FIVE MONTHS TO GO

We were on a field trip to a Science Centre kind of thing and this is a lot of the kids after they put their faces into one of those pin things... Am I a really bad human being for suggesting that the kids do this? I did watch the other side to make sure some idiot wasn't pushing the pins back into their eyes. I knew to do that.

Well, it's the 28th of the month, so another month has past.

Nothing really good to report at this point. I'm just living for the weekends and trying to avoid the cold weather as much as I can.

See you in a half year less a month.

What's right with this picture?

Is this an example of something bad about a school or no? I think it looks awesome, because portables were lame enough, and at least these kids get a nice open-air learning environment, even if it's in a gym. Aside from losing the use of the gymnasium for soccer baseball, what's wrong with this picture?

And who doesn't like the feeling of walking into a school gym... Communists?

On another note, I try way too hard to disagree with everything I read at the Globe and Mail website.

Ok, I'm pretty pissed.

Don't these two men look cute right now? They're like father and son, except the smaller man is older and probably killed more people.

And why am I pissed? Because I can't watch either of them play basketball. I can't watch Steven Nash or Christopher Bosh either, and I'm especially pissed that I'm not going to have access to a television when the finest weekend in sports comes along in March, the first week of the tournament, when there are three or four college basketball games on at the same time.

F.

Word.

I'm not so excited about Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl, and I'm praying to a God I don't really pray to that he becomes the next Jim Kelly, but honestly, I even miss watching hockey once in a while, because I'd really like to see Alexander Ovechkin kick some ass in the all-star game and make Sidney Crosby look like the Canadian lillysiss he really is, even if he's catching assists from said lillysiss.

Wow, I miss hockey. Isn't that pathetic? I'm so far removed from the jockhead doorknobs in high school who used to eat lunch with the pretty girls that I'm starting to enjoy the idea of the sport again.

Ok, that's enough Tim. Back to bed.

Why is Dalton McGuinty in India?

Are there really that many Sikh voters in Ontario?


Jesus.

And what's with that hat? Is he not running again, because politicians can only afford a photo op like this when they're about to retire. For instance,


With this kind of pandering and my increasingly low opinion of getting taxed so Maritimers can keep fishing and not get real jobs, I may never vote for that party with the red signs again.

Maybe I'll stop paying taxes and voting altogether like that guy in New Hampshire.

And wait, I've only voted Liberal once anyway. I can remember voting Green, PC, and even for Howard Hampton and the NDP once, just for fun. I'm making my rounds of the colours before I buy into the ignorant follower thing. Woohoo, I'm really growing up.

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Oh, and before someone defends Maritime fishing as a "real job," I put this forward:

A "REAL JOB" is a "SHITTY JOB." It has to be something that people do just to make money and eat cheesecake on weekends, like my job.

I posit that Maritime fisherman really, really enjoy fishing, or else they wouldn't be fighting to avoid education and re-training in order to work in the new no-fish economy.

Wow, I actually left my apartment on a Sunday. This is some kind of record.

The weather has been highly bearable during the past two weekends, although it's still hard to break the wintertime habit of hiding in my room.

Anyways. I had nothing good to watch on my computer, so I actually ventured out to complete one of the tasks I've been meaning to do for about seven months now: find a bridge where I can walk across the Han River.

Well, I walked along the river past about five or six bridges today, and I still can't find one to walk across, but I did see and smell some nice garbage in the water.

I'm kidding. Most of the river and the streams leading into it are pretty, or at least impressive in scale, as swamped as they are with high-rise apartments and the odd factory.

I even saw a few things that bordered on the word "charming," which hasn't happened in months here.

For instance,

65-year-olds on roller blades wearing SHAQ backpacks.

Old dudes fishing in a highly polluted river and (if you look closely) giving me the tourist-y peace sign thing that they have no shame about here.

Everyone was taking pictures of themselves in front of these clustered apartment buildings, so maybe they're important or something.

(Also, do you like my new counterfeit hat?)

I finally found it! The Olympic Stadium, where Canada's greatest Jamaican set the 100m steroid record at the '88 Olympics. Video Here.

As you can probably tell, I wasn't all that close, so I'll have to chase the ghost of Ben Johnson and his magic running potion another day.

More Pictures from Saigon, I mean, Ho Chi Minh City

Let's start with more babies on bikes...

This kid is straight gangster!

Don't you love that his parents invested in a mask to block the smog, but somehow forgot to buy little Ho Chi a helmet?

This baby is seasoned. He/she can drink and cruise at the same time.

Observe the following picture for insight regarding the safety situation...


On highways like this one, the road is split into car and bike lanes, somewhat lessening the damage done to a helmet-less communist.

Also, the bikes only go about 40 km/h, so the odds of crushing your skull are far less than the idiots with Kawasaki Ninjas on the 401.


A cute tour guide displays the present given to Americans entering her grandparents' house during the war.

(Where are the Canada-Vietnam marriage agencies when you need them?)


At the shooting range, these Russians spent over $500 shooting every gun imaginable.


Drinking coconuts with straws. Yeah, I know how to rough it sometimes.


Mmm, a fruit that looks like a monkey heart that's been out in the sun. I was actually happy that it tasted so bad. This way, I'll never have to see it at home.


We're geniuses. We put our hands in water tanks with fish and turtles that may or may not know that they're about to be eaten.


Prime waterfront real estate on the Delta...


... just a few hundred meters away, someone is getting rich!


Back in the city, this is where the heroes of the American press corps experienced the Vietnam War -- the Rex Hotel.

The four-star hotel district was by far the nicest part of Ho Chi Minh City.

For those travellers who want the true experience. Hehe.


All the tallest buildings in the city are new hotels, so...


The best view of the city I had was from the window of my room.

Actually, the view from the airplane was extraordinary. I don't know why the hell I didn't take pictures. All the buildings packed together in communist shades of green and pink and blue, pierced only by the Saigon River that doesn't look so dirty from a thousand feet up... Damn it, damn it, damn it.


From the top of the old South Vietnam Presidential house.

"Let's get the hell out of here, Quislings!"


Mmm, propaganda.

Notice the date? The end of WW2, when the Nazi-sympathizer French homies got "Declaration of Independence'd" by Ho Chi and the crew in Hanoi.

It took 30 years to kick out all the culturially-superior French and militarily-superior Americans.

And then it was 30 years of communist bureaucracy and nitpicking, BUT NOW IT'S TIME TO...


...get our flag on...


... and make some @#&$ing money so we can afford a pool!!!

Because let's face it. What's life really about?

Pools, dummy.

OK, I haven't been preachy about anything lately, so here I go.... I've never seen TV (and few movies) this good. Watch THE WIRE.

I've had a lot of time in the past few months to catch some ass-kicking TV. I've watched every episode of Deadwood, The West Wing, Six Feet Under, the Sopranos, Lost, Rome, Oz, and a few more lighthearted shows like the Office (U.S.) and Entourage, but this one exceeds the quality of the above combined.

WATCH THE FIRST SEASON OF THE WIRE RIGHT HERE

It may be as shaky to follow as Syriana at times, but the meat and potatoes are there for the initiated.

If you get halfway into the first season, I highly doubt you'll be dissapointed... As a picture of bureaucratic incompetence alone, it's worth it. Beyond that, be on the lookout for Shakespearean monologues involving drug pushers and lazy career cops.

This Week in Pictures with Uncle Ho

Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City. People like to drive bikes here.

Yeah, that's four people on one bike, and no, they're not wearing any helmets. I think I wasted about 50 pictures trying to get a good one of a baby riding a bike. I now have about 50 bad pictures of babies on bikes.

I think this was New Years Eve. I'm so cool, I stayed up until about 12:03 a.m.

Yeah, more bikes.


And some of those riding bikes are cute girls, which is unheard of in Korea.

Oh, wait. That reminds me of the best story I heard all week... Someone filled me in on the details of the Vietnam-Taiwan marriage agencies.

It turns out that Taiwan, like Korea, is developing a large number of young and lazy fat kids that are ill-suited marriage bait in a society where families still make it their responsibility to hook their kids up if they can't do it themselves.

Enter Vietnam. There are agencies set up that send Vietnamese wives and husbands to marry the fat unmarryable offspring of the wealthy Taiwanese. The Vietnamese families collect fees from the Taiwan families that coincide directly with the weight of the person they're going to marry!

Unfortunately, I wasted the best trip of the week on the first day. This is the Mekong Delta, made famous by Martin Sheen and that fishing boat on their way to kill the guy from the first Godfather movie.

In the distance, you can see a factory and a massive bridge being built over an area where they still use Martin Sheen-fishing boats to get around.

They're getting richer, get it!

They wear funny hats here.


Who's that cute Vietnamese villager?

It's me! Tim!

And I'd be a prime catch, too, if it weren't for my height. They love pale skin here, for some stupid reason... Something about looking more like David Beckham, apparently.

No McDonalds.
No Burger King.
No Wal-Mart.
Yes KFC.
Fantastic!

Gross.

Tire shoes from the war era -- popular with babies, elephants and Ho Chi Minhs.

I guess snakes were the Vietnamese Tickle-me-Cabbage-Patch-Furby this Christmas.

But don't feel too bad. These kids make more money than I do.

The Cu Chi Tunnels, just east of Ho Chi Minh City, which once ran almost 250 miles underground in total, including a string of tunnels directly under the American military base for this sector.

Timothy Dukakis, looking for more holes.

This is the face I make when people suggest I go all the way into the hole because I'm skinnier than the average tourist.

Sure.

Also, the last guy who went into this hole wearing an American college t-shirt got a shaft of bamboo in the balls.

This is the face I make when I eventually decide to go in for a few dozen feet. Not as fun as it looks in Platoon.

This rates up there with, "Sure, I'll ride in a wicker-basket up a few thousand feet in the sky with two huge flames a foot from my head. No, that couldn't possibly make me feel unsafe."

The "souvenir" booby-trap. Get it? Get it? You're bringing it home with you.

TAKE THAT AMERICANIES!!!!

Now I can join the 2 or 3 billion other people who can say they've shot an AK47.

Independence Palace? Reunification Palace?

I can't remember what they call this one, but its the building from that famous video where the North Vietnamese tanks take Saigon.

Someone kindly inform the American collaborators that a bunch of Chinese tanks (and tourists) are coming to reunite the country.

The getting rich thing again.

Skinny-but-posh buildings like this are popping up all over the countryside.

This one is a hotel, but there were a lot of great three or four-storey houses like this, too. Very nice open-air masterpieces. Unfortunately, they're probably lived in by about 10 to 20 people.

This is the face I make when restaurants have pigs heads hanging in the background. Mmm.

Guess who didn't eat the head of this chicken?

It was me! Tim!

Elephant Ear Fish. I swear to God, the tour guide was telilng me all day how great the "Eleven Year Fish" was, and I had to try it. I'm so glad it wasn't really a rotten old fish.

Also, the fact that they have deep-friers here is wonderful. Can you say culture!

The American War Crimes Museum, now renamed the War Remnants Museum, as to not offend people who spend lots of money in the country and happen to wear MIT t-shirts.

This was the best and then the worst museum I've ever seen... It started off great, lots of helicopters and blood and deformed baby fetuses in jars, suppossedly from Agent Orange carpet-bombings. And then I realized that I'd seen everything. No good pictures.

The best part might be that all the pictures documenting the horrors of the "American aggressors" are credited to American news agencies.

They want to be RICH, RICH, RICH!!!

I've heard about this, but it's still fun to see... There are more books about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs here than Uncle Ho himself.

A canal leading into the Saigon River.

What a beautiful country, huh.

A great way to spend the last day of my trip. The picturesque Saigon River itself.

Needless to say, I cut that part of the trip a little short.

I should have left the Delta trip to the end!

&%$#, &%$#, &%$#!

Six more months to go. FANNNNNNNNNNNTASTIC!