Amazing but true: From the Bao Linh Tinh

25-year old man admits he doesn’t know his own father’s name

Nguyen Hoang Anh didn’t realise he had never known his own father’s name until questioned by his girlfriend’s parents, when visiting their house for the first time.
“At first I though my mind had gone blank,” said the 25-year old computer engineer. “You know, when a teacher asks you a question in front of the whole class and you just freeze, even though you know that you know the answer.”

But Hoang Anh didn’t know. A man he has called ‘bo’ (father) all his life, of course, has a name, but nobody ever told their son and he never heard anyone say it out loud.
“It’s normal, you just say ‘bo oi’ when you talk to him and then his friends come around and call him ‘anh’ (brother) or the woman with the electricity bill says, ‘Chu Nha’ (man of the house) or his older sister’s kids call him ‘cau’ (young uncle),” said Anh sheepishly. “It’s not as if he’s famous, he’s just a normal man leading a simple life. He’s ‘bo thoi’ in my house. Even my mother calls him that.”

His father, who is in actual fact named Nguyen Duc Manh, reportedly took umbrage not to the fact that his son didn’t know his name but that Anh knew his mother’s.

“I guess I just saw it on her ID card one day,” said Anh of the woman who is known as ‘me’ (mother) to him and his younger sister, Bich Ngoc. “But even that seems weird. She doesn’t come across as a woman who should be called Duyen. She’s a bit of a battleaxe.”

But Hoang Anh isn’t getting too worked up about it.
“It’s meaningless anyway, to cheer my father up I started calling him Hung aound the house and he didn’t even notice me," laughed Anh. "In fact, I think he might have forgotten his own name."


More on pronouns here in the Archives

Motorbikejacked in TPHCM
Here's a very good reason not to own a SH or a Dylan or an "@". This poor chap really should have just handed over his keys though.

Who, what, where...
Everyone's favourite Christmas-time buddies, local Customs officials have been told to be a tad more polite.

We'll soon find out that they were just as scared of you as you were of them all along. Go on, go down and give them a hug and spread the love!

Double dose of Bird flu for you
A man keels over and snuffs it in Ha Tay. Which isn't such good news.

To cheer you up, a few months back the peerless M.I.A. (missing in Acton) put the old bird flu chestnut to music:



She's the bees knees if you ask me.

Also, I linked to a few stories on cheating in local schools around the country a while back; the education authorities and examiners promised a clamp down and perhaps this is the result: a long boring summer studying for repeat exams in August for one third of the students sitting the exams.

Last week's photo of the week
Not sure where I saw this first, some online paper, but it's now doing the roads on the blogs and chat rooms and as that's the first link I found, here it is, last week's photo of the week with SuperCop chasing a taxi, which burned through a red light.

Check out the two vigilantes, one running on the left of the photo and another carting the cop's partner by Honda Spacy further behind. If the latter's lucky he had just be nailed for also burning through a red light and was subsequently let off the hook for services rendered: "Follow that taxi!"

Anyway good action photo and for the record my sources inform me the taxi driver was stopped and is now to be prosecuted.

Pittstop works' mucker EH Pollard forwarded this non-Vietnam related but hilarious Onion-esque article from the Beeb...
Beer for flooded Australian town
A flood-isolated Australian town was in danger of running out of beer this week until emergency volunteers came to their rescue.

Residents of Hinton, New South Wales, were stranded following the severe storms that hit the region on Sunday.

There was concern that their pub would run dry before a rugby league match which was due to be played between New South Wales and Queensland.

But the State Emergency Services boated in a huge beer delivery just in time.

Read on

Severed member
Ouch - "A man in southern Vietnam has had surgery to reattach his penis which was cut off by his wife following a quarrel – for the second time."

Second time?

Readallaboutit here.

Bourdain eats half-hatched duck egg
Just spotted this (old to the world, new to me so no moaning if you've seen it before) while surfing the world wide web, Anthony Bourdain chomping down hot vit lon or trung vit lon to us northerners.

If it wasn't for the 300 ducks plummeting to earth dead as dodos (see below) sure maybe be I'd be out there, eating it too, then again... maybe not.

Some flickr photos for second helpings if you can stomach more.

Duck - bird flu
I say "Hmmm..." to this - 300 ducks nosedive and die in Hanoi they say.

On a brighter note Pittsop's fellow diehard Irish Rugby fan and mucker Mr. Daragh Halpin is featured in this Reuters' story for his and others' sterling work at KOTO.

An a mhaith ar fad Mr Halpin!

Meanwhile after the Snooze's Talk of the Town points out the obvious – "Vietnamese marketers have realised that most products look more appealing to consumers when attached to a pretty girl" – it goes on to discuss the life of the paid-to-flirt beer girls who are always pushing the worst beer in town - Tiger or Carlsberg usually - and the hazards or seedy associations involved: "Minh, a promoter for Carlsberg, says that she and her co-workers sometimes receive offers to go out with clients after work, but they normally refuse them." Can't help but laugh as the word 'normally' being dropped in that sentence. NOT that there's anything wrong with meeting someone after work, but these girls are vulnerable and sleazed on in lots of bars, plus many of them (in an effort to make cash as they're on commission) often act outrageously forward just to get you to change your order: "Yes, cancel the bottle of white wine and serve me Carlsberg for the rest of my life."

Anyway, of course classy Pittstop approved drinks such as Larue, bia hoi and ruou just don't need mini-skirts to sell. Carlsberg and Tiger need all the help they can get.

Get out while you can!
I told you facebook was evil... check out this anti-Facebook propaganda titled Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

Yes, is the quick answer, which is the problem, don't you see?

Haven't got this wound up about something since those blasted Crocs hit Hanoi. Thankfully that fad seems to have eased off despite the fact you can - so I hear – get fake ones in Sunny Saigon.

Young wayward lovers on the run? An online newspaper reports that the people of Luc Son, a mountainous commune in Bac Giang province, are still scratching their heads over why T. V. H., Chairman of the Communal People’s Committee, husband of one and father of two, suddenly dropped everything and disappeared with no explanation. On the same day, another official, who just happens to be a woman, in charge of cultural and information affairs in the same locality also disappeared. Now I am no Sherlock Holmes, nor was meant to be, but that can’t be a coincidence. Someone should check the Nha Nghi in the next province, says me.

Football is coming to Vietnam. And Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand too. The AFC Asian Cup 2007 is split between the four regional rivals who will be all doing well to climb out of their respective groups, despite home advantage.

This is Vietnam's group: Group B: Vietnam, Japan, Qatar, UAE

Pretty mammoth task to get out of it. But the Pittstop team will be rooting for them all the way. Check out the fixtures here, all Vietnam and other group B games are in My Dinh Stadium in Hanoi.

If, if, if Vietnam were to finish second they'd play the winner of Group A, which could very well be none other then the Sunny Australian Socceroos (with Viduka, Cahill, Kewell et al making the trip). That would be tres grande. Winner of group B plays second place in group A.

Group A
1 Thailand
2 Australia
3 Oman
4 Iraq

Here's the other groups:

Group C
1 Malaysia
2 IR. Iran
3 Uzbekistan
4 China PR

Seems pretty tricky for Malaysia to get out of that one, but this looks like what the pundits will be referring to as the group of CAI CHET!

Group D
1 Indonesia
2 Korea Republic
3 Saudi Arabia
4 Bahrain



Thanks to the Rastall-Man for the tip off

Peer pressured into Facebook

At first I thought this article was written by a kindred spirit but alas – et tu Davin? - the writer is sucked in, though he retains his suspicions.

"Friends were appalled, yes appalled, that I wasn't yet on Facebook. It was as if, with every day of brave resistance, I was becoming fainter to them, a less complete acquaintance, remembered only in dusty photos (printed, not digital) and an increasingly unused number in their phone's address book. For fear of becoming entirely transparent to them I relented, and went through the online hazing that is Facebook registration." writes Davin O'Dwyer in the Irish times (subscription only I'm afraid).

He also says:
"And despite the explosion of these sites, a research paper last year concluded that social isolation is on the rise in the US - the average American has fewer friends now than 20 years ago. How many people are being duped into thinking their social circle is as vibrant as ever, just because they can keep up with the latest antics of their acquaintances with ease?"

And: "China will ban Facebook and Bebo, not to restrict political dissent, but to stay economically competitive.

On the other hand, Facebook is a surveillance state's dream come true.

Intelligence agencies spend vast resources trying to spy on their citizens, only for huge numbers of people to relinquish voluntarily their own privacy online. Is it any wonder civil rights campaigners are finding it difficult to arouse broad concern over diminishing rights to privacy? These days, it seems, privacy is for when you're going to the toilet; everything else is in the public sphere."

This article is from the Guardian last month on "the Dark Side of Facebook".

He talks about the site being used by political parties in the UK - all very well though he expresses concern that "The British National party has recently developed a number of presences on the system..." though amusingly enough, as I said previously you can end up as "friends" with people you don't even like on Facebook, one user points out an even greater irony to a BNP chap: "Let me add this up. You guys hate Jews yet you're on a Jew's networking site?"

In general according to Professor Michael Geist this political use of Facebook is no bad thing: "Is there really no benefit to have government policy makers access and participate in the hundreds of groups discussing Ontario health care issues? Would it be so bad for elected officials to actually engage with their constituents in a social network environment?

The attempts to block Facebook or punish users for stating their opinions fails to appreciate that social network sites are simply the internet generation's equivalent of the town hall, the school cafeteria, or the workplace water cooler - the place where people come together to exchange both ideas and idle gossip."

And lastly on the Beeb this article by Rory Cellan-Jones offers advice on how to make friends on networking sites for the over-40s. He now has a Facebook-group named after him - Befriend Rory Cellan Jones.

You will NEVER BE LONELY AGAIN! EVER!

So everyone's writing about it and on the Hanoi-campus everyone's still talking about it but Teddy de Burca is holding out!

There goes the neighbour's house
There's a few written and unwritten rules about neighbourly conduct - you know yourself: don't covet your neighbour's wife, try not to shit on their doorstep, keep the music down after midnight and ... um... never try to demolish his house when he's at work.

This last one happened at the end of last year in Hanoi after a row over land between two neighbours. One was so pissed off he paid a gang to come round with pickaxes and hammers and start smashing up the neighbour's gaff.

The case has just been in the courts with the naughty neighbour, a female copper and a bunch of ne'er do wells all going down for playing a part in huffing-and-puffing and blowing the poor fella's house down. Well half of it.

The ex-copper got 15 months. She got paid off by the neighbour to turn a blind eye, then paid off by the gang's leader to turn the other blind eye, then by the neighbour's brother to try and get his brother cleared.

She then paid a guy to PRETEND he was the guilty party (sounds like pretty daft career move by the faking-scapegoat) to get the neighbour off the hook but he obviously didn't perform so well as the investigating cops smelled a rat (spotted the said copper's new Honda@ in the parking lot per chance?) and it all came out in the wash.

Property disputes here can kick off over a matter of inches, someone builds an annex that encroaches on the neighbour's house or even someone leaves a motorbike in front of their neighbour's house and suddenly there's a dogfight. Obviously reacting by trying to knock someone's house down is a tad extreme.

Makes coveting the neighbour's wife/ husband a petty misdemeanour in comparison.

So don't feel so bad about it, alright?

Me and my minsk
The mucho-talented Julian Abram Wainwright's portraits of a bunch of Minsk-riders are up here.

The shots were taken in the woods at Thac Da where the Minsk Olympics were held - around 200 punters came this year and we had a right auld knees up. There's a few more photos courtesy of the Doctor here - of the football, party and Comrade Struggle event.

Thanks to the lads for all the hard work, in particular Dan Daiquiri of Highway4 and the CAMA Soundsystem boys and girls.