Pineapple Cake

Rain in Southeast Asia is nothing to scoff at. Particularly not when you’re informed to prepare to move for a company branch during said rainy season, worse, in short, a three-week notice. It brings an altogether sigh and a cold drink together, after which I would grab and wipe down my luggages and throw them open about two days before departing. It’s always an adventure, sure, and I look forward to the new person I will come out of the place. But it works altogether. However, I noticed another addition in the email order I received.

“Do not pass immigration until she has transferred from her Taipei flight. You must pass it together.”

Her? They typically do not say names, as HR doesn’t know or care who. I also understood it was not to stir a raised eyebrow from the immigration officer. But yes, the pronoun made my head tilt. Having had a “his” to partner me during the few work trips, and often than not, I just kept it professional. It is usually someone with a better-ish grasp of the local language than I. However, I almost always grab the free two-week language program, which is a good excuse to do other things during company time. It makes the white lie of “easily learns new languages” in my resumé seem worthwhile.

I wasn’t so glum about it. I was looking forward to it even, despite some naughty suggestions from my colleagues, I was firm that it was just another work deployment. Though I cannot deny myself the power of my imagination. I was young and single, so the idea never really left me. The idea made me ponder once or twice in the weeks leading up to the day, all while having no real imagination of who I had to live with for the next few months, except that it was a she. Given that it was Da Nang I was to leave for, there was quite a bit on my mind, though I doubt the adjustment wouldn’t be too hard. I’ve done this before, so it can’t be that different, can it?

In the meantime, I did what I could to get a clearer image of the place I would call home for a bit. I thought I had to grab a motorcycle if I wanted to go around on the weekends. However, I don’t consider myself to be the most adventurous of people, but in a new country, I don’t mind. I looked forward to sitting on a stool and eating whatever I picked; the good excuse of “I can jog this out tomorrow” always worked like a charm, and being used to greens helped.

Though that was all I did for the past three weeks. Now I’m a bit early at the airport, waiting outside a cafe, a large suitcase on one end, an empty plate and almost-finished mug on the table, and waiting on an empty chair while double-checking whether the documents I had were correct. Though I was just watching something on my phone when I got the message that she had arrived. Let’s see if I was lucky, but now I just need to be professional. It did not take long before a tall lady, quite serious, searching, about five-foot-six, could tell from a glance she was Taiwanese, probably because she wasn’t so pale. I thought maybe that was her. Then she saw me, looked at her phone, and walked towards me. Yep, that’s her.

I stood up to meet her. A firm handshake but a carefree smile. Good impressions all around, she seemed very fun to be around, happy-go-lucky, as said. It was pretty easy to crack the ice, warming up to each other easily, as she had been my counterpart in the Taipei office for some time now. We were now the “traveling circus,” since they had shifted from sending uninterested middle-aged executives a while ago. Yet her name was one of the things I asked first, so I have one: Hsu Nien Tzu.

I remember asking her one thing before standing up: if she could speak the language. I was not about to start a bad demonstration.

“I’m half-Vietnamese,” Nien replied, “we’re gonna be fine.”

Save for the passing score I got when it came to comprehension, I was glad. Alright, this was going to be better than I had hoped. So we followed another set of orders: pass by immigration, eat, and wait for our flight to leave after sunset. I was constantly reminded that I needed to speak up more to my trip partners, so I decided to keep the conversation as natural as possible. Talking to Nien over dinner gave that, sharing an early phở before we left. It made me wonder why I didn’t decide to set out and look for who I was going with on the trip. On trips before, I got my answer at least a week before we departed. Maybe I was too busy, or perhaps some part of me liked that anticipation, the waiting, yet it’s not like I exclusively work with men, so what gives?

Maybe I’ve probably gotten too used to the scheduling. This was also my longest deployment so far, so there was probably more off time between us. I always make it a point not to make it too personal, but I value the companionship I get.

We passed the time that way, and before long, we were number two for takeoff on a rainy evening. It took a bit of both waiting and a little turbulence, with a loud turbofan roar and water flying by the window as we left the city. I saw it disappear behind the clouds; thick clouds only meant rain, and pretty much another goodbye. I hoped the rain wouldn’t follow us there as the plane settled into its climb, so I whispered it to Nien too; she was already, understandably, half-asleep, and she agreed. We were heading to a coastal city after all, and I knew it would be sooner or later. I just about remembered the slight pull of settling into cruising altitude as I dozed off, unable to put my book back and it on the tray table.

We were being told to put the tray tables up when we woke. I look outside and see spotlights on the water, equally spaced apart. The next thing my eyes saw was a mass of lights in a line, some were moving, but most were static; the unmistakable coastline, and a temporary new life. Our little residence should be across what seems to be the river, a little company present that overlooked the estuary. I could feel Nien was looking over, too.

“Fishing boats.” I blurted without question.

“Hm?” Nien sounded off. I asked, letting my thoughts known, “wanna grab something when we land?”

She just nodded.

That’s what we did. Getting our bags and getting into a company car took less than fifteen minutes. A junior representative welcomed us and discussed what to expect in our new residence. Trying not to space out and just look out the window, one moment we were at a stoplight with just a bit too many motorcycles, the next, we were on a bridge, a pretty well-lit one at that, glancing to see the many skyscrapers before looking back and trying to read the paper in the dark. We were told to split tasks for tomorrow as we needed to show up by Monday. I agreed that I was the one getting the long license conversion pipeline.

Unpacking our things, I gave a generous, well, a little too generous, tip to our welcoming party. It was a small third-floor accommodation, with a nice river view as I walked out onto the small balcony, with a row of sellers a few walks to the right. I remembered what I told her two hours ago on the plane. I turned around to see Nien had changed into more comfortable clothes, nothing unusual. She seemed to fit right in, and I did my part by changing into sandals. Our conversation took off where it was at the airport, no work yet, that was tomorrow’s problem, ending our first night with a celebratory beer and two bowls of noodles. I think it was Mì Quảng.

The next day came as it did, and we started working as the weekend passed. It only took about a week, and adding a few more, coupled with plastic bags of beer, or enjoying the long lunch breaks, to really get on their best graces. Before we knew it, we were almost halfway through our stay. They remarked from the first few days that they liked having someone closer to their age to mess around with. I also did, and having a roommate that the guys liked flirting with was fun to watch. It never crossed my mind to look at her differently, visually or personally—though I did understand why people wanted to flirt with her—perhaps keeping myself down, shifting into the college-age rhetoric of never getting involved with your colleagues. Even if we shared the same room, we had to run errands together sometimes. However, Nien did bring up a throwaway line when we were sharing a drink on the balcony once.

Nien asked, “You mentioned I’m the first girl you went on a visiting trip with?”

I replied, “Yeah, it was always men before that.”

“Mine too. So you’re my first guy partner.” Nien answered, adding, “It’s quite relaxing.”

“And why’s that?”

She replied, “You’re not a bother,” then paused again.

“If anything, I kind of forget we’ve been together for like, six weeks now.”

I paused too, mid-sip, putting the glass away from my lips and corrected her, “Together in Da Nang, you mean.”

Nien chuckled, taking it in stride, “Yeah, together in Da Nang,” before taking a swig of her glass, which had already made her fingers cold and wet. She had held on to it for a bit too long.

We left it at that. A slight brush at the line. It was like that until we got to Huế.

The monsoon season came as I had predicted. Switching out the sticky, humid heat of mainland Southeast Asia for the torrential rain of its archipelagic neighbors. Save for the second morning, when we were able to tour a bit of the citadel and some of the city. We shared mugs of coffee when the heat got too much for us, which, by this point, was the bitterness we’d gotten used to. Now every other coffee will taste diluted. The rest of our week was forecasted to be just a gloomy morning, followed by an afternoon downpour, and evening rain, all in that order. I looked across the river, our cheap local hotel barely had a view over the river and to the citadel. I wondered to myself, “Just getting across that moat would’ve sucked."

Our actual reason for being in the older city was far outside the center. A site visit, about an hour or so via a rented motorcycle, amounted to us arriving at a small roadside site. Nien and I were just being toured around and gave pretty faces, maybe interviewing some folks, but all in a day’s work; show up, play nice, lead them along, write the report the evening before we get on the bus Saturday morning. We arrived and finished early in the afternoon, which was unexpectedly sunny for that day, both much to our surprise. Changing into more comfortable, warm-weather clothes, we thought the same thing—there was enough time to kill.

It was a fine tour of the citadel, again this time with less time to beat, for ourselves. Perhaps the aspect of sightseeing while breaking a bit of a sweat endeared itself to Nien. Linking onto my arm as we walked to the lesser sights inside the walls, I didn’t question it this time. Though maybe, earlier in our stay, I would’ve. It just never crossed my mind at this point to ask why she’s doing it. Perhaps she could just do it because we weren’t in our usual city, and I rolled with it. I asked, albeit a bit forcefully, when she pushed me to stand, pose, and take some pictures.

"I’m getting envious of everybody else here."

Hmm. Doesn’t sound half bad, but it does sound like an excuse from Nien. To be fair, a more homebody like me became just a bit more adventurous because of her, even after we settled for our stay. Sooner, I told her that it might rain a little later, the grey clouds slowly swamping out the sunlight as we kept walking. We did have a foldable umbrella, but having seen it bent before, I didn’t want to trust it if the wind blew. She argued that we could just keep taking our time, though, adding her point that there was more to explore beyond the moat.

Though the grey clouds, heavy as they were, rolled in faster than we anticipated. We were in a garden and managed to walk, almost into a jog, towards a pavilion as the raindrops began to fall heavily on us. When we got under the roof, it was dark. Nien and I caught ourselves for a moment before I started to notice the old wood, and I looked around. There was nobody else there.

“Well, let’s wait,” I said, looking out to the garden. The wind was coming in now.

I moved inside, adjusting my eyes from the hallway to see a sizable, but empty interior, almost cavernous because the roof was the ceiling itself. If we had run the other way, we would’ve ended up at a cafe. But we were here. Nien was on a bench, the second of three, scrolling on her phone.

“Internet’s pretty slow,” Nien remarked when I sat beside her.

I was about to space out, between staring at the interior and my phone, I considered just standing and walking around. The network is slow, as she said. Then Nien blurted out of the blue.

“Sometimes I wonder why you don’t ask me out?”

I heard her. I froze a bit, though it hit like an M79— thump!

“Hm?” I knew I would stutter as I met her stare. Though flatly, maybe firmly, I replied, “We’re workmates.”

That was just me trying to run for cover. Nien was a wily woman.

“And single.” Nien butted in. The free spirit had me cornered. Another one, thump!

I turned to look at her, possibly overreacting, “I sure hope you’re not asking for casual.”

“You know,” Nien grabbed my hand, squeezing it, “I have a visa,” her palm was sweating, “And you’re just an hour away.”

“I know, but I just hope you don’t have any silly surprises from Taipei.” I wasn’t willing to be a third party.

"How about you’re my "silly” surprise then?“ Nien replied. I was tense, but sneaked out a smile, mirroring her. I asked, "Hard to hold one down with our work, no?"

"Yeah, sounds nice sometimes..,” I continued, “to settle.” At the risk of sounding like a formal email. I couldn’t think of saying anything else, really. Nien had other ideas besides just staring at me. Her gaze was on my lips. I was thinking about it, but she beat me to the chase again. I could only think; Please, don’t just be another passing mirage. Yet she was a bold woman—asking for my commitment—there was no “no,” as her eyes locked onto me.

“Is that a yes or no?”

Responding with “maybe” was going to throw everything off. I did not doubt Nien, yet my doubt always forecasted itself when I needed it the least. It took me about a second to really gather my thoughts. This felt like the fucking interview again! I needed to think quickly. Nien was anything but bad. Whatever quirk I had thought of before, I forgot now, and in my recent attempts back home, they were all pale and shallow compared to where we were. It was half a calculation and boyish arrogance, and a matter of time before we reached this point. She got her reply.