Generational Resignations

 It wasn't a pretty line across the scoreboard of Kaufman Stadium. Image from the Kansas City Star.

My dad and I had to pass each other condolences after the Kansas City Royals lost 19-1 to the Minnesota Twins on Monday.  My parents had the misfortune of choosing that evening to go to the ballpark.  This is what bonds fathers and sons in America: the shared joys and sufferings of baseball.  Somewhere a man and a boy marveled at Joe Mauer's 5-hit, 7-RBI performance.  We shrugged our shoulders and remembered that the Royals haven't enjoyed a winning season since 2003.

A love for baseball must be instilled in a child early.  The video below salutes fathers committed to raising their kids right. 

The Show Goes on in HCMC

The historic and the modern live together in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. The Continental Hotel and municipal theater in front of a new glass tower.

As mentioned in an earlier post the Passengers loved staying at the Hotel Continental Saigon, not least because of its great location overlooking the old opera house. The grand edifice for the performing arts still operates as the municipal theater, but we did not know about their morning concert series. At about 7:00 am last Saturday we woke up to the sounds of a team setting up and testing microphones and speakers. This is nothing extraordinary in a southeast Asian city. In Singapore most companies believe they must erect a 200-watt sound system blasting techno-pop to simply pass out flyers.

Motorbikes zip past the facade of the municipal theater on a Saturday morning.

A little after 8:00 we decided to make our way downstairs to the hotel courtyard for breakfast, but we decided first to go outside and see in the daylight a bit of what we missed after arriving late the previous night. The constant motor-scooter traffic had already begun, but at the center of the bustle atop the theater steps sat a row of musicians dressed in bright silks and playing traditional instruments. Most amusingly, the setup of the performance had turned the chaos of the city to its advantage. Everyone was welcome to attend, and the surest way to find a seat -- park up your motorbike.  An improvised array of spectators had brought their own transport and furniture.  After this demonstration of city dwellers taking time for a bit of art and enjoying themselves in do-it-yourself fashion, we knew we would enjoy Ho Chi Minh City. 

A crowd gathers to watch an outdoor concert on a Saturday morning at the municipal theater in Ho Chi Minh City.

Musicians play under the caryatid columns of the municipal theater in HCMC.

The Building Scene in Ho Chi Minh City

A man watches the street below from the center balcony of this colonial development.  Electrical wiring remains an ad hoc affair in HCMC.

The history of Vietnam has indelibly marked the city of Ho Chi Minh/Saigon both in its name and its architecture.  The country's long coastline provided plenty of opportunity for Chinese and other merchants to visit and settle.  Unfortunately, the Passengers did not get to visit the Vinh Nghiem Pagoda on this trip.  The French operated Vietnam as a colony for about one hundred years and transformed the city with Parisian boulevards and art deco tastes.  

The city's cathedral, built in 1880 and dedicated to Notre Dame with the new Diamond plaza tower in the background.

This art deco building along Nguyen Hue lives on as a deli restaurant called Kita Coffee.

What Vietnamese call the "American War" (what else should they call it?) destroyed plenty but left its own  cultural artifacts.  Latterly, the socialist state that emerged after 1975 had its own architectural preferences and uses for existing buildings, but it has not shunned development in recent decades.  The city changes; the city remains.  It all makes for great sights just walking around downtown District 1.  

I will save the pictures of the old opera for another post, but there are plenty of pictures to see after the jump.  Click the link below left.

Time Capsule Hotel

The Continental Hotel Saigon in central Ho Chi Minh City opened in 1880.

The Passengers just returned from a weekend in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  We had a great time discovering a vibrant and changing city, and we will be sure to write future posts about our trip.  First, I wanted to provide a few images of our hotel, a relic of both French colonialism and the wars of the 1960's and 1970's.

The saucers and place settings at breakfast are like a breezy French cafe, but the coffee mugs are very American.  

The Hotel Continental Saigon was opened in 1880 by Pierre Cazeau on what was then called Rue Catinat, now Dong Khoi Street. The operation was later run by the mobster Mathier Francini until Saigon became part of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1975.  It looks like a huge colonial pile, and it featured as a central location for conspiratorial politicking during the country's troubles in the twentieth century.  Journalists and media reporters often stayed here.  Undoubtedly many swapped stories that never made the record.  Look for the hotel in Graham Greene's The Quiet American (both book and movie) or the film Indochine.

The courtyard cafe during breakfast.

The hotel stands beside the central plaza next to the old opera house.  Our balcony faced onto the plaza.  The whole affair was built with open-air corridors and double-height ceilings to help guests manage the tropical climate.  However, the anachronism that struck me most was the application of the hotel's mid-century logo everywhere.  The hotel's arms appear on the coffee cups, the ash trays, the towels, and even the tags of the bedding.  It's a piece of branding from a bygone era.

A corridor in the Continental Hotel Saigon.

Overall, we had a fantastic stay at the Continental and found all the amenities and services up to a very high standard.  The remnants from previous eras of traveling made our experience in 2010 an adventure in time as well as place.  For more images of the hotel, click the link below left.

Real Estate Offers

Look, an invitation to a "VVIP Private Preview" from Jones Lang LaSalle.  I might have felt we were part of an exclusive set if the advert actually included our name or address.  Nevertheless "Bring along this mailer to enjoy your early-bird promotion."

A couple months ago I wrote about the fevered sport of real estate here in Singapore.  Loads of people want to invest in property, and even government-built flats are selling for record amounts.  Consequently, estate agents are not shy about soliciting potential buyers.  One day last week I opened the mail box to discover three flyers advertising new buying opportunities.  These do not come with names or even addresses; they are as anonymous as coupons for pizza delivery.  Sadly none offered up off-plan condominiums in Mongolia.

The Far East Organization is building Miro, and it is practically around the corner.  This advert opens to invite us to a Saturday brunch at the Miro Sales Gallery.  FEO also does not indicate they know our names.  1,250 square-foot units start at S$2.8 million (USD 2.04 million/GBP 1.33 million).

Savills hopes we will invest in a London, buy-to-let with "estimated rental yields of up to 5.5%."  Prices begin at GBP 305,000 so we should bring ourselves to their exhibition at the Hilton Singapore on Orchard Road.

Further Troublesome English

I recently laughed at the words chosen in translating from Japanese into English an online booking form for a Tokyo ryokan.  This is rather unfair because the person who undertook the translation did his task fairly successfully, and native English speakers are not much better themselves.  Here is the letter of instruction I received with my absentee ballot for the Missouri 2010 primaries.

Please read your ballot instructions carefull.

The computer's spell-check function could have presented this mistake.

Chicken!

The signboard for an eatery in the basement of our local mall.

Part of the love of food here in Singapore includes a somewhat overly enthusiastic demand for chicken, preferably fried.  In the mall around the corner from our flat, Novena Square/Velocity, there are several imported imported chicken outlets.  This is in addition to multiple mom-and-pop chicken rice stalls.

KFC has prospered in Asia.  The image of the venerable and inscrutable colonel welcomes diners to a KFC outlet on the ground floor.

The big American fast-food brands can really thrive here, but the affection for mass produced poultry means that even obscure or regional American franchises can do well in Singapore.  Our mall is soon to add a Popeyes.  Most confusingly, there sits upstairs at the mall a Kenny Rogers Roasters restaurant.  I thought that corporate venture went bust and disappeared sometime in the 1990's.

I am counting down to savoury biscuits coming to our neighborhood.  Popeyes already has at least two other locations in Singapore.  This one will open along the street-level shops of Novena Square.

Somehow the Gambler he broke even here in Singapore.  The third floor of Velocity.

Of course, these chicken locations are in addition to the Burger King and Long John Silver's fast-food outlets in the mall.

Existential Evening Plans

Screen grab from an online reservation form for a Tokyo ryokan.

The Passengers are planning a trip to Japan next month, and I am doing my best to hunt down a traditional Japanese bed-and-breakfast, or ryokan, for our stay.  These places sometimes also serve dinner to visitors so when I entered our meal preferences on the enquiry form above I was faced with a startling choice: large, medium, small, existential.  Click the image for a detailed view.