I’m going much better now: the fingers are mostly not swollen anymore, and all I have left are biggish bruises on the fingertips (which make typing all but impossible, but at least I can flex my fingers).

The flipside of hurting my hand goes as follow:
-Basic language test: I basically switched to English the entire time the H and I were dealing with the (minor) emergency, and only switched back to French once my hand was safely bandaged. So, apparently, when in pain, I switch to English. Go figure…

-Basic rice cooking test: since I could only use the left hand, the H ended up cooking rice–an activity that, by unspoken agreement, is left to me along with Vietnamese cooking. And boy, is it hard to convince him to follow directions properly :=D (he was OK with most of it, but didn’t want to rinse the rice more than once or twice before cooking. I insisted. Being a man who likes his sticky rice, he also put a lot more into the mixture we cook [1]). So now the H knows how to cook rice, or more accurately which buttons to press on the rice cooker

That’s all from me. As mentioned above, still not very easy to type more than a few paras. I’ll save my energy for working on a crit.

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[1]I cook 9/10 normal jasmine rice, 1/10 sticky–makes for a much nicer texture.

(broken down in several posts as this grew too long)

1. Food: oh my God, the food. I might be a tourist and more than a little lost in Vietnam, but the food is always like coming home (and it’s no coincidence that the one place I’m never lost in is restaurants). Plus, you always eat well at Grandma’s house (thanks to the combined efforts of Grandma, my maternal aunt, and my cousin). We also tested and patented the food crawl as we were travelling: this is a technique by which you get up at 6:00, have a cup of tea, eat a breakfast soup at 9:00, have lunch at 11:00, then have a boat ride on the Mekong and have a copious snack at 15:00, and proceed to dinner at 17:00 (all the while being pointed to food in various peremptory ways, and being told to eat in either French or Vietnamese). That’s discounting special events where you are well and properly stuffed, banquet-style (our stay intersected my great-grandmother’s death anniversary, and a two-year death anniversary for my great-uncle, which is basically when the period of mourning ends for the descendants); and it explains why we came back from Vietnam sated, but determined to undergo a diet of salads. [1]

2. Orientation: Grandma very sensibly wrote the address of the house on a bit of paper (well, OK. First she told me to repeat it out loud, then she grimaced and said she was going to give me a bit of paper… Remember what I said about my pronunciation sucking?), and that was what we gave taxis as we zoomed around Saigon. It puzzled them no end that two very obvious tourists (one White guy, and one vaguely Vietnamese-looking gal who obviously couldn’t speak very well) would ask to be dropped in what seemed to them the back end of nowhere. Mostly it was fine, but we did have one taxi driver who kept circling the house, looking for a hotel where we could be staying… (when this was explained to Grandma, she laughed very hard and said she was the cheap variety of hotel). In the end, I gave up the pronunciation game–it’s just too frustrating to argue with a cab while the meter is running–and copied down street names on a bit of paper. (I think the only two places that I said out loud that didn’t suffer from a pronunciation problem were the Bến Thành market, which is a touristy destination, and the word “crossroads”, but it was accompanied by a list of two street names, and a rather graphic gesture of a cross made with my hands).

3. Tourists vs. locals: the H and I spent a most profitable afternoon in Hội An [2] observing an ever-increasing flow of local tourists vs Westerners, and we’ve come to the conclusion that the one difference between the “locals” and the Westerners is–guess who’s wearing the T-shirts and shorts and getting sunburnt? (getting dark skin is considered a bad thing in Vietnam, so a lot of people dress with long-sleeved shirts, trousers, and sometimes even gloves and facemasks. And I shudder for the poor kids decked out in thick winter clothes, because it’s colder in the Centre, but most certainly not *that* cold).

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[1] I didn’t escape the ritual bout of food poisoning in Hội An–two days out, and I basically couldn’t keep anything down. Thankfully it didn’t last long, because it was a bit stressful to be rushing about in a temple complex trying to explain with gestures that I was going to be sick and needed to get away from the sanctuaries before it got messy. Also, explaining in a restaurant that I was sick and needed cháo (rice porridge) was worth a laugh or two (I mangled the pronunciation completely, but enough of it got across that I basically got a custom dish made up for me).
[2] Incidentally, if anyone knows of a festival that happens to fall on Feb 8th/the 17th day of the First Lunar Month, we’d be interested. We were mildly curious at the queue of pilgrims outside the Quan Vũ/Guan Yu temple in Hội An, and we couldn’t figure out why they’d be there (I know Guan Yu’s death anniversary is on the 13th day of the First Lunar month or something, but the date doesn’t coincide).

“Có công mài sắt, có ngày nên kim”: “If you work hard enough at sharpening iron, one day you’ll have a needle” (literally “Put effort [into] sharpen[ing] iron, have one day in the end [a] needle”). Basically, insofar as I can tell, the closest equivalent would be that nothing is obtained without hard work. Again, I’m pretty sure of my translation, a lot less sure about my reading of the proverb.

Progress continues apace; I’m turning to vocabulary words that might actually be useful out there, namely: “nhà băng” (bank), “thông hành” (passport), and “khách sạn” (hotel). My vocabulary continues to be overwhelmingly focused on food, though: at the very least, menu-reading isn’t going to be a problem (nor is ordering, at least if they don’t answer back…).

Had last lesson before leaving; if nothing else, it confirmed that boy, I need to work on my neutral and short-descending accent (and my diphtongs and my “th”, and so on, and so forth). Should be fun…

That’s it from me. Don’t know how much internet I’m going to have over there (it’s not that there isn’t any, but rather that we might be busy). See you in two weeks?

-Two Dudes in an Attic reviews Harbinger of the Storm–with snarks, but without harming any owls
-Blue Tyson’s capsule review of Master of the House of Darts
-Martin McGrath on “Why does SF hate Ordinary People?”. Fair point about the elitism of SF, though I wonder how much of it is already present in literature (I can’t remember who, but someone pointed out that recent literature, especially the source literature of SF, was the province of the bourgeoisie; while the older texts were the province of nobility)

In other news, busy weekend ahead: friends coming over on Saturday, and we’re probably headed into the 13e Sunday to see the New Year’s procession.

Not much to report… It’s become a tradition that whenever I sell something big, the H and I will go to a restaurant and have a nice meal, so we went to the 13e and had a nice phở to celebrate the Clarkesworld sale (the owner knew what I was going to order when I walked in, too–drawbacks of eating at a restaurant which accommodates Mum and Grandma on a regular basis ). The couple next to us was a bit lost, I think–they started off by ordering a chè ba màu (three-colour chè, which I’ve always seen eaten as a dessert when it’s part of a meal), and they were desperately looking for a “light” soup without noodles on the menu (they don’t really exist: you do have broth, but it’s thin and not nourishing at all…). In cases like those, I always hesitate to butt in and offer unwanted advice: they could have had one of the various gỏi, the cold “salads” that include green mango/green papaya/grapefruit, which are full of vegetables (and nước mắm), if not very nourishing. But I would have felt really out of place making a suggestion to two total strangers, so I didn’t say anything (though, amusingly, I would have done it were we speaking English–I really think my English-speaking persona is more outgoing than my French).

And finally steeled myself and said “bye” in Vietnamese, and nobody looked vexed, so at least it worked (though I think I shouldn’t have said “Madam” to the waitress, who looked to be firmly from my generation, but hey, better be safe than sorry…).

Right. To bed, and then to work on that short story that threatens to morph into a novella all over again. Sigh. I really need to stop worldbuilding and start writing.

So… I’ve fallen in love with a particular tea (it was a gift). Insofar as I can tell (remember I can’t read Japanese, and it’s a direct import), the brand is Harada, and it’s their Yabukita blend of green tea–you can see the box here. It’s got a light, refreshing taste, and it quenches thirst quite effectively. So far, so good. Trouble is… I haven’t been able to find this particular tea here.
I’m therefore hunting for a substitute.

Am I right in thinking a good grade of Sencha tea from Japan would taste about the same, or am I completely off-base? I haven’t been very impressed with the one variety of Sencha that I bought, but it was definitely the cheap kind (google tells me that Yabukita is a particular category of sencha, but I haven’t been able to find Yabukita either).

Aka, the nativity scene and the Christmas tree. I never feel this is official until the actual Christmas tree is put up, even though we’ve been in the Advent for a while.

(pictures behind the cut, including my rather unorthodox nativity scene…)
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(well, OK, not so recent. Catching up on my summer of sloth)
-A Tangle of Magicks/Renegade Magick by Stephanie Burgis: the sequel to A Most Improper Magick/Kat, Incorrigible, which finds teenage witch Kat Stephenson in Bath, trying to shepherd her sister into marital happiness, prevent her older brother from gambling the family fortunes away–all the while struggling with her Guardian powers, and a dastardly plot to use the power of the Roman Baths for nefarious ends. Kat’s voice is as delightful as always, and this is a very nice, punchy mix of comedy of errors and adventure book. Very much looking forward to book 3!

-David Gemmell: hum, a lot of books? Finished the Drenai books, and found one I hadn’t read (the very last one, Swords of Night and Day). The earlier ones are still those that carry the most punch for me; I suspect partly because of nostalgia. Also read Lion of Macedon/Dark Prince, which is basically Greek legends on crack (I exaggerate a bit, since Gemmell obviously documented himself well and has always had a fondness for Antiquity settings in his books; but not by much. The entire many-worlds experience, and the Source vs Spirit of Chaos thing are very entertaining, but I very much doubt that they have anything of “authentic” Ancient Greece about them. Still, what I very much enjoyed about them is their scope: the books take place over decades, and it’s refreshing to see alliances form and break as time passes. It also allows the author space to show the characters grow and age, which isn’t often found in genre fiction–especially in epic fantasy–and this gives a gravitas to the books which prevents them from tipping into outright silliness. Not by much, admittedly).

My Vietnamese progresses; I can now get *some* words recognised by my mother when I say them (don’t laugh. The potential for screwing up words in this language is oh-so-boundless). And this weekend is going to be busy busy, as I’ll be at Rencontres de L’Imaginaire in Sèvres with the H, hopefully signing a number of books greater than zero…

Also, this: awesome xkcd comic. I want to go back in time and build one of those in high school.

Woke up to find out that Anne McCaffrey had died–I had never met her, but her work meant a lot to me when I was a teenager. At a time when most of the SF I read was male-dominated, it was good to know that girls could be dragon-riders and Harpers and have adventures just like the male protags.
The world is going to be a little less without her in it.

So, the weekend… part of it was spent looking for a crockery dresser, not entirely successfully (the H loved the place we dropped by first, but the prices are about 75% above what we’d be ready to pay for such a piece of furniture). Part of it was spent sorting out papers, using ye old method of “trash most of them, they’re not useful anymore”. I hadn’t realised until I got rid of stuff from my old workplace how liberating the entire process was (I loved my old workplace–it had a great atmosphere–; but moving on did me a world of good).

And part of it was spent revising a short story that I wrote over a year ago, “Starsong”. I think I’m done now, though I managed to crash Scrivener rather badly and had to reinstall from scratch. Currently brainstorming for a new project I pitched to my agent–urban fantasy set in Paris, but which has a gaping hole where the words “magic system” should be.

Oh, and we also got a headstart on Xmas shopping–ordered present for 3 people (out of the 7 we have to deal with), checked out stuff for a fourth, and I made my mind about a fifth (the H).

Recent reads: working my way through David Gemmell. I read those when I was a teenager in London, and I was rather afraid that they would not hold up to another reading. But actually, they’re pretty good. I’m really glad that although they feature strong stereotyping (Chiatze=China, Gothir=Persia, Drenai=Greece or somewhere thereabouts, Nadir=Mongols), the author never takes swipes at the various nations: people come in all colours and alignments, and we have as many Nadir madmen as Drenai ones. Also, they’re fairly gender-typed (though there are a few women fighters), but Gemmell never denigrates what women do, and indeed his fighters often find themselves envying women, knowing that the greater courage is on their side. And his heroes are just impressive and memorable, and he never hides that they have terrible flaws, but can rise above them (it’s been rather a lot of years, but I can remember Tenaka and Druss and Ananais quite clearly). All in all, very entertaining and satisfying, and I’m glad I had those around when I was ~16. I’m really sorry I never got to meet Gemmell in person, and tell him how much his books meant to me when I was growing up.