Seven Days

Monday – Manic. Had two new members in my team so it was spent handholding and babysitting them (I swear). It’s always a drag to drag your arse to work on a Monday. I feel that way every week. Not a good thing, really.

Tuesday – Had a client meeting at 10. Client was a cute Asian guy with an Aussie accent. Discussing our “high” prices, he actually drawled:
“We just met, don’t be like that”. He resembled Pitt but his hair was black. I wanted to say (if I owned the company that is): “No worries we
can give you a discount, mate!”

Wednesday – Started the team training where it was intermittently interrupted by my coughing spells. Tiring day, almost lost my voice. Was supposed to have lunch with Pao but he got stuck in a meeting. We rescheduled for Thurs @ Le Jardin (this quaint little cafe in Thai Van Lung Street). I noticed it was mid-week already and it cheered me up.

Thursday – Hot morning, stormy afternoon. Such is the weather in Saigon. Finally met up with Pao and Ching for lunch at Le Jardin amongst french speaking people and unforgivably hot weather. Of course I was teased by Pao that I fit right in with my scarf around my neck and all. Then we teased Ching about the cute white guy behind us that she knew. We ate lunch truly like Pinoys: rice with our steaks. Afterwards it rained cats and dogs and we all got wet on the way back. In the afternoon at work, it was another leg of training. By the end of it I was having an honest-to-goodness full blown headache. I capped the evening off with a much needed massage session with Ate Norma. She's a pinoy who's been living in Vietnam for five years now. She has been a masseuse for 29 years. We talked the whole time she kneaded my body and didn't mind at all.

Friday – Free day. I got sick and stayed back. Partly, I wanted to be one with Pinoys and celebrate the Ramadan holiday (in short: ayaw patalo sa free day sa Pinas) Slept and ate and watched Grey’s Anatomy episodes. That night I felt a bit better and made it to dinner with Rupali, Ching, Brian and Lem. We went to La Cantina where we spotted a guy that looked like Anthony Kiedis. We took a stolen shot with Brian in the foreground doing the Korean pose and the unsuspecting guy in the background...

After dinner we made a dash for the new Megastar Cinema in District 5. It looked like Galleria with nicer seats. Buti na lang, because the movie 'License to Wed' wasn’t great. Went home and spent the rest of the time talking and watching TV. We slept at around 4am.

Saturday – Slept til noon. By 12.30 we were hungry and decided to have Com Tam (Broken Rice with BBQ Pork Chops) for lunch downstairs. We saw the Little Manila sign up so we dropped by and made chika with Tita Lucy. We promised to be there the next day for their soft opening. After all it is the first EVER Filipino resto in Saigon and we (I especially) was thrilled. Kare-kare, sisig, dinuguan, kaldereta = the whole gang of familiar food was there! Afterwards we had anticipated mass in Le Van Sy at 6pm. Had dinner in Ben Thanh market then met up with Dave’s (Lem’s friend) officemate who as visiting from Manila. They were from Manila Water and attended a bidding here in VN. Hope they win it! We had coffee then afterwards went to Acoustic where the tag line was: “Emotion Talks”. Acoustic is a new bar in a Saigon located in 6 Ngo Thoi Nhiem Street. Juram (a pinoy guy and one of the most popular ones in the band circuit) was playing with the Vietnamese band that used to play in Carmen Bar. We got there at around 10:20pm and didn’t know that the music died by 11pm (such is the bar scene in Saigon). Last memorable song we heard: 'Oye Como Va'.

Sunday – Was D-Day. Little Manila Café and Restaurant was open and while we had originally planned to be there at dinner time, we suddenly changed our mind and walked right smack into the Sunday crowd of church goers and other excited Pinoys. The result: our sisig order didn’t come in 1 hour and then 2 hours, after which we lost our patience and appetite. We left annoyed and I snapped at Tita Lucy if all was done “from scratch”; I hope she forgives me for it because it was my combined hunger and suspended excitement over the place for weeks that made it truly a letdown. I guess I’ll be back in a month’s time when they have mastered their systems and customer service. My advice: trim down the huge menu, it’s too ambitious for the capacity of your kitchen. But wasn’t that just sad? We ended up eating a lame lunch in the Italian resto in front.

Now it’s Monday again. End of this week I am off to our company outing slash team building in a far away place called Ninh Chu for three (looongg) days. It starts with a six-hour train ride and ends with an eight-hour bus ride. It will be a tiring weekend for sure. Basically it will be a seven-day work week for me. And it will also be an experience. I’ll be back with a blog entry about that for sure. In the meantime, I have four more days to survive.