Random thoughts

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...