Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day. And, since we've been on vacation during a particularly busy ten days, happy Super Bowl Sunday, happy Mardi Gras Super Tuesday, and happy New Year of Earth and Rat. We arrived home from New Delhi yesterday afternoon, just about an hour-and-a-half later than expected. It's always interesting coming home to our exciting country, especially from as exciting a country as India. Both places are very unlike the US, and also unlike each other. But I'm far more comfortable here, after almost four months, than I was in India. So while many people would suffer similar culture shock in either place, I only get it there. Stepping into the dry nineties outside Tân Sơn Nhất Airport, accosted by taxi stand attendants and the ever-present raucous airport crowd--even hustling my way through customs and immigration taciturnity and into the mad chaos of aggressive street traffic--was like sinking into an armchair compared to leaving through Indira Gandhi International Airport, though were I to write why it would be another list of all the very same things differentiated only by familiarity. Don't get me wrong: I had a wonderful vacation. New Delhi and I eventually became good friends, and Indian culture is as varied and wonderful as it is ageless. We saw all the expected stuff: elephant traffic, decorated cattle, city monkeys, camels, funny little cars that seemed to have changed not one whit since British assembly lines changed hands in the forties. We saw statues of blue people, people with many arms. The city was dusty and arid, and yet lushly green, too. It was cool in New Delhi even though it was sunny; at night it was cold. But New Delhi was not home, you know, not safe. And apparently Ho Chi Minh City is. [Cavin]