I was going to backdate posts and fill up the whole weekend, but I think that's probably futile. No streak is going to happen; I just have to get better at regular posting during non-streaks.

The big news right now is that I got myself an apartment. After looking at 12 rooms in 8 buildings over a week and a half, I ended up choosing one of the first ones I saw. (This was one that my friend introduced to me, and naturally he "encouraged" me to choose it so he could get his commission from the landlord.) When I first visited it, it wasn't love at first sight, even though it had most of the fundamentals of a livable room and no real deal-breakers. We went back to look at it this morning so I could make a final decision (it was between that one and the one I saw Friday which was in walking distance of the office) and I guess I can say my second impression was better than the first.

Probably the best thing about this place is that it's big (relatively, at least), and was by far the best value based on price per square meter. It's a typical Vietnamese "shoebox" room, long and rectangular, but it's probably 11-12 feet wide and three times as long, with very high ceilings. It also has a kitchen area, with a sink and refrigerator/freezer, and a decent-sized balcony. It gets a lot of natural light, has a nice LCD TV, is on a quiet alley off Ly Chinh Thang, and is not far from work.

Ironically*, the closest restaurant to the end of the alley is Phở Bình, which I wrote about a few days ago. Also ironically*, it is very close to the former home of my ex-girlfriend Miss T. [* By ironically, I don't mean there is anything at all ironic about it, but rather that the fact that follows is a mildly interesting coincidence. That's what "ironic" means these days, I think.]

The weak(er) points are the extremely simple design — it's a shoebox with a bathroom cut out of one corner, the bathroom, and the bed. By moving around the furniture I can create some defined "spaces" (at minimum, a dining area and a sleeping area), and it I hang up some decorations (which I should note I never do) it might look "homier." The bathroom is functional but not luxurious. At the moment it's also a single room with a wet floor, but the landlord will put in a curtain that will partition off the shower area and keep half of the floor at least mostly dry. I'd rather have a proper shower, but I can live with this and have for many years. The water pressure is decent, which is more important. The bed is probably OK (it's new), but feels a little "lumpy" from the springs. If it turns out to be bothersome, I will either get them to change the mattress (they say they have several), or I'll buy a soft pad to put on top of it. Hopefully not an issue.

I put down a one-month deposit today and will move in tomorrow or Tuesday, though realistically I'll probably be "moving in" all week, maybe daily trips from old home to new home carrying whatever fits on a motorbike each time.

Hopefully I will have pictures up by mid-week.

I went to see three apartments today. The first was nice (two options: small room or big room) but both rooms seemed a little too expensive for what you get. I was invited to have tea with the landlord and I think she liked me, but I don't know if I should press my budget. The rooms are very attractive, with especially nice kitchens and bathrooms, but the small room was a little too small to justify paying $500 a month, and though there was nothing wrong with the big room, I really don't want to spend $650 on rent.

The second place was a classic bait-and-switch. I saw a great-looking room advertised for $400 a month on a website. Talked to an agent and found out that it was actually $500. Went to the building and found out the one on the website was actually $650 (but otherwise almost perfect, including being a two-minute walk from my office). The one that was actually $500 was much smaller, on the ground floor, without any windows. It was like living in a basement. The furnishings and fixtures were nice, but I'm not going to pay that kind of money to live in a basement. Also, the landlord's main bargaining tactic was saying, "You should spend more!"

The last apartment, kind of a bonus visit, had an elevator, felt like a hotel room, was in a district I'm not familiar with (but actually close to downtown) and was only $450. I guess that one's still in the running, though the way it was arranged felt a little "tighter" than some of the others. So I don't know when I'm going to get an apartment.

I had lunch at Phở Bình, which you may have read about in the Lonely Planet. These days, it's just an unassuming phở shop, but in the '60s it was the underground headquarters of the Communist movement in the South. As such, it's now a national landmark. The phở, though, was pretty mediocre. Meaning it was better than any phở I ever had in Hanoi, but not as good as 80% of the phở in the U.S. An interesting thing about this shop is that it was staffed entirely by middle-aged men. That's something you don't often see at restaurants here.

You know that famous anecdote about how, before the days of electric power, big ships used to go up to the Arctic to fill up their holds with giant blocks of ice chipped away from icebergs and bring them back to the U.S. to sell, and even though 75% of the ice melted en route, they still made a handsome profit, and then Thomas Edison started selling electricity and people were able to make ice cubes at home, and then all of a sudden those ice-fetching boats were obsolete white elephants, and that is supposed to be a lesson that you have to embrace future technology or you will be left behind with a big worthless boat and a product that no one will pay for? I don't know how much of it's true, but it's a fun story to tell schoolchildren.

Anyway, tonight I saw something similar: an open truck carrying huge blocks of ice, presumably to deliver to stores and restaurants. These blocks were probably 1 foot square by 4 feet long, and there were several dozen of them stacked on the truck, which didn't appear to be refrigerated. I've seen these blocks of ice before, usually on the back of motorbikes, but I don't think I've ever seen so many of them at the same time in the same place. It felt like a trip back in time.

Ice, of course, is a valuable commodity in the tropics, but pretty much every home in urban Vietnam has electricity, and I think most of them also have refrigerators with freezer sections. I suppose if you need large quantities of ice (to serve to your beer-drinking customers, for instance), it might make more sense to buy ice in quantity than to make it yourself, because industrial ice makers are probably quite expensive. [I assume these huge blocks of ice came from a factory, not the Arctic!]

It is weird how much attention I get from the staff in the HCMC office. In Hanoi I felt that people sometimes went out of their way not to interact with me; in HCMC I feel like a VIP.

I'm suffering from a bit of a cold today — I think probably the result of changing weather and going in and out of air-conditioned environments — and around noon the office manager asked me what I was going to do for lunch. I said I thought I would go out for some chao (congee, rice gruel) or soup because I was trying to fight off a cold. She then immediately asked, "Do you want to have someone go out and get it for you? You should stay here and rest." And before I knew it, my lucnh was ordered and I was just had to wait around in the office for it. (And someone mysteriously paid for it.) Then they fussed over me and made me take some cold medicine.

I also now have an assistant who will enter my timesheet for me every week (one of my least favorite jobs) and I can get a coffee made for me anytime I want. I'm really more comfortable doing all those things myself (I kind of don't like having people "serving" me) but it's interesting to see what life at a Mad Men-era office would be like.

For those of you worried about our office politics, I'm happy to note that the two guys who were arguing so animatedly last week went out to lunch together (with me) today and there seemed to be no lingering hard feelings. So I guess that's just something they normally do, and what seemed bad to me was just "a day at the office" for them. Good to know.

We ate at a nearby Korean restaurant which was, as usual, filled with teenage girls. "Korean" is a huge trend right now, whether it's soap operas, music, fashion, or food.

Yesterday, Basketball An and I once again went off in search of a basketball court. The last time we tried this, almost a year ago, we discovered that our former "home" court had started charging for use and had subsequently been abandoned. (Most of the "ballers" in this city are not rich kids.)

We stopped at a popular court on the road to the airport that we'd often heard about, but had never played at. There was a half-court game of 4-on-4 going on. At first glance, it looked like a normal Vietnamese game: a bunch of skinny, somewhat ragged kids emulating NBA stars they had seen on TV, exuding a cockiness that I guess is inherent to streetball players all over the world. I recognized one or two of the guys from years ago (when they were probably high-schoolers). They were playing the typical local style of "drive wildly and take a shot if you can see the basket and don't pass unless you absolutely run out of other options, and on defense everyone swarm to the ball and try to steal it."

My usual instinct when I see this is to think, "Let's teach these guys a lesson in what real basketball is: selfless passing, setting picks, tough man-to-man defense, boxing out... They won't find the going quite so easy when they're up against this big (size is relative, my friends) American." But then after watching some more, I realized, uh-oh, these guys are actually really good. They. Did. Not. Miss. A. Shot. Obviously, that's an exaggeration, but they really did make about 75% of the shots they took. It wasn't always textbook form, but the ball just kept going in over and over and over. Was it bad defense? A little. But these guys had something magical going on. They knew exactly what they were doing.

When Basketball An and I finally got into a game (4-on-4, playing to 7), we found ourselves down 5-0 before we even knew what hit us. We eventually climbed back to 6-4 before they nonchalantly polished us off, but I don't think An or I scored any points. After the game was over (quickly), we were like, "WTF was that?!" Luckily/unluckily, the court shut down for a karate class before we had a chance to get a rematch.

Not really satisfied with our 5 minutes of basketball, we drove around looking for another court and finally ended up back at the old one. It still costs $2-3 per hour for a court, but I guess the players have accepted that as a fact of life, and have returned. So there were a bunch of guys there, some of them familiar, but most of them young. We got in a couple of non-so-competitive games, but it was better than nothing. It's good to know that at least there are players there — that's the important thing. I hate going to the court and finding it empty. I'm even willing to pay the $3 myself (big spender!) and let the rest of them play for free, if it gets me some games.

The Vietnamese — or at least the Vietnamese in Hanoi and (especially) Saigon — are very big on trends. Every year it seems there is a new "big thing." When I first moved to Vietnam in 2003, it was the time of English schools and big, fancy cafes. Then it was (not necessarily in order) micro-breweries, Western-style bakeries, "upscaled" humble street food, American ice cream shops, conveyor-belt hot pot restaurants, LED signs for stores, etc.

When I first got here, Apple products hardly existed in Vietnam. I had an iPod and an iBook, and I'm not sure I saw any others through all of 2003. Gradually, you started to see artists and hipsters using Mac laptops at cafes, but when I left in 2008, Apple was still very much a niche brand. Rich people and spendthrifts sported imported iPhones, but most people barely knew what Apple was. Flash-forward to 2011, and suddenly iPhones were ubiquitous, iPads weren't far behind, MacBooks were the favored laptop for students and fashionable folks, and the Apple logo was everywhere. (Surely not with Apple's permission.) At this point, I think Apple is probably the most esteemed and beloved brand in all of Vietnam.

It's been said — though I'm not sure I agree 100% — that the Vietnamese are not innovative people; they are merely imitators. In some ways, this is true. If some new type of restaurant or shop turns out to be popular, you can be sure that there will be plenty of knock-offs or imitations following in its wake, probably even on the same block. Sales of counterfeit "name-brand" products (e.g., fake Polo shirts) probably outweigh sales of original Vietnamese brands in the same category (e.g., Nino Maxx). And yet there are original ideas here. For instance, the about-to-explode trend of "construction-site restaurants."

As background, you should know that at construction sites here — whether for single-family houses or large office buildings — the construction workers often live at the site through the entire construction process. When work begins, they set up a little makeshift shanty. After a few floors are complete, they move into the unfinished building. The workers bathe, sleep, hang out their clothes, play cards — and, of course, eat — right at the site. So earlier this year, when I was driving down Nguyễn Thông street, I noticed what looked like a streetside open-air canteen for construction workers and assumed that was exactly what it was. It was surrounded by green aluminum siding and chain-link fence, lit by some bare lightbulbs hanging from their cords. The tables and chairs were made of rough-hewn, unfinished lumber; the "floor" was built from loading pallets; the kitchen was little more than a couple of makeshift barbecue grills.

All of this is quite normal. However, I then noticed that the people eating there were definitely not construction workers. They were office girls, young couples, college students, rich businessmen and their mistresses... so I figured out that this was just a new kind of restaurant, designed to make you feel like a construction worker at the end of a long day. Kind of a bizarre theme, but whaddya know... it actually worked! This place is insanely popular, and now there are two or three more based on the same concept. I tried the original one tonight, and I found the food to be quite delicious, the price to be reasonable, and the experience to be... interesting. But the guy who came up with the idea is a genius. His setup costs must have been minimal — the whole point is to make it look like you spent next-to-nothing on your restaurant — and people can't get enough.

Apologies for the long LJ silence. April's almost over and this will be my first entry of the month. The good(?) news is that there has been a lot of Halphasian's Maxim-ing going on — part of why I haven't been writing is because I've been busy doing other things or thinking about other things and haven't had the time to sit in front of my laptop. And of course an even larger part is just laziness.

The last time I posted, I think I was in Saigon. In the month-plus that has passed, I took another trip to Saigon, slept in a five-star hotel, got my visa extended, experienced some upheaval at work (which didn't affect me), got paid a surprising bonus, and kept living in Hanoi.

That last thing is about to change. This afternoon I'm finally flying down to Saigon "for good" — perhaps. I've packed everything up and will be leaving this apartment for a second time. Thirty-seven years ago on April 30, some people came (figuratively) from Hanoi to Saigon and they weren't exactly the most welcome visitors. (At least not from the Southern point of view.) So maybe my April 30 trip from Hanoi to Saigon is ill-timed, symbolically. But all I'm bringing is dirty laundry and a few laptops. Not communism.

• Stanford's women's basketball team made it to their fifth straight Final Four, and Stanford's men's team is in the NIT final. I would trade both of those for even one more Michigan State win, but hey, Go Cardinal! And luckily I won't have easy access to the women's games this year, so I won't be tempted to watch Stanford and then do my annual "Oh no, I'm never watching this again" swearing-off of women's basketball.

• I'd like to see the NIT final though. The last time Stanford won the NIT was in my sophomore year. The next year they made it back to the NCAA Tournament, then after a brutal season my senior year and an NIT first-round loss in my fifth year, they started an unprecedented (for Stanford) 11-year run of NCAA Tournament appearances — most of them ending in the second round, but with an amazing Final Four run in 1998 and two other 30-win seasons. Truly the golden age of Stanford basketball. It hasn't been the same since Mike Montgomery left*, but maybe this year's NIT is a sign that Johnny Dawkins has the program turned around. Most of our players are freshmen and sophomores. It would be great to have both of my favorite college basketball teams be relevant again.

* Mike Montgomery — that guy was freakin' awesome. I know we all love Tom Izzo and he's had phenomenal on-court success with a 99% clean and scandal/embarrassment-free program, but let's see how Izzo would do if he also was limited to recruiting players with 3.5 GPAs and 1200 SAT scores (or whatever the equivalent is in the new system). He'd still be a great coach, of course, but I'm pretty sure there'd be fewer banners hanging at the Breslin.

• I'm in Saigon for one more day (Wednesday) because the office is having professional pictures taken and they wanted me included. I will have to borrow a jacket and a tie from someone, because naturally I don't travel with such things (and don't even have a suit or jacket in Vietnam). Then I'll take a taxi to the airport right after work.

• That means I did not ride my motorbike to work this morning. Instead, I took a "xe ôm" (motorbike taxi). There is usually a xe ôm hanging out right in front of our gate. He lives next-door and I think driving is his profession.* He wasn't there this morning, but there were two women and a man sitting in plastic chairs drinking coffee. They asked if I could wait a few minutes for the driver to come back, but then the women just volunteered (forced) the other guy to drive for me. I'm pretty sure he was not a xe ôm driver, but just a guy with a motorbike who had stopped for coffee. (Evidence: He only had one helmet, so I had to grab mine from home. Also he smelled clean.) But he agreed to take me with little protest, made $2, and (I hope!) returned my helmet to our house. Sorry for interrupting your morning coffee, guy!

* Funny story about this guy, I've probably told it here before: I don't usually take xe ôms because I have my own motorbike and Cousin TA is usually willing to pick me up/drop me off at the airport or the bus station. So I only take a xe ôm when Cousin TA isn't available, and I usually go with this driver because, like I said, he's right in front of our house. One time, maybe in 2008, I was heading to the airport to fly somewhere. Cousin TA was tied up at work and it was getting perilously close to the time when they don't let you get on the airplane, so I had to leave. I agreed on a fare with this driver, he got his bike out, mounted it, waited a few seconds, and then TOOK OFF. Before I had even gotten on. My aunt and I were a bit dumbfounded. Was he going to get gas? Did he have to run an errand first? It soon dawned on us: "I don't think he's coming back." By this time I was in a big hurry and couldn't wait for him any longer, so we had to roust up another driver from farther down the alley. I guess what happened is he THOUGHT for some reason that I had got on the bike, but never turned around to check. I don't know how far he made it before he realized he didn't have a passenger.

• Hard to believe it's already baseball season. There's a real live, yes-it-counts game in Japan this evening (Vietnam time) between the Mariners and the A's, though the season doesn't start in earnest for another week. I'm debating spending the $100+ for MLB streaming video. It's not that much money over an entire season, and I really would like to watch the Tigers, but I should probably think about the logistics, and how many games I would actually watch. Most of their games will start at 6 a.m. here and will finish after 9 a.m., so I guess I can watch a few innings before work and then covertly watch the last inning or two while I pretend to go through my morning email.

Well, that was a much longer grab-bag post than I expected to write this morning. Time to start working!

I will be rooting strenuously for Ohio State next weekend (though I won't actually watch any games). How weird is that? I don't even like Ohio State!

Could this possibly be the "dirtiest" Final Four in history? With a hat tip to Grantland's March Madness (Compliance) Power Rankings, we have:

Ohio State
Findings of major violations in 1957, 1994, and 2006. Two postseason bans, 76 regular-season wins and 7 tournament wins "vacated," 5 years of probation.

Louisville
Findings of major violations in 1957, 1996, and 1998. Two postseason bans, 7 years of probation. Rick Pitino is the coach. While his programs have been surprisingly (and suspiciously?) scandal-free, his personal life hasn't.

Kansas
Findings of major NCAA violations in 1957, 1960, 1972, 1988, and 2006. They've had three postseason bans and 10 years of probation. The current coach seems OK, but this is one of the most corrupt basketball programs of all time...

Kentucky
...though it can't touch Kentucky. Findings of major violations in 1953, 1976, 1988, and 1989. Received the "death penalty" in the '50s, and almost got it again in the '80s. Two-year postseason ban, 5 years of probation, 2 tournament wins vacated. John Calipari is the coach. Before coming to Kentucky, he took two different schools to the Final Four. Both of those appearances were later vacated. Trouble follows this guy around like toilet paper on a shoe. He has somehow escaped any direct punishment, but nobody trusts him. He is clearly and unapologetically running the University of Kentucky's basketball program as a one-year NBA Draft prep program.