On Languages

This a piece I wrote a long time ago and I think it never got published anywhere (not as far as I can remember) so here it is:

Learn English! Learn Spanish! Learn French!
Brightly colored billboards dot highways, city streets, town alleys all over the world. They promise you a job, a better life, the entire world in an unreasonable span of time. Their lurid colors and bold fonts mask the dismalness of your life and firmly position language as your exit path to the promised land. Language, not for love, not for life, but to escape.

I’ve always loved languages, because they allow me to lament. To lament the loss that was given to me in my childhood and has carried me all the way to my adulthood. This is the companion of a lifetime, more constant than any loves and hatreds. At this point in my life I have lost an entire country and several cities and the counting hasn’t stopped. Of course, I must not be unfair. If I look at the scorecard, there are countless additions as well. Researchers claim that women have a richer vocabulary than men; feel free to blame my voraciousness on that. All I ask is that you allow me to put you in the category of people who need gender binaries to navigate the world. A stereotype for a stereotype is only fair.

Medium

Now trying something new. I'm still here and kicking, it has just been a few full weeks (this is one of my personal favorites and I sent it for publishing twice but with little to no luck - everyone wanted me to change something and I did not want to change anything :))

https://medium.com/@ShrewTea/on-loss-and-language-20eedba7d178#.v4llqoa37

Getting to Hue

Our trip to Hue was full of adventures. Adventures that began even before our flight took off. We had booked VietJet flights since it is comparatively inexpensive. I definitely had a ton of luggage and was worried about excess baggage but the website told us 32 kgs! Yay because the limit was 23 kgs when I flew from the States and boy did that get me into trouble even with planning. We went to the VietJet counter outside at the terminal to figure out baggage limits and turns it out it was 25 kgs per person and 7 kgs for hand baggage (which they weigh - this is the first time I saw that happening. I think I flew in almost 15 kgs from Minneapolis (at no point could I lift the suitcase I had on person, even with all my muscles and strength). The lady at the counter spoke little English and we, well, we speak no Vietnamese. She kept asking us how much our luggage weighs and we kept saying we need weighing scales and this went on for a while.