Random thoughts

I have been here in Hanoi over a year and had trouble using VPN and accessing Amazon to let me watch movies that are available on Prime Videos. We paid around $100 a year for Prime and paid another $80 for VPN yet we still had to pay extra for most of the videos because Amazon did not let us watch while abroad despite using VPN. Last week, I was talking with my colleagues in the shuttle and decided to try again when I arrived home. Lo and behold, it worked. I wanted to watch the final season of the Man in the High Castle but the season wasn't available yet. So I watched a chick flick "Ladies in Black". It's a story set in 1959 Australia, where a daughter had to get approval from her father to apply for a college scholarship and where expectation for young girl was not to go to college. I have a lot of thoughts about this topic and many more others. One day, I will write more about them. For now I am happy that I can watch any movies I want without having to pay $5 f...

Last Sunday, we went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Hanoi. With the two kids in tow, as much as Rob and I enjoyed looking at the paintings and other pieces, they did not fancy them. Luckily, entrance fee was less than $2 per person so we can go back without kids another time. ပြီးခဲ့တဲ့ တနင်္ဂနွေနေ့က Hanoi မြို့မှာရှိတဲ့ အနုပညာ ပြတိုက်ကို ရောက်တယ်။ Rob နှင့် ကျွန်မက  ကြိုက်သလောက် ကလေးနှစ်ယောက်က စိက်မဝင်စားဘူး။ ကံကောင်းတာက ဝင်ကြေးက တစ်ယောက်ကို $၂ တောင်မကြတဲ့အတွက် ကျွန်မတို့နှစ်ယောက်ပဲ ကလေးတွေ မပါဘဲနှင့် ထက်သွားရမယ်။ As many of you know, I am not an outdoor person but enjoy visiting museums. I have been to several museums in many cities in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Although I cannot claim that this museum in Hanoi is the best, it had a good collection of ancient and contemporary arts. Some collections were from as early as 10th century and some were very recent. Artists used gouache, lacquer, and many other mediums.    သိတဲ့အတိုင်း ကျွန်မက အပြင်မှာ လုပ်ရတဲ့ အာ...

When I move to a new city and am not busy, I tend to observe, think, and write. In other words, I am keeping myself busy with something to do. So I watch and take mental notes as I go around town and here are the goods, bads, and differences of Hanoi, purely from my perspectives. Goods People are friendly. Usually, they think I am Vietnamese and speak to me in Vietnamese. When I reply they know immediately I am not because my Vietnamese pronunciation is just not right. When they figure out that I am not Vietnamese, then they think I am from Malaysia. When I reply that I am from Myanmar, then either they go quiet or say something nice about Myanmar. No criticism of Myanmar here about Rohingyas or civil war. Food is great here. But I see a different noodle soup (Bun cha) shops more than the well known pho eateries in Hanoi. Interesting mix of Vietnamese, Japanese and Western food here. Many cafes and bakeries all around. We live in an area called Tay Ho or West Lake area where ma...

Last Friday the piano we bought in Hanoi was delivered. We meant to bring our own from DC but our shipment was overweight so we either had to pay $1,400 or pull stuff out. We chose the later and didn’t have a piano so we went to a shop recommended by a colleague and ordered one. It is a used Korean brand, Samick, and cost around $1,100. It would cost more to rent monthly for two years. Hopefully, we can sell it back when we leave. For now, both kids, especially Zey, was happy to start playing again. He truly enjoys playing without us having to prompt regularly. Sometimes, he needed some reminders if he was obsessed with something else but usually he just played whatever song he was learning in DC. Their piano teacher, Mathias, was truly amazing, motivating kids to play. Zey learnt from him for five years. He also learnt from some video games by watching over and over. This week both kids started their piano lesson at the UNIS as after school activity. We will see how this works ou...

Yesterday, we went to the Back-to-School Night for the middle school a.k.a for Zey. He prepared a schedule for us to follow starting with his homeroom. Then we moved from building to building and many different rooms to meet different teachers. I knew what he meant when he first started there that bunch of students moved from class to class while getting lost. He quickly got a hang of it. Rob had a good sense of direction and I just followed Rob as I usually got lost as soon as I stepped out of a room. Zey’s home room teacher was very new agey and fun. We met teachers who taught Spanish, PE, Science, English, Design, Humanities, Art, Drama, Repair and reuse and Math. I saw 3D printers, tools he would use to build wooden products, a classroom where they repaired old things, a science room where they incubated some duck eggs. Anyone want a duck as a pet? Hope might go berserk if we brought one home.  We saw a library which was larger than our DC public library. We saw more s...

I went to two coffee events at my children school yesterday as if I needed that much coffee to stay alert. I had to leave the first one early and arrive the second coffee late because of overlap in schedule. Their school is a UN International School, one of the two schools in the world; the other one is in New York. Apparently, the UNIS in New York is one of the founding schools of International Baccalaureate (IB) program. I heard about IB program for the first time in Tokyo and wanted my children to experience it when possible. My first impression of the school is very warm and fuzzy. Elementary school has no homeworks. Yaay for Khin!! Not that she ever complained about homework back in DC. In fact, Rob and I have always been the lucky parents who did not have to battle with our kids to get the homework done. Recently someone commented that our kids are easy going because the parents are easy going. Imagine a big smile on my face! I take credits whenever possible even though all I...

People are often surprised when I tell them that I do not like hot weather. Just because I come from Yangon doesn’t mean that I must like the hot and humid weather. Many of them are perfectly happy to announce they hate cold weather because they are from Michigan or Minnesota. Well, I wouldn’t go to that extreme level of emotion to express my dislike for a particular type of temperature or season but of course I have a preference. I get super sweaty and smelly and perfume can’t hide it easily. I take multiple showers a day which may contribute to my ever increasing pile of laundry. No, thank you, if possible, to hot season. Anyway, I am back in South East Asia and it is mostly hot. Hey I will get used to it, no big deal. I will just complain for a bit until I have other things to complain about, like coughing a lot. Preference, no preference, it doesn’t matter when I have to follow my spouse. He is really, really nice by the way. He is not an alcoholic, a womanizer or a gambler an...

I arrived in Hanoi from Yangon one week ago. Somewhat surprisingly, I cried when I left Yangon. I always have strong affection for my mother and younger brother. Now that my younger brother is married and has a kid, who is super adorable and lovable, and my own kids are older and not wanting to cuddle, there is no surprise my niece gets my affection. And she has become super sweet (sometimes naughty) two year old who likes to play with me and my kids, wanting to be held, be entertained, and be cuddled. Zey loved her too. Khin, not sure what to do with her since she herself is in a stage of moodiness. Oh dear, she is only nine years old. At least, Hanoi and Yangon are closer than Washington, DC and Yangon. We can just fly there for a long weekend if we wanted. Yangon International airport has changed for the better as well. We can now check in then hang out with family until we need to go to immigration and additional security. There has never been a long line at immigration and ...

This trip I managed to see several friends I had not seen in a while. I had more time as I did not have my children with me. မတွေ့ရတာ ကြာတဲ့ သူငယ်ချင်း တွေနှင့် ဒီတစ်ခေါက် ခရီးထွက်တာ တွေ့ရတယ်။ ကလေးတွေ မပါတော့ အရင်ထက် ပိုပြီး အချိန်ရှိတယ်။ On my first day, I ate Montinghar and many more. One of the reasons why I went home regularly was because I wanted to eat Burmese food. I didn’t usually get sick but this time, I ate four different kinds of food in three hours and got sick. Then I recovered in a few hours and became more careful. ပထမရောက်တဲ့နေ့မှာ မုန့်ဟင်းခါး ရော၊ အခြား အစားအစာတွေရော တော်တော် စားလိုက်တယ်။ မြန်မာပြည်ကို ပုံမှန် ပြန်ရခြင်း အကြောင်းထဲမှာ မြန်မာအစားအစာ စားချင်တာကြောင့်လည်းပါတယ်။ ပုံမှန်အားဖြင့်တော့ အစားမှား ဝမ်းသွားတာတွေ ဘာတွေ မရှိဘူး။ ဒီတစ်ခါတော့ စားတာများသွားပြီး ပြန်အံ့တယ်။ နာရီပိုင်းအတွင်းပြန်ကောင်းပြီးတော့ နည်းနည်းသတိထားလိုက်တော့ နောက်ထက် ဘာမှ ဆက်မဖြစ်တော့ဘူး။ On my second day, I saw my high school friend whom I did not see for more than 17 years. It was ...