In Hanoi in stores and stalls selling Vietnamese books, there were a lot of familiar titles. See below for photos.
Vietnamese banknotes
Whenever I visit a foreign country, I try to collect one each of all the bills and coins in use; my husband also likes to have a set of his own, so I assembled one for him this time too. Nine different bills! Six polymer and three paper.
Since the coins aren’t worth much, I didn’t run across any in use. I did see some at a stall selling postcards, stamps, and other items of interest to tourists, but they were glued on to a dirty old cardboard “collector’s album” with some undoubtedly fake/replica ancient coins and some random, beat-up coins from other countries (including an American penny next to a label that said it was a nickel). No thanks.
Since the Wikipedia article on Vietnamese banknotes doesn’t let you see the images of the banknotes (you have to click a bunch of links to another site), I’ve scanned mine and posted them below.
The 200k note shows Ha Long Bay, and the 100k note shows a gate at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, two locations I’ve now seen in person.
Embroidered flag patches
This is the current state of my collection of embroidered flag patches. (They’re all about the same size and quality now, yay!)
The ones in plastic bags are all ones I just bought in Vietnam.
These are all flags from countries I’ve visited (except that I haven’t been to Malaysia, the Philippines, or Mexico overnight, and one is the Buddhist flag).
China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Japan, Korea
India, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Buddhism, ,
Laos, Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand,
Cambodia, Myanmar, Myanmar (old), Malaysia, Indonesia,
UK, Spain, Portugal, France, Hungary, Germany
I also have flag patches for cities and states I’ve lived in, plus the US, plus a variety of other embroidered patches for sites, places, brands, and institutions.
I would like to have flag patches for:
- Italy (+ Vatican City)
- Honduras
- UAE (no overnight visit)
- England
- …any other countries I visit in the future!
Small little bowl from Vietnam
This bowl came from a shop called Maroon (156 Hang Bong St).
The price was VND 88,000 (about S$5.50).
They had a lot of other pieces with a similar glaze.
It’s impressive that the shop has custom-printed shopping bags.
On the other hand, nobody really proofread them…
interior design – glhtware – homeware
– Wooden furnitures, sofa, curtains
– Giftware, homeware, ceramics, silk,
Lacquers…
Six Little Princes
I’m fascinated by books that transmit knowledge and culture across language barriers, which is why I have whole shelves of familiar books in unfamiliar languages. (I’m not crazy; I’m erudite! At least that’s what I keep telling myself.)
One of the books I own in multiple languages is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Above are copies in Lao(atian), Khmer (the language of Cambodia), Vietnamese, Portuguese, the original French, and Italian.
I bought the Lao and Khmer copies at Monument Books in Vientiane in 2015; I just recently bought the Vietnamese one at one of the three Artbook locations in Hanoi; I bought the Portuguese one in Porto, Portugal, in 2004. I unknowingly kicked off the habit of buying Le Petit Prince in other languages when I bought the Italian one in Italy in 2002. I probably bought the English version between 1999 and 2004.
The French copy is the one I used when I was a senior in high school. The book, designed for students, includes a glossary at the back, but I added footnotes.
Do I have an English translation of Le Petit Prince? Yes, but it’s not in the photo because it’s in a box with a bunch of other books we don’t have shelves for. There is more than one such box.
UPDATE: I have seven different English translations of The Little Prince and I have made a post comparing all 10 English translations!
Vietnam (November 2016)
My husband attended the APLAS conference and the workshop that followed. I went along for fun.
See below for photos from this week-long trip (about 200 of them).
Smaragdgrün (2016)
I should have paid attention to that little word “finally” in the synopsis. The fact that this is the third movie in a trilogy explains a lot. I had no idea. I just thought it would be fun to watch a German movie about time-traveling teenagers.
In any case, I should have known it wouldn’t be much fun to watch a fantasy movie—especially a widescreen version of one—on a screen that’s only maybe eight inches across. Not only did I have a hard time appreciating the costumes and special effects, I had a hard time reading the subtitles.
I can still say I enjoyed listening to the movie, though!
Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot (2015)
aka They Call Me Jeeg Robot (2015)
The Italian language is beautiful. This movie is not.
Blood, death… more blood, more death…
I mean sure, the thief with a heart (and watch) of gold saves the day, inspired by the manic pixie dream girl, but the path drips with gore. I liked the villain almost as much as I liked the protagonist, if not more. The villain’s music video was maybe the best part of the whole movie, even though it involved quite a lot of death. I mean, you gotta hand it to the guy. He had style.
Though I’m not interested in seeing any more movies about this superhero, the ending of this one made it seem like it was the origin story for a series.
Value life
Terrible photo, great advice. In four languages.
Value Life. Act Responsibly.
In context, the message means: do not jump in front of the MRT train.
The sign has no doubt been there a while. It used to be that the above-ground MRT stations had exposed tracks; now they have these gates that only open when the train arrives.
Still, we are reminded that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Update (22 Nov 2017): Here’s a more cheerful looking photo:
IKEA opens daily
I’ve posted about errors in signs declaring business hours before. A giant European home furnishings company you may have heard of is among the businesses that have gotten it wrong.
Why should the phrase be “open daily” and not “opens daily”? Because one is idiomatic and one isn’t; or if you prefer, “open daily” has been idiomatic longer, since the sign is, itself, evidence that “opens daily” has become idiomatic in Singlish.
The best I can do for a usage citation is a couple of dictionary entries for “daily”, which give “open daily” as an example, suggesting that this is the most natural and intuitive phrase, as far as dictionary writers are concerned.
Then there’s the fact that the phrase “opens daily” gets Google 253,000 hits whereas “open daily” gets 10,800,000. The images for “opens daily”, in comparison to the images for “open daily”, are telling, too.
(New can of worms: I see that there are signs for “open everyday”, which should be “every day” because “everyday” is an adjective…)
Leaving aside calls to authority and statistics, the syntactic difference is interesting. “Open daily” uses “open” as an adjective, and “opens daily” uses “open” as a verb. We want to know when the business is open. We do not care when the door of the business is opened by some employee with a key. The emphasis is misplaced.
There is a further confusion lurking under the surface, which is that when we do use “open” as a verb for a business, we sometimes mean it in the sense of “to launch” or “to open for the first time”. So the phrase “opens daily” makes it sound like maybe the business is having a grand opening every day, which is ridiculous. Grand openings are not everyday occurrences.
You can use “open” as a verb if you really want, especially in a sentence rather than as a notice on a sign. But I think the verb needs a strong contextual justification.
Example Business
Opens at 9:00 a.m.
Closes at 5:00 p.m. Monday to Thursday
Closes at 3:00 p.m. on Friday
The Ikea sign is particularly bad because of the colon.
Opens Daily: 10am to 11pm
The text suggests that the door is opening (and closing) continuously from ten in the morning to eleven at night! Why? Because there are two adverbs modifying the verb “opens”: the word “[once] daily” and the phrase “[from] 10am to 11pm”. The first can legitimately indicate when the business opens; but the second is meant to say when the business is open.
This is what I think the sign should say:
Open Daily
10 a.m. to 11 p.m.
