Loose change in tight pockets

Teddy de Burca Jnr. praises the glory of his morning cigarette and a cup of coffee, purchased for a paltry VND6,000 ($0.40), the only problem is he never has the exact change

Every day I stop for a coffee and a single cigarette in the same café. It is a highlight of my day, being an absolute skinflint, but for the cantankerous looking uncle who serves me, it often seems to be the opposite. The problem is, you see, no one has invented a note to the tune of VND6,000.

He is a troubled old soul at the best of times, I suspect. People – known in cafés as customers – are never very warmly received with their orders, requests and complaints.

His gripe with me is I never have tien le (small change). Like yesterday, when I went to pay, first, he stood aside and grumbled to the doorway, as though calculating an equation that would confound professors. Then, when I pulled out a fresh washable pink VND50,000 note, his eyes rolled back into his head. “Who on earth,” I imagined him thinking, “pays for a coffee and a single cigarette with that?”

He stared at the note, as if it were the note’s fault, shook his head, looked at me again with a pained expression, and then begrudgingly rooted around his money-basket for change.

To exact revenge, he plucked out the most God forsaken notes: VND1,000 or VND2,000 ones of the 1984 vintage (frayed at the edges, browned with age, and scented with mildew), a VND5,000 note sellotaped together with a phone number and em yeu anh mai mai (I love you forever) hand written in the corner, and a reassembled VND10,000 with a bit of a VND500 taped conspicuously in the corner.

I spent the rest of the day trying to off-load these notes. Paying bills, debts and tipping delivery boys. Without fail, I rid my pockets of old cantankerous’ notes, which meant this morning I arrived, once again, ordering my usual, only when I stepped up to pay I only had a crisp lime green VND100,000 ($6.6) bill. I might as well have stabbed him in the heart. He stumbled out of the café, put his hands on his hips and gazed at the unmerciful heavens. Then, he walked back in muttering to his chest. He was thinking long and hard. The world turned but we felt nothing, standing man to man, waiting for the other to make the first move. It felt like a Wild West sort of moment. He would tell me to leave town, or cough up the small notes I was hiding in my cowboy boots.
“Okay,” he said, squaring me up, planting the note back in my hand. “You can pay for it tomorrow.”

Of course, my bill would then be VND12,000, and there is no such note, so he’ll have to face my VND100,000 once again. The only other option is I turn up with all the coins left over from a visit to the Hilton Hotel (Why is it the only place that uses them?) – would he be happy with that kind of tien le?

There’s only one way to find out. I’ll be wearing spurs and whistling as I walk into the café tomorrow. It’s a showdown – skinflints at high-noon.

Old hairy arms is here to stay

In Hanoi Teddy de Burca Jnr. can stop the traffic, not with his looks, but merely with his shaggy-haired arms. But will his descendants be able to “hang on” to this eye catching feature?

The first time it happened I was at a red light. The throng of motorbikes sat behind me. My eyes were fixed on the light ahead, and, like everyone else in this city, I was impatiently waiting for it to turn green. That’s when I felt a slight tug.

I could feel a pair of naughty little fingers pulling the hair on my arm. My head rolled around, I like to think, with the air of Schwarzenegger’s terminator, what with the shades, the motorbike, and the bad-to-the-bone attitude.

But no one cowered. No one became embarrassed. A young boy sat on the back of his sister’s bike, and the two of them continuously giggled, as the boy tugged on the mane of hair that covers my left arm, as though it were just too silly to be true.
“Like a monkey,” sniped the boy, as the light went green, and the girl zoomed off, leaving me behind, lost in a din of horns and revving engines.

The very same day, I found myself at a petrol station, and I could see the squat woman, from behind her handkerchief, was grinning madly. As she filled my bike her dainty little hand brushed down my arm.
“Beautiful hair,” I heard her say, and it can’t have been my head hair, as I was wearing a helmet.

Since then, my arms have been admired by men at the bia hoi, I’ve been asked if I wanted them shaved in a hair salon, told the hair was like golden tobacco by a flirty waitress, asked if they keep me warm in winter by a thoughtful mother; shoeshine boys, grown men, girls, mothers, fathers, beggars, doctors, urchins, even the boy marking me in a game of football – all and sundry have had a little inspection.

And as much as my dear partner may pretend to put up with my Celtic body’s peculiarities, she takes glee in the fact that if we had a child, as she’s Asian, all of my reddish hair, hairy arms, freckles, blue eyes and pasty skin wouldn’t stand a chance against her, rather unfairly labelled, dominant genes.

But she’s as wrong as she is right. Any offspring I produced would undoubtedly appear more Asian – black hair, brown eyes, sallow skin – and they would live happily as sleek and aerodynamic drivers, zooming through red lights without any fondling or derision for gross hairiness.

However, thanks to an Augustan monk, Gregor Mendel, we know a thing or two about genetics, as the big-bearded fellow was the man who married smooth peas with wrinkled peas and discovered that the next generation had no wrinkles.

Now, placing my partner and myself in that context, I would be the wrinkled pea, so if we had kids, would that mean the end of the line for me, my hairy arms and sun kissed-pasty looks?

Hardly, as the third generation of peas, grown by brother Gregor, proved that there would be a one in four chance one could return completely wrinkled.

So, I like to picture a scene, years from now, when I’m an old senile nonagenarian, or worse, and the fruit of my loins, a beautiful Asian-looking woman, is starting a family with a carefully selected other, and on a summery day, in a quiet maternity ward, in a bed surrounded by curious heads, a wailing little red-faced-red-headed boy with hairy arms will pop out from the belly of his mother into the hands of the black haired and baffled father, and the nurses will gasp, and the doctor will raise an eyebrow, and the mother will shrug, and that’ll be my way of saying, old hairy arms is here to stay.

I was the Passenger ('Cos breaking up is hard to do)

Teddy de Burca Jnr. can’t help feeling awkward about crossing paths with his old xe om driver, a man now minus a once-steady source of income

I have to change my route to work. I just don’t have the heart anymore. Every morning I drive out to the lane and there he stands, in the shade beneath the kapok trees, his head hanging on his chest, like a wounded soldier in a heart wrenching portrait, entitled – “Man as bucket of misery.”

As I pass by, I try to catch his eyes, just to be cordial. How could I pretend he’s not there, after all we’d been through, all those mornings we rode together, through the dusk, dirt, smoke and the city lights.

And of course, he knows I’m there. He knows I’m passing by, slowing down to say ‘xin chao’. He recognises the sound of the engine, or saw me coming around the corner, but he won’t look at me, lest I see the tears welling up in his eyes.

He, in case you are wondering, is my ex-xe om driver, a man, who due to some broken limbs, I depended on for the last three months. And as a result of the income I generated, he, no doubt, grew to depend on me. Recently, I noticed he had upgraded his brand of cigarettes to a Singaporean variety.

Come rain, come shine, together we drove over the causeway, around by the mausoleum, along the banks of the murky Red River and down the plush boulevards on Tran Phu. He never drove too fast or braked too suddenly. He even slowed down as we passed pretty ladies, so I could wink and say “Howya”. He also learnt some English phrases, my favourite being – “Where to, sir?” He told me that during the next Tet holiday I would be an honoured guest in his house. He thought this summer would last forever. Perhaps, we both did.

But alas, one fateful morning, weighed down by a heavy heart, I wheeled my bike out of the gate, and drew a long breath. I knew it would be awkward. I knew it would hurt.

As I approached, I saw him glance out of the corner of his eyes. He had been laughing with his friends. Looking forward to another day in the saddle, making a few dollars-worth, a decent day’s wages for most. Little did he know when he rose that morning that the gravy train would drive straight past. Should I have given one month’s notice?

And now every morning, as all the other xe om drivers head off with their regular passengers he is left, in the shade under the kapok tree, no money in his pocket and nowhere to go, a future as bleak as it is uncertain.
So that’s why I can’t take it anymore. Tomorrow morning, I will turn left and drive the long way round to work. Just to spare his feelings. So he can begin again.

In future, there will be other foreigners, he will coo them over and they’ll hop on his pillion, and he will smile sweetly, and say – “where to, sir?” And they’ll laugh at that one, especially if it’s a woman, and being new to Hanoi, she’ll pay double what an old skinflint like me ever did. It’ll be the start of a beautiful friendship. Until she plucks up the nerve to buy a motorbike, that is.

An experiment gone wrong

Teddy de Burca Jnr. just wanted to take a taxi from Phan Thiet to Ho Chi Minh City, but found himself in an experiment to try and travel at the speed of light

It wasn’t far out of Phan Thiet when I realised I was with a taxi driver who had set his mind on achieving what you would think was obviously impossible – to travel down highway one at the speed of light.

It would be nice, I suppose, to arrive at your destination as you left. To be there before you knew it. To see the other side of the galaxy or to go boldly where no Vietnamese taxi driver has been before.

But the car was not modified to any Star Trek specifications. In fact, the whole vehicle was juddering as the car tore down the busiest road in the world, weaving in and out of articulated lorries and buses, like there was no tomorrow.

I thought about pointing out to the taxi-driver-cum-scientist that there were two eventualities to this experiment. Either, we would crash, into one of the other thousand automated vehicles around us, and burst into a ball of flames. Or, he would succeed and we would travel at the speed of light but that, according to Einstein, would mean our molecules and atoms would obliterate in a colourful blaze and we would be nothing but cosmic dust sprinkled upon an earthly road.

Either way, we were doomed. I knew that. But he obviously didn’t. So why didn’t I speak? If I had, I hear you say, nothing would have happened. But hindsight, you will agree, is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

So I sat in dumb silence, well, not quite. I could hear the music in my headphones. Isaac Hayes, crooning about a backstabbing love affair, “If loving you is wrong…” We will crash I thought. “I don’t wanna be right,” sang Isaac.

And then, I thought, enough is enough, I will tap him on the shoulder and say, listen buddy, it just isn’t happening, not today, not with me, I would like to live. But the taxi driver had already seemingly given up on life. He had taken his eyes off the road, despite the fact that we were now travelling at a hundred thousand miles per hour, and his eyes were scanning the horizon, across the lush paddies, his thoughts, perhaps, recalling an incomplete romance from his past, and Isaac sang on, “I don’t wanna be right”, and my eyes looked ahead, and I saw the stationary truck we were hurtling towards and I said an unprintable four letter word.

I will not speak of the impact, my gruesome injuries, or the imminent debacle of getting from a country road to a foreign hospital. Nor will I speak of the operation or the rehabilitation. But, I will recommend that when you find yourself in a taxi or on the back of a motorbike, if the driver is trying to travel at the speed of light, be direct, be swift and tap the fellow on the shoulder and say, “No. Not today. Not with me. Just ease off the gas and let’s enjoy the ride. I’m in no hurry. I’ll even give you the gist of Einstein’s theory of relativity along the way.” Or forever hold your silence.

The vigilante’s guilt complex

Teddy de Burca Jnr. encounters a thief and saves the day for a shopkeeper, but ends up wondering why doing a good deed makes him feel so bad

I look into his eyes. He looks into mine. He has just slipped a large colourful volume under his shirt and down into his pants, quite skilfully I might add, and now he is staring at me, like prey before a predator, wondering – “does he see me here, three feet in front of his face, or am I somehow invisible at this moment in space and time?”

And yes, of course I see him, and he realises, and without batting a eyelid, he whips the large colourful volume back out and then holds it up in the air, squinting his eyes, as if measuring it with great academic curiosity, as though he might be thinking, “Yes that proves it – quod erat demonstrandum! One large colourful volume can slip snugly into a pair of pants. And if I wanted I could, y’know, rob it, but of course I wouldn’t do that, because I’m not invisible, which means that foreign guy saw me.”

I call the shop assistant over, thinking craftily, I will scupper this oddball. He won’t have the audacity to steal anything if she stands beside us. She toddles over, smiling beatifically, and repeats everything I say.

“I’m looking for a book.”

“…a book,” she says, turning towards the shelves, as if to say, well, help yourself.

“By James Joyce. He’s an Irish writer.”

“…Icelandic writer?”

“…” I think about trying to sum up the writer in 25 words or less. Irish. Alcoholic. Blind as a bat. Stream of consciousness. Hailed as the greatest by Irish people who have never read any of his books. Dead.

But then I see the would-be-shoplifter drop to his hunkers and then shunt the large, slim colourful volume up his shirt again, before sliding it down into his pants, and then, after wheeling on the heels of his plastic sandals in the doorway, with a flash he is gone.

“That man just stole a book,” I say pointing my finger at an empty space.

“Yes. Stole a book,” she says smiling, oblivious to the theft, searching for a book entitled Stole a book.

“Under his shirt.”

“Under his shirt?” she says, thinking, such names for novels.

I decide to take the matter into my own hands. I walk out and look down the road. Nothing. No one. I jump on my bike and drive around the corner and start to drive in the direction the man vanished into. I imagine a mini-headline – “Foreigner rescues two-dollar book from destitute man, marries shopkeeper’s daughter, declared national hero”.

About a kilometre away – he’s certainly no slouch with a book rammed down his pants – I find him on Pham Chu Trinh street, pacing furiously with the gait of a man, well, with a large colourful volume rammed down his pants.

“You. You have a book.”

“…” He waves me away with his hand.

“I know you have a book down your pants. I saw you.”

Pedestrians start to look as this odd altercation. His thoughts are visibly turning over in his head. He twitches as he turns towards me, walking while whipping the book from out of his pants and under his shirt, and another headline flashes in my head, “Foreign man bludgeoned to death by large colourful volume”, but instead he just hands it to me, quite delicately. Somewhat surprised by the anti-climax I throw it in my basket and drive away not bothering to explain that I am a good-willed vigilante who plans to return the book to its rightful owner. After all, I don’t know the Vietnamese word for vigilante.

He squawks as I drive away, “Schkou, ehuh,” gibberish for “hang on a minute” and starts to run after me, but not for very far. I suspect immediately that, in fact, he thought I might want to buy it off him. Now, he feels he is the one being robbed. Another headline, this time in the Vietnamese dailies, flashes in my head, “Local thief robbed by foreign thief”.

Unperturbed, I u-turn, drive back to the shop, deposit the large colourful volume in the hands of the proprietor.

“Here you are.”

“…here you are,” she says taking the book.

And that’s that, or is it? No marriage proposal. No medal. Not even a pat on the back. And as I drive away a nagging guilt niggles. Scenarios flood my mind. The man had given up too easily. Perhaps, he had paid and just didn’t like plastic bags. Perhaps, he lived in the worst part of town and his pants were the safest place for a large colourful volume. It was, no doubt, his crippled three-year old son’s birthday and I had run away with his gift.

I drive on, trying not to think about it, but his gaunt face returns to haunt me and spite my arrogant vigilance. I picture him sobbing on the roadside. His incomprehensible words – “Schkou, ehuh” – ring in my ears. Being a vigilante is not all it’s cracked up to be, I decide. I’m quite sure, that’s why Batman is such a dark and melancholy chap come cocktail hour on Saturday night.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Teddy de Burca Jnr. ponders a rather challenging work in progress – the street he lives on

Every time I return from a trip abroad, I wonder if the construction work on my street has finished. It doesn’t matter how often I go, or even how long I stay away. It never does. The road is long. So, so long.

Each house on my street has been built around me, one by one, over the course of two years. Each one, in the spirit of neighbourly one-upmanship, a little bit higher than the last.

Though it seems longer, I reckon the projects take on average half a year. Which means, half a year of secretive midnight truck deliveries, spinning cement mixers and the clanking of bricks. Half a year of labourers grinding, sawing, hacking, hammering, drilling, whistling and hollering “ell-looo!” every time they see me. And, worst of all, half a year with no Sunday-sleep in.

What can you do but thank the stars that even the universe is finite. A piece of string, though you don’t know exactly how long, has a length. Everything must end. The only question is when.

For the time being, I must grin and bear it as the latest work-in-progress, directly opposite my abode, continues.

Construction began, or rather continued, after the octogenarian lady who lived there finally succumbed to the lure of the dollar, sold up and, I presume, moved back to her mother’s in the provinces to count the cash.

The building, replacing her so-wee-you-couldn’t-even-see-it-bungalow, is nothing short than a workingman’s idea of a palace. It seems to have stopped at seven, or is it eight, stories, making it the tallest on the street, if not the district.

You could knock down the neighbouring buildings so it stood alone, put clocks on top, and call it the town hall. Or convert the roof into a helicopter-landing pad. Or, at the very least, enjoy abseiling down to pay electricity bills.

The two-dozen young labourers, which initially seemed an excessive number, now have their own room. Lost within the bowels of this architectural monster, they can only be heard, crooning away, tickled pink by the reverb they get on their voices in the bare rooms.

I suspect the father of the family that is destined to live there, asked the architect for a house so large he could hide from his nagging family and live forever in blissful solitude.

Then again, that’s all assuming there is an architect involved. Judging by the style –the mock-pillared balcony (I say mock, as the gaps are filled with cement, so as, I presume, only to hint at pillars, “thus, I give you pillaresque!”), the monastery round tower windows (perfect for archers defending the site from attacking hoards), the car wash size basement for a fleet of SUVs and BMWs and the papaya-peach paint job – you’d say not.

Of course, I know the construction won’t last forever, one day the world will run out of bricks, or just end. But, the really distressing fact is three doors down lies another house where the oldest woman in Vietnam dwells, alone. I’m afraid, like the last of the Mohicans, her days are numbered.

Someday, I will have my much-cherished Sunday morning sleep-in again. The only question is when.