David was still not able to comprehend the complicated relationships among Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- in fact, he was not even able to clearly tell the differences among different branches of Christianity such as Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, or even the terms such as Baptists, Quakers, Jehovah Witness, Mormons, Later Day Saints, etc. But he decided not to bother Bob with too many questions and instead just ask him some seemingly basic and simple questions: "If a Jew does not dress differently from a Christian like you common white folks, if a Jewish man does not were the little Jewish hat, can you tell if a person is Jewish?" Bob answered with a joke first: "Maybe they have a better tan" Then he said with a more serious tone: "No there is really not a lot of difference, especially in United States where people are so diverse. It's probably easier to tell from their last names". David said: "I can tell from last names with 'stein' or something, something "heimer", etc. but how can you tell that Medline Albright is Jewish or William Cohen is a Jewish name?" Bob: "Cohen is a Jewish name for sure. I guess you have to learn about these things from life experiences. I used to work with a guy named Cohen and he told me Cohen is a Jewish name". David said: "How about 'Cord', is that a Jewish name? I used to work a guy who is Jewish by that name." Bob said: "I can't tell. It could be short for something else". "Oh, like that Seinfeld episode there was this Chinese woman Donna Chen, who was Jewish. Her original name was Donna Chenstein".

"It sure looks like there were many rich and powerful Jewish people in the United States. If you count Henry Kissinger, Medline Albright, and William Cohen, there were equivalent of the two and a half of your head of the State Departments" David wondered. Bob made a statement which David was not sure whether it was true or not: "Yeah, it seemed Jewish people always had this talent of going to different countries, getting good at politics and eventually taking over the government of those places".

To further display his apathy towards both religion and politics, Bob said: "You know I don't celebrate Christmas. I don't vote either. I figure it wouldn't have mattered one way or another whether I vote or not. There was this book written by a US Senator, I forgot his name, but the book was called 'between the heart and hard places'. He mentioned that the world is such an unpredictable enough place, that even without any selfishness or prejudgment it's still hard to make the right decisions. But if one lives in the real world, there are inevitably bias and influence from special interest groups. Now, if you live under democracy, you have to at least be responsive to the voters or else you wouldn't be in the office. Politicians in this country are, by nature of their jobs, faced with the dilemma between pleasing the voters and making the right decisions. Guess which end is going to win? Damn the right decisions, pleasing the voters is more important, because that is just how the system works."

David made a comment: "If the world is totally unpredictable, as unpredictable as throwing a dice in a casino, then trying to be a just governmental official could have pretty much the same effects to the society as trying to be a corrupted official, isn't it?" Bob said "Aer you go. Did you say you wanted to try to learn West Virginia and Southern accent from me one day? One of the first phrases you need to learn is this 'aer you go', nothing else." David realized that Bob thought he was joking. But he was not totally joking, because he recalled the Ying & Yang (阴阳) and Taoism (道学). It's almost a philosophical thinking that nothing really works as it was designed to do, but on the other hand, everything was working just as designed by being not working as designed.

Going through many trips together and filling up gas many times in between David couldn't help but once touched upon the topic of gas prices with Bob: "It does not look like that you guys in Houston are getting any break on gas prices, with many big oil companies being here and all". Bob said: "Well, it has nothing to do with where the oil companies are. Do you remember there was a film about the 70's oil crisis, starred by Michael Douglas?" David said: "In the 70's, I probably couldn't even read Chinese yet". "No, no, the movie came a little later" Bob said. David thought he was not going to remind Bob that he wasn't even in this country yet before the 90's, and he once made a mistake of calling the old air-craft maker McDonnell Douglas as Michael Douglas Company when he was learning English in China. Bob continued with the movie scene: "in the movie, Michael Douglas played this President of the United States and one of his assistant called him and said: 'hey Michael, whatever his name was in the movie, I figured out who were jacking up the prices. It's the Arabs'. Michael Douglas wasn't impressed and calmly said to him: 'we are the Arabs, you big tool' and just hang up the phone."

"Oh, I take it you don't think the gas price is totally determined by supply and demand economics." David probed Bob and got ready for one more interesting opinions coming afterwards. Bob did not disappoint him and said: "The Bush family has a lot to do with the Arabs. I even think the war was just another errand the Arabs asked Bush to run for them. I don't really know and I don't really care. I just know there are lots of people in this world wanting to fight. That's what people do sometimes. You got this baby Bush growing up in the shadow of Daddy Bush who was this war hero and all. He just always wanted to have his own legacy, wanted to raise the 'flag of our fathers'. Every time people mentioning stem cell research, he was going to accuse them of killing babies. Then he turned around and was going to kill many other people in Iraq".

David was not interested in listening to stories about Iraq war anymore since he got quite an earful and eyeful already from people surrounding him. He felt like the Iraqi War in United States was just like a gamble with gambler's expectations going from bad to worse. Initially many people place their bet with the line drawn for the US to win by a large margin. But now both Democrats and Republicans were just hoping to draw another line with only the outcome of Vietnam in mind and hoping to beat the spread.

"You were in Vietnam War, how do you compare that one to this?" David wasn't exactly sure how to ask his partner about a war that was often portrayed as a terrible period that most people do not want to talk about. But to his surprise, Bob quite matter-of-factly talked about it, as if it was somebody else's' story totally detached from him.

"Well, we went to Vietnam to stop the spreading of Communism. Right there the war looked already better than this one because we at least had a reason for the war, even though we later thought that was a stupid reason.

Vietnam was a beautiful place, a very interesting place too. I couldn't understand a thing when I first got there, the language, the people. I still can't understand the language. There was this market that we used to go to in off days. One day, I went to the market with this girl, hmm a whore that's what it was." Bob hesitated and then confessed that he wasn't as "noble and professional" as propaganda and President Bush expected out of US serviceman and women. "She went somewhere getting something, and I was standing alone in the market. There was this man came to me with a stick and a diamond as if he wanted to sell me the diamond. I couldn't understand what the stick was for and he gestured me as if I was supposed to use the stick to test the diamond. I took the stick and hit the diamond. The stick broke and proved the diamond was really solid and hard. Then this man started pushing me, grabbing me and yapping away. He also talked to other people in the market and pretty soon, there were many people circled around me saying something that I couldn't understand. I thought they were trying to sell me the diamond and kept on saying "true diamond, good, very nice true diamond, but I am not going to buy". They just seemed to get angrier and angrier. The good thing was none of them was big. The girl came back and after talking to other Vietnamese for a while, she explained to me, the man was trying to bet with me that I couldn't break the diamond, not selling me the diamond. I was supposed to pay and get no diamond because I lost the bet. I'll tell you, those people bet on anything in the market and strange things too.

When you go to the country side, there were just those picturesque scenes with rice patties lying on the ground like gigantic carpets and mountains that looks like appearing from fairy tales. Those Vietnamese women looked small but usually carried big loads on their backs and some times dragged many other things too, usually following a water buffalo and a man. Men usually just rode on the backs of the water buffalos empty handed and led the way. You asked local people, why things look that odd when women had to do all those work, while men just carried nothing, they would tell you: one word -- 'tradition'.

As I stay for a year and towards the end of it I would see men still empty handed riding on the back of the water buffalos, but this time following women still carrying many things to and from fields. You ask local people again why the women moved to the front, they would tell you: one word -- 'landmine'".

There was a Vietnamese man who used to come to our camp almost everyday trying to sell us some sort of buns. One day, I tasted one and he started asking me for money. I thought tasting shouldn't cost anything and he was very mad. He kept on saying: "I am going to get you. I am going to get you. And that night, we were attached. So to me personally, I seem to feel that the war started because I tasted some Vietnamese buns without paying. I think that man was a Viet Com. Every time people mention Viet Com, an image of him would just pop into my mind."

When there were days we were not fighting, Vietnam was just a gorgeous place. Are there are monsoon seasons in China too?"