The last couple of days have been interesting. On Thursday, I went to Thao’s hotel met with about 20 members of her accounting and finance department. Their hotel is having their big company party for Tet in February, and the theme this year is “Disco Fever.” All of the different departments have to choreograph dance routines fitting that theme, and Thao asked me if I would help their department because they know nothing about disco. I quickly informed her that I know nothing about choreography, but she said I probably know more than they do – this is, of course, based on her watching me dance around our apartment by myself, which I do more frequently than I care to admit publicly on this blog. So anyway, I’m the choreographer now. We practiced for about an hour, and will practice twice a week between now and the party. I will have to get video of their performance on the blog after the party.

On Friday, I finally saw Avatar in 3D. It’s been sold out continuously since it started here in Vietnam – there are only two theaters in the country with 3D projectors: one in Saigon and one in Hanoi. I bought these tickets a week ago and the seats were still not good – in the second row and had to look up at the screen at a pretty steep angle. Even so, the 3D effects were incredible. 3D is clearly the future of moviemaking. Even the average, typically not very interesting scenes in the movie were interesting to look at because of the 3D. They did a good job not overdoing the 3D effects too. There were a couple of scenese where something shockingly flew out of the screen at you, but it was kept to a minimum. The computer-generated effects were also extremely well done. CGR has finally gotten to the point where it really looks real. Not just almost real, but really real. I got excited watching Avatar because I am sure that this level of CGR and 3D will come to videogames at some point, and I was imagining how cool an experience that will be. Before I saw it, I thought the Avatar story was going to be over the top cheesy and predictable, but I have to say that it was presented in a more interesting fashion than I anticipated. James Cameron really knows how to make a movie with mass appeal. I did feel a little queasy during the movie – I assume because of the 3D – but nothing major. I would recommend Avatar to anyone – just for the experience of it.

Also on Friday, I participated in a television gameshow. It’s a show where they explain a traditional Vietnamese dish to you and then three people compete to see who can cook it the best. It’s usually women, but yesterday was a special show featuring male competitors because they are going to air it on International Women’s Day – which is sometime in March. So it was me vs. two Vietnamese guys.

The hardest part was they were speaking only in Vietnamese – no English. And my Vietnamese is not exactly conversational yet. Before we cooked, we had to answer three multiple-choice questions. I had no idea what either the questions or the answers were, so I just looked at Thao and other audience members who were mouthing answers to me and chose those answers. I got 2 out of 3 correct.

Anyway, then we had to cook – the dish yesterday was “ga nau nho,” which means chicken cooked with grapes. We each had our own little table with a gas stove on it, and we had the cut-up chicken pieces, some grapes, some spices, water, and wine, etc. We had watched a little video explaining how to cook the dish, so I just tried to do it the way they’d shown in the video – guessing about the proper combination of spices, etc. They didn’t use pepper in the video, but there was pepper on our tables, so I used a lot of pepper, which made it a little spicier. Also, I fried my chicken in oil, garlic, onion, salt, etc., before I added the water and wine. I think frying it for a while first made the chicken a little more well-done and crispy. Finally, I didn’t use all of the water they gave us. The other guys did, and their dishes were more liquid and soupy than mine was. Mine was a little more like a gravy than a soup because I didn’t use all of the water but did use all of the corn starch they gave us.

Anyway, the bottom line was: I won first place! There were two judges – both of whom were chefs – and they tasted the three finished dishes and agreed that mine was the best of the three. I won a prize – one of those water boiling pots that boils water and then keeps it hot afterward. This isn’t the exact one, but it’s basically like this:

They’re fairly expensive, so that’s a nice prize and we can definitely use it to make coffee, tea, oatmeal, etc.

I don’t know how much of my winning had to do with the fact that I was a foreigner, and how much had to do with the fact that the food I made really was the best, but I’ll take it either way! Thao was proud of me – she was on the same gameshow recently but won third place (a new blender). So now we have a new blender and hot water pot! It was a fun experience – I am just hopeful they can edit the video where I don’t sound too idiotic trying to speak Vietnamese.