her the whole day long, to a woman who is in her element, washing and chopping and cooking. As I chop my onions and grate my ginger, I am no longer in some different world. I am back home, in my mother’s kitchen, where onion and ginger in oil smells just the way it does here. It doesn’t matter if I am a thousand miles away from home; tomatoes go all soft and squishy on frying just the same. Potatoes boiled and mashed with salt and coriander taste just the same, specially with a dash of mustard oil. Lusi-aloo bhaji remain what they are no matter where I am: a classic. And when Ma gives me instructions on phone about how to cook fish with lai-xaak and I follow them to a T, it will taste just like Ma’s does. Unconditionally.

And even while I am cooking, the husband calls up to ask me about the weather in this home, and I tell him it is nice and warm and it smells very good. I remind him to have lunch and he reminds me to have mine and we hang up with a “See you”. I smile for a full five minutes like some idiot who’s suddenly reminded of some happy thing she had forgotten in a hurry: I will see him in the evening after all. Unlike the year before the wedding when it was solely the phone calls.

Being married to my best friend and keeping a good home. I guess I am starting to get the hang of it. Dealing with homesickness? Not so much, yet. But with a song here and a three course meal there, I think I will get by just fine.

P.S. Here’s the *on repeat* song for today.

But allow me to elaborate. The husband had to go to Saigon for official work, and I, the pampered housewife decided to tag along. And since we stayed in the guest house where the kitchen is a true no man’s land, I was pretty much left to my own devices with nothing to do. I mean nothing. Not even make the perfunctory cup of coffee in the morning for the husband. So I did what any clever wife on a break would do. Plonked myself down on the couch, put my feet up on the table, turned on the AC (it was effing hot and humid there, even in November) and sat my way through a movie marathon while eating my way through a heap of snacks I’d buy from the mart downstairs. And I would do this everyday. The husband, in Mom Heffley style, had suggested from time to time that I go out and explore the city, but ah, who wants to get all tanned and sweaty and tired when I could do all the exploring after dark, once the husband was home?

Oh but I did go out once. All by myself. To the blessed Bin Thanh market. And emptied my purse out there under the influence of wooing salesgirls. In my defense, they could actually speak English! And it was such a relief to be able to bargain in English! Well, I discovered Saigon is more used to, and hence more open to tourists. And hands down younger and more vibrant than Hanoi. Hanoi has an old city charm, and I imagine it to be place which doesn’t reveal its secrets to you that easily. You have to give it some time, and slowly, it will open itself to you. Not Saigon though. Saigon embraces you with open arms the moment you land here, and invites you, entices you, to enjoy thoroughly. While at Hanoi the streets are empty by nine, Saigon doesn’t sleep before eleven. If only there were no traffic jams bad enough to make you lose all enthusiasm because you actually forget where you were headed to all decked up, Saigon and I would have been best friends, me thinks.

But coming back to the exploring bit, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe there and then walked around the lanes in District 1, which is one of the most happening places in the city. Restaurants and five star hotels and shopping malls, they all are nestled close by each other in that area. We dined at an Indian restaurant, and the food was Indian enough for us, which is all that can be said about it. There are in fact quite a few Indian restaurants there, which is really a consequence of the fact that there are many Indians out there. Staying in Hanoi it was quite the pleasant change for me to see some faces from back home. Even though the few ladies that I talked to didn’t take me as an Indian in first glance. But well, what’s new in that, huh?

For the weekend we escaped to a place called Phan Thiet about four hours from Saigon by car. The husband and I, another Indian couple and a Vietnamese family; we all packed ourselves in a big van and reached the Pandanus Resort by the Mui Ne beach at around midnight on Friday. And even though I spent most of the journey playing sign language with the Vietnamese kids (two cute little girls) and the other half gaping at dragon fruit farms with lights glowing on each goddamn plant, the moment I was in the resort I was like a kid on a sugar high. The men folk shared a couple of drinks by the pool till two in the morning while the wives gave them company and laughed at the kids’ antics. Typical.

If I were to write about the resort this post will carry on forever because I could write pages of poetry in rhyme for that place. Flowers. Bluest pool ever. Coconut palms scattered over green grassy fields. Sea waves that made themselves heard all day long, and even more at night. Ponds and fisheries with pink and purple lotus floating on them. Live music in the reception area. More flowers. The B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L spa. And then some more flowers. The place was seriously a riot of colors. And as if that was not enough, I jet skied over those huge waves, tried way more seafood than my “khar-khuwa” stomach is used to (huge shrimps the size of crabs, oysters, roasted prawns), and then topped it off with locally brewed beer. I guess “bliss” has a whole new standard to live up to right now.

But like all good movies and better books, the holiday ended a little too soon. Not before adding a lot to my life, though. And I am not just talking about the extra kilos that I now flaunt (not!). Now that I am back in Hanoi, and it is nippy and gray all day long, all I do is close my eyes and think of that time when I was lying all by myself in a beach chair under a coconut palm, a drink with oranges and peach in my hands, the sea waves lulling me to sweet slumber and my eyes struggling between wanting to surrender and to take in all that was in front of me. Believe it or not, I am transported in a moment. And the cold isn’t that bad anymore.

When we first came here, I couldn’t really take all the noise from the drilling and welding from the nearby construction site, not to mention the massive crane with six humongous lights glaring at my face all night long whenever I made the novice blunder of not drawing the curtains before going off to sleep. I wished they would take a break and give me mine. Seriously! It doesn’t matter if it is three in the morning or ten at night. These people work *all* the time! Add to that the Bahn Cuon sellers who cycle around the locality with a recorded message blaring from their speakers searching for buyers way past midnight and I was ready to scream out loud and pull my hair. Whatever’s left of it, I mean. Most of it is gone, anyway, thanks to the water here. But well, now, I am all zen. Even though it is mostly because of forty-five minutes of foam bath and scented candles and relaxing music, everyday. I still toss and turn in bed each night wishing for silence or at least, more “night-like” sounds, but I have accepted all the noise and disturbance as a part of life out here. Just like I have started to accept everything else.

So what do I really know about this place after nearly three weeks? Not much, but enough to just get by. Plus, there’s always the blessed internet and my best friend, Google. Starting from where to get a haircut to where to find dumplings, I have obsessively scanned reviews and comments and replies to those reviews and comments. I had deliberately refrained from reading about Hanoi before coming here, hoping to form my own opinion without it being affected by anything or anyone else, and I am glad I did that. At least I got to find out most of the things on my own.

Like the fact that Hanoians love their karaoke. I think every sixth building has a karaoke bar in it. There are three bars in my street itself and I can see at least five more from my bedroom window. They also love their foot massages, by the way. Maybe more than karaoke if the number of massage parlors in my street is anything to go by. And they love to display everything in flashy neon lights. From signboards screaming out names of shops to string lights draped on trees, it is all very showy and festive. And I like how I can almost hear the streets sing “Look at me! Look at me!” to me. Wedding photography is a hot thing out here, like I already mentioned. It is not unusual to see brides in white flowing gowns and grooms in white suits giving dramatic poses in public locations while the photographer clicks away, jostling passersby if he has to. And oh, these people love their bikes. From teenagers to office goers to heavily pregnant women (honest!), they all prefer traveling in bikes than in cars. Even in my belly dancing class I must be the pampered housewife who takes a cab to and from the class while the other girls put on their smart helmets and take out their chic bikes and “vroooom” off. Which reminds me, yes I joined belly dancing class. And they play Bollywood songs during the warm-up sessions. Tiny packets of bliss these people keep sending my way, I tell you.

I think this place is starting to grow on me, you know. Each night when the husband and I go out for our post-dinner walk, I see people sitting on low stools on the pavement, enjoying their snacks and fruit juices and cut fruits, and I see friends chilling and chatting and laughing, and I feel a pang of homesickness. I am immediately drifted to my university campus, surrounded by all my favorite people, singing and cracking jokes and talking about everything under the sun. But then a crisp fresh scent floats to me in the pleasant autumn breeze and I am brought back to the streets turned orange due to the streetlights, and I realize the streets are finally starting to look familiar. And each time I open the door to our house, I finally feel I am home.

Which brings me back to where I started. It is easy, just like a Sunday morning. This whole falling in love with this new place and accepting the homesickness as a bittersweet accessory. Sometimes all it takes is a good song, a long foam bath, and siphoning off all the thoughts to an unnecessary blog post.

So you see, while I had written about the first week in Hanoi, and how it was to start making a home out of a house, I had skipped that bit about how in a pathetic attempt to be a good wife, I once actually served just an apple for breakfast to the husband, because there was nothing else in the house for the two first days! While I had written about crocodile meat being sold in Big C, I had skipped that bit about how I had nightmares long after I had seen an actual crocodile head being chopped off and displayed for show on a slab of ice, and how peeling the skin off and “dressing” the meat is “exhibited” as a form of art for a mesmerised audience. Sometimes we all do things like that. Not peel off crocodile skin, of course. Skip things we don’t want to talk about, I mean.

But in the last two weeks I have seen things I had never seen before, done things I hadn’t done before, and realized a few things I had never thought I would.

So while back at home, I had cooked from time to time, it was more of a hobby, not a compulsion. And now that I am actually running a kitchen, I am amazingly at ease with the whole concept of cooking three times in a day. Okay, two times. Lunch includes shoving containers of leftover dinner into the microwave and having it all by myself since the husband’s away. Like my sister never fails to add whenever people ask me if I cook, I used to cook just fancy stuff. Not the humble everyday meals. And I sincerely can not put into words the feeling I have after cooking something the way I had seen my Ma cook it, and then realizing with pride that it smells and tastes just like hers did! I plan meals with as much zeal as I used to plan eating out with friends. I am just as happy when the husband loves something I had cooked as I used to be when somebody told me I looked good. For the record, now that it is just me and the husband, this is not something I hear very often. But meh, whatever. It’s been quite some time that I have realized the dude is more expressive when it comes to food than he is about me.

Moving on. This must be the first time in my life when I have tasted four different cuisines in ten days’ time. From authentic Vietnamese to Mexican to Thai to French. I gushed over the crab spring rolls and bahn cuons and the typical Vietnamese green mango salad with shrimps, I fell in love with the Thai green curry served with rice, and the chicken soup with coconut milk that had a distinct lemon grass flavor, and I actually became poetic over my bacon flowers served on a bed of lotus seeds and caramelized pork. Once we both figured out how to go about eating it, of course. I mean, we didn’t even know what to do with those chunks of roll that they kept serving one at a time on a soup spoon until our starter arrived. But ah, my stomach is the last thing I have to worry about now that I am here. Oh, and I am married, which means I can afford to be a little complacent, at least for a few days (wicked smile)

But enough has been said about the food. I should probably talk about the silent haggling that I witnessed, much to my amusement, just last week. So just near Hoan Kiem is a huge shoe market where you can get all the fake Nikes and Adidas and Pumas that you had dreamt of, and more. The husband wanted a pair of slippers to wear at home, and when he picked one, the saleswoman, an elderly lady, promptly picked up the calculator and typed out the price. The husband raised his eyebrows as fast as he could, and typed out his price. I merely laughed, the supportive wife that I am. The lady shook her head, took the calculator from him and typed out her price again. After fifteen minutes of taking turns on the calculator, they finally agreed on a price, and I was amazed once again by how people have found ways around the entire language barrier. But then again, body language is universal. A nod will always mean a yes, and a shake will always mean a no. A smile will only be a smile everywhere, and a frown will only be a frown.

Between people coming and talking to me in Vietnamese and learning a little bit of it myself, between realizing that out here there are still places where they shape eyebrows with a blade (yes, a blade!) and between marveling over the most fresh, the choicest fruits and vegetables money can buy, I’ve also had a few Hanoi moments of my own. Like that impulsive dance move in the middle of the street my husband surprised me with as we walked hand in hand by the Hoan Kiem lake. Like seeing that cute kid with a proud mohawk (the rest of his hair was shaved) holding his brothers hand in the lift. Like listening to a Vietnamese song in the radio and realizing I could hum along with it because I had heard it once before.

Life, for the last two weeks has been different, has been difficult. But most of all, has taught me what life is really about. Making the best of what is thrown at you, and learning to be happy with what you have. Signing off before the homesickness gets to me yet again. Tam biet!

I had never known just how little it takes to make me go all sunshine-y and summer-y until I came here.

No, honest! So while the first two days we spent running around getting stuff for the kitchen from Big C, on the third day we decided to take our chances on the Vincom Tower (or to put it officially Hanoi Vincom Center) which is a business center with six levels used for commercial purposes, including a supermarket spanning across a whole level. The other 17 levels are used by the embassy and other international organisations. Even as I entered the brightly lit, welcoming place, there was a smile plastered on my face. Finally a mall where I could actually take a breath without gulping in someone else’s. Escalators with steps! And not those clumsy step-less ones where I can’t ever maintain my balance. Brands I actually had heard of before! Le’s Mart with awesome music being played in the background! It took all of my self-restraint not to dance a jig right in the middle of the store. Such was my relief to get a change from noisy crowded Big C.

The husband and I methodically scanned each aisle and each shelf for stuff we needed. Sugar, salt, and ketchup (Heinz!). Cornflakes (Kelloggs, another name I knew!) and biscuits (Oreo, my dear friend you!). The exclamations at the end are en exact depiction of my reaction, just in case you were wondering. But my favorite buy of that day had to be the perfect saucepan with a glass lid for making tea, and a wooden spatula with the flattest end possible to flip my omelettes, and oh, an egg beater just like the one we have back home in Mamma’s kitchen. Funny how “just like the one we have back home” seems to be the yardstick for the “good” now that I am this far away from home. And did I mention the humongous wooden rolling pin that we got? I mean, which self-respecting wife doesn’t have one both for self-defense and sometimes offense, eh? That I used it to make map shaped “lusis” the other day is just something that comes along with it, I guess. And just when I thought my shopping couldn’t get any better, I saw these warm cuddly bedroom slippers that made me feel like I was gliding on a cloud, and I had to pick them up. The wooden floor is starting to get colder as the days pass by, you see. Oh, look at me gush over saucepans and spatulas and bedroom slippers!

But even now, as I look at the sunshine somehow peeking through the fog, I realize once again it is always about the small things. The picture perfect golden yellow omelette that slides from the pan to the plate without me having to fumble over it. The yellow and red roses I bought dirt cheap from the flower shop just three minutes from my place. The fragrant pink lilies which make me take a deep breath each time I pass them by in my living room. Discovering a KFC and an Al’Fresco’s (a chain of restaurants which serve the most amazing steak and chips) at walking distance from where we live during our late night post-dinner walk yesterday. Being able to give instructions to the taxi driver in Vietnamese, and actually managing to reach my destination correctly. Standing on the top of a foot bridge and watching the busy evening traffic melt into a sea of red and yellow lights.

I don’t know if this is how things will be, for days to come as well. But I am enjoying it while it lasts. Someday, I will start worrying about jobs and salary and savings and taxes. But for now, it will be just about the pots and pans and flowers and slippers.