One of the very rare pieces of non-spam that arrived in my Hotmail E-mail account today was a rather long (about 400-word) E-mail, apparently addressed directly and only to me, written entirely in unaccented Vietnamese. Now, my Vietnamese reading skills are pretty shaky to begin with (I’d say no better than grade 3-4 level—enough to read signs, restaurant menus, etc.), so my skill at reading ASCII-fied Vietnamese (without the accents and special characters normally in written Vietnamese) is considerably worse.

I guess I’ll keep struggling with reading the E-mail, because I feel kinda bad about not reading such a long message that someone would take the time to write me. And because I’m curious why someone would E-mail me out of the blue, in a language that they just assume that I can handle… (If it turns out to be spam (though it doesn’t look like it), I’m gonna be pissed.)

Actually I receive some random communications in Vietnamese now and again… A few months ago I got mail from a pagoda in—of all places—Australia. Why? I don’t know! And back at Waterloo, some random Vietnamese student just started harrassing me via E-mail in Vietnamese without any provocation and for no reason that I can think of. (What the heck was that about? I can’t say I understood every word of what he said, only that he said some not-nice things about my mother. The E-mails stopped after I complained to the guy’s system administrator.)