Monday, April 12, 2010

Wounded reflections

I am sitting in a cafe on a street adjacent to Kim Ma, to lazy to go outside and find the street name, procrastinating. I dropped Celine at work and consequently have a few hours which I have put aside as study time. I am finishing off my degree while I am in Hanoi and as I don't work on Monday nights anymore it is the perfect time to hit the books. The business law text book looks to daunting so I am using all my available energy to avoid it, concentrating on other things.

At the moment I am concentrating on the pinky finger on my left hand. My pinky finger has a band aid on it. If I bend it, it hurts. This time last week, on this same very street but a different cafe, I was spending my time procrastinating from reading business law. I was enjoying a Vietnamese coffee and talking to the waiter about the possibility of buying the piano in his store. I told him I couldn't play the piano. He asked if I wanted it anyway. I said no. He laughed. So did I. I practiced my Vietnamese with him and we chatted about normal stuff. His English was very good.

After a while I went to the bathroom and on my return I was distracted by the busy streets outside. As I went to sit down I headbutted the low lying light shade over my table. It broke and a bit fell down and sliced open my pinky finger on my left hand. Blood starting pissing out immediately, on me and on the floor. I was still feeling embarrassed for breaking their light when I realised a young girl had grabbed my hand, wrapped it in cloth and applied pressure. The piano salesman was leading me to the bathroom and grabbing a bunch of band aids. They were amazing help and showed no qualms about the blood that was leaking in quantity whenever we looked at the cut. We wrapped it up tightly with a few band aids and they laughed when I tried to clean up the blood on the floor. It was a surprised, what the hell is this foreigner doing kind of laugh but the culture about dealing with other peoples blood is obviously different. I bid my farewell soon after and thanked them profusely.

Today as I searched for my retreat of procrastination I looked for somewhere with no obvious dangers for a clumsy idiot. So far so good....

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