Suits and Scooters

3:15 PM Ho Chi Minh City Time

I'm sitting here in an internet cafe with my cousin King and he's preparing for a competition in an MMORP by the name of Vo Lam Truyen Ki. He tells me that in about a year he plans to open up an internet cafe for gamers. The one I'm at has computers stocked up with Ragnarok Online, Warcraft III, Starcraft, and the like. When I asked him how he's going to fund it, he said he was going to borrow money from his sister and pay her back when he breaks even. Apparently everything is already set up. Maybe Edward should try that considering how much he loves video games. King says there's usually a huge group that goes out to celebrate if they win, so I'm rooting for them, mostly so I'll be entertained.

Surprisingly I'm not sleepy today. My 9th aunt stumbled into my room somewhat drunk at 6 am and yelled out, "It's time to talk!"

6:00 AM

I hate being woken up by something other than my alarm so the conversation goes like so:

Aunt 9: It's time to talk!
Me: But it's not even ten o'clock yet! Sis won't be online! (I'd arranged to Skype with the family at 10 am HCMC Time)
Aunt 9: I'm not talking about you! Go downstairs so you can sleep.
Me: *Grumbling* Ugh, fine.

So I go downstairs and lucky me, everyone else is already awake so I get the room to myself. I crash again and expect the cell phone to wake me up at 10. At around 9, Aunt 7 walks in and starts looking for my mom's phone. Somehow I forgot where I put it when I brought it down and it annoys the hell out of me. Aunt 9 also comes and falls asleep, simultaneously waking me up. I appreciate the fact that she's really understanding about everything and that she's fun to talk to but yeesh, I hope I don't get drunk like that when I'm her age. (I probably will though. :P)

Anyways, I actually manage to wake up at 10 and get online on time to talk to Sis, Edward, and Dad. It was pleasant and a few of the relatives stepped in to say hi. Mom started complaining about how she ended up fighting with her siblings last night. (King says I was lucky that I got to be upstairs. One of my uncles told him to stay and listen to the conversation. Poor guy.)

11:00 AM

Eventually though, we finished the call and Mom, King, King's sister Gwun, and I hopped on the family scooters (they have a Vespa!) to go to the suitmakers because of my severe lack of suits.

You see, when I was in Montreal, we went to a party at this upscale club called 737 and I wore one of my suit jackets. Much like my sober personality, drunk Frankie also likes to jump around on things. In this case it was a short flight of stairs. Unfortunately, my sleeve caught on the handrail and tore a hole in my left sleeve. Considering it was my best tailored jacket, I was very tempted to cry.

Anyways, my mom brought the torn jacket (and coincidently, I brought the matching pair of pants from hong Kong) and we asked them to reproduce the suits with different jackets. I was worried about the Vietnamese sense of fashion so I asked them to make it exactly the same. (Can't have bell bottoms or ginormous lapels after all). On top of that, I must be growing a belly because the tailor said the jacket was a bit tight around the waist. Gotta love the effects of Hong Kong cuisine. They're also fixing my old jacket. Yay! In total, the two suits and the repair is costing me $200 USD. Sweeeeeeeeeet.

With all that done, King and I hopped on the Vespa and headed to a pool hall with one of his friends. It's a nice place with pretty girls manning the tables. You pull a scratch, they retrieve the ball. You win a game, they re-rack. Kinda disturbing. There are so many that each table has two that just sit there and watch until they're needed. It kinda shows you the extent to which there's a huge surplus in supply of labor as opposed to jobs. I like to compare it to China where they had two different people selling toilet paper and charging admission for public bathrooms. Gotta love the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Wonder how this place would have turned out if the U.S. had won. Maybe I wouldn't have gotten my ass handed to me at pool in a capitalistic Vietnam.

Anyways, they're about to kick me off the computer because they need it for the gaming competition. Catch you later guys.