Progress, Statistics, Chickens and the Hunt for the Great White Whale

Like most people, I have a penchant for lists, statistics, categories…and whisky; things like, if you arranged 1000 chickens vertically, one on top of the other, it would be the exact height of the tallest building in Ho Chi Minh City, not taking into account the gravity factor of course. This kind of thinking is useful because it allows us to apply our knowledge of a known concept, say, chickens, onto something less familiar, say, the urban infrastructure of a city in Southern Vietnam. If we can use knots to measure speed, why not chickens as a gauge to measure unnecessarily tall buildings?

Most things in Ho Chi Minh City, indeed, in life, are not 100% verifiable and this fact is no exception to the rule. And, even if it was, a fact only remains a fact until enough people who are ‘in the know’ decide that it was a fact, but no longer is and replace it with another fact, supposedly more factually accurate than the first. The whole process is complex, messy and doesn’t bear thinking about. So this chicken statistic remains one of the great urban myths of this great city. Just the thing for people to debate in cafes whilst staring up into the heavens. I don’t speak Vietnamese, but I can just imagine what they’re saying, looking up at this gleaming new skyscraper, “You know, I’ve heard it said that if you were to place 1000 ordinary chickens…”

These things help us to define our reality and, indeed, define ‘progress’. Humans have a great desire to document, which is why the internet has so quickly enmeshed us all: it is, among other things, one great personal digital archive of our lives; it is the great human story. Future historians will have a field day digging up this digital treasure trove. I mean, who wouldn’t? February 12th 2011: Dave updates that he is enjoying his Sunday off and has just toasted a muffin. And, right there, next to the status update is a picture of said muffin; future archaeologists will be enthralled. Unless they are of a species different from ourselves, in which case, they will be astonished at how completely wrapped up in ourselves humans were. Which is why everyone should upload the stories of their lives. But, aside from the few who either have interesting lives, exceptional writing skills or furtive imaginations, reading most of this drivel is nothing more than mindless distraction.

Which leads me to the next two important points: I too intend to write my life story, though not exactly factual. It if were the truth, it could be called an expose´, in which case, almost everyone I know would disown me. This is what the educators and concerned parents call ‘oversharing’ and should best be avoided. Also, I bring up the subject of Ho Chi Minh City because, by some strange twist of fate, I find myself back here again. This is not the first time I have lived in the city of the famed 1000-chicken-high skyscraper. Even more impressive is the somewhat verifiable fact, that this is the 16th time I have moved to live in a different city and/or country and/or continent in the past 22 years. I’ve lived and worked in Europe, Africa, Australia and four countries in Asia. I am what may be categorised as a career, or, at least long term, global interloper and, in this, I am not alone. There are many of us out there…interloping…and trying to get good deals on girls and cheap scotch.

If I were to plot these movements onto a map, it would resemble a scribble done by a nine-year-old with Attention Deficiency Disorder…or the handiwork of a Vietnamese cable guy. This graphic representation would be, perhaps, the best way to truly represent the mess I have made of things; a bar graph just wouldn’t do it justice. Each new apartment contract, visa, residency permit, each new language I attempt to negotiate are all recorded, documented in the lines around my eyes, themselves looking a little like scribbles done by a nine-year-old.

Why so many moves? Needless to say, whatever it was that I was looking for, I’ve already found it and either didn’t see it, didn’t recognize it, sold it, drank it or killed it. Could it be the never-ending search for that great white whale that hovers like a mirage between the pages of a Joseph Conrad novel: exoticism? Exoticism is not an easy thing to live day to day. It can be like trying to capture the winds of Tarifa in a bottle, the small wind-blown city where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean and putting that bottle in your apartment in Bristol. Living exoticism is like trying to climb into the pages of an interior design magazine or ordering Mai Tais, Singapore Slings and Long Island Iced Teas everyday at 4pm, only to find that you’ve lost your job, spent all of your money and have become an alcoholic. Not that that would be a bad way to go.

Like an old jaded statue in a Chinatown shop window, I keep looking outside at the traffic, keeping watch…in case I miss anything. Perhaps I have an insatiable curiosity? Or just an insatiable fear of commitment. Which brings me here, now, to yet another café which just happens to be in the exact geographical centre of Saigon only a stones throw from that 1000-chicken-high building. Saigon, a city literally bursting its seams with a zest for life, a city that doesn’t sleep until at least 11pm (10pm on weeknights).

How many cafes has it been? How many bordellos, cathouses, gin joints, vodka bars, wine bars, beer houses? How many dens of iniquity, shops of antiquity, cafes of ubiquity? And what do I have to show for it? Artifacts. Artifacts and sore feet. Certainly not money. I would like to say that I amassed a fortune along the way, to give some hope to future interloping generations, but all of those Mai Tais and Singapore Slings cost money. If the success of a life requires it be measured in the accumulation of wealth, I have truly failed. Instead, I have ornate tissue packets from Japan, smooth lacquer boxes from Burma, ink-black hair cut from a Vietnamese girl while she slept (in fact I still have the whole Vietnamese girl), rosemary beads from Seville, a pillow cover from Morocco, a bottle opener from a bar in Korea…small things easily shipped.

Moving to a new country is like a shot in the arm. It is a way of seeing life fresh again, a painful and challenging, but endlessly rewarding way of deconstructing and reconstructing new versions of my reality, of identity. I guess it is some kind of progress, but, like the mirage itself that I keep looking for, not easily measured.