Productivity Redefined

On Thursday, I had a plan. And it went something like this. Take bus 54 to the park on Dien Bien Phu, walk over to the bike stores on Vo Thi Sau to see if they have bike pumps, from there walk to Pasteur where I saw those shops selling household items for a dust pan and brush, then on to Select Supermarket at Saigon Center for some spices. From there, I would walk to the bag store near Ben Thanh Market for that bag I'd seen, then over to the electronics store for the DVD player I picked out for Steven's birthday, then take Bus #1 to Tran Hung Dao near where our friends live to check out the cheap massage places, then walk over to Nguyen Van Cu Bookstore for some silver and gold pens for Steven's homework star board and finally home. I figured it would be a success if I managed to accomplish half of my list and that it would take me 4 to 5 hours to do it all.

I futzed around in the morning answering emails and straightening up the apartment and got out around noon, after a quick lunch of left over stir-fry.

I walked over to Nguyen Trai, one street over to catch the 54 and was soon on my way. The bus ride to the park on Tran Hung Dao takes about 15 minutes and once I saw the park, I made my way off the bus. I walked over to Vo Thi Sau, one street over and wandered down the street until I found a bike store. I walked into the first bike store I saw, took out the faulty pump we had bought a few weeks earlier and a spare tire tube, held them both up to the man in the shop and shook my hand in the rapid "so-so" gesture we have come to learn communicates something in the negative. In this instance, I was saying, "I have this pump and I have this tube, but I can't get the pump to blow up the tube."

The man took the pump from me immediately, nodding as if to say, "Yes, I understand completely." He then said something in Vietnamese to a boy in the shop, who disappeared into the back. While the boy was gone, the man looked at me and pantomimed cutting off the nozzle of the pump where it connects to the tire. The boy then returned with a pair of scissors and the man proceeded to cut the nozzle off of my pump. He then put the now nossleless end of the hose onto the tube stem and proceeded to pump air into the tube. After showing me how it worked, he handed me back both the pump, the tube and the dislocated nozzle, pantomiming throwing the latter in the trash before handing it to me. Because our problem had not been that we couldn't get the pump to pump air in the tire, but that it wasn't powerful enough to pump enough air into the tire to get 100% pressure, I continued our conversation. I held up the tube and held up my fist and squeezed it tight, trying to convey, "very very hard," and then pointed to the pump in my other hand with a questioning glance. The man pointed to an inflated tire on a bike nearby and felt it showing me how hard it was and then pointed to my pump and nodded. I smiled and uttered the first spoken word in our conversation, "Cam On;" thank you in Vietnamese.

After leaving the tire shop, I walked down to Pasteur towards the kitchen shops. The first shop had a small ironing board for 50,000 ($3.25), porcelain soup spoons for 8,000 ($.50) but they did not have a sweeping brush and pan, so I moved on to the next shop. The second shop keeper was much more opportunistic than the first and showed me a salt and pepper shaker for 140,000 ($8.50), resulting in my immediate departure from his shop. I was tempted to go back and buy something from the first guy just because he was fair in his pricing.

From the kitchen shop, I stopped for a woman selling rambutans, my favorite fruit for 12,000 a kilo, much better than the 30,000 a kilo they try to get near our apartment, and continued on to Saigon Center.

At Saigon Center I spent about $13 at Select Supermarket on rosemary, cayenne pepper, coriander, cumin, Thai green curry mix and some fresh basil. From Saigon Center, I walked over to the bag store near Ben Thanh and was disappointed to see that someone had purchased the orange bag I was hoping to find, but I settled on a black bag that was probably more practical for $10, a price I thought was a little high until I looked the bag up online and saw that it sells for $84!

From the bag store, I walked over to the electronics store and picked up the JVC DVD player I had picked out as a joint gift from my parents and myself for Steven the week before after days of comparison shopping, looking up player reviews online and asking my parents to check into their store of Consumer Reports.

I had hoped to put the DVD player in my bag, but it was too big to fit, so I walked across the street and boarded the #1 bus with my backpack purse, my new black bag and a big DVD box. I decided on the way home that I would go straight to the apartment and then head back out to Tran Hung Dao not wanting to walk all over with all of my bags.

Back at the apartment, I unlocked all of our locks, put everything down (hiding the DVD player in one of our suitcases in the empty room) and headed back out. I took the #1 bus back to Tran Hung Dao and got off near where our friends live. I checked into one salon where I found they offered 60 minute massages for $8 and then wandered down a bit more to see if there were others. Not finding any other shops, I stopped into what looked like a second hand clothing shop with clothes piled high on a big table in the middle of a small room not much bigger than our kitchen. I asked the girl if they were second hand and she said no, quoting me 40,000 (less than $3) for a shirt I had picked out. Having seen shirts for over 200,000 in the stores, I happily paid for my new shirt, before making my way to Nguyen Van Cu Bookstore and buying Steven's pens and a pack of candles for the birthday cake I planned to buy the following day.

After all that, I arrived home at 3:00, just three hours after I had left, quite pleased with my productivity.