The American LadyThe American LadyI'm an American freelance journalist living in rural Austria with my London Black Cab and my adopted Jack Ruseell. If we aren't transporting sheep in the London taxi, we're stumbling across Vietnam, Armenia, Greece, Hungary, Romania, North Africa. Co Articles
I Miss Elementary School...
2007-10-24 22:17:00 More sex posts on the way... call it research (it IS research. Honest!) More About: School , Miss , Element
Gong Bangers
2007-10-23 21:06:00 One of my worries before leaving the newspaper in Vietnam was the English translation. Turns out, my concerns were well-founded. I received a pdf file today of the newspaper, with the headline for a feature on the resurgence of ancient Vietnamese gongs reading: Bang the Gong .
For the Extraordinary Man
2007-10-23 19:13:00 ...and the lucky woman More About: Extraordinary , Ordinary
Fence-Hoppin' Dog
2007-10-23 09:15:00 Found out what Remi was up to while I was in Vietnam. This, according to Christoph: he was walking her on one of the first mornings I was away, when she ducked her head down and slipped out of her collar. She took off in the direction of my house, which is only a few houses down from his. He went after her but couldn't find her. Called her name, whistled, searched the yard, searched up and down More About: Fence
Killer Egg Nog, Tractors, Live Chickens
2007-10-22 10:06:00 So last night I'm over at Anna and Christoph's, and Anna brings out the egg liquer. I tell my story about my mom swigging egg nog and getting caught on home video--just knocking back the glass and slurping it all up when she thinks no one is watching. And then I ask Anna where she got the egg liquer, which is egg nog to the 10th power--wickedstrong. Turns out she got it off a guy who pulls up More About: Killer , Live , Tractors
What's NOT Listed in Your Travel Guide
2007-10-22 09:06:00 ... off to work I go... to do a piece on the Museum of Contraception and Abortion in Vienna. I love my job. More About: Travel , Guide , Listed , Guid
Whacko at the Rex (Hotel)
2007-10-21 18:58:00 The last few days I was in Saigon, I slipped off to the pool at the Rex Hotel in the mornings. Being small-minded, it was important for me to return home with a tan. There was never more than a few people there, and I always parked my stuff at a table and chair near the deep end steps. On my last morning, there was an exchange between a staff guy and an Asian woman, presumably Vietnamese. He More About: Whack
Mother and Child Reunion, Part XXII
2007-10-20 22:53:00 My little dog; A heartbeat at my feet. --Edith Wharton More About: Mother , Child , Part , Reunion
Jiggety Jig
2007-10-20 12:48:00 Home again yesterday morning. Grueling flight. A large branch had fallen in the yard, so I spent some time getting it settled for firewood. It's cold here. Fire burning in the fire place. Remi beside me. Very tired. I have to say, I'm appreciating the quiet after the noise of Saigon.
Goodnight, Saigon
2007-10-18 13:03:00 In a few minutes I'll be leaving for the airport and, snap--like that--24 hours, three airports, two flights including a long haul, one train ride, and I'll be home.... This morning I got up and took a motorbike to the city center. A guy driving his motorbike along beside me had managed to balance a huge bucket between his feet that was filled to the rim with live shrimp. I told one of the More About: Saigon
Thanh Nien's Golden Boy
2007-10-18 10:19:00 Wunderkind. I'll miss him. More About: Golden , Golden Boy
A Look Back at Vietnam
2007-10-17 11:48:00 Found this site chronicling South Vietnam during the last years of the war. Absolutely worth a look. More About: Back
The Glamour of Being Crammed into Small Spaces for Long Periods of Time
2007-10-17 10:42:00 I nearly spilled my coffee when I read this quote from an interview with David Frost in the Financial Time s. He's obviously never flown coach: "I think there's still a considerable glamour in traveling. It's the long flights that are still romantic--when you have time to enter into a different world on a plane, to think about where you are heading." More About: Small , Long , Glamour , Spaces
Filing Systems
2007-10-16 21:38:00 When I was a kid, my mother used to constantly be on my case because of my disastrously messy room. What she did not know was that she was messing with a journalist's (to-be) natural order of things. Get a load of this editor's desk: and this guy... he's not so messy as the first. More About: Systems , Stem
Tonight's Special Is...
2007-10-15 21:55:00 ON A MENU IN SAIGON: Pig Nail with Asparagus More About: Special
Paris Hilton, she ain't
2007-10-15 21:21:00 The newsroom was one big hangover tonight. Very quiet. Except for about 15 minutes when they turned on the tv to watch a popular 19-year-old soap actress confess to a sex videotape. The "tell all" show itself was very bizarre--looked like it was being filmed in someone's old-fashioned living room. And when the star started to cry, a bunch of people emerged from nowhere to comfort her. Only in More About: Paris Hilton , Paris , Hilton
Steppin' Out
2007-10-15 11:56:00 Here's a fact: Newspeople like their liquor. When I worked at a newsmagazine, the owner decided to install a cafeteria in the building to prevent his editors from leaving to eat, because half of them would get wasted and not come back in time to meet deadline. Here's another fact: It's same all over the world. I've done lots of drinking with lots of editors in lots of countries. AFTER close, of
Riding Shotgun in Saigon
2007-10-14 14:07:00 Sometimes I'm just happy to make it from Point A to Point B. Got on a moto to go grab a bit to eat before heading to the newsroom. I've used this driver before because he's near my hotel. But tonight he was seeing three roads instead of one. Not sure what's in that green tea he's drinking, but it's not helpful. After about two blocks he pulls over and I think "thank you, beloved Jesus. I owe More About: Riding , Saigon , Shotgun
A Pack of Miracle
2007-10-14 06:05:00 Apparently it's good for everything from sex to constipation. More About: Miracle , Pack
Remi and the Ungotten Mole
2007-10-13 21:12:00 Got an email from Remi 's sitter. Seems she dug herself a hole, in a furious search for a mole. Wound up dirtydirtydirty, and was frog marched in for a bath. Only one more week and I get to see my little girl. More About: Mole
Airport Art
2007-10-13 12:43:00 A very large piece of Buddhist art in the Thai airport More About: Airport
It's Raining Macs
2007-10-13 12:26:00 Since Tuesday I've been using two macs... just because I can. The gluttony. My powerbook died just before I got on a plane to Vietnam, so I rented one in Bratislava and had my mac cloned to it. Then bought a macbookpro here--an unsettling experience to see your new pricey laptop arrive on the back of a motorbike that has traveled along with 3 million other motorbikes on potholey streets... ... More About: Macs , Raining
Surrendering to Sidewalks in Saigon
2007-10-13 08:44:00 Things are slowing down. I go into the newsroom around 7pm and get out around 2 am. So I can get out for a couple of hours during the day. Which is a brave thing. To go out on foot in Saigon is a brave thing to do. Walking on the sidewalk is like walking through a host of living rooms and kitchens, since there are always lounging people to dodge, cooking people to dodge, broken cement, and of More About: Erin
Where's YOUR diploma?
2007-10-11 20:47:00 There's a journalism project I applied to work on. They said Okay, Great, but we need a few documents, and then they rolled out a scroll of things needed in triplicate: passport, driver's license, father's military record, mother's birth certificate, first grade report card.... What they DID ask for, really, is a copy of my high school diploma (FedEXed) and my college transcripts. First, I More About: Diploma
Shut(My)Eye(s)
2007-10-10 05:29:00 I want to sleep. I miss sleep. Everything hurts. I get home in a coupla weeks, on my birthday. I want to sleep through it, as well as many of the days that follow. More About: Shut
Can I Go Now?
2007-10-06 23:09:00 4 am. I awoke today at 2pm after getting to sleep after 5 am. Tracked down the so-called Apple store, among the sea of computer shops jammed together in this district (looks like a computer flea market. You may as well buy your laptop off the back of a truck). After going up and down the street at least twice, I found it, and was relieved that it was a store with an actual lock on the door.
Sneak Peek
2007-10-05 21:59:00 Here's a loot at one of our premiere issues of the new English-language daily now on the stands in Vietnam. There was a lot of tension in the newsroom today--some internal politics I'm glad to not have to be a part of. Christoph the neighbor sent me an sms update on Remi--frightened by the thunderstom and now sleeping it off. Wish I could be there to cuddle her. More About: Sneak Peek , Peek
What's a Pizzle?
2007-10-05 12:08:00 Last night after the close, the few of us still hanging around in the newsroom went out for a beer to celebrate, a) getting closer to meeting deadline, and b)circulation has increased 4-fold in five days of publication--and has far exceeded their original goal. But on to more important matters---English translation on the menu: Braised Beef's pizzle (Pizzle apparently being code word for penis).
The Importance of Consonants
More articles from this author:2007-10-04 08:56:00 I don't know enough about the "local" languages to understand why, but the Vietnamese and Chinese get a lot of consonants back to front. Larry becomes Rally, Jessica becomes Sejjica, and so forth. So this causes general confusion with any word more than one syllable, as consonants are place at random when speaking, and received at random when listening. In the newsroom, I asked a guy to put 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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