Turning 60

StarBowl was, in fact, able to fit me with bowling shoes—more or less. (I think they keep a box of oversized clown shoes for Americans who might show up.) You wouldn't be able to distinguish StarBowl in Hanoi from any similarly named bowling alley in America—except for the eel soup being served in the bar and a complete lack of league schedules on the walls. Naturally, it was robot-dancing Nam—in a bowling alley for just the second time in his life—who bowled high game Saturday night, easily surpassing the anemic scores of the three Americans present. Nam's accomplishment may have been partly beginner's luck and partly a result of being unused to air-conditioned bowling alleys, which this one definitely wasn't. Every time I picked up my ball, a stream of sweat ran down my arm, pooled in the finger holes, and moments later dripped from the bottom of the ball onto the tops of my shoes. Towels were not available.

After bowling most of the others went on to a Karaoke bar, but that's where I, personally, draw the line between not taking yourself too seriously and not deliberately making an embarrassing public spectacle of yourself. I went back to the hotel around midnight to say my farewells to Gordon and Gordon.

Sunday was my 60th birthday. Thanks to everybody who sent kind wishes. I spent the day moving the last of my kit to the new apartment, shopping for some of the housewares I needed to get myself set up (towels, toilet paper, trash cans, some extra clothes hangers, batteries for the TV and AC remotes…), hanging up clothes that have been packed into a suitcase for 10 weeks, and rearranging my furniture. Around 6:00 I took a xe om around to the other side of Hoan Kiem Lake for the big Regurgitator concert at the American Club.

Those of you who don't keep abreast of the techno-punk music scene in Australia will be unaware how absolutely huge Regurgitator is in Oz. De, the Kiwi recruiter who lives in my building, called the band's appearance in Hanoi "the event of the season". This turned out not to be an exaggeration. The outdoor Sunday evening concert attracted a few thousand enthusiastic music fans who whooped, whistled, and pogo-danced through four hours of music. There was plenty of beer, hotdogs, and french fries on hand and enough patio furniture scattered around the periphery to give less-rabid attendees like me a place to recuperate a bit between sets and get to know a few new Language Link teachers, who showed up in droves. There were times when I forgot completely that I was in Hanoi. The music, the crowd, the food, and the atmosphere could well have been Charlottesville, Fort Collins, or Berkeley.

So that's how I spent my 60th birthday. The only real damper was learning that I was right to be skeptical about the Wifi in my new digs. Before the concert I tried 6 times to get online and the sole unsecured network visible to my laptop was not responding. When I got home from the concert and tried again, the network was no longer even visible. Whover owns it apparently had turned off their computer for the night and cut me off. I looked several times today and the network didn't reappear until about 7:00 pm. I was able to download my email, but the network disappeared again before I was able to reply. Excuse my negativity, but this really sucks!

I need a stable connection at home. I'm writing this blog entry at a Wifi café two blocks from the apartment and conditions are less than ideal. Elvis Presley is singing Love Me Tender at high volume, there's a Vietnam war movie on the TV just above my head, and my waiter keeps coming over to the table to chat with me every chance he gets. He's gotten quite a lot of information out of me, considering I've been typing steadily and have avoided looking at him or addressing any questions to him. He had trouble assimilating the news of how much my rent is—about 6.5 million VND per month. Every time I said 'per month', he asked 'per year?' It might blow his mind to know I've been paying about 12 million VND a month to live at the World Hotel for the past two months.