Friday

Oh yeah. I meant to mention this yesterday. On my way to the newly Deli Saigon, the house coughed up the first card of my third Saigon Stud poker hand: the torn-but-complete Six diamonds, an inauspicious middle card. Is my winning streak heading south? Luck be a lady this week. Today was the day of the great Christmas Party in the first floor lounge of our apartment building. This was not a work, but a home-related, party. Therefore it was full of strangers--our Japanese and Australian and Vietnamese neighbors--who we were expected to mingle with. Come and meet your neighbors, the sign said, from seven until late. Good food fantastic prizes, it added. This good news was somewhat lessened by our raffle ineligibility. Apparently, we were supposed to keep the gaudy invite. It isn't as if we don't have a lease, but that must be difficult to fit into the oblong box full of names. Too bad: a weeklong vacation getaway to Nha Trang* beach really is a pretty fantastic prize. Less accurate was the sign's description of meeting people, since everyone cliqued immediately into groups composed of those most comfortable screaming at one another over the half karaoke-half Filipino cover band booming under the psycho lights. Nor was the sign all that consistent with my understanding of the word late. This is Saigon. Any night I knock off at four am I can catch a taxi to an illegally open District One bar and drink till sunup (or so I hear). And yet at nine pm on the nose, two hours after the party started, the band packed up and I realized we were already some of the very few people left in the room. Though we could amiably talk among ourselves, if we wanted. [Cavin]