Posting remains difficult so I must be brief. Our first day in Saigon we did indeed drive out to the Cu Chi tunnel complex outside the city. During the wars against the French and the US the people in that area of the country built a tunnel system to shelter them against enemy soldiers and…
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OK, I can only get on the internet for 20, 30 seconds at a time, and I can’t get WordPress to upload photos. I don’t feel like going down to the lobby to use the business center so this will have to do for the moment. Rush hour in Saigon. I’m sorry you’ll have to…
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The flight from Charlotte to LAX seems about a month ago. And what with the time difference and passing over the date line, maybe it was. I sat between two teenagers–a dude who read surfer mags and did Sudoku and a girl maybe 13 who wore fuzzy sweats the color of Tweety Bird. I managed…
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The flight to Charlotte took an hour and about 20 minutes of that felt like we were inside a tin can filled with BBs. Turbulence, I mean to say. Nothing too hairy, but there was one moment descending through the clouds when we WHOOOSHED up about ten feet and, yes, that got my attention. Landing…
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My alarm rang at 7AM sharp and I hit the snooze. "Why get up now?" I asked myself as I snuggled under the covers. "How ’bout another warm, toasty hour?" But if there’s a day when being a wee bit sleepy might be a good thing, today’s the day. We’re heading to Vietnam this afternoon,…
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The Pirates today bought out the contract of right-handed reliever Byung-Hyun Kim. This comes about a month after the Pirates signed Kim to that contract. That was in and of itself a bit of sketch comedy–the Bucs and Kim reached an agreement, but five days passed before Kim actually signed on the line which is…
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From my cousin, a news flash. Now, I understood that the Vietnamese are more fastidious about their dress than we filthy Westerners. I knew that there would be times when I’d have to wear khakis and long-sleeved shirts in 90-degree/85% humidity conditions. If history has taught us anything, it’s that the Mean Gene can deal….
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In my previous post I quoted a few lines from Richard Thompson’s fantastic song "Sibella". One problem–I didn’t quote from the song. I quoted from a website that posts lyrics of millyuns and millyuns of songs. Now, the lines I copied and pasted aren’t that far off from the lyrics posted in the liner notes–there’s…
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Richard Thompson is one of my favorite singers and the other day I picked up his album Mock Tudor, which features two of my favorite songs of all time–"Bathsheba Smiles" and "Uninhabited Man". After listening to the album about a dozen times the last few days I can add the song "Sibella" to my list…
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I write this nestled comfortably at the Fox and Hound, watching my Kansas Jayhawks (they’re mine because I picked them to go all the way) put on a clinic. Scary good team. At three my Pitt Panthers (they’re mine because I’m from Pittsburgh and got my MBA there) will send Oral Roberts to their eternal…
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