Dogs, Groceries and Security

The title is just to remind me what I wanted to talk about. Normally I have no idea what to title these so 67% of the time it's totally at random.

Last night I was up till 3am watching American Dad and I planned to get up a little early so I'd be tired tonight, go to bed early and wake up at a decent time. This plan was trashed by morning Jay, who has the ability to see and understand what time it is, disarm multiple alarm clocks, even if he has to walk across the room, crawl back into bed and when he does wake up, he has no idea what he's done! That happened and I woke up around 1pm haha. You know if you're having a really good dream but then you wake up? I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep and reset everything the way it was. Sadly it didn't work out haha.

I stayed in bed until 3pm because I found an online Vietnam War game. It's not great, you have a combat platoon, so about 20 troops (during peace time a platoon is full with 40 troops and an officer) and you're outside a village and all your troops have traits, some are good at observation so they can see Cong before others, some have shitty aim, etc. The only constant that you have is an RTO, Radio Telephone Operator but everyone else is random. You have to keep your RTO alive or you can't call for artillery, air support, gun ships or resupply. What sucks is that on average you can call three times. The horrible thing is when you call for artillery or an air strike, it's all random. You start off with about 20 guys, I called for an air-strike and I lost 15 haha. Your guys have a mix of weapons, mostly M14's and M16s. You usually get a sniper, a SF guy or a medic, which doesn't have the ability to heal people. It's a cheap game from newgrounds.com so it's not perfect but kills time. Anyways the point is you have to take over the village and after you do, you have to fight inside it as afterwords you face human wave attacks from the Viet Cong. The shitty thing is by the time you clear the village you have like 5 guys left, then a wave of 20 enemy troops come. It sucks haha.

Anyways I played that, got my fruit salad, it pissed rain so I came back here, headed out for supper at the Vincom Centre, the big 6 story mall and went to Carl Jr's which is like an American fast food place. I got a monster of a hamburger, fries and a strawberry milk shake, but it cost me $10CDN so I can't eat there anymore.

On that floor there's a supermarket, so I figured I'd check it out. Eric and Mitchell will be happy because Vietnam doesn't have Dr. Pepper. They have Dr. Thanh, Vietnamese doctor that's fizzy and has the cure for hydration, with Thanh! I mean Pep! haha. I've been craving coconut and viva puffs but there not here. I got some a Twix bar which tastes different and made in Australia. The ones at home have more of a cookie crunch while these tasted like they were soft shortbread. Still awesome, but different. M&M's for some reason cost a fortune, well maybe not but there a dollar more than the Snickers, Mars bars, Twix, etc. I picked up some Lime Mirinda which is really good! I got Maltesers,  a TimTam which is some chocolate and strawberry wafer, Mana which look like aeroroot cookies with strawberry filling and Cream-O's which are like Peak Freans cookies or as I called "Freaking Pete's". I was talking to Jackie about it last night and yea, I'm comfortable trying western like foods to see how the Vietnamese rates at copying them, but fruit and veggies I won't test out. One thing looks like a green strawberry with sharp claws. That's not entering my body haha.

At the supermarket they have about 5 security guys constantly walking around. I also had to lock up my ARVN backpack so I wouldn't steal anything. Glad they didn't make me take my cargo shorts with all it's pockets too, as I gave up boxers weeks ago. Doesn't make sense in a tropical environment haha. But yea, I think it's interesting how in a shopping mall there's like 200 security guards, but next to no police presence, especially in a communist country. Seeing Russia with tanks driving down the street on CNN I figured here would be super secure but I guess not. Most security guys are only armed with FRS radios, but tourist security guys, the christmas green uniforms they carry the same thing Raphael on the Ninja Turtles had, it's like a 4" Sai, like metal cactus or an ice pick with two smaller ones coming off the base. It's crazy, who carries that? Sure it can be defencive, but it's tiny. Why not a baton or something? Aw well.

Dogs. It's weird, there's like 3 main dogs here, and it's like their from the same family. One female gave birth to two pups. They mated and make two more, they mated and two more etc. Their cute but they look like somethings wrong with them. The one near my hotel reminds me of a gremlin because it has a weird overbite and looks goofy. I cross town and there's the same dog, just different colour. They all seem to be mutts. Yesterday I saw a chiwawa with a sweater. We're in Vietnam! That should be animal cruelty haha. Anyways tonight I might watch "Men Who Stare At Goats" and tomorrow I don't really have any plans, other than waking up at a decent time! Take care.