Where indeed is TED?

Me! A blogger! Stranger things have happened.

Ever since I decided that in the US opportunities for architects are limited I began to entertain the thoughts of working overseas. At least in Seattle the unemployment rate for the design profession is awful and will continue for the next few years I think. For my designer friends I hope that I am 99% wrong. So much for reality.

After starting an extensive but casual search process I decided to start a blog if I was to accept an offer somewhere other than in the US. So the blog was created but no posting until now.

Amazingly I received an offer in August, 2010 for a posting in Ha Noi, Viet Nam.

It took all of five minutes before I decided to accept.

So here I am sitting in a hotel lobby in Pho Nha Tho (the Cathedral Quarter) in writing this blog.

My intention was to write a sort of love letter to the US Northwest but it can wait for a little while until I feel more settled in Ha Noi. There is so much going on here in the past two days that I feel a need to write some of it down before I forget or more likely overwhelmed.

 This is a relatively calm street scene if only for a moment.

 These women work so hard every day carrying baskets of fruits to sell for so little that it touches my heart.

And of course a bowl of steaming pho for breakfast, lunch and or dinner. The broth is much clearer than in the US with no sprouts or basil on the side but some nice and hot chilies, not the common green jalapenos.

The city is ever Buzzing, Beeping, Whirring, Roaring, humming, vibrating, jammed packed and then there is a momentary lull and then starts up again, pulsating from early morning till late at night. So many people trying and working extremely hard to earn a living and striving to make a better life for their families. I can only imagine what the unemployment rate is.

And then there is the rain, buckets of wet warm rain, I pulled on my hi-tech cap, put my hi-tech jacket over my shoulder as it comes down. It rained so hard that the choice I have is to get drenched or half drenched underneath all this gear in my own sweat since it is so humid that the gear trapped all the moisture. The Gore folks probably never did any testing in the Southeast Asian rainy season.

The flooded streets reminded me of when I was just a boy making paper boats and letting them float down the street for a few doors before sinking in the deluge.

It's starting to rain.