Avocados are in season!

And they’re wonderfully inexpensive in Vietnam. Even better, I was pleasantly surprised to discover they Vietnamese avocados don’t oxidize and turn brown. So you don’t have to eat it immediately after cutting it open. I can slice one up the night before and put it on my salad, and it’s still green the next day.

In my enthusiasm, I bought too many at the grocery store. They were starting to turn towards the end of the week. I couldn’t eat them fast enough. A spoiled avocado is a very sad thing. So I added a way to enjoy them. This morning I made a paleo breakfast: baked eggs in avocado halves. Yum yum!

My beautiful life: baked egg in avocado.

Reason #736 why I love my job

The Indian consulate in Ho Chi Minh City sponsored a performance of Indian classical dance last night.  The consulate invited the consuls general of the various consulates in the city.  Our Consul General had a time conflict, and so another officer got to accept the invitation.  I was the fastest to hit the “reply” button on the email, so I got the honor of representing America.

I know nothing about Indian classical dance (and after seeing the performance, I still don’t), but it doesn’t take expert knowledge of art in order to appreciate it.  I was absolutely stunned by the performance.  The dancing was athletic, but with very intricate and strictly controlled movements and gestures as well.  The dancers used their eyes to express emotions, it was like their eyes were speaking. The costumes were gorgeous, and I was seated close enough to the stage to see everything in detail.

A few of my counterparts from the Indian consulate sat next to me.  After the first act, one leaned over and asked what I thought. For some reason, the dancing made me emotional.  I wanted to jump up and down, and break down and cry, at the same time.  I was literally speechless. “Oh my God,” I managed to squawk out.  I think he smiled.  I hope he knew that that was a good “Oh my God.”  Because it was.

Curtain call. I was so enthralled during the performance that I didn’t even think about taking a photo.

The show was amazing, and it was such a treat to represent my country there.  Before the show started, I met and talked with a number of Indian diplomats, and several members of the Indian Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam.  It was also fascinating to witness international relations between two other countries.  The protocol was very similar, the structure of the diplomatic part of the event would be familiar to any American diplomat.  Dignitaries from both countries said nice things about each other’s country, and praised the great relationship between the two nations.  But the content of the remarks was very interesting, too, in what they did and didn’t talk about.  They emphasized cultural exchange, but not some areas that the U.S. emphasizes in our diplomatic work, like education and security.  The nature of the relationship between Vietnam and India is just different from the relationship that we have with Vietnam.

So this was another terrific experience.  Next time I see my boss, I’ll have to thank her for being so busy that I could take her place at the event.  And I’m very grateful to the Indian consulate for being so graciously welcoming at the event,  and for sharing some of their culture.

A TDYer brings embarrassing news

Summer is usually the busy season in consular sections.  Everybody wants a visa.  Students are applying for their student visas to go study in America, and families want to travel to America during their summer vacation.  The volume of visa applicants usually starts to increase in May, then spikes in July, and gets back to “normal” (if there is such a thing) in September.  This means that our work load increases, but our staffing doesn’t change.  So the Department shifts people around between posts, on a temporary basis, to balance the staffing and meet the demand.  Posts that already have a large volume, like Ho Chi Minh City, ask for help from other posts that don’t have the same workload.

When I was in China, the demand for U.S. visas was spiking.  One summer we were interviewing 2-3 times the number of people that we processed when I first arrived at post.  With the same number of permanent staff.  We asked for a lot of temporary duty (TDY) support that year, and we had a number of people come in from other posts to help.  Of course, the requirement was that they spoke Chinese, but luckily we were able to get enough TDYers (that’s a word in the State Department) to meet our demand.

Since that spike, demand in China has gone back down to a reasonable volume (still almost double what it was when I first arrived there in 2014).  So posts in China are able to spare some officers to go to other posts to help with their volume.  Instead of importing TDYers, China can loan out a few people.  I’m actually a little disappointed.  I was hoping to do a short TDY visit back to my old post in China and see my dear friends in the consulate.  But oh well.  Maybe next tour.

Anyway, one of the TDYers in Ho Chi Minh City is now here from Shenyang.  We were catching up the other day, swapping gossip and stories about life in Northeast China.  She says that the local staff all say hello.  That part of the conversation was fun.  Then it got ugly.  She mentioned that the community there is still eating my kidney beans. She said that she personally has a few bags.

OMG.  It’s been two years since I left post.  How can there still be kidney beans?  When will this end?!

In Memorial

To mark Memorial Day, flowers by the plaques honoring the five servicemen who died during the attack in the Embassy in 1968, and the last two soldiers killed in action in the Vietnam war. The plaques are on the grounds of the Consulate, the site of our former Embassy.

Everybody loves Mr. Phi.

Mr. Phi is one of the best benefits that my apartment building provides.

I live in a “serviced apartment.” In addition to the facilities like a gym and a swimming pool, there is also a staff of people who are here to help us with minor life issues.  They’re all great, but one guy stands out.  Before we moved to Ho Chi Minh City, we visited this building, and got a tour.  The young man who showed us the building and talked with us introduced himself as “Phi” (pronounced “fee”).  He’s like a young cheerful Buddha: he’s a little overweight, and his round face is always lit up with a smile.  He talks with a cheerful ad charming accent, and always seems upbeat and happy.

When we moved in, we were delighted that Mr. Phi was still working in the building.  He helps us get a taxi when we need to go to the airport, provides insight into the local culture, tells us how to get around, and generally helped us adjust to life in Ho Chi Minh City, all with a smile on his face and a helpful attitude.  When I talk with my coworkers who live in the building, we all agree that Mr. Phi is our favorite member of the staff.

He’s also very cute.  Last Christmas, one of my neighbors got a real Christmas tree.  She said that Mr. Phi timidly knocked on her door one night, and hesitantly asked if she had a real tree.  She became worried that she had unwittingly violated the fire code or a local health ordinance.  No, it was that Mr. Phi had never seen a real Christmas tree, and he was curious.  “Can I see the tree?” he asked shyly.

How cute is Mr. Phi?!

There was a mystery about his age.  None of us were sure how old he was.  We all agreed that he could be 24, and he could also be 45.  He might be just out of college, or he could be married with three kids.  We couldn’t see any clue on his face or in his demeanor that indicated how old he was.  I actually liked not knowing.  Later, when we finally asked him, and learned the truth, I was a little disappointed to know, because the mystery was so much fun.

One of the daily necessities in the modern world is a connection to the internet.  Mr. Phi has a friend who works for a local service provider, so he has some inside information and got us a good deal.  When we moved in to the apartment, he helped us select a suitable package, one that was much less expensive than the package the salesperson wanted us to buy, but which was good enough for our needs.  He also helps us with billing and payment.

Yesterday, the internet stopped working.  This morning, I stopped by the front desk to ask.  Unfortunately, Mr. Phi was not on duty at the time, and the desk clerk (who’s also nice, but hey, he’s no Mr. Phi) said that Mr. Phi was the best person to ask.  He said that Mr. Phi would come on duty later this morning.  I said thanks, I’ll stop down later and ask him.

Ten minutes before his shift was to start, Mr. Phi rang my doorbell.  He said he heard I was having problems with my Internet connection, so he just called his friend and told him to fix it.  It should be working now, he said.  Sure enough, it was back on.  He fixed my problem for me, and made a special trip up to my apartment to tell me in person that the problem was fixed.

How much do we love Mr. Phi?!

After my tour is over and I go on to another post, I’ll miss a lot about Vietnam.  Without a doubt, though, living under the watchful care of Mr. Phi is something that I might miss the most.

Believe it or not, this is downtown.

Ho Chi Minh City is a huge city with millions of residents, but there are still parks with towering old-growth trees.  This makes the city different from many other cities in Asia, and I love it.

I’ve been in Vietnam for almost a year already (holy cow, how did time go by so fast?), and I’m looking for my next assignment.  Wherever I go, it will be amazing and wonderful, but it’s hard to imagine a city as livable as Ho Chi Minh City.