Dear Phil - a project!

I like cooking, but I realise that I've been a bit lazy about learning how to cook Vietnamese style food.

I was reading this column by Sheila Quirke and she mentioned an idea she once had of learning about one country in Africa per week - since the number of African countries is similar to the number of weeks in a year.

She failed - but it's still a cute idea. I wondered how many provinces are there in Vietnam?

58.

Close to a year. I could learn one dish from each province per week, I suppose.  But that sounds overly ambitious.  I don't want to fail like Sheila did, just because I set the bar too high!  And, although lots of provinces have their own specialities, I'm not sure if they all do.  I could end up making an awful lot of stringy chicken stewed in lemongrass and ginger, y'know?

BUT!

Vietnam has a mere 8 regions. And it does seem achievable that I could master one dish from each  region roughly over the course of a year - say, one per month-ish.

Are you hungry, Mr Martin?


Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Vietnam

Mr D smells.

On Saturday, Mr D txted me in Vietnamese, and asked me to give him a small bottle of perfume.  I suspected a phone jacking. I was going to ask him about it on Monday morning, but he was looking so bedraggled in the rain that I felt too sorry for him to tease him about it.  And he didn't mention it - giving more credence to the phone jacking theory.  I don't know why he let himself get so drenched either - he usually carries a rain cape in the compartment under the seat.

I was hoping that that might be the end of the whole weird episode.  But then on Tuesday night when he dropped me home, he asked me again.  In person. 

I don't know.... of all the things I might ask my boss to give me, a bottle of perfume is just not up there.  He's been working for me now for two years, and has never asked for anything before.  It was such a strangely specific request, that I said yes - I will give him perfume tomorrow. 

I had to speak to him in Vietnamese about it.  Are we all proud that I knew enough to ask him whether he wanted perfume for a man, or perfume for a woman? 

For a man. Specifically - for him.  He pointed at himself.  Perfume for him.

So, since I was home alone anyway, I went out to the shopping mall.  First I looked at the real perfume shop thinking I might be able to buy a little travel size bottle from a proper perfume brand, but they were all too expensive.  I just can't justify spending more on cosmetics for my motorbike driver than I would ever spend on myself*. So then I went to supermarket. Surprisingly, they had about 30 different kinds of cheap men's perfume and I umm-ed and ahh-ed for ages over it. Eventually I chose two similar looking black boxes (each containing a bottle). Behind me there was a boy standing high up on a rickety ladder - as you might reasonably expect in a shopping mall supermarket. So I waved the two boxes to him and asked which one he liked best.  I've never tried perfume, he said - handling the boxes gingerly. A girl came along.  The boy was taking too long to choose and she obviously really wanted to be the one to choose, so he capitulated.  That one - she said. It has a brand. 

The brand is: X-MEN.

So, yesterday morning I gave Mr D the little box of X-MEN perfume.  He tied it to the handlebars of his bike and off we went. 

He seems happy... and no, I can't tell you what X-MEN perfume smells like.  Probably wolverine musk.

*I admit to some duplicity in this sentence - I have, on occasion, spent a king's ransom on cosmetics...  for myself.  Ssshhhhh!

Anecdotes with Mr D

Today Mr Martin has gone to Bangkok for the rest of the week for work.  I have been making lots of jokes about how quiet our bedroom will be tonight, now that there's no-one snoring in there.

Having a xe om driver is a strangely intimate experience.  You sit so close...  Mr D's a bit smaller than me so I can easily peek over his shoulder.  Last night as we were coming home he did a classic Mr D double-take - slow right down, look over his shoulder really closely at the thing that captured his attention.  Usually we only see Mr D double-takes when someone tries to cut us off - but last night he was utterly captivated by fat baby twins, dressed identically and propped up in a double stroller - off for a walk around the front of the Coopmart.   Then he gave a laugh and offered me a thumbs up before zooming around the corner to my front door.

This morning there was another Mr D double-take, but a bit less jolly.  We had to take a detour from our normal route.  At an intersection quite close to the hospital there was a big traffic jam and lots of peachy-uniformed traffic cops - obviously there had been a crash.  The ladies at work told me that they drove past it on the way in and saw the guy lying on the road - dead.