Language freak

Surprise! It's me again! I told you I was going to post more, and I meant it, even if it means vaguely uninteresting and perhaps even self-indulgent posts like the one below!

So, how surreal do you think it is that on the sports page I edited the other night was a story about the Lao Badminton Federation (and how shit it is), with a story about Andy Roddick directly underneath? Or a story about some woman who sings traditional Lao songs for the army, right under a story about Britney and Federline finally getting a divorce?
News is news, I guess, even in Laos. And what I love most about the local sports pages is the tone of constant, unending disappointment:

"Football fans were once again let down last night, when the Lao team was thrashed by Indonesia 11-0 in the ASEAN Cup. But this time, they won't be content with promises to try harder, because now, fans are simply demanding an explanation."

Or:

"The Lao Karatedo Federation is holding out little hope for a gold, or even a silver, in the SEA Games in Thailand this December.
'Our team is weak, and unskilled,' the president of the federation explained. 'We may have to be content with a bronze, and not much more.'"

I've never enjoyed sports writing as much as I do at the Vientiane Times.

I'm a language freak, and everybody knows it. When it comes to English, that is. I just can't understand how people, English speakers that is, are incapable of grasping basic grammar and punctuation , wilfully, knowingly, constantly. It's not so much a love of language, I guess, as an obsession with bad grammar.

But then, on the same night as that usual bizarre selection of stories I just mentioned, the editor-in-chief, a suave Party man with ministry aspirations, who generally regards me with bemused surprise at the fact that never get sick and never stop running around, surprised me by suddenly speaking to me in Lao. He’s never done that before- he speaks fluent English and adores the sound of his own voice. But he kind of appraised me quite hard on that evening and started babbling away, purposely too fast, almost a kind of test.
A test that I failed, miserably. And I could tell everyone resented me for it, me who has about 20 mini-tantrums a day at their inability to distinguish between nouns and adjectives, and the difference between ‘law’ and ‘raw’, etc, but unable to answer inane questions like “Did you bring a raincoat with you?” and “When will you get married?” But hey, these guys are paid to write in English all day every day! I, on the other hand, have…been in this country for 18 months and should be able to answer non-difficult questions by now.
So now I’m home, after finishing at 8.30 this evening, poring over what I learnt in my last Lao lesson.

It’s confidence, really. I’m still at the stage where people get all amused when I break into Lao, so I find myself doing it not as much as I should. But I’ve really got to break through this stage.
Another resolution: almost everyone foreigner I know here has one answer to the question “How’s your Lao?” and that’s “Crap, how’s yours?”, as though that’s acceptable.
I don’t want to be one of those people anymore…

Last week, apart from having a Lao lesson, being run off my feet and tacitly getting into trouble from the editor, I also kept a long-held promise and took the crew from the KPL office out for lunch, to the place we always used to go for special occasions, where they serve barbecued fish, fish laap and great fish soup. I dragged the Island along with me, against his will – he used to work there too, after all – and it was all fine and jolly. But I struggle to come to grips with the fact that they are all still there, all still plugging along on minimum-to-non-existent wages in that crappy bloody room – and for what?

Weather update:
I’m sitting up in my room listening to one of the albums I picked up in Hanoi - Lunatica by the Gotan Project- and leafing through a months-old copy of the New Yorker, left behind for me by Sandy Forbes, another journalist who came to work at the VT, doing short-term training. The rain has cooled the weather right down, but it’s hot up here – the fan is spinning and I’ve got the curtains and door to the veranda open.

I read two awesome books while I was in Vietnam - The Brooklyn Chronicles by Paul Auster (so good it was like eating icecream- I felt guilty at how much I enjoyed it!) and Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn, which was nominated for last year’s Booker, but of which I’d never heard. Absolutely hilarious. I laughed out loud all the way to Hoi An, and on the plane on the way back to Vientiane.
Now I’m deep into Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It's giving me nightmares. It won the Orange Prize this year, and the author is my age! I can’t see how it’s done.

The animal kingdom
Yesterday morning, I opened the front doors in our living room and a tiny pair of green-and-black frogs sprang apart from each other, guiltily, as though they’d been having a tryst, and hopped away. I’m still at the stage where I’m fascinated by frogs, and there are plenty of them around! Big serene toads, especially, and snakes. I’ve seen a few when walking in the morning. The most recent was a black one with white stripes. It was dead on the road.

One of the photos I've put up is of the Ladies in my office 'cutting loose', as it were. We had a baci for Sandy's farewell, and then they cranked up the music and really let their hair down. Yes, I joined in. Rock on, ladies!

The others are more cool pics of cool houses in my now-beloved Hanoi.

Alright, I've had enough now.