Thao and I planned an interesting new trip earlier today. I got an email from a budget airline over here, JetStar, advertising some very cheap rates within Vietnam. I have not been to Hanoi since I was first in Vietnam back in 2001, and I’ve been thinking about going, and round-trip tickets were only $60. [...]

Woo-hoo! Just ran 4 miles. The farthest I’ve run since I’ve allegedly been trying to get back into shape.

Better late than never, I guess, but I have never really gotten into much Neil Young before. This might sound stupid, but I think the reason is because of what Lynrd Skynrd says about him in Sweet Home Alabama – or specifically about his song, Southern Man. (I used to be a lot more conservative [...]

It’s Monday morning here – about 9:25am. Usually I would be teaching my first class of the week, but as I mentioned before the school was closed from Friday through today due to the swine flu. Well, we found out over the weekend that the closure has now been extended through next Sunday, August 2nd, [...]

I just heard that they’ve officially closed school this Friday through Monday.  I was taking Friday off anyway to go to Da Lat and Nha Trang for my friend’s bachelor party – but at least now I don’t have to take a day of vacation. This is clearly the work of Al Qaeda.

So today at lunch my friend Fred(erique) – some of you may remember her from when we both happened to be in the U.S. at the same time last October and she met me in Atlanta – told me that she was one of the teachers of the student with swine flu at our school [...]

Look how happy this little guy is for someone to be playing with him with his ball: I saved this one for last because this was my “favorite” child at the orphanage: We were in a room with a bunch of the more severely disabled children in beds and I heard one child crying really [...]

Here’s a little tip for all of you out there: Don’t eat a large pizza and then try to go running.  I made it two miles – two slow miles – before I gave up the fight.  What the hell was I thinking?  I think I will now drink a beer and play some Xbox.  [...]

It rained all day long here today – well, starting about noon at least.  Which was just in time from preventing me from sneaking out of work early and going to my Vietnamese class.  I ended up being at work until 5 – at which point it was still raining but I braved it. I [...]

This past Sunday our volunteer group, the RMIT Community Action Network, had our first volunteer activity since we opened up membership to all students and staff.  We took about 25 of our members to the Phu My Orphanage in Binh Thanh District.  The orphanage has about 300 children living there, most of whom have mental [...]