một vài thứ về Tết (2012)
by Wither
When my laptop broke down two years ago, about three years’ worth of photographs went with it and that drove me berserk with anxiety for a while. Though back then most of the pictures I had were taken with a 1.3mp Nokia phone camera, they were still very, very important, almost identity-bearing to me. Without them I get uneasy, fearing that eventually I’d forget some things I never should. That ought to be the reason why there are several gigabytes of totally irrelevant photos in my hard drive that I can’t bear to delete — who knows if they’ll turn out useful someday?
Anyway, the lunar new year has rolled around again, and what I love most about them is driving out with my Dad to choose and buy flowers for our garden - always knowing that this is one of the things I’ll one day look back on and miss unbearably.
choosing flowers
At about 30-50.000 VND a pot, I don’t think these flowers are meant to last so mostly we let them beautify the gardens during the holidays, then throw them out when they eventually wither.
this pot cost 30,000
so many flowers
The next day we did our annual thing, which is to drive out at the last minute possible before the new year, looking for flowers that are going at dirt cheap rates as their sellers are just eager to finish up and go home. We found two young men and after a little bargaining, bought their entire lot of sunflowers for about 120k.
all for 6 dollars
men stuffing flowers into the trunk
a Cadillac full of sunflowers
Ending the post with a picture of me sitting on the trunk of my dad’s Escalade. You can’t see it, but I’d had a couple of beers and my heart was brimming with happiness, stealing glances at the backseats constantly during the drive home. It doesn’t matter that the flowers captured here would go on and wither on the very next day, I finally have a photograph to keep and my heart is at ease.
