Scooter Snatch

As you may have guessed, I have finished this week with very good news from the Motherland.  In a real speech, and not as my doppelganger, Inspector Goole, I would like to thank Miss Jennifer Dennis from the very bottom of my heart for being the best person I could possibly have shared that year 11 class with last year.  I don't know if she reads this, so if you see her, give her a ginormous hug from me!

Over the last two weeks, the socialising that has been essential to my personal and professional wellbeing has also been the root cause of a number of amusing incidents, some of which include the loss of my flip flops to a smelly swamp, the agreement to partake in the Angkor Wat half marathon (which means running, which I am not very good at) and the purchasing of a £50 pair of trainers.  Luckily, with term starting tomorrow, I also feel freakishly well prepared for all the lessons I am about to teach to classes of maximum 24 children.  Lolz! I remember a time when I had 35 names on a register, to be trumped only by Bridget, who had something like 48 and lived in fear of them all turning up at the same time.

We are apparently signing up for the half marathon this evening in front of 'Bridesmaids'.  Penny has already stated exactly how stupid she thinks the whole idea is: 'NO.  Angkor Wat was the hottest place I have ever been to.  I could barely walk let alone run around that place.  Don't do it Em, you will die...', so if anyone wants to get any more comments in, please do so by getting yourself a blogspot profile.  If I die, that'd be pretty Li Hi, right?  More Li Hi if I don't, obviously, but either way, pretty Li Hi.

I was also witness, this week, to an Incident of Real Life Crime.  In one of the first inset days, our principal informed us that whilst crime was very low in Ho Chi Minh, there had been cases of scooter bag snatching and random groping (gosh!) of which we should be aware.  Now I had heard of scooter bag snatching in Paraguay, so this is clearly an approach that dominates most moped-mobile nations, and to be honest, I think it's really quite clever.  If you have a fetish for the feel of other peoples' handbags, this is a much more effective way of going about satisfying your needs than the 'grab and run' method we seem to adopt in the UK.  If successful, it means you can make a quick and fluent getaway, and disappear quickly into a sea of other moped users.  If unsuccessful, you ensure that you avoid the embarrassment of having failed at the one thing you're supposed to be good at.  Nobody wants people to point and laugh at them after they have been too wimpy to pull a bag from the arm of an unsuspecting female.  That's just shameful.  And you don't have to spend a fortune on gym membership to stay fit enough to run away from the angry de-ccessorised woman chasing after you.

When this news was announced, it was met with lots of nodding and whispers about a friend's brother who had been travelling in China and had shared a hostel room with a boy whose sister's dog walker's son had had his bag snatched in a similar incident in Ho Chi Minh just recently, but I doubt anyone in the room genuinely considered that something like this would ever happen to them.  Imagine my shock, then, when, whilst walking to the Expat-Quiz-Excuse-For-Drinking with three other girls and one young man, a scooter zipped past and grabbed at my New Friend's bag, pulling her into the road!  Thankfully, she put up a good fight for her newly bought fake Mulberry, and not only was the thief forced to whiz away red-faced and empty-handed, nobody was hurt and nothing was lost.

The most hilarious part of it, though, were the responses of the remaining non-victims: the first to react was Drama Teacher, who aggressively yelled the first expletives that came to mind, squaring up to the rapidly disappearing scooter, and maybe even shaking a fist.  Some two seconds later (long time in such dramatic situations) I thought it appropriate to scream as loudly as possible like an attacking seagull (gaah-awgh!) which served no purpose other than to scare the living crap out of PE Teacher A who was standing, frozen in shock.  Our favourite part, which we have reenacted since for numerous audiences, was the further delayed contributions of Mr. Reynolds' Long Lost Son, who, reverting in his panic to his northern boy roots, waited a further two seconds, and then yelled something that sounded like 'OIURGHRROI!'

It took us about an hour to realise how incredibly stupid, pointless and ridiculous our responses had been, and by that time had formed a losing quiz team (B-CHEGGA'S), and had had enough to drink to fall off our chairs in hysterics about it all.

A big shout out to Meera and Kunal who are getting Real Life married this weekend.  I took this photo for you: everybody seems to be getting married in Vietnam, and they don't seem too bothered when you take photos of them like a strange nuptial pervert.

Rachel and Courtney have been technologically committed enough to figure out how to comment, so for you, ladies, I ate this sandwich on Monday:

I can't figure out how to turn the picture round, sorry, but the sandwich was really good.

And once again, Happy Birthday Mummy.  Can't think of a smile I would rather have seen when I got this at about 11pm my time en route to an upmarket venue named Crazy Buffalo.  The whole taxi were subject to me shoving an iPhone in their face, saying, "Doesn't she look happy?  I'm so pleased she's pleased.  What a lovely Mummy!"

Everybody agreed you are the most lovely Mummy.