Sudetenland Tales by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Sudetenland Tales

Page 167

everywhere. There was some weird Pepsi thing, a giant can of Pepsi ringed in neon perched on the top of the Immigration Administration building, loud pulsing techno music with Hausa lyrics blaring, lights everywhere like a rock concert. Maybe it was a rock concert, or a lip synced thing with their version of k-pop stars. Or maybe they had a Tupac Shakur style hologram of Uncle Ho up there, dancing with Hanoi’s version of Taylor Swift, or any other conventional female ‘artist’ in a low talent era. New York City is anything but a sleepy little city, especially in District 1.

It was my last day. In WTF news, Vo Van Thuong, the President of Vietnam, resigned the day before. Or ‘was asked to resign’ maybe. Turns out there’s a big anti-corruption campaign he was in charge of, to stop the rampant bribery, and he did something that made the party say; ‘Yeah, maybe you need to go spend some time with your family.’ I know nothing about politics in Vietnam, but I’m guessing that the investigation of the bribery culture there isn’t cool to the multinationals looking to invest and/or bribe, and not very different than it is in the US of A.

I ate at a Burger King. Actually, it was just the ‘greatest hits’ menu; Whopper, etc., because every other time I go to Burger King, there’s a cornucopia of random new things on the