Spring Break (4/4)

I've been back in Austin for nearly a week, and it's rough.  I adapt quickly to the luxuries of little responsibility and bounties of delicious food.  This is my final entry on Vietnam, designed to fill in the gaps from my other bowlegs.  After arriving in Saigon on Monday, Thal was sick and slept all afternoon.  Liên came home from work early, and we went fo Japanese food and bubble tea.  By the evening, Dad felt ill.  The rest of us took a bus downtown to book our tour to Nha Trang and find dinner.

On Tuesday, Mom showed George and me the building she lived in when she was growing up.  Her family had lived upstairs and owned a book shop on the ground floor.  A third floor has since been added, and the shop on the bottom now sells Western clothing.  We bought lunch and my favorite fruit, pomelo, from the same market my Mom had gone to every morning.
Mom, Liên, and I spent the afternoon at the salon, where we were well looked after for three hours.  After returning to the hotel and waking up the guys, we went downtown for a remarkable dinner.  My mom's friend Kristie Stovall had graciously invited us to her workplace, a five star hotel called the Windsor Plaza.  We joined Mom's friends for endless sushi, hot pot, spring rolls, intestines, etc.

The entirety of Wednesday was spent on a bus ride to Nha Trang.  I slept and fought off my cold, waking up only to consume the best of Vietnamese subs and grumble about the Rubik's cube.  George studied the countryside of Vietnam and held me sweetly.  On Thursday, we took a boat tour of four islands, where we discovered that Thal and I are horrible snorkelers.  During Happy Hour, everybody else watched our family jump off the boat just for a free drink of sangria.

Friday was our free day.  We spent the afternoon at Thap Ba, soaking in mud and hot mineral baths, enjoying water massages, and loitering about in giant mineral hot tubs.  That evening, we had the best grilled seafood imaginable.  Their cuttlefish is not something I shall ever forget.  We rode back to Saigon on a night bus, where Mom, Liên, and I slept like babies.  The three six-foot men stayed awake and watched us nearly crash every five minutes.

After returning to Saigon on Saturday morning, we took a trip to Núi Bà Đen, or the Black Virgin Mountain.  In sweat-soaked shirts, carrying nothing but extra water, we glanced up the stone stairs to see this woman.  We rode down the mountain in rickety carts on a curvy metal chute where we had control of the breaks.  By accident, George and I slammed into Liên pretty hard.  Thal, who was in the cart behind us, was utterly horrified.

And that's the end of this story.  Sunday morning we had a plane to catch, and Monday morning we had work to do.  Such is the nature of vacations.  George referred to Vietnam as a "paradise," which I find to be fitting.  There is no place I would rather have been, and I feel very lucky to have had my entire family there.  We even got along, mostly.

It would be remiss for me to neglect to mention any sort of culture shock.

Top Ten:

10)  Food - delicious.

     (Seriously, what are we doing over here?)

9)  Traffic - heavy.

8)  Littering - common place.

7)  Power lines - spaghetti.

6)  Fashion - anything goes.

5)  Coffee - it's a different drink.

4)  Street markets - so fresh.

3)  Bargaining - expected.

2)  Bills - worth a tenth of a penny.

1)  Mannequin stores - too many.

Happy Hour (3/4)

Today my family toured Nha Trang by boat, and visited islands Hòn Miễu, Hòn Mun, Hòn Một, and Hòn Tằm.  We went scuba diving and ate sea urchin at Hòn Mun, toured an aquarium at Hòn Miễu, and swam in the rain at Hòn Tằm.  But Hòn Một.  Hòn Một was happy hour.

Salon (2/4)

Liên, Mom, and I went to have our hair done.  Although the first place we stopped was advertised as a salon, it looked like a brothel inside.  After we explained what we were looking for, the young ladies laughed at us and pointed to an establishment for women.  At the real salon, there was a friendly woman, an angry woman, and a fashionable young man working while the American TV station in the background blared out such favorites as, "Screamer" and "What's My Name."  The hipster cut and styled our hair while the women worked very quickly doing everything else, like multiple washings, curling, applying 3 rounds of chemicals, etc.  Mom periodically disappeared and reappeared until she disappeared permanently.  She always understands everything that they're saying, so she doesn't get to experience the mystery we do.  The women were very rough with our heads, and it was painful.  My eyes welled up with tears several times, and Liên and I ended up taking ibuprofen.

Due to the language barrier, the hairstylists would push us around when they wanted us to do something, such as go to the back rooms and get our hair washed again.  One time after a washing, one of the women wanted me to hold the towel on the back of my wet hair, so she grabbed my hand and shoved it into place.  Unfortunately, I had been palming a handful of snotty tissues, which ended up getting thrown all over the floor.  To add to the mess, we were wearing containers on our shoulders to catch the perm chemicals, and Liên was making me laugh so hard that I would lean forward and spill them out onto the floor periodically.  It was embarrassing.

Last but not least, another woman entered the salon and promptly got a steaming bag on her head.  Every time Liên turned around, the bag had inflated a little more, as steam poured out.  It was so funny that we shot a video while I pretended to take a picture of my sister.

The entire process took 3 hours and cost twenty bucks.

I'd do it every six months if I could.

Bánh Cuốn (1/4)

George and I arrived in Vietnam on Monday morning.  We found Mom at the airport before she spotted the giant white guy in the Taiwanese hat.  Lien came on a 5-week medical rotation, and the units brought my brother on his Spring Break.  On Monday, we explored downtown and booked a tour to Nha Trang, a city known for beautiful beaches and hot springs.  Tuesday, Mom showed us where she used to live.  Her family owned a bookstore, which has since turned into a "Fashion Shop."

A few buildings down from her old home, there is a market with a big sign reading, "Khu Phố Văn Hóa."  We walked through and saw my favorite foods - fresh seafood and fruit.  Mom bought me a pomelo, which is like a huge delicious grapefruit.  She says Bà used to give her money to pick out breakfast from the market.  Because everything smelled so good, I asked her about coming to America where we eat things like cereal and oatmeal for breakfast.  She replied, "Yeah, that doesn't taste good."

My favorite meal from childhood is called bánh cuốn.  Mom would say, "Girls, we're having bánh cuốn tonight," and we would shriek, "Yaaaay!!!"  At the market, we ordered the best bánh cuốn I ever had in my life.  A steamed sheet of rice flour is stuffed with ground pork and mushrooms, served with fresh veggies and chả lụa.

Try to ignore the antics that are my family, carrying on and about in the background.

Push a Little Button

I woke up with a song called, "Push a Little Button," in my head.  It was originally written by Tony Hatch in 1966 and recorded by his 15-year-old sister, Ninette.

This evening I figured out some chords and played it on my clavichord, which is an early type of keyboard.  The strings of clavichords are struck by small pieces of brass called tangents, whereas they are plucked in harpsichords by plectra and struck by hammers in pianos.  Clavichords have a much quieter range of sound than pianos, and because the tangents are in constant contact with the strings, clavichords can vibrate pitch.
The handsome fellow playing it, named Pooh, was bought for me by my mom before I was born.

George and I are trying to sing in unison.

Is It Yours?

Grandma is a church pianist who plays by ear.  It's not that she can't read music, though.  Her idea of a good time is to play through the Well Tempered but transpose the Preludes and Fugues to - well - whatever she feels like.  "This is J. S. Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C minor.  In F minor."

I don't play by ear as well as I read, so I have arrangements for my church job.  They used to sit around in the sanctuary, but now I keep a few at home so I can call and play melodies we both know.  The other night I played, "Fairest Lord Jesus."  She replied with, "Is it yours?"  Surely she knows I don't spend my time coming up with hymn arrangements when I can buy a dozen that are better written for 10 bucks.  In other words, 4 arrangements would probably cost me 4 hours of my life or the price of a latte.  I think she just likes to be reassured that she's the only one in the family who holds that spot.  Take it, grandma.  I'll make a doppio with one percent at home this week.  This one is arranged by Melody Bober.

Also, that strikingly handsome man is my husband.

Grandma

On January 15th of this year, my 84-year-old grandmother had a massive stroke that severely affected the left side of her body.  Most people in that condition don't recover, but then again, most people aren't Ruth Volkert Kratzke.  If Little Red Riding Hood were visiting my grandmother, the girl would arrive to a home filled with the aroma of a blackberry pie that made her basket of sweets look like hardtack, broiled tenderized wolf with three sides, a printed menu, and not one drop of blood on the floor.  She probably does not own a tenderizer.

Grandma and I have a few things in common, such as an underdeveloped sense of patience and an overdeveloped sense of when it's appropriate to be insulting.  Generally speaking, the notion of considering another point of view when it comes to just about anything is unheard of.  Oh, yes.  And we both chose a career in piano.  It shouldn't be hard to imagine that we haven't always gotten along.

For the past few months, I've been trying to take a little time out of the teaching day to give her a call and play something short and fairly sight-readable.  The arrangements are nothing special, and it's sort of stupid to try transmitting 88 sets of vibrating strings over a telephone.  Despite this, she seems to look forward to hearing whatever happens on her end of the call.  I tried ringing one time just to talk to her, and the phone was promptly hung up.  She really just wanted to hear me play, so then I had the idea to do start some postings.  You know, just in case somebody out there might like to hear a little easy piano music from somebody else's granddaughter.

"Crown Him with Many Crowns" in the setting of Bach's Prelude in D Major

Arr. Cindy Berry

First Bowleg

When I was in elementary school, I couldn't keep a diary because my handwriting was not uniform enough to prevent me from ripping out pages.  If 7 pages went missing on the left side of the binding, the 7 adjoining pages on the right had to be neatly removed.  Often, this process ended up removing more than 14 total pages.  Before very long, the paper in the center of the book was visibly denser, and the covers lacked a sense of proper cushioning.  They were the jutting, vulnerable bones of what once was a diary.  This was all very hurtful to me because the soft blue paper with faint lavender lining was very pretty, indeed.

Now that we've moved to easily deletable data, I'm trying again.  It's been 20 years.

In closing, I find the word "blog" to be disgusting.  As I don't find "web log" to be much better, I entered it into an anagram solver out of sheer desperation.