Birds that love to fly in the rain

Ciambella wrote:

This morning, the bánh cuốn lady asked me back:  "Which birds?"  "The ones flying over our heads."  "Those?  They're wild birds.  Why do you want to know their name?"

Now, I could've answered,  "Same reason you want to know how much we get for retirement."  But no, sarcasm doesn't sit well with Vietnamese, so I just shrugged and left for home.

This is an interesting example of cultural differences.  You seem to have absorbed a more Western interest in facts for their own sake, while your neighbors are only interested in things that directly impact their own lives.  In a similar way, my wife dislikes national news in the US as "all talk" but watches local news every morning for the local traffic and weather reports.

THIGV wrote:

This is an interesting example of cultural differences.  You seem to have absorbed a more Western interest in facts for their own sake, while your neighbors are only interested in things that directly impact their own lives.  In a similar way, my wife dislikes national news in the US as "all talk" but watches local news every morning for the local traffic and weather reports.

In my case, that characteristic was not cultural but personal, and it was nurtured in childhood.  It might be natural or it might be not, but it was definitely enforced daily by my father and eldest brother.  Abstract concepts were taught, thirst for knowledge was encouraged, and questions were not allowed to go without answers. 

I still remember when father spent every evening of an entire week explaining to me why the crash of the airplane on which UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjold travelled wasn't an accident but a planned act, and how his death would vastly change the world in which our little country was a part.  The year was 1961, I hadn't yet to turn 9, and that's an example of our (every) evening conversations.  I didn't fully understand everything he said about Hammarskjold then, but I knew he wanted me to see the cause and effect of everything in life and never take anything at face value.

By the time we arrived in the States, I was already a full grown woman so Western culture didn't hold much of a role in the development of my characters, but father definitely did.

Ciambella wrote:

I hadn't yet turned 9, and that's an example of our (every) evening conversations.  I didn't fully understand everything he said about Hammarskjold then, but I knew he wanted me to see the cause and effect of everything in life and never take anything at face value.

An amazing dad in any culture to engage children in adult topics. I'm pretty sure if you were 9 now, you wouldn't have been "kept quiet" by being served continuous cartoons on the mobile phone. Like every child I see: here, US, Australia, everywhere probably. Sad.

[cranky old guy comment]

THIGV wrote:

I think you would agree that this was not the general norm in Vietnam at that time.  Not being too inquisitive became even more important after 1975.  If you don't ask questions, you can't get in trouble.

I didn't live here after '75 so I can't vow for that personally, but the topics of which father made me aware were freely discussed in public between the mid '50s and 'mid 70s when I grew up -- among men at neighbourhood coffee shops, corner barber chairs, and over chess boards.  There were months when parts of the newspapers were blacken out, and there were weeks in '63 when religious congregations were sort of banned, but generally, people spoke just about everything on the streets without looking over their shoulders.

When I was in college in the early '70s, eldest brother warned me to avoid certain groups of anarchist students on campuses, but he looked away when I participated in peaceful demonstrations including all-night sit-ins.  Nothing happened to me during and after those activities, but then again, I was far from being an activist so perhaps that's why no one paid attention to me.