Just For Thrills

But only on fifteen-minute drives back from her place to my place, at 11:00PM on weeknights, when the heat facility of the car slowly defrosting my fingertips which, for the time being, don’t seem to be a normal, human colour. Oh wait… there they go… back to their human colour-ness… I was worried a bit there…

In any other context, she doesn’t talk to me half in Vietnamese and half in English (it’s usually either one or the other), or ask me whether or not I consider myself as having a soul, or talk to me about God. And in other contexts, I usually don’t find myself cupping my hand close to my mouth and blowing warm, carbon-dioxide filled air into the area between them to avoid dying of everyday frostbite. What a bizarre situation to find myself in, then.

But what I found more enlightening on the drive home tonight wasn’t the fact that I’d be able to start learning how to drive without having to pay anybody extortionate amounts or a finger or two (although I’ll have to learn manual, which sounds and looks like a complete bitch). Au contraire (oui oui, there is French here, dear readers). What I found more enlightening was the fact that in the almost nine years since my mother’s death, I’ve forgotten all but the basic elements of the Vietnamese language (it’s no longer spoken in this household), and communication between myself and my own Aunt is, therefore, made exponentially difficult by my own brain.

My own. damn. stupid. brain. Betcha didn’t see that one coming, didja?

I find myself yearning for the days when I was actually bilingual – to the point where I rummage through years and years of primary school memories to find the Vietnamese textbooks from the language lessons I attended back then… and in the process, I drag up six solid years of crappy memories and once they’re absorbed, I resign myself to being psychologically full of fail. This all comes back to the point that I suck for letting myself almost entirely forget something that was once extremely vital to my everyday lifestyle. *cue emo sigh*

I’ve gotten to the point where I immerse myself in Vietnamese-ish surroundings as much as possible, so avoid losing every little bit of my native tongue. Things like (in the daytime, I must say) frequenting the suburbs in Sydney where Vietnamese people seem to crawl around in the thousands upon thousands, not in the least bit aware that I just likened the lot of them to a bunch of creepy crawly bugs…

I speak in Vietnamese wherever possible, despite the fact that half my tones are wrong most of the time and I could very well be asking “How much for a pig?” when I intended to ask “The pork and salad roll, how much is it?”. Oh, and I sit with my nose in a Vietnamese-to-English dictionary on some nights, copying out random words and stringing them into sentences with the grammar that I’ve only partially retained.

…it all sounds a bit sad, doesn’t it? Damn.

So that was, essentially, my train of thought on the way home tonight. Followed shortly by a certain train of thought, not at all unlike “I’m going to fucking blog about this when I get home…”, running laps in my head.

Oh, and the ickle God thing? My Aunt finished off the drive by telling me to murmur “God, save me, and save my soul, if I have a soul” before I go to sleep tonight. Yes, that’s right, folks… if I have a soul. I didn’t know whether to nod in an appeasing manner or burst out laughing… so I did both. The former while I was in the car, and then the latter when I was safely in my room. I wonder when she’ll realise I’m an atheist…

P.S. A new theme will be up after 12 June, as that’s the day I finish my exams and go on a big shopping spree with one of my best friends as a bit of self-reward. So hang on tight until then, folks!