New Years is a pretty special day for a lot of people and the expat population of Da Nang feels the same way. There are a ton of parties and everyone gathers to their favorite spots and counts down the day the month the year with their close pals. Well, that is not always so easy to pull off when you have a doggy that is absolutely terrified of fireworks and since you know that they are going to go off, unless you are a jerk you go home to console your little friend. Therefore Nadi and I decided that it was going to be an afternoon sort of day for us, but we had a problem - she was kind of stinky.
I woke up pretty early on the 31st because I had no schedule to stick to. But I ended up giving her a bath after our morning walk. As always, she was very compliant and patient with me and we got it done as fast as we could. The drying off part takes a bit more effort. At this point it was around noon or 1pm (I didn't look) and I was starting to feel tired. Much of this has to do with my home and how there is a lot of screen in it and this makes me feel tired, even when I shouldn't be.
So we needed to order some coffee. This ended up being a great ability to kill two birds with one stone though, as I was able to convince Nadi to sit in her "sun chair" to speed up the drying process from the bath as well.
She's in the back there, working on what we call a "chewy chew" while I sit in the foreground with my delivery coffee. I got 2 of them just to make sure the wake up juice actually works. Just so you know, if anyone ever offers you a "Vietnamese milk coffee" just know that by "milk" they mean sugar or condensed milk. This thing is so sweet it feels like I am drinking cake.
We'll save the avoidance of processed sugar for next year I guess.
Later on I was clearing out my fridge and was nibbling on some cheese and all of a sudden this meme came to mind. It's been a while since I did a meme post and I don't feel like it yet so we'll just throw that in here.
I was talking to a vegan friend and Nadi's love for cheese came up. since she doesn't eat cheese she is never around it. She thought that dogs don't like cheese and I corrected that very foolhardy opinion. Dogs LOVE cheese. It is one of Nadi's favorite things and I am convinced that if I put a bunch of it on the floor there is no limit to how much of it she would eat. She would gorge herself until she involuntarily vomited then she would relax a bit and head straight back into eating more cheese. She would never stop.
I did go out to the bar with Nadi, but we didn't stay long. Then I went and dropped her off and made a promise to her that as soon as I hear or see a single firework, I am going to come back home. I was at a pub that is only 1 block from where I live so I was prepared to run if necessary.
We managed to make it until midnight before any fireworks went off. I quickly downed the complimentary glass of champagne and headed home immediately. Nadi was already hiding in the bathroom and shivering as she was under the sink trying to get away from the noise. It's a bit crazy how affected by fireworks dogs are. There are plenty of other loud sounds in our lives that don't bother her like that does.
Past midnight on new years day is not a good time to be hungry anywhere in the world and Da Nang is not an exception. I went to the fridge and threw together some "ghetto nachos" which consist of Doritos, sliced American cheese, and Tabasco. Heat this concoction until it looks melted and voila! You have an absurdly unhealthy snack with no nutritional value.
Because she had just been exposed to a good 10 minutes of torture at the hands of the fireworks though, I decided that she could have some as well. She was a big fan of the cheese but Tabasco, not so much. I guess dogs have hyper sensitive tongues or something.
The next morning I took Nadi on a walk past the same pub I was in until 3 minutes after midnight or so and the place was still busy at 7:30 in the morning. I am willing to bet that we will not see those people for a number of days. I can't even imagine the level of hangover that a person accomplishes with with that many hours of consecutive drinking. No Thanks!
So it is now 2026 and everything for me is exactly the same as 2025. Things don't change for me and I am actually extremely OK with that. If you do have some change or what not, they go for it... I hope you succeed even though the odds of resolutions actually working are very very small.
You are very very funny! 😆
Some of your lines I rate below with the number of LOLs.
By all means, these are just a few I took out, not saying the rest isn't funny. It was!
BTW, cheese and fridge. My advise is indeed: Never in the fridge, orrrrr at least, leave the cheese out of the fridge to warm up to room temperature before eating. Many cheeses are soooo creamy which can best be tasted at room temperature. When cold from the fridge, the creamy taste is somewhere at sleep and will not reach our senses. The tricky thing with cheese outside the fridge is to Eat It within a few days, or never touch the cheese with 'dirty' fingers and/or utensils.
😆😆😆
😆😆
Orrrr, they know what it feels when doing the number 2, hours to a day past the eating 😆
So true. They even say, never start any resolution at Jan 1st. Best start is the first Monday after the new year. That said, how boring to think of resolutions at the end of last year and the beginning of a new year. Too many do this. Though a flock of sheep has a nice view and feel to it, never become part of the herd, is my credo 🥳
what a wonderful response. I'll go and follow you write after I write this response back at ya.
Resoulutions are really stupid. I don't even understand why people do them anymore. Let's think about it ok? How many people that have made any sort of resolution has ever stuck to it? I can't think of any off the top of my head but I can think of hundreds where the people shamefully kind of backed away from it and hoped nobody would notice that by January 10th they were sneaking cigarettes around the corner, and by the 20th they just were back to doing it all the time in front of everyone. No apologies, just hoping people wouldn't notice.
The amount of "i'm going to lose 10 lbs" I have heard over the years are just absurd. You don't need a Jan 1st to do that. You can do it mid March and as long as you have a plan you have a much better chance of actually succeeding.
When I said that dogs have hyper-sensitive tongues I already knew that they did but their noses are where they really stand out. I think the scent of Tabasco is just overwhelming to a dog and they want to get away from it. This is also why when I spray what I consider to be a mild fragrance on Nadi to maske her doggy musk for a day or so before her bath, it makes her sneeze and she absolutely hates it. To me it is a light minty scent, to her it is an overwhelming mint overload like she had been dropped into a vat of the stuff.
I'll try your suggestion about room temperature cheese but you have to understand that the "room temperature" in Vietnam during most of the year would be considered "melting" in the cheese world.
Have a great day!
True, and realised it after I wrote it, but didn't want to correct my statement because your room may have air conditioning and/or not to overcomplicate things. Let say: 20 to 22 degrees Celcius I meant to say. In fact, I never tested the temperature of the cheeses when I eat them, but my room is somewhere between 18 (mid winter) and 28 (mid summer) degrees Celsius. In winter I leave the everyday cheese out of the fridge. In summer, I have to put it in to the fridge, though. Depending on the cheese, I leave it out for 10 to 60 minutes before eating. Now there is a tricky part. Some cheeses are not so nice. Leave them in the fridge and eat them directly from the fridge, cold, since they taste nicer when cold 😆
The Portuguese also have a coffee that is mainly condensed milk and is sickly sweet. You find out and learn never to order it again. Out of my 5 dogs I have had two have been terrified of fire works and maybe the other 3 were just not bothered or clever enough lol. The two I can remember were running around in the front garden playing whilst fireworks were being let off less than 20m away. There is a dog school down the road near a shooting range that teaches dogs to be less fearful of loud bangs. We did not do much either and would never leave our dogs alone knowing there are fireworks.
I am not a fan of loud bangs and to this day, from my childhood, I cannot stand the unpredictable nature of thunderstorms. Nadi reacts to what is probably sensing my own fear when it comes to this sort of thing. Firecrackers irritate me to no end and I am very happy that they, and anything else that could be considered an explosive, are banned here in Vietnam. In Thailand for religious reasons a certain sect of Buddhism has unrestricted access to masses of firecrackers for these rituals that they do several times a year. This is an absolute nightmare for both me and my dog because the long string of small firecrackers in concluded with 2-5 really big ones at the end.
The idea there is to scare away evil spirits but for me it just made me loathe that particular branch of what I consider to otherwise be a very peaceful religion.
I actually work in a town that is pretty well known for their cheese. It has a population of maybe 1000 and four cheese shops in the town. Anyway, I do some work for a couple of the cheese shops on the side and they actually say a lot of their off the block cheese you aren't supposed to refrigerate. Jovi loved cheese as well. My wife and I stayed home for New Years and ended up in bed by 11 PM. Just another day around here!
Yeah, I rarely am awake past midnight and while I realize that this has at least something to do with my age, I am a bit in awe that it used to just be normal for me in college to be awake once the sun came up the following day. This was normally followed by a two day hangover as well. For me, I still like drinking, but because I know the consequences are going to be increasingly extreme the older than I get, I start to get "the fear" right around my 6th. That seems to be my hangover threshold. My body can process 6 no problem, it would be like I had nothing at all, but 6 normally leads to 10 and I just throw in the towel and go nuts at that point. The hangovers are so bad that I normally write off drinking for a week or so at that point but I think that in the end that it probably wouldn't be a terrible idea for me to just not drink at all anymore. It just doesn't seem worth it. I wish that some of the people I knew had other activities but in the expat community that is basically all anyone ever does.
It's good you kind of know where that point is. I definitely don't recover like I used to, but I also don't go as hard as I used to. Every now and then I get a little crazy while we are camping and I wake up the next morning regretting it.
one would think that the fact that literally everyone gets hangovers that we would stop doing that stuff but I guess the global population are just all idiots bent on self-destruction. When I was recently injured and also didn't drink, I got down to nearly 80kg or what is that? like 175 lbs? Of course much of this had to do with muscle loss due to deterioration of muscles but now I am back exercising again and drinking most days and I am back up to 86 or 190 lbs. It really is alarming to me how quickly that all changes now that I am older.... like wtf man? When I was in my 20's I drank SOOOOO much and ate just whatever all the time... barely ever exercised and had 6-pack abs.
I suppose this is normal.
I've never been in great shape, but I wish I had put more effort into it when I was younger and it was easier to get there. I feel like I am fighting a losing battle now that I am older and my metabolism is slower. I know what you mean about why we keep getting drunk when the hangovers are so bad. I think for me it's more an oops thing this time versus something I strive for. Like I had one too as opposed to going balls to the wall just to get hammered.
⋆ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ ғᴏʀ sᴏᴜᴛʜᴇᴀsᴛ ᴀsɪᴀɴ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴏɴ ʜɪᴠᴇ
⋆ sᴜʙsᴄʀɪʙᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀsᴇᴀɴ ʜɪᴠᴇ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴛʏ
⋆ ғᴏʟʟᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀsᴇᴀɴ ʜɪᴠᴇ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴛʏ ᴠᴏᴛɪɴɢ ᴛʀᴀɪʟ
⋆ ᴅᴇʟᴇɢᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ʟɪɴᴋs 25 ʜᴘ⇾50 ʜᴘ⇾100 ʜᴘ⇾500 ʜᴘ⇾1,000 ʜᴘ
yeah that seems about par for the course for certain parts of that country.