patience, revisited
yeah, all that 'zen' garbage about 'patience?' what. ever.
it's not so bad as all that. yesterday morning a bus was supposed to pick me up at 7:30am in front of a certain cafe, where i thought i could get a warm baguette and some coffee while i waited. got to the cafe and found it shuttered, so i went down the street to a local baguette cart and got one smothered in laughing cow cheese and a sliced tomato (rather than with scary pate and ground-up meat product). strolled back to the cafe and waited, and waited, and the cafe opened, and the front walk was swept around me and my big pack, and one hour later i got fed up and left. i also found, when i looked at my receipt stub to make sure i'd gotten the time and place right, that the woman who'd booked my ticket had booked me to the wrong destination - in the opposite direction! so the wrong bus not arriving ended up being a good thing.
but as i stood there chewing on my baguette (sadly, with no coffee), i had to laugh at myself for thinking that perhaps i'd noticed some sort of sea change in my present personality. to that, let us all say, 'HA!'
even luckier than not getting picked up by the wrong bus was that the office where i'd booked my ticket was closed when i finally caught a motorbike over there to see what was up. the electric company is doing some sort of pre-tet testing throughout nha trang, which involves shutting off the power neighborhood by neighborhood for several days. on that particular day it happened to be the one where this office was, and according to a neighbor, the office hadn't bothered to open.
anyway, i managed to get a room for the night at my favorite guesthouse, got my money back for the bus ticket later that afternoon, and then booked a flight to danang today (they've been booked solid because of tet). and here i am in hoi an, where the ladies follow you down the street and sweetly force you to their tailor shops to have clothes made. tet is bumping up the prices, but i ordered some desperately-needed clothes in time to get them done before everything shuts down (in two days). so it all works out. and i am, in fact, still quacking.
seen on my 45-minute motorbike ride from danang airport to hoi an, but nothing you wouldn't see every day through the country:
1. an old man bicycling with a burning brazier on one side of metal bike panniers, and a tin steamer full of steamed something on the other;
2. a man on a motorbike with one hand on the accelerator and the other holding a saw and a machete;
3. a passenger on a motorbike carrying a chandelier.
happy almost-tet!
it's not so bad as all that. yesterday morning a bus was supposed to pick me up at 7:30am in front of a certain cafe, where i thought i could get a warm baguette and some coffee while i waited. got to the cafe and found it shuttered, so i went down the street to a local baguette cart and got one smothered in laughing cow cheese and a sliced tomato (rather than with scary pate and ground-up meat product). strolled back to the cafe and waited, and waited, and the cafe opened, and the front walk was swept around me and my big pack, and one hour later i got fed up and left. i also found, when i looked at my receipt stub to make sure i'd gotten the time and place right, that the woman who'd booked my ticket had booked me to the wrong destination - in the opposite direction! so the wrong bus not arriving ended up being a good thing.
but as i stood there chewing on my baguette (sadly, with no coffee), i had to laugh at myself for thinking that perhaps i'd noticed some sort of sea change in my present personality. to that, let us all say, 'HA!'
even luckier than not getting picked up by the wrong bus was that the office where i'd booked my ticket was closed when i finally caught a motorbike over there to see what was up. the electric company is doing some sort of pre-tet testing throughout nha trang, which involves shutting off the power neighborhood by neighborhood for several days. on that particular day it happened to be the one where this office was, and according to a neighbor, the office hadn't bothered to open.
anyway, i managed to get a room for the night at my favorite guesthouse, got my money back for the bus ticket later that afternoon, and then booked a flight to danang today (they've been booked solid because of tet). and here i am in hoi an, where the ladies follow you down the street and sweetly force you to their tailor shops to have clothes made. tet is bumping up the prices, but i ordered some desperately-needed clothes in time to get them done before everything shuts down (in two days). so it all works out. and i am, in fact, still quacking.
seen on my 45-minute motorbike ride from danang airport to hoi an, but nothing you wouldn't see every day through the country:
1. an old man bicycling with a burning brazier on one side of metal bike panniers, and a tin steamer full of steamed something on the other;
2. a man on a motorbike with one hand on the accelerator and the other holding a saw and a machete;
3. a passenger on a motorbike carrying a chandelier.
happy almost-tet!
posted by a wandering eye at 6:53 PM
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