Spring has lightly skirted around New York. The weather is still chilly, but couldn't prevent people to hop around in shorts and spring fashion. I was caught more than once shivering outside due to deceiving sunshine, but refused to give up my mid-calf tight and oversized bright yellow Saint Norbert sweatshirt. It just feels so good to shed off thick layers of winter clothes, and I'm already in summer-mode.

February and March have been two months of lightheartedly silliness. A week after Vietnam, a very special friend of Yuko and I, Xue Lor, came to visit us in New York. A Hmong immigrant, Xue spent many years at a overcrowded refugee camp in Thailand before settling in Green Bay, Wisconsin. With shaved head and broad smile, Xue resembles a bear-hugged jolly Buddha who often whole-heartedly bends his head over so we can rub it for good luck.

Xue was a big brother to me at Saint Norbert, as he was big brother to everyone who needed help. Most often it's the richest guys and most coquettish girls who demanded the most attention and most easily forgot. He'd help them out anyway.

On my way out of the library, I often stopped by, and we'd talk for hours about finding identities, finding love, keeping love. We still do.

Funny how life sometimes throws us such sudden and lovely treat. Xue in New York has giantly and dramatically altered my world, in the most unexpected way. It turned out, a little nudge was all I needed.

"Here is your food, miss" - the delivery guy from the Vietnamese restaurant I ordered on Seamless Web handed me the plastic bag with a toothless smile. He wore a flurry hat with flaps covering his ears - the one we often fondly called "Russian hat", an oversized coat damp with the first New York snow, but no gloves. I could see clearly his red knuckles and cracked fingers. Outside, on his bike hastily leaned against the black marble wall of 1166 Avenue of the Americas, I saw dangling more plastic bags - he was on his usual delivery routine. But I have never noticed until now: his red sniffing nose, his shivering shoulders, the piercing cold of an indifferent winter in a rather indifferent city.

"Oh... it must be so cold outside." - I said almost apologetically, wishing I had brought more tips down.

"Yes, cold." - He nodded several times - "These, warm." - and pulled out a cigarette half smoked with a light laugh. I lingered to watch him: as soon as he exited the revolving door, he lighted the half-done cigarette, hunching his shoulders to shield it from the wind and took few satisfying deep puffs. Then he hopped onto the bicycle and pedaled away.

New York seemed to dissolved, and I could suddenly see myself, on a bicycle, wheeling away down the crooked pebble roads of New Orleans one winter night, a delivery girl.

I had to run to the bathroom to cry a little. And I wondered how had I forgotten all about it - my other life - the moment I started earning paychecks and swiping credit cards. Hard times...

Over dinner in the still busy office, I scrolled through my pictures from long long ago, and suddenly wondered what had happened to them - the friends I met and the friends I lost. Oleysha and Ivan, a poor but loving Russian couples from Wisconsin who shared with me their winter coat and home cooked dinner. The two little kids we met in a monastery in Tiksey, India whose hair were full of sand and who fell asleep so easily on the earth. The rich doctor family of Saint Charles residents who were rude and impatient, but kind enough to give me a ride for one and half year of high school. The Jamaican handy man with hope in his eyes, who I later learned has cheated on his wife and ran off to another Bahamas island...

All those people from a long time past which I do not want to relive, but know that it was much more poignant than the life I am now living.

Unless I could make this new, beautiful, comfortable, American-dream life as meaningful as I aspired it to be.

And so I pray - pray you remind me of the more important things worth living for...

Few weeks ago, as I was having dinner with Esther, Fumi and Craig to celebrate the close of our big - and my first - case, one of us brought up whether we enjoyed working better than school. We all agreed we did, though what Esther added startled me, "Working is great, though you tend to lose perspective. You know, when we start wearing suits we tend to inflate our importance. I bet you, if one day - phooof - I just disappear," she shrugged, "Manuel would be sad for a while, but he will survive. And Fred surely will find another consultant in no time." Manuel is Esther's boyfriend who she has dated for seven years, and Fred Dunbar is the founder of our securities practice, who often comments on Esther's efficiency.

The woman really got me thinking.

After two painful days of pure programming, I admitted she was right: should tomorrow comes and phoooff, I disappear, I wonder would anyone notice. Certainly not my landlord, since rent was just due last week.

A liberal art education really tries hard to pump our head that we are somebody, that little things we do in aggregation can have big impact, that we are at worst educated and responsible. Truth is, as I come to learn a little perspective, you and I are - no matter how much Nat King Cole insists - replaceable.

Replace-able. Re-p-la-ce-a-ble. I repeated the word out loud several times, a little overwhelmed.

After dinner, I shrugged and accepted it. I thought of a de-motivational poster Mug once showed me with pictures of a million snowflakes captioned "Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else."

And so, tonight, lying in bed with mismatching socks and messy hair, I kind of just... disappear.

Listen to the Bayou
Can you feel the blues
In my lonely heart…

“The Bayou is a river that moves with the ties,” Kaitlin’s dad explained to me as we drove along a branch of the Mississippi river that used to be a heavy trading route back in the days. I realize how often I use the phrase: back in the days when we used to go to Franklin, back in the days when Coach Firneno’d make girls bend over to check if their skirts were long enough, back in the days when we’d roll down Saint Charles on the streetcar named Desire and lazily sipped a paper cup of latte at the Café du Monde…

I dropped by 3437 Napoleon Ave at midnight. In the eerie chilly air, a lone streetlight casted my peeled shadow on the wall of a ghost town. The whole street was deserted. The little basement where 7 Vietnamese families used to live and fight over the bathroom now stood empty, its walls stripped down exposing molded beams, its floors dusty, still lingering the smell of stale water. I looked at my shawdow on the plastered wall and cried a little. Hard times...

3437 Napoleon Ave was never quiet on the bathroom front: something was always stuck, or missing - most often toilet paper. Someone (impossibled to identified, since there were at least 20 of us living in the space of 5) had hiden the toilet paper away, right on the day Elisa dropped by and had to pee. So we ran to the public library down the road and stole all of its toilet paper. Becky O'Malley - upon learning this - condemned us of stealing against the Catholic Archdiosese and the next day, brough me a package of 12 rolls, which lasted me till the day I left.

Becky was the first true American friend I had. Apparently she had noticed me thanks to the school bus incident. You see, I didn't belong to the yellow school bus that picked kids up from their houses. I usually took the public bus, but somehow that day I needed to get home fast. So I kinda just climbed on the yellow bus, hoping the lady wouldn't noticed. But of course she did, stopped the vehicle, and tried to kick me out. And well - I begged, please, i'm from Vietnam, I don't know how to get home, please take me. I must have reminded her of a strayed dog, because she let me stay. True, I was a strayed dog. In the back, Becky had a great laugh out of the incident, and noticed the next day that I was in her homeroom. So she asked me to come over her house to watch some animation.

I have too many stories to tell about Ben Franklin High School - its notorious green roof, the Rapuzel-haired Ms. Fontenot, Coach Firneno - an ex-marine who taught with a yard-long rulerstick and many many other characters that could have come straight from the satire The Confederacy of Dunces. Kaitlin Baudier took me back to Franklin the night before I left, so I could glue my nose to the glass door and squint at the status of Monsieur Benjamin, standing so proudly in the centre of the hallway, like he has always. Kaitlin is the female version of a true Huck Finn. Her famous Hess story goes like this: Mr. Hess - the economic teacher - always wore red socks. His classic pose: slumping in the armchair, arms folded, his feet on the table, red socks exposing, the corner of his mouth sagged down , ready to spit out sarcastic comments as the students poured into class. One day, Kaitlin realized she also had red socks on. So she pulled up a desk straight in front of his table, put her feet up and assumed the same pose. Hess said nothing but looked at her. They just sat there for 10 mins, red socks looking at each other. All the students pointed, laughed, talked, then got really quiet. Eventually, Kaitlin couldn't hold it anymore, so she broke out into a laugh. "Ha!" Hess said, put his feet down, and started the class.

Bruce was my first kiss - a 6 feet 4 muscular guy with a huge smile and goofy mind. Like Kaitlin, Bruce is the kind of kid that can sit down at all cafeteria tables (the Asian table, the Black table, the Gothic squatting group, the nerds) and would be welcomed. Everytime he saw me running down the hall, bookpack unzipped and notebooks spilling out, he'd pick me up with one arm, hailed me across his shoulder and carried me and my books to the next class. On weekend, he'd take us out on his beat-up truck - whose wheel was not even working unless you banged on it hard. We cruised down the water front, along the lake, veering left and right, bruised as we smashed side to side in the tight cabin.

One day, Kaitlin and Paoblo - a sturdy red-headed with a long beard - were fighting in the hall. Paoblo smashed Kaitlin's head, so she punched him in the stomach and pulled his beard down. Just their luck, Ms. Gills - the grumpy Creative Writing teacher - turned the corner and caught them. So, they stopped as quick as lightning, stood mellowly side by side like two innocent statues. Ms. Gills looked at them tentatively, and decided they were making out, so she gave them a PDA offense. Kaitlin later explained to her parents, "No, we were fighting, and Paoblo is dating a man right now!"

Apparently Paoblo has become gay - which was funny to me since he once asked me out on a date. James Page - my biggest high school crush - has also declared that he is gay. And Brian Pittman - the anime fanatic - got married and played a vampire movie in the church (the priest ran yelling, you cannot play images of the undead here!) Elisa and Kaitlin are now living in FEMA trailers because their houses were flooded. Ben Franklin has become a charter school. Ngoc has committed suicide. And Lanisha died last May of a brain tumor, after beling locked out by her crack-head boyfriend. I remember she was so pretty, the prettiest girl in school. I always bumped into her crying in the bathroom because her family did not approve their relationship ("he is white, but so what!")

And... life goes on.

Does Ms. Fontenot still have long hair? Does Coach Firneno still have his yard-long rulerstick to make girls bend down so he can check the length of their skirts? Mr. Hess still wears red socks?

Life must go on.

Goodbye New Orleans. I come back there everytime I need a little bit of soul, a little air to breath, a little right to be ridiculous, a little jazz down in the French Quarter - a little me.

Goodbye New Orleans, time to move on.

BẠN
Khóc bạn hôm nay khóc mãi thôi
Tương lai mơ ước, cuộc đời ơi
Sách vở trăm năm chưa ráo mực
Tài năng một chốc ngọc đà rơi

Tri kỷ còn đây vẫn sớm hôm
Hai mươi mốt tuổi, một tâm hồn
Hải ơi, chữ còn, người còn mãi
Sâu thẳm trong tim: "bạn trong tôi".

Lê Minh Đức (04 - 02 - 2007)

I last met him at the VietAbroader 2005 Conference in Hanoi. He walked in the Twin Towers in white shirt and blue slacks - the usual uniform, though he is already in college - and tapped on my shoulders. We could only chat for a little bit, then I had to go back to greet the guests. I asked him about school in Vietnam, and he smiled sadly that it was pretty bad. I thought it was just another normal complaint - like we always complained. After the conference, he went to shake my hands, and said it was great. He left - and never, never would I have thought - that is the last time.

We did not hang out a lot in secondary school - partly because I sat in the front and he in the back. He was rather quiet back then. This morning, as I frantically scrolled through old friends' blogs, I was suddenly horrified that I didn't quite remember his face. But now it all came back: we sat side by side on a bench outside the Hanoi Twin Towers, I was wearing ao dai and sitting up straight, he rested his elbows on his knees, head bended, wavy hair, a smile slightly sad.

I feel floating, bloating - the same feeling when the acolhol has just hit the brain, slowly numbing the neurons and making life a little more surreal than it should. I remember feeling like this at Christmas 2004, sitting in Sara Snider's living room and crying uncontrollably when Ms. Brandon said, "Ngoc hung herself in the backyard on Christmas Eve." I remember going to her funeral, looking at her purplish stony face, and thought - how could it be, she was always smiling, sitting near my locker in the hallways of Ben Franklin High School. She was always early and I always late. She was always smiling and I perpetually depressed all high school life. How could it be that I am still alive and living while she is dead?

I remember my art class in 5th grade. The teacher tried to teach us to analyze a painting that made a big impression on me. It painted a funeral parade marching through the field, amid the sky and the earth. The parade was tiny, we could only made out the long dark rectangular shape of the coffin. The sky was very blue, but took up only a fifth upper part of the canvas. The other four-fifth was stark black, representing the earth where the coffin was soon to enter. The title was "Gan dat xa troi."

Meanwhile, another New Year is coming...

Cuối cùng thì tuyết cũng rơi, hối hả rải trắng xoá những mái nhà gạch đỏ và đóng băng chiếc hồ nhỏ trước cửa toà nhà Olin. Bầy vịt đã bay đi tránh rét từ khi nào. Trời thoắt lạnh căm, thâu thấu chích những gò má đỏ ửng và hắt bông tuyết lốp xốp bạt ngang những làn mi chớp chớp. Sáng dậy nghe cổ họng nhoi nhói tôi biết là mùa đông thực sự đã đến, chậm trễ hơn mọi năm nhưng không kém phần cay cú. Iris và Mai ló đầu vào la toáng "Lạnh quá!" với bốn mắt kính còn phủ mờ hơi. Tôi lục cục lôi quần đông xuân, khăn len và dầu khuynh diệp ra lót gối sẵn sàng. Biết ngay mà, trời trở rét chưa được mấy hôm thì mũi tôi đã sụt sịt, phổi phập phồng. Năm nào cũng thế, ốm rồi.

Cũng chẳng trách tuyết được. Cũng tại tôi. Ngày đầu tiên tuyết rơi, tôi và Iris oà lên ngưỡng mộ cái vẻ đẹp trinh trắng và thanh toát của miền xứ lạnh. Tuyết rơi nóng hổilàm mọi thứ thật sạch sẽ, phẳng lì. Như hai con điên, chúng tôi qươ quýt áo khoác, xô nhau chạy ra ngoài để lăn lóc, vùng vẫy chân tay in dấu một thiên thần trên nền tuyết mới toanh. Tôi nằm đó thật lâu, thầm dần hơi lạnh, mơ màng nhìn lên màn trời đêm đen ngòm lốm đốm những sao. Dường như tuyết đã đóng băng cả thời gian và những lo âu. Chỉ còn lại trắng xoá một cảm giác êm đềm.

Đêm thứ sáu vừa buông, một mớ nhạc tả pí lù đã chan chát khắp ký túc xá. Đâu đâu cũng thấy sinh viên thoăn thoắt tuồn bia, rượu, mồi nhử vào phòng. Và những tiếng rù rì: "Nửa đêm tiệc ở ký túc xá Smith nhé" hoặc "Hookah ở phòng tao" hoặc "Mày có ID không? Đang cần thêm mấy két..." Marta réo tôi trên điện thoại, "Đến nhanh đi. Nhớ mang đồ đấy!" Sau mấy lần cạn chén với nhóm Adams, tôi líu ríu vứt chai vodka vào trong túi xách, rồi khoác vai Kevin loạng choạng lên đường. Trời thì lạnh mà vodka thì ấm hôi hổi như cái sự ham vui của chúng tôi. Vừa đi tôi và Mai vừa hát toáng Mỹ Tâm, "Vẫn biết yêu người không lối thoát..." chỉ sực nhớ suỵt nhau im im khi đi ngang qua toà nhà giám thị.

Phòng Marta thơm lừng mùi thuốc lá caramen của hookah - một kiểu tẩu nước nổi tiếng từ vùng Trung Cận Đông, với thân thuỷ tinh duyên dáng và những ống hút dài uyển chuyển. Cem - người Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ - vừa thong thả rít thuốc vừa nhả chầm chậm những hình tròn khói, trong khi Besir từ Macedonia và cô bạn gái người Kosovo say sưa nhảy một vũ điệu vùng Balkan. Marta ngồi đê mê một lúc lâu, thi thoảng lại thổi sâu vào một chiếc ống gỗ dài ngoằng - một thứ nhạc cụ lạ đời từ Châu Phi. Tôi biết cô đang nghĩ gì.

Kevin dóng lên một nhịp hip hop giòn giã, và những người đang ngồi trầm ngâm lập tức sáng mắt, vai nhún nhún theo điệu nhạc. Sherraine, cô gái da ngăm chân dài, nhảy phắt dậy, loang loáng uốn mình trong tiếng vỗ tay và hò reo của bạn bè. Tôi cũng bị kéo dậy, và mặc dù đầu óc lơ mơ cũng bắt đầu tự động đung đưa theo những ngâm nga của Nelly. Marissa hào hứng xoay khắp nơi, đầu gối chùng và mái tóc đen dài quất lên xuống. Nhảy một hồi hết hơi, tôi bỏ ra ngoài hớp một luồng khí lạnh trong lành. Marta đang tựa lưng trên bậc cầu thang, lơ đãng chập chờn đốm tàn thuốc lá với Binit. Tôi quàng tay qua vai hai người bạn. Không ai nói gì, chỉ nhìn mãi vào màn tuyết vẫn rơi hối hả.

4 giờ sáng, tôi lê lết về phòng, đầu nóng hổi, chân tê cứng và mệt rã rời. Mai lờ đờ quăng áo khoác xuống sàn, "Đói quá!" Một người bạn thực thụ, Iris lục tục đặt cơm. Tôi bày ruốc, cá cơm và muối vừng xuống sàn, rồi ba đứa dập dờn nhai trong cơn buồn ngủ. Khi Iris quay về phong yên giấc rồi Mai vẫn còn nán lại. Nhìn mặt nó thần thờ tôi biết là nó đang buồn. Lôi ô mai và sấu cay ra, tôi gạ nó ăn. Trời đã sáng, hai đứa vẫn vừa nhằn ô mai vừa thủ thỉ, rồi ngủ gục lúc nào không hay.

Sáng hôm sau, tôi tỉnh dậy với cổ họng đau buốt và trán hâm hấp cơn sốt đầu mùa. Lo lắng ra mặt, Mai và Iris mang nào thuốc nào chè nào mật ong sang săn đón, tha hồ cho tôi vòi vĩnh mát-xa và sai vặt. Mai vừa thò tay bốc ô mai vừa cằn nhằn, "Lợi dụng ghê quá!" nhưng vẫn tăm tắp pha vitamin cho tôi uống.

Ôi một thời sinh viên...

My loving gangs from Bates: Svitlana from Ukraine, Marta from Slovakia, Saify from Pakistan, Binit from Nepal, Shawna-Kaye from Jamaica and me.

I met them on those first days at Bates, and we have remained good friends throughout all those Maine winters and human dramas...

In fact, looking back, I feel like I have integrated them into my selfness. With Marta it was crazy adventures: the streets of New York, overnight at Mcdonald, and of course, Kingston, Jamaica. From her I picked up the zest for music and for life.

With Saify I had countless conversation about love. Saif is so full of love that he needed to spill it over. And Shawna with her screeching laugh. Shawna taught me how to dance, crack jokes and appreciate black men. Missing from the picture is Kristofer Johnsson from Sweden, pale, sarcastic, easily freaked out about small things yet funny and reliable as a man is capable of. We had a pact: when I am 40, if we are both still single, we'll get married. The pact, however, is gravely endangered as I found out from facebook that miss Shawna and my future husband are regularly exchanging secret messages. Hmmm :D

"Friends are the family you choose," said the taxi driver from one of them midnight drive home from NERA. I never really appreciate that truth until New York. "You know why they always say 'New York, New York'?", continued the taxi man, "Because everything here is double: you pay double the price, you have double the fun, you are surrounded by double the people but you feel double the loneliness."

So I learned 2 things: appreciate your friends, and, listen to your taxi driver.

New York, New York...