How the Americans lost the Vietnam War

I was really privileged to be invited to supper the other night by a high ranking government official. Apparently, when you are invited to a home it is really something special and implies a very distinctive relationship. The meal, like the one I had in the restaurant a few weeks back, consisted of tons of food spread all over the table and you simply picked what you wanted to eat and put it in your one bowl. As the host explained, this is very democratic and you are not “served” as in the west where there is no choice of food.

Having said that, since I was the only ‘foreigner’, I was ‘given’ food which I had to eat because everyone was looking at me. I also committed two faux pas at the end of the meal. There was a huge rice bowl which I ate from directly instead of putting it in my bowl, which is bad enough and secondly, I remember my boss telling me at a Chinese wedding we attended together that you were supposed to decline the rice served at the end of the meal because it was a sign that you were hungry and the food was not adequate. No wonder I was the only one eating the rice!

I asked my host, who was a bit older than me, how he figured the Vietnamese were able to defeat the Chinese, then the French and then the Americans so successfully. He explained that they were simply smarter. For example, talking about food, he said the Americans ate tons of canned goods and then threw the cans outside their quarters. The Vietnamese then put frogs in all of the cans, which of course, eventually rattled. When one frog moved and caused a noise, the Americans came out and started shooting causing all of the frogs to start jumping around creating a tremendous racket and assured the Vietnamese that the Americans would shoot all of their ammunition at the phantom soldiers. Once their firepower was deleted, it made it al lot easier to capture them. He told a lot of stories like this which were quite humorous thirty-five years later, although not to Americans I don’t suppose.

Last night, after dinner, about eight of us went to a karaoke place. If you have never been, you go into a very nicely furnished room where there are couches, microphones and large TV with video and words to the music. Surprising, we ordered a bottle of whiskey and started drinking. Our age range probably varied from 35 to 65 and I quickly realized that the object of the exercise was to make everyone drunk, especially this one poor guy that was going to take up another post in a different country.

Within two hours, one guy fell asleep after vomiting, the ‘victim’ could hardly walk and everyone was laughing uproariously. As I have discussed with Joshua and Daniel so often I just don’t see where the enjoyment comes in???? I am sure you feel like hell the next day, it cost a ton of money, and vomiting does not seem like such a wonderful exercise.

I did not like the way they seemed to be picking on this one guy to drink to oblivion. For some reason, they seemed to respect the fact that I did not want to become engaged and eventually did not try to keep filling up my glass. There are a lot of things I can understand in this world even though I do not indulge or agree with them, but this is not one of them, no matter how much Joshua tries to explain it to me.

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