I have no idea what this is supposed to be or what these people are saying. But at the 2:35 mark I nearly pissed myself laughing.

It’s about 9:30am Saturday morning here – Thao and I had big plans to get up at 6:00am and go ride our bikes before it got too hot, but it didn’t happen. I’ve gotten very good at turning off the alarm clock and immediately falling back to sleep.

I’ve got to go in to work today. I have a new class on Tuesday and I need to prepare for it. I’m teaching the third semester of the four-semester Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning program. Completion of that program is required to teach at the university-level in Australia, so all RMIT teachers have to take it. I completed it last year. Semester 3, which I’ll be teaching, is about using instructional technology to enhance your teaching, so that will be fun for me. My goal is to introduce a lot of different tools to the teachers with the hope that some of them actually implement one or two of them. I’ve got some good ideas about this already – just need to get them into presentation form.

Thao is getting ready to start studying English seriously again. She took a break for our wedding, and then that break extended through the Tet holiday. The next class at her level starts next week, but today she is going in to some open study sessions they have at her school. Her English has gotten noticeably worse over the past few months. I guess the studying and practicing really does help.

Yesterday was our two-month anniversary. Woo-hoo! We made it!

I’m flying up to Hanoi tomorrow. I’ve got a couple of meetings at RMIT’s Hanoi campus on Monday, but because of flight availability I could not fly up and back on Monday (it’s about a 2-hour flight). So I’m flying up Sunday afternoon and back Monday afternoon. I haven’t been to Hanoi since my first trip to Vietnam in 2001, so even though it’s a short trip I’m looking forward to it.

This week was the first week of the new semester (and new academic year for that matter). I’m not teaching Commercial Law this semester, only two groups of my negotiations skills class and the new Grad Cert class mentioned above.

That’s all I’ve got.

Three days ago I made the mistake of doing about 40 situps and 25 pushups. My stomach is still so sore that it hurts to laugh and I have to get up from a sitting or lying position like an old man. And the area where one would normally expect to find their pectoral muscles is also very painful and sore. I seriously just had Thao give me a chest massage (ah, marriage!). I am a well-oiled machine, I will tell you that.

Someone I don’t know commented on one of my posts and asked me if they could subscribe to Orangwutang.com by email so that whenever I post a new article, they receive an email notification. I had never really thought about that before, but I looked it up and found out there is an email subscription widget you can add to your blog.

So starting now, over there on the right side of the page, there should be a “Subscribe by Email!” widget where you can enter your email address and click “Sign me up!” and you should begin to be notified whenever there’s a new post. (And if you have a WordPress.com account and are already logged in, you don’t even need to enter your email address – just click “Sign me up!”)

Just doing what I can to expand the Orangwutang.com Global Media Empire.

Ole Miss got rid of its mascot, Colonel Rebel, years ago and since then we have been the much-mocked mascotless football team. On Tuesday, the school held a student election to see whether students wanted to continue on without a mascot, or to select a new mascot. The students voted overwhelmingly to select a new mascot.

Good for them, I guess, but the possible replacements aren’t really setting the world on fire. The only ones I’ve heard are a riverboat gambler or a colonial soldier. I don’t understand how we can be called the Ole Miss Rebels, yet our mascot is a riverboat gambler. I guess the colonial soldier makes more sense, since they were at least rebelling against the British, but how boring given that this has already been done over and over again – Patriots, Minutemen, etc.

The best one I’ve seen is the above – Admiral Ackbar for Ole Miss mascot. What does Admiral Ackbar have to do with Ole Miss? Football? Anything? Absolutely nothing. That’s why it would be so awesome. If you’re going to refuse to allow us to have our traditional mascot and then let us vote to select a new mascot that no one really wants, it ought to be something as nonsensical as Admiral Ackbar: http://www.notatrap.org/

I seriously wish Admiral Ackbar would win the election and the intellectual property issues could be worked out with Lucasfilm. Will never happen, but would be hilarious.

Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/olemiss_ackbar

Thao and I went for a nice little 20km ride tonight. It was nice and cool out – we had to go pay our electric bill, so we rode our bikes to do that and then we went one time around the loop I usually ride around. I’m going to get Thao to start riding with me more regularly.

Good ride tonight. Very little traffic – I guess because it’s the last night of the Tet vacation. Should be back to normal tomorrow, I think. Felt good to get out and ride. Didn’t do much of anything exercise-related in Bali. Did work out in the hotel gym one day – rowing machine and elliptical machine. That’s it.

I think I’m going to join a gym here again. Just month-to-month because our school is opening its new gym in April or thereabouts. But I want to have a gym available now. Like today I felt like working out, but it was so freaking hot outside that I didn’t want to go ride my bike or run or anything. I really wanted to go work out in an air-conditioned gym. So I’ll remedy that shortly. Hopefully our school’s gym will be nice and I can work out there. Also, our lease is up at the end of May and we’re probably going to move into a different apartment complex near here that also has a gym.

It’s really nice to be back in Vietnam. I think Thao and I were both feeling a little “resorted out” after seven nights. The hotels we stayed in were really nice – much nicer than we could afford if we weren’t able to stay there for free. But even with the free room, everything else was so damned expensive. I really hate hotels’ business model. I don’t mind paying a little more for convenience, but their pricing is just absurd. Feels especially so after living somewhere as cheap as Vietnam. I think for our next trip we will forego Thao’s deal and just stay in a cheaper hotel that we pay for but where everything else associated with it is not so expensive.

I also think that our next trip will be to somewhere cool. It was really hot in Bali, and since it’s always also really hot in Vietnam, that didn’t feel very vacationy. We won’t be taking any big trips for a while now anyway as we dig ourselves back out of debt from our wedding, honeymoon, etc., but when we do I’d like to try to go somewhere with a little cooler weather.

Back to work tomorrow. I’ve got a lot to do this week, but I’m actually looking forward to getting back into a little bit of a routine.

We’re back. It was a nice trip but we’re both tired and happy to be back home. I’ll write more later. Here are a few photos:

Thao:

A dark photo of Thao’s glass of wine that I thought was neat:

Having some tea:

The old Swastika Lemon restaurant:

Bali Hyatt (Sanur):

Sweatmonster:

Purple:

Because when I think good coffee, I think Kentucky Fried Chicken:

Grand Hyatt (Nusa Dua):

I shaved and got a bit of a haircut:

I didn’t mean to get such an extreme buzz, but the haircut the guy gave me originally was so bad I really had no choice. (Now, granted, the original haircut only cost $6 and was done in a “salon” inside of a grocery store, but hey, when in Bali . . . .)

Thao loves this photo:

Thao gets down on her McDonald’s hotcakes and sausage this morning at the Singapore airport. She had her first Big Mac the other day, and now her first McDonald’s breakfast. We’ll have her Americanized in no time:

*Update: Now with its own GIF: