Random encounters

I went for a perm last night. It ended up taking me 2.5 hours because the woman talked so much. It was so interesting to hear her life story.

It turns out that she was Vietnamese, and that her mother and brothers and she came to Ottawa during the late 70s. Her father used to be a head military officer working for the Americans during the war. She was telling me how they lost all their possessions to the communist, her father was sent to prison camp, and how the rest of her family had to sleep outside on the streets while fleeing the communists.

Apparently her mother organized a small boat for her family and 43 other members of their extended family so they could flee to Malaysia. She was telling me how she had to take swimming lessons in case the boat capsized and whatnot. When I asked why she and her family settled in the Ottawa region, she told me it was because her mother had been able to contact a former Canadian soldier that they used to rent a house to in Vietnam, and he vouched for them to come to Canada.

It was so crazy to listen to the woman talk. You hear about these kinds of things happening in movies and books, but to actually encounter one of these people was mind boggling.