...It's a small world after all

There is at this time one major park in the city of Saigon, known as Gia Dinh park. It is near the airport, a long, long way from where I live. (Actually, where I "live" now is actually a long way from where I normally live in the US but that is a different story.) Yesterday, a friend invited me to meet a native Vietnamese Tai Chi teacher visiting from the U.S. at Gia Dinh park.
The local residents like to walk around the park in circles. They look like worshipping Tibetans at a stupa. However, they are just walking for exercise. Young lovers cuddle on benches and on the grass. An old blind man walks around with two raggedy beggar children at his side. He blows air into a very small plastic bottle and it makes a noise, like a whistle, which I take to mean it is the entertainment he is providing in exchange for small change.
Various people arrive, and finally the teacher himself, in monastic garb. Stout, short, energetic with wild eyes, he seems more like a fighter than a monk. He lives of all places in Washington State, just a few hours from my home in Portland. I told him of my time studying zen in the school of Zen Master Seung Sahn, and he asks me if I know of a place called Cambridge Zen Center. That, as many of you know, is where I used to live. He asks me if I know Mark, and I say of course I know Mark (the co-abbot of CZC). So it is a small world after all.
Soon the local TV station is there, and in typical Vietnamese fashion, a gaggle of onlookers, many of whom seem amused by the tall lanky guy they say looks like a swan (was that a complement or not?). The teacher puts on a quite a show, dramatically demonstrating what turns out to be more like Qi Gung than Tai Chi.
In the end, it was exactly what I needed after a long week in the Vietnamese stock market.