Phailblog part IV

I created a teacher facebook separate from my personal facebook account at the end of the previous school year because I kinda missed my annoying students. I don't check it very often but fortunately, I received a notification of a certain event. This year, the school is very aggressive on dress code policy. The students obviously object to this. One of my former students was told on the first day that he could not wear his sleeveless tshirt. I don't care either way, but if this gives me the chance to take some fools down a notch or two, I'm taking it! Anyways, the event I was invited to was titled "Sleeveless/Tank Top Wednesday!" There was about 100 confirmed attendees and the point was to silently rebel against establishment blah blah blah, nothing too impressive in terms of civil rights. My student posted on the wall, "uhh guys, I think I accidently invited Mr. Pham to the event," to which his comrades appropriately responded, "fail," etc.
Instead of snitching on everyone in the group, which I totally would, I would rather them all get in trouble on Wednesday and see how aggressively the faculty and admin would stick my our dress code policy. So I posted on the wall, "I dress like a boss errday, so I never get dress coded. GETONMYLEVEL!" Needless to say, I am very excited to bust some chops on Wednesday.

Phambroiled Whopper!

My flight out of Saigon to Seoul was 5 hours, so I planned on watching about 2.5 movies. They added some newer releases since my last flight so I was a bit excited! FastFive topped the list, and Julia mentioned that action movies were fun for plane rides. Also, I've liked the Rock since my WWF days. IT WAS AWESOME! After that, I watched Hanna, starring Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, and soixiEOOIEFSDkla girl from lucky bones. It was a bit dull for an action movie about a girl trained to be an assassin. I'm sure Colombiana will be better. Next up was Kung Fu Panda. I fell asleep. The plane landed and I had 5 hours to kill before the next flight. I laid down in the unused terminals and watched Korean television while the clean up crew vacuumed. I listened to some more Moth and TAL reruns. Finally, I hopped on another plane. I started this trip watching Battle Los Angeles, which Julia said was good. I remembered that I already watched this a long time ago, but nothing else intrigued me so I kept it on. Next was Arthur, starring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, and some girl that might as well have been Zoe Deschanel. I would have glossed over this one had it not been for some article that Russell Brand wrote about the London riots. Anywho, it was a decent comedy. I fell asleep soon after. This plane was super crowded and hot. The old lady next to me kept making noises and elbowed me a couple times. RUDE. The 11 hour flight came to an end. I landed in LAX, spent an hour or two in customs, then ran to the closest Burger King! It was delicious and fatty and greasy and flame-broiled to perfection. AMERICA! 3 hours back to DFW on Thursday at 5 AM, passed out in Arlington, woke up at 3 PM. Jet lag was a b and remained one for the next 5 days.
On Friday, I decided to go back to Austin and surprised Mel and Thomas. When I walked in, Thomas was in his underwear with gloves on and a bottle of blue dye, "this is not as kinky as it looks!" He was dyeing mel's hair again. He told me there was a surprise waiting for me in my room:

That night, we got the group together for some dt fun. Also, Hot Ashlee was in town, and she's totally into me.

The next day, I saw Zilker Summer Musical's Footloose, and it reminded me of how awesome Gia Wright was in MHS's production during her rendition of "Let's hear it for the boy."
The rest of the weekend, I tried to rest, despite my severe jet lag and anxiety about the following work week which meant the end of Summer of Pham...to be continued...

Let me let you go.

I know I was supposed to blog next about the plane ride and my homecoming, but I was just inspired by some bat shit insane neighbors at my bat shit insane apartment complex.
It was 11:15 on a Saturday night. I was watching the 4th installment of The Fast and the Furious marathon. The fourth movie, according to wikipedia, is actually chronologically the 3rd movie, so I watched it after 2Fast2Furious. This marathon was started because I watched the 5th movie on the plane, and to my surprise...I enjoyed it. Hate on me, haters! It's better than Tron. Also, this was the first weekend in a while that I could do absolutely nothing. Mel left for Vegas, and Thomas left for Dallas. Anyways, I was enjoying a nice nap until I was suddenly awakened by knocking and yelling. "Unlock your door!" *knock knock knock* "Unlock your door! I'll keep knocking all night and embarrass you in front of your neighbors." (Oh, please do, crazy lady. I eat this stuff up.) "I'll go around to all the doors and knock until you open your door!!!" (omg, what if she knocks on my door?!) Finally, some guy answered. The guy living upstairs had a couple friends over. I heard a lot of yelling so I shut off the loud air conditioning unit so I could increase my eavesdropping capabilities. Soon the footsteps headed toward the back patio so I hastily followed. I ran into Mel's room for a better vantage point. I could only hear tidbits so my side of the story may not be accurate, but here goes. Apparently, the man living upstairs had been separated from this crazy lady. She was super pissed because she found out that he had been sleeping with some girl named April. The crazy lady was also pissed about 400 dollars he owed her, I believe from a tax return. He had a history of borrowing money from her, and she found out that he used some of that money to pay for dates with this poor April girl. Also, he forgot the crazy lady's bday because according to her, he was "too busy fucking April." I think they have a 13 year old son together.
-OH SHIT I THINK THEY ARE BACK ON THE PATIO, BRB-
Aw man, I think she just left. Her final words, "you wanna fuck with me, I can fuck with you."
OK, so if you think it's amoral to eavesdrop on crazy people arguing, then I am sorry. It's not my fault I live in a shitty apartment with paper thin walls. It's not my fault that crazies like to get loud on balconies. It's not my fault that my life isn't as tumultuous and exciting...well, I guess it is.
Anywho, his car is under her name so she can do whatever she likes! "April doesn't even know we been sleeping together. We've slept together 5 times this month!" Oh poor naive April! He's been hittin up both of them before the divorce is even finalized. SHAME! He tried arguing that she was doing the same thing to him. REBUTTLE!...rebuttle failed. He said that she went on a date with some realtor. She got a text one night while watching TV with her son. It was this guy that her friend introduced her to that was going to show her apartments and houses, but I do believe he wanted to do more than that ;) He said, "when can I meet with you? tonight?" She said, "not tonight" because she thought it was reallllly creepy. Instead she met him the next day to have tea at Starbucks on the patio. She explained to him that she had just gotten out of a "16 year fucked up marriage" and that she had no intention of getting into another relationship. She had only met this man as friends! THIS WAS NOT A DATE! "No one here would say that was a date!" Then she said something about 500 dollar child support, yikes! Then she said, "if I want to drive recklessly and total your car, not my problem." Reminded me of a Mary J. Blige song. Then it got a little Alanis. "YOU FUCKED UP WHEN YOU FUCKED HER!" Finally, it quieted down a little, and I could barely make out any words. "Let me let you go. Stop sucking me back in." Aw! That is such a sweet sentiment. I'm sure that's a song or movie line, but I don't care, it's beautiful. Love makes crazy people do crazy things. I hope they had some crazy breakup/unbreakup sex after that whereby foregoing any intention of letting her let him go. Sad. In closing, I hope I never get divorced because $500 a month in child support for a kid I never get to see is just upsetting.

Murpham's Law, Everything that can go Pham, WILL go Pham!

I left off last time with my trip to Hanoi. Jeebus, I am so behind. OK, so after Hanoi, I went with Cau Nam (Uncle Nam), who is, as my little sister calls him, "Superman," to Ha Long Bay. This place is like one of those wonders of the world that Andrew Zimmern would visit or probably already has. Let's backtrack, we refer to Uncle Nam as Superman because he is probably won of the most intelligent and versatile beings of our time. He is currently working as the Chief of Technology for Vietnam Airlines. He is trying to get a direct flight from US to Vietnam in order. Oh, also, he is working on a project to remove all the agent orange from the ground water and top soil. NBD. Anyways, he pays for the whole trip, and we get on this old boat thing off the coast to get to these awesome islands.


Here is me out-Corona shot-ing all your asses.


Here are the famous islands. Ha Long means "dragon landing."


These two rocks are said to resemble a cock fight.


We also climbed up Yen Tu Mountain. There is a temple at the peak so many people make pilgrimages up there.



Um, did I mention I went parasailing?


In my next entry, I will conclude my trip with the exciting plane ride and my return to ATX!

Good morning Vietpham!

It's 4 AM. My first day back at work starts in 4 hours and I can't sleep. When I try to sleep at night, my body thinks I'm taking a nap and wakes up 2 hours later with a head ache. I hate jet lag. I'll be crashing during the day because I already have a knack for falling asleep during professional development presentations. On the agenda for today is "formative assessment strategies" ZzZzZz. Hopefully, my colleagues will be able to keep me awake with their snarky comments. I have the best coworkers.
I keep having to go back and delete the "extra space" after sentences because Jack the Lawyer informed me that two spaces after a sentence is a "time-honored mistake."
Well, because I can not sleep, I've decided to finish up my Vietnam posts. Last time, I ended on my first night in Hanoi when I went out with David to the discos.

Hanoi is a very interesting city. It is a much more modern metropolitan area than most of Vietnam. The citizens seem to dress much nicer than other parts. The women are beautiful. They are all slender and tall and keep up with the latest fashion trends. The dialect in the north is very difficult for me, a southerner, to understand. Mel's family speaks this dialect. I jokingly refer to it as bourgeois. The men in Hanoi sound like a mix of Orochimaru, Mario Cantone, and Lil Wayne. It's quite flamboyant. Every word spoken seems to begin with a "Z" sound. For example, if a racist such as Thomas ever visited Hanoi, he would pull back his eyes and say "zing zong zing zong."




Okay, so here is a photo of my sister, mother, uncle, and I as we were leaving the airport. You may notice I am as big as a house due to all the food my relatives keep throwing at me.


Later that day, I went fishing with my uncle, and we caught absolutely nothing.


This night was also the night that I went out on the town with Mel's brother David. You can see those pictures in the previous intoxicated post.

The following morning, we went sightseeing. I saw the corpse of Ho Chi Minh at his Mausoleum in the middle of Hanoi. Don't tell my dad that I went here. He'll probably beat me. He's still pretty sensitive about the whole war thing. I dunno, something about the whole being forced to reign hell fire down on his own countrymen really ground his gears.


Here is the pagoda built on a single pillar. It's supposed to be some kind of engineering marvel.


In the center of Hanoi, there are two lakes. In Hoan Kiem, or Lake of the Returned Sword, there lives a 100 year old turtle who is currently very sick. The name of the lake refers to a legend of a king who was given a sword by a giant turtle, and after the king defeated his foes, he returned the sword to the giant turtle.

This much like the King Arthur/Lady of the Lake legend, or the much more famous Lion Turtle/Last Airbender legend. ENERGYBENDER!

Completely Phammered

Early morning in Quang Ngai, my mother, sister and I went up to the roof to behold a....DOUBLE RAINBOW

We tried to explain the significance of this event to our mother to no avail.

I believe we next went to the resting place of my grandfather and his brothers and other phamily. We had to walk through some dense vegetation. All along the way, I hummed "Up to the Mountain" which as you know, will be sung by Mel's daughter at my funeral. My logic for this is because Mel will be too old or dead by that time. Also, I won't have my own daughter sing it because I am not allowed to have daughters. Yes, you are confused but here are my reasons. Daughters get pregnant. Daughters will be able to manipulate me into doing absolutely anything for them. Case in point, look at this hurricane of mischief and tell me how I could possibly tell her no.


anyways, it was very humbling to be near the dead and honoring them with flowers and incense.


The next day...I think...we went to Son My, the memorial of the events of the My Lai massacre. Needless to say, it was incredibly depressing. A massacre benefits absolutely no one. When men and women are thrust into war, they are called upon to do unnatural things such as murder. It's something I can't comprehend.



Later that night, we went to the beach at My Khe. I don't have those pics yet but I'll post them to fb laters. It was beautiful. There was a restaurant right on the beach that would serve us food and beer all night long. The weather is such that if it's late at night and you leave the water, it's still nice and warm.

Some time later, we went to My Son. Speaking of which, my second grandfather...brother of my dearly departed gramps...gave me a vietnamese name, Son, pronounced sung, which means mountain. I am MOUNTAIN! Ah yes, where were we, we went to My Son, which is the land that Vietnamese people invaded which was previously occupied by the Cham civilization. Does this seem awkwardly backwards and predestined??! I kid I kid...

OK, so next, we had to drive to Da Nang where my Uncle Nam lives. There is also an airport there which was method of travel to Hanoi. Anywho, Da Nang is an awesome tourist city with mountains AND beaches. It's beautiful. If I could live anywhere in Vietnam, it would be here with my Uncle and his well educated and cultured family. We took a really long thingy tram thing that goes up to the mountains. at the moment I can't think of the word because...well, i'll explain in a little bit. At the top, there is a resort which would be perfect for a honeymoon(hint hint ladies). There were monkies, and some idiot provoked them and the alpha chased him. Hilar.






Also, here is a giant Buddha which is Vietnam's response to the giant sword in Houston.

NEXT! we stayed at Uncle Nam's place, and after dinner, he took us all to a bar called Seventeen Cowboys. This was a cowboy themed bar which featured a filipino cover band consisting of 3 rocker guys, and 3 scantily clad female vocalists who performed such hits as "What's Goin On?" and "Firework." At the end of the night, the more rock voiced female sang an AC/DC song and I thought she was flirting with me but she was actually looking at my sister, GAY!...literally gay. I was so disappointed at myself.

In the morn, we had to go to the airport to head to Hanoi. My Hanoi uncle took me fishing and on our way out, his motor bike took a tumble on a decline and we fell ove. I was fine but he had a little wound on his knee. O Unk Hai. You can spot me a mile away on that motor bike as I am the only person holding on to dear life in stark contrast to the rest of the lackadaisical denizens of Hanoi.
After dinner, I went out with David Nguyen, Mel's older brother who was teaching English in Hanoi. Funny story, he tried to take me to the Hanoi's location of Seventeen Cowboys but was sorely disappointed that I had been there the night before. Here's us at some bars:


apparently, we got out-Texaned by the bar tender featured above on the sequence of a tequila shot. We were very ashamed.

Which leads me to now. It is 4 am. I am hungover/drunk/sleep deprived. Good night boners.