April, the month of beginning of summer, the month of a lot of exciting
events. I had a couple of things to settle out-station and spent lots
of quiet moments to look around as a patient observer. Nothing much,
just some ordinary stuff I’ve glanced at while I was sitting in the
car. Then I realized, yeah, this is a life I’m living in. The fact that
I can’t get away from this life made me ponder over why and how this
and that happens.

I saw a blind girl standing in the
interception of the streets and selling lottery tickets. She was
mumbling about something that I had no idea what she was talking about.
Blind people taste life through the sound they’ve heard of. When the
green light was on, she sat down and patiently wait for the red light
to come. Soon enough, the red light replaced the green one, she quickly
stood up and stretched out her 2 hands holding tickets, hoping for
passengers to pay a little attention to her and buy a ticket. Life’s
tough, isn’t it? All of us are struggling to live it up. I met that
girl quite a few times at different interceptions. She still wears
faded but clean clothes. Her face is still skinny with two deep holes
where her eyes are supposed to be. Should I feel sad for her? Or I
should feel happy because she is trying to prove she’s a disabled but
not a useless / jobless person.

When the car stopped at
another different red light, I looked at the pedestrian side of the
street and came across a middle-aged woman selling a selection of
simple toys. There were a number of artificial birds nodding their
heads lining in rows neatly on top of a plastic sheet. I could say that
those birdie toys are beautifully made but no one bothered to take a
notice of them. That rode me back to my sweet yet poor old time when I
didn’t have a chance to see any of those beautiful toys and even if I
could, I didn’t have enough cash to get one for my own. These days,
people just wanna buy electronic toys for their kids like walkie-talkie
robots, mini racing cars with glossy and colorful covers. Living
standards have been up and those simple toys will be soon forgotten. We
have come a new age where electronic stuff rules almost everything.
See? No computer, no work. No cellphone, no talk. No electricity, no
way. Again, life is hard, isn’t it?

Finished my assignment, I
got in the car and waited for it to return to my office. Traffic jam
was really horrible these days. And again, the car stopped at an
interception, surrounded with lots of motorcyclists. All types of bikes
and scooters! I started looking around and found a group of three young
foreign tourists walking along the pedestrian side. They paused, took
out the digital cameras and began to take few snapshots. I was
thinking… They will go back to their country and tell their friends
in amazement while proudly showing off the photos : “Wow! You wouldn’t
know how crowded Vietnam is. They were waiting for the green light all
over the street and the traffic there is really awful!”. Now it’s
related to the population of my city. Over 9 millions or it could be
more. Now, here comes another “Woww!”.

When the driver was
trying to turn right so we could reach the office, it was just so
difficult because all the motorcyclists didn’t want to give us a chance
to turn. They were all rushing. Rushing for what? Business? Meeting
friends? Emergencies? Or a coffee talk somewhere nice and cool? I
didn’t know but I was a little upset when people kept moving forward
regardless our signals for making a turn. My boss made a comment the
other day, which made me laugh but quite ashamed at the same time. Know
what he said? “I couldn’t understand. Vietnamese people cannot wait for
30 seconds for the green light to come. They have to rush. Just can’t
wait for 30 seconds and they can spend 4, 5 hours in a cafe?”. It makes
sense, somehow, to me. And it was my turn to say “I can’t understand.
Why are they always in a rush?”.

Uhm…. What a crappy yet
thoughtful entry today!!! I don’t even know what I’m thinking about.
I’m stressed, perhaps. I don’t know. I just got to jot down whatever
appeared in my tired mind at the end of the day. Somehow, it’s a way to
get rid of the stress, in a sense. Now, perhaps you should be nodding
and tell me understandingly, “Go sleep lah…. I know you’re tired but
don’t know you can be that crappy! Go sleep lah!”.

Yeah, I’m about to go to sleep…. NOW!!!