I notice my recent change of subjects in this blog. I started calling the blog by a pronoun, ” You”. I used it as a journal to myself, like I’m speaking to myself, but recently it’s like speaking to a person. You know, like I’m actually talking to a person.

I’m not sure it’s a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, I feel pretty comfortable talking, and much more expressive. On the other hand, am I going a bit insane? Nevertheless, this is my space right? I am allowed to do pretty much whatever I want.

Have I told you why I’m here in Ha Noi? It’s quite interesting, in this blog, I always let the emotional self speak. It almost feel like my rational self doesn’t even exist. Mundane stuff like why I’m going to Ha Noi doesn’t seem to appear in here. I only mentioned stuff like why I don’t like Ha Noi, and I’m trying to understand that.

I’m in Ha Noi because we are opening a new branch in Ha Noi. Well, I’m not opening, I found a logistic partner – one of my oldest friend. I sent all the stocks to Ha Noi on Saturday and flying here to receive the stock. It’s a disaster! Crisis all day long!

It started with we were only 4 and we have to carry all the stuff inside. And in Saigon I have about 10 helps, now we are much less than that. The stocks melts really fast, so it’s another disaster. I mean it’s a whole day disaster =)) . But I didn’t really feel like it was a disaster. Whatever it is, though it’s not a good day, but I didn’t feel like it’s something that bothering me.

You know, this expansion, kind of bring our store into a bad position financially. Last month, I already don’t have salary, this month I’m afraid that I will have to find cash somewhere to pay salary as well. The reason is, we have to pay before hands a lot. About 1 month in advance for Ha Noi stock. With this amount of destroyed stock in Ha Noi, the cash I’m receiving in Ha Noi gonna be much less as well. So I will be in a very bad position 🙂 . I was telling my friend: ” Anh ơi, em nghèo quá anh ! ” , and he’d say : ” Trời ơi, bà chủ tiệm Bliss than nghèo kể khổ kìa trời”. See =)), nobody on earth would agree with me that I’m poor. But I am really really poor. I worry that by the end of this month, I won’t have the money to pay interest to my mother. The stress of having to bear this amount of responsibility, the livelihood of so many other it’s heavy and quite tiring sometimes. But I don’t feel like I have any rights to complain about this.

I want to talk about my first day working in Ha Noi. It’s really strange, I mentioned my fear yesterday, and today is the perfect example. My friend asked me: ” Chắc là hôm nay ít nói lắm hả?” , he said he just felt it. And it’s so true, know why I’m “ít nói”. Because I’m kind of afraid. I feel like I’m in a strange land, even with the support of my friend, I feel like I’m speaking to a foreign language.

I called it “Ngọng”, really I really do. I don’t speak to customer. Even when we got so busy, and I ordered food from Grab to us, I also feel Ngọng. Like I don’t know what to speak and how to speak. When I want to cancel because it took so long, I’m so afraid. I’m afraid the Grab driver is going to yell at me. I can never work or open any business in Ha Noi. Period.

Today at around noon 12:00 PM, a lady knock on our door and yell: “Trưa trời trưa trật không ngủ thì phải im cho người ta ngủ. Nhỏ nhỏ cái mồm lại … or something like that, I think she used even harsher language but I cannot recall it. And we said we didn’t really did anything, so she continue to knock on the house next to us and started yelling outside of the house too. See, it’s terrifying. How come a person can be so aggressive in here? I mean, I’m not allowed to talk inside my house? The problem with me is, when ppl yell in front of my face direct like this, I’d freeze. I cannot talk anything back, I’d stress the fuck out of my life if I have to go around and deal with this.

Even in Saigon, I have around 20 staffs, one of the most important character for my staff is being soft, nice and gentle 😀 . If someone is so dark, so harsh, so rigid, I won’t be able to work with them.

There’s something fundamentally wrong inside me. I still cannot find that knots inside my heart. These people are people, they are not going to eat me alive, or beat me. Yet, I’m acting like they are going to tear me apart with their words.

Oh, I saw the women in Ha Noi, they are generally have the same out look. It’s strange, my mother has that outlook too. I can really see the difference between northern and souther people, it’s like I’d say people are coming from 2 types of DNA.

It’s late, and my mind is jumping around different topics with different visuals in my head right now. We’ll continue to talk tomorrow. I think it will be better than today. I’m still learning.