Motorbike to Work

Thanks to the government shutdown, we didn't have operational funds to fuel our office vehicles for the past three weeks.  Normally, a car picks me up and drops me off to and from work; this is approved by our major command and is intended to prevent accidents and injuries to our office personnel.  Road accidents in Vietnam for 2012 accounted for nearly 10,000 fatalities, so this decision is not without foundation. That is quite a number when you consider the majority of the 80 million citizens of Vietnam don't own a car.  Even more so when you consider the speed limit on most city streets is 40 kph (just under 25 mph), and that wearing a helmet is compulsory on a two-wheeled, motorized vehicle.

During the shutdown, half of the American office staff decided to ride their motorbikes to work and the other half decided to use the remainder of the fuel in the vehicles for duty to domicile with the intent of paying to refuel the car when it ran out of gas.  I figured the five dollars it costs me to drive six miles round trip to the office and back for three weeks was cheaper than divvying out a portion of the hundred dollars or so that it costs to fill up a Pajero in Vietnam.  My logic was sound in theory because I have been riding in Vietnam for some twenty years or so and I have experience on a liter bike in the U.S.  I know to fix my mirrors and pay attention to people behind and in front of me, and I know the special characteristics of Vietnamese drivers.

The weather in Hanoi in the spring and fall is the best five weeks of the year.  The rest of the year is crap, with drizzly, cloudy and cold weather in the winter and melt-your-skin-off heat in the summer. So, early October was perfect for the decision to drive the bike.  I only had two days that it rained on me, and I had rain pants and coat that someone had left in the office on their end-of-tour departure to protect me from the elements.  Actually, I don't have a problem riding in the rain, but the flotsam jetsam of road debris that gets thrown up by other bikes is nearly impossible to wash out of clothes once they are stained.

When on the roads of Vietnam, it is important to remember the actual rules of the road, and not the rules that you might read in the Vietnamese Traffic Laws.  Let me cover some of the most important ones here, as they may save your life:

Rule number one:  When turning, a Vietnamese citizen may just nod his head  in the direction he is turning.  This nod can be very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that it may be better to expect a sudden turn for no apparent reason at all.

Rule number two:  Sudden stops without easing to the edge of the thoroughfare are perfectly legal.  These stops may be for reasons ranging from receiving a phone call, sending a text message, or just to taking a breather.

Rule number three:  Regardless of the speed of the vehicle they are operating, most Vietnamese citizens will gravitate towards the center of the road.  This allows for more room to maneuver in the event of another vehicle operator exercising rules number one and two.

Rule number four:  The centerline is often determined by the number of vehicles traveling in a specific direction.  The actual paint on the road is merely a guide.

Rule number five: U turns should be made by easing to the extreme right of the road and then executed by cutting across the path of as many vehicles as possible in both directions.  Look for the head nod.

Rule number six: For pedestrians, it is important to remember that you are the lowest form of life on the road system. You should not cross the road at any other point other than the indicated cross walks, and then you must remember to yield to all other motorized vehicles and bicycles. It is a good practice to stick your hand out at the approaching vehicles; it will remind them that the palm of your hand will smash into their face before their wheel breaks your leg.

Rule number seven: Though helmets are compulsory, it is important to remember that beautiful people, specifically people with beautiful hair, may be waived from the requirement to wear headgear.  If you find yourself resenting these people who are waived of the requirement, remember, don't be a hater.

With those rules in hand, you may just survive a government shutdown.

Now that fuel is in the cars again, I get picked up next week. I survived my three weeks on the motorbike, and even enjoyed the freedom of leaving the apartment when I felt like it and not waiting for anyone when the clocked struck five.  Having said that, I think my longevity has been extended, because even knowing the rules of the road, there's always that bus with your number written on it.

QV06 I hate you...

There are a large number of freeware and open source software porgrams out there that can make your life easier.  I use at least a couple in my day-to-day computer interactions.  I use a free, open source program called Unikey to type in Vientamese and I have used a program called GIMP for photo processing.  There are even free operating systems out there like linux and free office suite programs that work very similar to Microsoft Office.  I try to be careful what I download because I know the risks can be high.

During the summer break I bought a new ultrabook because I thought I would be traveling a lot and that I would need a personal computer to bring along with my bulkier office computer.  The job changed a bit and the ultrabook isn't as necessary now, but it is still nice to have.  Anyway, when I first bought it and fired it up, I wanted to load GIMP see about using it in lieu of Photoshop Elements.  I was in a hurry, so I typed GIMP into Google and quickly chose one of the top-tier search results.  It didn't take long before I knew I chose the wrong program download site, because my browser was hijacked.  With a highjacked browser, no matter what you do, your browser will default to a specific home page.  My browser was hijacked by QV06 and no matter how many tricks I tried from online help, it wouldn't go away.  Honestly, I didn't try too long because the computer was new and I didn't have much to lose by just reinstalling the operating system and starting anew.  The firewalls and virus detection systems out there (I use Microsoft Security Essentials and the Windows default firewall) do very well at protecting your computer from those uninvited threats, but there aren't many out there that can protect you from a file you choose to download and open on your system.  Lesson learned... sort of.

Jump ahead to this past weekend. I had a file that was typed with a Vietnamese font that I wanted to view and save as a PDF.  There are a couple of Vietnamese font packages (TCVN3 and VNI) that I have downloaded in the past with little problem.  I was in a hurry this time, and true to habit, I downloaded the font package from one of the top tier search results from Google.  Ironically, I realized after I started the downloaded that the program was taking way too long to download for what it was so I cancelled before it was finished.  I cancelled too late.  Once again, this QV06 malware was on my system.  The problem is, the computer I was using this time was my primary system in the house with all of the programs I like.  Knowing it would take a very long time to recover the system to factory settings and then reload all of my software (I actually purchase all of my software except for the open source programs I use), I spent a little more time trying to recover my system from the malware.  I  downloaded several malware and spyware removal programs and did everything short of editing my registry (a very dangerous proposition) No joy.  Truth of the matter is, even if I had un-hijacked my system, I probably would have reloaded the operating system anyway, because I would be paranoid some other computer virus like a trojan, or back-door program was lurking in the background.  Ends up, I found an online font coverter website that converted the font to a unicode font that can be read on any system.  I didn't even need to download the font package... ARGH!

The weather in Hanoi was beautiful this weekend, so I didn't waste it on reloading my operating system on my computer.  That task will be put off for a rainy day. Literally.

I guess what really bothers me is that this QV06 malware is out there so prolifically that on the two times I chose some freeware online, on a top-tier search result,  I ended up infected.  I don't even know to what benefit this malware can provide to the creator.  Let's just say I hate it. 

Back in Time

I guess it didn't really hit me until just recently, but I have become fascinated with history.  Not the history of high school, where I memorized events, dates, and names to pass a test, but the historical journals available at the Amazon Kindle Store and in Google Book.

Last year I read a book a friend, Dan, gave me titled, Hanoi, Adieu - A bittersweet memoir of French Indochina by Mandaley Perkins.  The book covers a lot of history in the protagonist's life as an expatriate in Vietnam during a very interesting period. I am not sure how much is actual biography (written from interviews with his step-daughter) and how much the author added from research, but it made me fall in love with Hanoi, if but for a little while.  It didn't take but a couple of times out on the motorbike to shock me back into the reality that I don't much care for this city.  What I liked about the book, however, was the vivid descriptions that were written about Hanoi during the late '30s, 40s and 50s.  The locations and scenes that the author described were detailed enough that I knew where they took place, even if the street names were different, or not even provided.

I just finished A Voyage to Cochin China, that I downloaded free as a PDF file from Google Books. I found this fascinating because it was written by a USN Navy Lieutenant who sailed from Salem to Saigon and Danang on the USNS Franklin in 1819 to establish U.S. trade with Cochin China (present day coast line essentially stretching from Hue to HCMC).  This cautionary tale appears to be the lieutenant's diary on his adventure.  Though the English is a little old and some of the terms were not readily familiar, the story line was outstanding.  He described in good detail the corruption that took place after the civil war in the late 1700s in Vietnam, as well as the flora, fauna, and land form of the country.  I have been to all of the places he described and could, in my mind's eye, picture the scene as it was at the time.  There is no doubt we as people have lost the ability to write, to some degree, with the advent of photographs and other digital media. I made myself keep reading through the slower parts just in the hope that I could adopt the easy style of description that he used that was brief and yet allowed me to "see" what he was describing.

He included several anecdotes that were amusing. My favorite was his story of the royal tiger that was presented by the Viceroy as a gift to the crew.  The crew fed the tiger a dog each day as nourishment, but one particularly fierce dog thrown in the cage became the friend of the tiger.  Another favorite was the routine throwing of stones by invisible hands.  This reminded me of Diep telling me the kids would throw rocks at the Cuban sailors after 1975. She said it was a game to them, and they would run like hell after they threw the rocks. If those Cuban sailors caught the offending kid, they would thrash the hell out of him.  Overall, though Vietnam has changed in many ways, I saw many of the Vietnamese characteristics as described by the lieutenant.

His description of the Saigon Citadel got me looking for photos and maps on the web. Though the citadel has long since been destroyed it appears it stood in the general vicinity of the Ba Son Shipyard on the river side and abutted or extended into the Saigon Zoo.  The French destroyed it in the late 1800s.

I also took a motorbike ride to Ba Vi National Park with a co-worker last Monday during the government shutdown furlough.  The weather was ideal for the ride, and the mountain was cool, if not almost too cool.  The park lies about 60 kilometers southwest of Hanoi proper and is within easy reach for a day trip on motorbike.  Ba Vi, like Tam Dao, was a favorite resort area of the French in the early 1900s.  There are still vestiges of some of the resort's cabins and the chapel, now gutted, on Ba Vi.  Beautiful place to just visit. Not a whole lot of activity going on, but the ride itself was the adventure.  National Highway 32 has recently been widened and allows for an easy jaunt to the park.

Remnants of a 100 Year Old Chapel  on Ba Vi National Park Grounds

I know my updates have been far between of late.  Some career disappointments have kept me from posting "how I really feel".  I complain enough in real life, and I want to keep my posts as positive as possible. Hopefully this medium can help my life emulate my writing.