Chúc mừng năm mới, friends. Or, as you say in the Western hemisphere, happy New Year!

Yes, yes, I know all of my American friends reading this are thinking, You fool, you addled ignoramus, you rice-besotted chucklehead, New Year’s Eve was more than a month ago, are you so deluded by life in that backwards, hopelessly unhip nation that you’ve lost sense of time altogether? The coming holiday is not New Year’s but Valentine’s Day, shit-for-brains. We know this because every retail establishment in America is assaulting us with that invaluable information every moment of our waking lives until Sunday, when it will all transform smoothly overnight into a full-scale marketplace offensive of behalf of Easter. So thanks very much, Captain Caveman, we’ve got a pretty good handle on which holidays are which over here. Go back to sucking on your boiled egg fetuses and leave us alone until you’ve got something intelligent or at least interesting to say.

Ah, the intimacy of true fellowship. What you fail to understand, my dear American friends, is that while in your indulgent corner of the world the coming Sunday is indeed Valentine’s Day, here in Asia the date of February 14 coincides this year with the Lunar New Year, known locally as Tết (yes, the same as that Tet). Tết in Vietnam is far and away the biggest and most popular holiday of the year, so much so that they’ve stretched it out to a full week or more. By this time tomorrow, Ho Chi Minh City will be a ghost town, all its transient residents returned to the countryside to spend the next week imposing on their families, participating in pointless and obscure rituals, exchanging gifts into which little or no thought went, overeating shamelessly and drinking more than is either safe or legal, and opening old wounds with relatives they’d not squabbled with since last year’s forced reunion. In other words, Merry Christmas and Happy Thanksgiving!

I’ll be spending Tết alone next week, as my girlfriend will be returning to her hometown, Hanoi, where she will ring in the Year of the Tiger with her loved ones in traditional fashion and very likely be forced to answer some difficult questions about why she is still dating an aging foreigner with a receding hairline and no trust fund. Dear heart that she is, she’s made me my very own Tết tree, trimmed with envelopes of ‘lucky money ’ – a compulsory part of every Vietnamese New Year. (And they call this a communist nation. Pah.)

Life in Vietnam has its privileges: for example, a karaoke machine on every corner and in a fair portion of the personal domiciles in the city. Did I say privileges? Well, privileges, punishments, it’s mostly a question of semantics, isn’t it? Rather like ‘torture’ and ‘enhanced interrogation,’ not that I’m making analogies.

Here in the developing world, a karaoke machine is as necessary a part of life as the With this simple bit of technology, easily entertained local residents serenade their friends, peers, colleagues, and the immediate neighborhood with “traditional” songs pirated from the Chinese and re-rendered in the vernacular of synthesizers and electronic drum kits. The singers typically do not have any formal training, nor, indeed, bathroom showers in which to train. (Or even bathrooms, judging from the number of Vietnamese men urinating on the side of the road at all hours of the day). This does nothing to dampen their zeal for the pastime, however, and they indulge it with masochistic lust, apparently nowhere more so than in my apartment block.

Given the number of Vietnamese men hopped up on locally-brewed bia hoi and yowling like car-struck cats into microphones every evening beginning at dusk, one might expect there to be more violence — as for example in this striking bit of reportage from the Philippines, where bloody carnage often accompanies the performance of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” among other similarly incendiary fare.

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

Many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks, and the country’s many Sinatra lovers are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.

It seems karaoke-induced butchery is not limited to the Philippines.

In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Karaoke-related assaults have also occurred in the United States, including at a Seattle bar where a woman punched a man for singing Coldplay’s “Yellow” after criticizing his version.

In fairness, you’ve got to admit John Denver and Coldplay will have that effect on people almost anywhere. I find it interesting that Vietnam’s not on that list. After some reflection, I realize this must have to do with the facts that 1) there are no guns in Vietnam (although you can blow up a cow with a claymore if you know the right people), and 2) drunkenness is Vietnam is not undertaken lightly but with the seriousness as befits life in a developing, communist-ruled nation.

They love their mannekins in Vietnam. They’re a must-have accessory for every clothing outlet of any kind, no matter how small, how hidden, or how execrable the pirated Chinese-made reproductions they’re pushing. And for reasons known perhaps only to the world’s mannekin-makers, every single one of them presents a prototypical Western physique to the world. There are no Asian features of any kind to be seen in the mannekins of Vietnam. For me this begs the question: are there no Asian mannekins anywhere in Asia? In all my travels in this fair land, I’ve yet to see one. They’re all white, caucasian, often blue-eyed, tall and seemingly caught in mid-speech, articulating something in what’s clearly a non-tonal language: “Real? Real?? What do you mean by ‘real’?”

One of the strangest things about living as near to the equator as I do is that the length of the days never really changes. No matter whether it’s January, August, or December, the sun rises around 5:30am and sets around 6:30pm. Winter solstice, summer solstice, whatever, there’s no difference to speak of. That means that on Fridays, once I’ve finished my last class and have established that the mess on my desk can probably wait until Monday, when I’m finally ready to pack it in for the weekend, this is the scene I’m handed by the universe as I head out the third-floor north exit at RMIT and make for the motorcycle parking lot (which you can see down there, mostly empty at 6:30pm on a Friday). That’s not Saigon per se in the background — not downtown Saigon anyway — but the section of District 7 known as Phu My Hung. Otherwise known as home.

I recently watched a TV documentary on the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which I feel certain the cool heads at the History Channel programmed as a way of diffusing the overblown panic gripping the world over the H1N1 outbreak by depicting just how bad it’s not. See how tens of millions of people succumbed to a seemingly innocuous viral contagion that drowns its victims in their own bloody phlegm? That’s exactly what isn’t going on in your neighborhood. Yet.

I managed not to throw myself off my fifth-floor balcony to preempt the inevitable end. But on my return to work earlier this week, I discovered others have not been so calm about the looming threat of the near-certain eradication of the human species. Last week one of the 4,000 students at my university was diagnosed with swine flu. Shortly afterward, a faculty member, a friend of mine in fact, was also labeled one of the Infected. Both were quickly snatched out of the school, tossed into a van and carted off to the local quarantine hospital, which, if you’ve ever seen a hospital in Vietnam, resembles a cross between The Island of Dr. Moreau and a Bangalore slum, only less hygienic. On the advice of Vietnam government health officials, the school initially insisted that all students and faculty who’d had contact with the two pariahs confine themselves to their homes until seven days had passed or the world ended, whichever came first. But after some consultation with, one supposes, health officials who actually understand the germ theory of disease, university officials reversed themselves and allowed the Almost-Infected to return to school.

On Wednesday and Thursday of last week, therefore, the student population disappeared behind a deluge of cheap, completely useless surgical masks. Lecture rooms looked like casting calls for Scrubs. Hallways throbbed with youth who appeared to be en route to a late-era-Michael Jackson fan club convention. Faculty members awaited the inevitable call for all lecturers to don masks themselves, resigned to a week or more of dressing like a Halloween punchline.

Yet once again, logic, or at least a close substitute, prevailed. For reasons probably having more to do with public relations than modern medical enlightenment, RMIT International University has locked the doors and barricaded the entrance (literally) until the morning of Monday, August 3.* (Updated) It’s hard to complain about an extra-long weekend. But it’s also hard to imagine we won’t be here again in a week or two weeks or three. In the meantime, I see 28 Days Later is showing this evening. One good thing about global pandemics: they’re always entertaining.

RMIT Vietnam extends Saigon South closure to Monday 3 August

24/07/2009

RMIT International University Vietnam has decided to extend the temporary closure of its operations at Saigon South until Monday 3 August.

RMIT Vietnam’s President, Professor Merilyn Liddell, announced the measure today following an initial decision yesterday to close the campus until at least Monday 27 July.

“We have consulted further with local health authorities over the past day, and the good news is that the number of people so far affected by H1N1 has remained very small.

“The total of students confirmed to have this influenza remain at only three, with one staff member also diagnosed. We expect that this number may still rise in coming days, but we believe the quick action we have taken to curtail the spread of the virus will give us every chance of keeping the total number small.”

Professor Liddell said the decision to extend the closure for a further full week, to Monday 3 August, was taken to allow time to consider assessing whether or not the small outbreak has been fully contained.

“We believe it is sensible to continue our precautionary approach for a longer period, and the local health authorities agree with this approach.

“The early action we have taken to minimise the spread of H1N1 appears to have worked to this point, so we believe it’s prudent to continue this approach for a further seven days to provide the maximum opportunity to ensure all sources of potential infection are fully cleared from the premises.”

Professor Liddell said the university placed the highest priority on the health and safety of its students and staff.

The Saigon South campus will maintain a skeleton staff of essential personnel only during the coming week, and senior management will continue to monitor developments and advise students and staff of developments as necessary. General telephone calls will be diverted to the Hanoi campus, which remains open as usual.

“We are encouraging all of our students and staff to keep checking their emails and the RMIT Vietnam website for regular updates through the week, prior to the resumption of all classes from the morning of Monday 3 August,” Professor Liddell said.

“We know there will need to be some rescheduling of examinations and other student activities. Those affected will be advised of what they need to know during the coming week.

“We will be working to ensure that no students are disadvantaged by this temporary closure.”

While the western world bemoans the looming death of journalism and the printed word, I’m happy to report that here in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Fourth Estate is alive and flourishing. Proof, you ask? Consider the following news item from the ever-upbeat Viet Nam News: an announcement at last week’s meeting of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front of a new journalism prize. They’re giving awards away here to people for doing this stuff! What matter that they call it ‘information dissemination‘ rather than ‘reporting.’ (Which one sounds sexier, I ask you?) Anyway, don’t bother us with semantics. We’re busy contributing to the country’s glorious cause of the great national solidarity.

Award for Journalists

HANOI – A prize for journalists who have contributed to the country’s cause of the great national solidarity was launched yesterday in Ha Noi.

The award was announced at a meeting of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front on its upcoming seventh congress.

To Huy Rua, Politburo member and head of the Commission for Popularisation and Education of the Party Central Committee, spoke highly of the contributions made by the media in improving the role of the Fatherland Front and promoting national solidarity.

However, he said that information dissemination still didn’t reach potential, and urged information and communication agencies to diversify forms of information dissemination to focus attention and participation on the Fatherland Front’s congress as well as deepen their understanding of the importance of the mass organisation and the great national solidarity.