un-cultured

Remember that game I was telling you about that I played with traffic? Here is one example of a time when I was playing that game:
Maeve and I were walking back from a run at the pretty lake down the road. We were walking on the sidewalk where PEDESTRIANS are meant to be. There is a man on a motorbike riding towards me. We make eye contact, and I assume that he will break to one side because I am the pedestrian meant to be on the sidewalk. I was wrong. He drove right at me and did not stop until his front wheel was between my legs. It was one of those moments where I went through the metal checklist and decided that what he was doing was both illegal and unsafe. I hope the death glare and exasperated "REALLY?!" that I gave him really taught him a lesson about safe driving.

Today was a wonderful day. It started out with a very short lecture on tobacco use which I followed with several hours in my bed watching The Music Man. I knew it was time to revisit this classic from my childhood because I began singing Gary, Indiana to myself yesterday as I was walking down the street. In case you were wondering, the movie was every bit as funny and wonderful as I remember it being.

For lunch, I had the best beef fried rice I've ever had in my life. The beef was in big chunks and didn't have gobs of fat attached to it. The fried rice came with a bowl of pho soup broth and a plate of cucumbers that were slightly, sweetly pickled. It was honestly just so delicious. I followed that with another pomegranate. I just can't get enough.

Tonight was characterized by a familiar pass-time I like to call "going to the movies." This would seem to be a fairly typical event without much cultural significance. However, it is not. There was so respect for the line system. I can remember being in kindergarten and having the teacher tell us all about the importance of lining up, a lesson that I was taught yearly until I got to high school. As a camp counselor, I revisited these times as my kids would fight over who got what position in line. Let me just say, that regardless of where you are in the line, it is important to maintain that standing and respect the positions of those on either side of you in the line. This was not the case at the National Cinema Center. The line was not respected. It was like that scene at the beginning of It's a Wonderful Life where everyone charges the bank to reclaim their money, only there was no need for urgency here.

The movie we went to see is called Abduction. Maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't. To be completely honest, we didn't go for film quality, we went for Taylor Lautner. Having recently watched the Twilight movies together, we felt the need to see Taylor in a setting where he actually gets the girl and is in a position to lose his shirt many times. It was not a good movie, but it was worth every Vietnamese dong I spent to get it.