Week 4: the crash of my physical health and Vinh Ha Long

This week I witnessed (or actually more like experienced painfully) the crash of my physical health. Immediately after I recovered from the intestine-melting diarrhea that plagued my senses for 2 days last weekend, I began sneezing and having sinus problems. It ultimately got much worse by Tuesday as I began coughing in addition to having a nose that wouldn't shut up. By night I was coughing my lungs out and blowing my nose until my skull hurt. Then I got a massive headache from heavy congestion in the nose and almost threw up. I was pretty miserable this entire week as I couldn't think properly from the sickness and began missing my mommy and daddy even more. I don't know where I got all these symptoms from. My roommate got sick over the weekend, but according to his medical results on Friday it was his old malaria virus that was acting up. I've been told that malaria is not contagious so I probably didn't get sick from him, even though I began showing symptoms a day after him. So there I was, sneezing and blowing nose and coughing and wanting to fly back to america. On Thursday Gerard wanted me to go to the hospital to check if I had the swine flu. I was like no fucking way, I am far from dying. Thankfully I felt a lot better the next day so I didn't go to the hospital, and by Saturday I was fine.

So not only do I hella miss my parents now after this predicament, I'm hella missing my friends too! I've been getting all these emails and minutes from QPC planning meetings (since technically I'm still part of the committee even though I can't really do shit since I'm 9000 miles away) and reading them makes me hella miss organizing and late-night intellectual discussions about intersecting queer identities and People of Color community issues and all that good shit. FUCK! And the worst part is, I can't even attend the actual conference! QPC 2008 last year at Berkeley was the very first queer-centered conference I've ever attended, and while it definitely wasn't the best planned or the best implemented conference, it still had a very deep impression on me and gave me inspiration to continue working with the queer community, even though I still don't feel completely part of that community. QPC basically set the precedent for me for future involvement with the queer movement, and this year UCLA has the honor and privilege to host it, so I wanted to do everything I could to make sure it turns into the best queer conference ever put together. Now that I'm here across the fucking ocean, I can no longer attend those fun and intellectually-stimulating meetings NOR attend the conference. It makes me really sad that I'm not able to do more for my friends back home. I also miss APC and all my orgs and all the deep political work that I used to involve myself. I guess I've been depriving myself of politics too much here since the regulated environment doesn't call for such kind of work. Great, now I feel like I'm just babbling and not making any sense. Fuck, I'm just confused and frustrated right now. IN SHORT, I fucking miss my friends, I fucking miss organizing, I fucking miss APC, I fucking miss critical discussions about our communities and struggles, I fucking miss the events and programs we used to put on ourselves, and I'm going to fucking miss QPC at UCLA.

Okay, simmering down...

This week, despite wanting to hop on the plane and fly back to sterilized LA so I can see my parents and friends, and despite having my body crash, I had a lot of fun! On Wednesday the 2nd it was Quoc Khanh, or Vietnam's Independence Day, so we all had a day off. I wanted to go to the city to see all the celebrations and propagandas that attempt to infuse more doses of nationalist sentiment, but since no one else seemed enthused, we went to Lang Bat Trang, or Ceramics Village instead. The name speaks for itself: there was nothing there but ceramics shops. First we spent about 2 hours on the taxi since the drivers got lost and we had to go off an on-ramp in the reverse direction (thank the traffic gods there were no cars entering the freeway at that time) and the bill came out to almost VND 200000 (about USD 11-12, which is a phenomenal price in Viet Nam). Then when we finally arrived at the village after having no fucking clue where the drivers were taking us, we had a very late lunch where a lot of white people also ate. Then we lingered for a while longer before heading into a shop to make our own ceramics. This was my first time doing ceramics, and it was a lot of fun! I got clay all over my shoes and some on my legs and shirt, which was annoying. Tracey and I also struggled to make something recognizable with our clay and we weren't too successful, so in the end we didn't take anything home.

Check out these amazing ceramic things. Note the female figures bottom-center bending over. Hella sexist!

These have got to be the worst imitation Pokemon I've ever seen

Trying to make something that looks like something. And failing!

On Friday we celebrated Kim Anh's birthday. We went to a hella bougie Vietnamese restaurant and then went to karaokeing. I've noticed that so far at all of our KTV sessions, we always sing the following all-time classic american songs: anything from that slut britney spears, a few songs from that shit band backstreet boys and/or n'sync, "Two Become One" by spice girls, "Hotel California" by the Eagles, "A Whole New World" by whoever sings that song, and maybe a few more. It's really hard to find a place here with a good selection of american songs, so we usually tend to just sing whatever we know, which typically meant the above songs. But the one we went to for Kim Anh was really good! There was also a collection of Mandarin songs, so I sang "The Moon Represents My Heart" by the greatest Taiwanese singer ever Teresa Teng, and that ridiculous sappy song "Tonghua" by a not-so-talented Taiwanese singer Guang Liang, which featured the actual music video of that song, which was about 7 minutes long. Basically in the video, a Korean-drama style story was shown, where the girl falls over from sickness all of a sudden and the guy has to take her to the hospital and is left with a sick girlfriend who probably has terminal illness, like cancer or some shit like that. I would like to think Taiwanese people have MUCH more creativity and originality than Korean people, but I guess not, and that makes me sad (no offense to Koreans or people who enjoy Korean dramas).

Chuc mung sinh nhat Kim Anh!

Then on Saturday morning at 7 AM, 15 of us went to VINH HA LONG (Ha Long Bay)! It was a 3.5-hour bus ride there, but it was all worth it. I'll go ahead and let these pictures speak for themselves.

The beds on our junkboat. They were really comfortable!

Service bar

Our lunch feast

A split rock!

This looks like a rhino with half its head submerged. Can you see it?

Isn't it so gorgeous?

Exploring a giant cave

It looks like a penis! Naturally I was drawn to it

Group photo in the cave!

We swam on this beach

We also went kayaking (which I didn't get to take any photos of). It was again my first time doing it, and it was SO MUCH FUN! It was basically 2 people per kayak, and Kim Anh and I kayaked to two islands, where on one of them there were a bunch of small dark crabs crawling around, and on another there were all these beautiful shells that probably just washed ashore from the sea (and I took 2 of the coolest looking ones). It was quite exhausting, but at some points we just sat there and floated in the middle of the sea. It was so relaxing. Definitely one of the funnest things I've ever done. Shit, I would do anything to go back there and experience that again!

What a twisted week! It was both miserable and amazing at the same time. I've been having too much fun here. I am now upon the realization that I haven't done ANY reading for my classes. Yes, I DO have classes here and I DO have assignments! Shieeeet, this ain't no vacation like I thought it was. But as long as I don't get anything lower than C's I'm happy. Wow did I just say that? What happened to my high standards?

Till next week!