Hello world! :D haven't blogged since goddess knows when! :D i don't know la. Quite a number of things happened and i always have this urge to blog but when i actually open blogger, i don't know what to write! You know i attempted to be a mugger, or in other words a conscientious student who dutifully does all her homework before going to school, for a few days or so and now i do realize i've gone back to my old life as a slacker.
SADDD :(
Okay i PROMISE i'll change after National Day holidays! :D Will get junyang's kinda grades and better for GP :D (hahaha)
Dad has his own way to make me feel happy whenever i talk to him / msg him (money aside :P). Like how you know altho his smses are like so short and his punctuation funny as a few months back he still had NO idea how to type a message and now takes forever and one hour to write "Chao con. Bo Bang day" (translate: Hello daughter. it's me daddy :D), they're just gonna make me grin frm ear to ear. There are a thousand and one things i love about him. The fact that he gets where he is today purely with his ability and hardwork. You know in a country like vietnam, if you have no "connections", or don't know how to sweet talk (or suck up to other ppl) you are sort of doomed to fail in anything that you do, not to mention climbing up the social hierarchy. Sickening yes, but it's the truth. The fact that he is the most liberal, open-minded person i've ever known and he still always has the love to study something new even at his age. My family has got to be the strangest vietnamese family around. I call him by his first name most of the time (LOL) and the parents-children relationship doesn't differ much from that between friends. We debated and fought and did stupid things together. Countless people have said they admire my family, and the look in their eyes teold me they said it because they really mean it, not because he's simply their boss. My dad took up Chinese at 46 when i was in the third grade or so. I remembered asking him why he even bothered, especially when personally i think he'd known more than enough languages! And he'd quote Lenin that you must always study, study forever. Something like that la i don't know how to translate :P
He's brought so many changes to that mega corporation called the vietnam railways and you won't understand it unless you're a vietnamese who still remembered how trains used to look like a mere 6-7 years ago. It may sound like a joke to you guys who have always been living in a priviledged Singapore and even if you ever visited a third world country you only saw their not-so-horrifying side but all the trains in Vietnam then (some are still being used nowadays) were given to us by the French some two centuries ago. Yes that's right, the trains are two hundred years old and have gone through two wars, countless typhoons, forest fires, and other disasters. Don't even imagine the SMRT trains. These vietnamese trains if i might call them normally were grossly overloaded esp in times of war and disasters. And they are super long and thus very, very, VERY slow. What to do? We had 70 million people to transport from the North to the South (thats two hundred thousand kilometres) and even pigs and dogs. There used to be no beds on trains AT ALL, only hard (SUPER hard) chairs and of course, the walk way for ppl to sit, sleep, and vomit on. The worst part hasn't come yet. You know how last time the people living in the devastated country side made it a point to migrate to the big cities, even if that probably would cost them their lives? Because the overcrowded trains were so slow, people from the ground would attempt to jump inside through the windows, in the process pushing others from inside out. So it's like either you hid in the toilet the whole time or risked being pushed out and die anytime. What's more, kids and adults alike from the sideways would throw rocks and other stuff at the trains, like it was their best form of entertainment, and injure others severely. You ask why they would do such a thing. I don't know. And so to prevent all these from happening they had to fence all the windows, putting this metal thingy outside the windows all the more making the trains look like they were transporting animals and not humans.
I remembered i first took the trains when i was six, when the first few batches of passenger cars with comfortable beds were installed, of course these were meant for the un-poor people. So i was there, and when i got off the trains after almost a day (we went to the middle part of vietnam. it'd take two days if you want to go to Saigon) it first struck me how horrible the condition in all the "normal" passenger cars were. People looked like they were all going to faint from fatigue.
The metal fence thingy still remained with all the ancient trains until daddy came along. He ordered the removal of them all, rationalizing that we can't continue to degrade all the people to animals anymore. He worked with the americans (which was something breakthrough because, well they're americans), the japanese and the chinese to build new trains and replace the rails connecting hanoi and saigon. The new trains are really nice with huge transparent windows and there are even double-deckers. I remember when they were first used people would stand at the sides of the roads admiring them and commenting what a big difference it was from the past. Meals were improved and the trains are much faster now, it takes less than a day for hanoians to reach the south shores. And there are automated ticketing machines. Traveling by trains used to be quite nightmarish and its such an enjoyable experience now. But quite often people still throw stones at the new train, and i still don't know why on earth would they want to do something like that. And accidents still happen when people just cross the railways as the please, ignoring all the loud horns and signals. And "the train people" are to balme because in vietnam its like in times of accidents the bigger vehicles are the villain. Strange right?
Daddy always gets at least 90 percent of the votes. People said he's the most popular director ever. And the most intelligent and revolutionary.
Daddy always keeps his promises. You know how parents always bluff small kids in order to make them do something? Because they're little kids what, they won't know anyway. But my dad never does that. When i whined and grumbled, accusing him of not keeping his words, he would argue with me until i admitted that i was at fault and meant it. Even now when he's 55, he forgot where he put his phone and lost it (and got one whole scolding session from my mum), but never once forgets what he promised others.
Daddy still rides a motorbike to pick my sister up from her tuition, wearing fake adidas tee shirt and a cheap pair of slippers. Daddy still uses the pair of glasses he bought in Germany when he was studying there some thirty years ago. Daddy still does household chores when he is free (quite rarely but that's commendable efforts la) and eats instant noodles for breakfast and when mom goes on business trips. Daddy looks for sale stuff when he comes to Singapore. Daddy loves boiled kangkong and pho (vietnamese rice noodle) and listens to Abba's Happy New Year on the first morning of every year (its like OCD). The best part is, daddy can still solve all my maths and physics questions.
And Daddy has friends all around the world. By friends, i really mean good friends, not business friends or whatever. Friends who get really happy when he comes to visit them from vietnam and helps him with everything he needs, not expecting anything in return. German, Japanese, Chinese, Americans, Europeans. He always says friends is the most important thing in the world and i will ask him if twenty years down the road, i can have a united nations of good friends like him?
One thing is for sure, i'll forever be a happy little daddy's girl :)