week two

Day 12 in Saigon.

We've been transferred to a new living quarters. The owner of the old house kicked us out after having found out from one of the locals that one of us tenants has brought a girl home. and guess who it was, the smart-talking Canadian guy who apparently didn't know that bringing chicks home was against Viet house rules. who would've known anyway. tough luck for him. he looked so guilty it made me actually want to say something nice.

it's okay, no one cares anyway.

that might be a lie. because stories like that are ALWAYS fodder for gossip.

if it weren't for him, though, we wouldn't have been moved to a decent hotel. compared to the old one, the new living quarters almost feels like home--my own tv and bathroom, functioning air-conditioning (in the old place the aircon was a friggin prop), nice warm bed, warm water in the shower. thanks to your hormones, jeremy, we now have a nice place to stay in.

hay, saigon.

two days to go before the shoots start. no formal production meetings yet. that's so weird, because back in the philippines before the shoots begin a production meeting would always be in order. and in this case, i think it's needed. sa mga rehearsals pa lang, it's a tower of babel whenever everyone talks. kaya good luck na lang sa aming lahat pag shoot na.

new vietnamese phrases picked up:
xin loi = sorry
bau nieu = how much is this?
em oy = something like "miss"
anh oy = something like "missus"
chi oy = something like "mister"

vietnamese is so hard to understand. it's a lot like the chinese language in the sense that both are tonal (meanings of phrases and words change depending on what tone you use), but it uses the "conventional" alphabet. at least. i'd rather learn french. hah. another challenge. at least may interes ako.

politics at work, as always. two opposing parties, power struggles, creative struggles., a writer/producer who wants to direct, a director who listens to too many voices. hay. better to stay out of it and stick to what i need to do.