Bicycle and alley (with simultaneous translation for economists)

Riding a bicycle in Ho Chi Minh City looks from the sidewalk just as enjoyable, though a little safer than what it feels once you actually do it. A little after 7:30 Widhar and I got on the vehicles an ventured into Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, the busy street by which the Alley where we live is located. When you are moving along by them you get a totally different perspective of the celebrated Saigon’s motorbikes. They are no longer those curious picturesque objects that carry the widest imaginable variety of characters, and that you navigate among once in a while when trying to cross the road. They are now menacing creatures, half human half wheels, that seem to enjoy (s.t.f.e.: to draw utility from) getting as close to you as possible, that never approach you individually (always at least in pairs), and whose faces, when not covered by masks, have a ridiculously calm, almost cool expression. These creatures, however, just make the ride more fun. Full treat: fun an efficient: it took us less that 15 minutes to get to the School (s.t.f.e.: we produced a Pareto Improvement) (it must be said though, for the sake of completeness, that going back was a little bit more… challenging… in terms of sorting obstacles and avoiding fellow commuters).

I should have gone for the bicycle in the afternoon, when I was trying to decide how to get to an electronics store to get a transformer (I need to use 110V gadgets in this 220V country). The IT guy from the School advised me to get a UPS, and gave me the directions to the store that, he said, was very close to the school. Widhar, before I left, wisely suggested that I should ask the guy if I could borrow an old UPS that they had at the school, but I thought the guy had already suggested that they couldn’t lend it to me, so I didn’t follow that invaluable piece of Indonesian wisdom… Wrong! To make a long story short, lets just say that the idea of “close” and “far away” seems not to be the same for Ecuadorians and Vietnamese… I ended up walking for over an hour, just to find that I would have to pay over 100 dollars for a UPS that I would be of no use back in Cambridge. And when I got back to the School, exhausted, it just occurred to me to explicitly ask the IT guy about borrowing the that old UPS laying against the wall. He just said: sure! And Widhar just looked at me, smiled, and promised not to tell anyone…

After work, it is nice to get back home and just take a minute to enjoy the alley where our place is located. There are many small restaurants that at breakfast, lunch or dinnertime are always full of locals. Tastes and prices are amazing (however let it be on record that I liked the southern Vietnamese food much better than the northern Vietnamese food) (s.t.f.e. SVF is srongly preferred to NVF for consumer i=JP). You can get an amazing breakfast of sticky rice with shredded chicken, fried tiny shrimp, and sausage on top (believe me, tastes great, no matter how it sounds) for about 50 cents, much cheaper than what you would have to pay for the same food just few blocks away, in the touristic district (s.t.f.e. the fact that we effectively want to and do take the local’s “contract” is indisputable evidence that in this context we are the “high type”). You also find a DVD shop, a dry cleaner (which I should visit one of these days), a couple of barber shops (which I should definitely visit one of these days), a tailor, small fruits and vegetables stores, convenience stores, a cellular phones store, and many other businesses, all very convenient to have nearby. What a lively, busy, exciting place we ended up in.



Meanwhile in the world, I am sure something is going on… but that TV set is staying off tonight, I’ll find out in the future (s.t.f.e.: my daily energy constraint is binding, good night). 

Glossary: s.t.f.e. = Simultaneous translation for economists.