my 2-month-old sim card died this morning. rest in peace. a quick trip to the Apple store @ Rideau for a new one, & my iPhone’s good as new.
doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.
blog entries
finished highway cleanup with …
finished highway cleanup with the #Ottawa #Bahai friends; hanging out at Tim Horton’s now. nice exercise, and good company. awesome. ^_^
04.25.10 
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I wish someone could just para…
I wish someone could just parachute a bunch of ABMs in here to tell me what’s the problem with my children’s class. :P #Bahai
04.24.10 tweet No Comments »
Happy Earth Day! I’m going to …
Happy Earth Day! I’m going to go take a walk (and turn down the heat)
04.22.10 tweet No Comments »
happy Festival of Ridvan to al…
happy Festival of Ridvan to all – whether friends, family, co-workers or Twitter followers ^_^ #Bahai
04.21.10 tweet No Comments »
interview with a stranger
Written on Feb. 25, 2010.
The air here in Da Nang is cool this afternoon, and the shade inside the dusty, cream-coloured offices of the Justice Department is a welcome change from the hot sun outside. I tap my thoughts and reflections out onto an iPhone as I wait for Quynh to finish her interview upstairs. We’re scheduled to be married in just over a week, and this set of interviews is the last legal hurdle to jump for our union to be recognized by the state – at least, besides signing a bunch more documents in triplicate.
I went under the scope first, and they brought in a translator to talk with me so they could make sense of my strange moon-language. The questions they asked were… bizarre. What’s her phone number? Her date of birth? Her email address? I guess I was expecting relevant questions, you know, like something besides what you’d put on a credit card application. But in retrospect, remembering what Quynh and I had discussed about the nature of the interview process, these banal questions make sense. They’re apparently intended to weed out arranged marriages, ones brokered through agents– proverbial “mail-order brides”.
I guess I always thought of the business of “mail-order marriages” as a big joke. I’d heard of stories regarding the practice and found them to be too unbelievable to be true. How could two people become so desperate– or morally directionless– as to reduce marriage to a mere transaction, to reduce a human being to a mere commodity? When Quynh explained to me that such “agency marriages” were a well-known (though strongly condemned) practice among Vietnamese women, I was filled with incalculable rage, so much so that I nearly fell off a speeding motorbike. it seemed to violate everything I’d ever believed about love, marriage, and human relationships.
supposedly the phenomenon is mainly driven by despair, on both sides. Quynh explained to me that many of the prospective husbands– the word “customers” brings my blood to a boil, although most are indeed customers– would be considered “past their prime”, and perhaps feel impotent to attract women in their own country. As a side note, some of Quynh’s neighbours have expressed astonished at how young I look– perhaps expecting her North American husband to be in his 50s. On the prospective bride’s side weighs the burden of percieved “marriageability”, or, in the case of a Vietnamese woman in her late 20s, the steadily dwindling levels thereof. In short, an unmarried woman over 30 years old is widely viewed as a failure. Such a perception isn’t unique to Vietnamese culture, but it’s much more pronounced here.
04.19.10 vietnam, wedding No Comments »
currently hammering away at ou…
currently hammering away at our spreadsheet, planning #Bahai children’s classes for the next ~4wks. read up @ http://childrensclasses.org/
04.14.10 tweet No Comments »
yes, I said “home visit parent…
yes, I said “home visit parents”, meaning pay a visit to the parents of the kids attending #Bahai children’s classes.
04.14.10 tweet No Comments »
preparing for a double whammy …
preparing for a double whammy of children’s classes this weekend: Sat. & Sun. afternoon. need to home visit parents too. #Bahai
04.14.10 tweet No Comments »
Filling out calendar for our #…
Filling out calendar for our #Bahai children’s class for coming season. Read up on it: http://www.childrensclasses.org/ also: tweet #1000 :D
04.11.10 tweet No Comments »
I’ve never found statistics mo…
I’ve never found statistics more fascinating than at a #Bahai reflection meeting. Am I weird? The community planning process is mesmerizing.
04.11.10 tweet No Comments »
at #Ottawa #Bahai reflection m…
at #Ottawa #Bahai reflection meeting, surrounded by well-wishes and congratulations. ^_^ also, feeling impressed by the proceedings so far!
04.11.10 tweet No Comments »
been back in Canada for a week…
been back in Canada for a week, and starting to sleep soundly again. missing Vietnam way too much, especially Da Nang. sigh.
04.09.10 tweet No Comments »
back at work, a little worse f…
back at work, a little worse for wear, but managing.
04.06.10 tweet No Comments »
still feeling badly jetlagged …
still feeling badly jetlagged and slightly tender in the stomach(?) after flying back from #Vietnam. Overall, a largely uneventful #Easter!
04.05.10 tweet No Comments »
back in Ottawa, waking up earl…
back in Ottawa, waking up early from jetlag. family decorated the house with hearts everywhere, and there’s a pile of #wedding presents ^_^
04.03.10 tweet No Comments »
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