Adjustment Journal: The Perks of Being an Over-thinker Girl

"I mean, no way! Mine is October 29th too..”

I'll never forget the day I met Karol, a super-extrovert, smooth-talker Polish guy. We met on a bus trip from Mui Ne (a beach area in Vietnam that reminded me of The Hamptons) to Ho Chi Minh city. Everything was like a normal conversation with stranger until I found out we have the same birthday. Since then, everything made sense.

“I like Midnight in Paris.”

“Midnight in Paris? Looove it...” His brown eyes were filled with enthusiasm at a restaurant where we stopped for lunch. The fried rice with salted fish was good. Karol had morning glory.

“Yeah! Basically, I love all Allen’s movies,” I spoke with my mediocre English.

“And there’s this recent ugly news of him…”

Then the rest of the trip were spent with him talking about China. He's having 6 months of summer course there.

“I’m starting to learn Cantonese, you know? That one language beside Mandarin…” his smugness killed and entertained me at the same time.

Stepping off the bus when we arrived, he looked sharp in his green Polo and Levi’s, "Where are you going?"

“Ben Thanh market. Buying some souvenirs.”

“Nice! I’m coming with you!”

So we walked together to Ben Thanh market, strolling along the city centre streets. To fill the awkward silence, I asked Karol about Poland.

He blinked twice in confusion, “Nothing’s special about Poland. Nothing… typical. Holland got windmills and stuffs but all we got is World War concentration camp.”

The market itself was huge and crowded. Locals sold stuffs from ceramics to coconut candy, from ao dai to miniature cyclo. A Vietnamese man offered me sunglasses.

“Fifty thousand Dong…” the man handed a mirror to me.

Karol put a weird expression, “What? Noooo, that’s too expensive! Twenty for the beautiful lady, okay? Come on…”

After bargaining for ten minutes, I got the shades for twenty five thousand. Karol bought coffee beans for his Mom and a creepy frog toy that he used to spook everyone there (the best fun I have in my life for less than one dollar, he said). The weather was so hot at the city so we stopped at a drink counter.

“You know what?” I stopped sipping my drink. “I am kind of superstitious, you know? I believe in how birthday affects personality. And I guess that’s why we’re kind of clicked.”

I couldn’t believe I just said that to a guy I knew from a bus.

“Well, I’m not typical Scorpio,” he sipped the last drops of his Mango smoothie.

Looking at his eyes from my new fake Ray-Ban, I fell in love.