FOODOFVIETNAM.COM My Viet Guy friends are funny. They all love to deny their bad traits when I first showed them this article. Some even tried to act as if they were appalled at my writing. Not entirely unpredictable, they habitually claimed that they are much classier than what I portrayed them to be and that I didn’t “do the right thing” by them for writing such an exposé type of article… Awww….so sowie I didn’t “do right” by you guys….did I tick you guys off when I leaked that many Viet Guys disappear at exactly 30 minutes before Monday Night Football because they’re waiting for a call from their bookie so that they can place a paycheck-size bet to cover their losses from all the games from the Sunday before? Hehehehe been there done that…ouch!
Another memorable instance of denial came
when a drummer friend of mine, who often dine alone, argued that he prefers
“Filet Mignon and a fine glass of Cabernet Sauvignon” over “Phở
and a fine cup of cafe sữa đá” when I said that most Viet guys
prefer Phở (over steaks) because of the taste, convenience, and price.
So I did not hesitate to tell him he was crazy and explained to him that the
only reason he argued with me was for the sake of argument. Unfortunately,
he got his revenge by playing a Boston beat when I sang a slow rock tune a
few weeks later at a charity concert….hehehe that was weird. I guess the
moral of that story is not to mess with the guy whose job is to keep a
rhythm for you.
Alrighty then, here are the top 7 things that you don’t know about us Viet
Guys:
1. We gamble on football games only to make the game more interesting to watch…
OK, we have a problem when it comes to betting on football games. You see, unless it’s Super Bowl, we could care less when teams other than our home team play. So, for us to enjoy watching some non-conference team from the Yukon (ok, Buffalo) play against another run of the mill team from Anchorage (ok, Minnesota), we need to put at least $100 (one “buck”) on one side and then it’s instant Super Bowl every weekend from September till January! Oh yeah…please give us some privacy 30 minutes before game time because that’s when we’ll need to sneak away to call our bookie to get the line and place that bet. It’s a Viet Guy thing, you wouldn’t understand.
2. We prefer "Phở and cafe sữa đá" over "filet mignon and red wine” anyday…
We love to eat Phở whether it's breakfast time, lunch time, or
dinner time (you can make a strong case that Phở is the one and only
anytime meal). Talk about the absolutely perfect blend of herbs and spices
to give Phở that unmistakable tummy pleasing aroma that you can easily
recognize when you are within a 2 block radius (even with your car’s
windows up). It doesn’t mean that we’re cheap and that we’d take you
to the local “Phở 75” on the first date. But once you get to know
us, or when the proverbial honeymoon is over, good luck trying to convince
us to take you to Morton’s for steaks during times of hunger when
something much tastier like Phở is just minutes away.
Another thing, we hate waiting 45 minutes
for a table, another 15 minutes for the waiter to take the order, and
finally another half an hour before the food is served. When we’re hungry,
we want the waiter to take our order as soon as we sit down and the food
delivered on our table as soon as the waiter is out of sight, as is often
the case with most Phở restaurants. I could have sworn that one of the
Phở joints I went to had my usual bowl of #17 placed at my table
before I even got a chance to order the drink! Ok…not quite that fast but
it was really fast.
3. We assume she’s ugly when…
You use the following adjectives to describe a girl when you want to introduce her to us: “smart,” “studious,” “nice,” blah blah blah… Why? Because if the chick happens to be a pretty young thing, you would (and should) have said so in the first place. So, don’t be surprised if we say that we’re not interested when you try to hook us up with that studious one that we haven’t even met. If you want us to respond in kind, please mention the following: “nice looking,” “easy on the eye” “pretty,” “hot,” or “smoking,” and you can skip all her other non-appearance related qualities because it’s just blah blah blah to us….Why? We’re just wired that way.
4. As we get older, the more “sến” we get…
Admittedly, this is a strange phenomenon. Call it a genetic flaw or an inevitable end to our coolness when we finally succumb to “nhạc můi” or “nhạc quę hương.” In our 40s we’d start to tune in to Như Quỳnh and Tâm Đoan....soon after, we add Đặng Thế Luân and Quang Lę to the mix. Then we progress to watching the entire 4 plus hours of Paris By Night without skipping any duets by Mạnh Quỳnh and Phi Nhung. Finally, all hell breaks loose when we unabashedly order that Duy Khánh greatest hits compilation Karaoke DVD and promise to sing some (or all) of them at the next family gathering….yikes!
5. We can’t put up with disrespect…
Call it insecurity, lack of self-confidence, or whatever character flaw you want to bestow upon us, but the minute you start dissin us in front of our friends, you have lost us and we won’t forgive you for it. It’s bad enough that plenty of women make more money than we do, but we draw the line at getting dissed in public. We want to be the man, the protector, and the ones who pay for you when we take you out. By the way, trust us when we say we want to take care of the tab, as we do get embarrassed when you snatch the bill out of our hand to pay for it. If you want to pay for something, please take all feminine products out of our CVS basket and pay for them, we don’t mind, actually we insist that you do pay for those items, forever…
Another form of dissin is when you avoid or refuse to meet our family members. We take it personally when we think highly enough of you to want you to meet them and if you don’t want to meet them, then we probably won’t want to stay with you.
Or...get the best of both worlds, a blonde Viet girl!
6. We may lust after blondes, but we want to marry a Viet Girl…
We have a soft spot for Viet girls. We love the way they look, the way they talk, the way they sing along to Viet music, and the way they will be able to teach Vietnamese to our kids. After we’re done dating offspring of representatives from the United Nation, we tend to fall the hardest for Viet girls. This is where we differ from Viet gals, and the proof is in the stats. Most Asian-white marriages are between Asian girls and white guys (3 out of 4, according to a 2007 article in NHA magazine), whereas a Viet Guy marrying a white girl is still a rarity. Despite all the blasphemy (we can’t get Caucasian girls, we’re not confident enough to date Caucasian girls, blah blah blah), if you ask any Viet Guy what his dream wife would be, she’d be a pretty Vietnamese girl, no doubt about it.
7. Lastly, here are a few things that we believe that we are always better at than our female counterparts:
- Driving (a given)
- Picking stocks (even though our past day-trading stint was disastrous)
- Buying electronic goods (again, we’re just wired that way)
- Gambling (it’s in our blood)
- Judging whether your sister or best friend is hot (uhmm…no comment)
Duy Hân
May 2008