How do you pronounce the name Phuc??

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Evening all,

How's things? Hope you're fine and/or dandy. Admittedly I'm not crash hot at the moment as I'm coping with the fact I encountered too many chillies yesterday in my soup. Who would've thought that possible? Certainly not I….

This may have in fact affected my ability to write, so this one may have taken a turn for the absurd, but hey, torturous burning sensations either takes you to a higher plane in understanding truth, or it gives you a mild sense of delirium. Hahahehehohoho…..

To all those I've added to the list recently, apologies for leaving you out, it was an accident. If you're bored/curious and want any previous entries, let me know and I'll send them through.

And of course, let me know if you no longer wish to receive these emails.

Anyway, this week's entry is thus:


It goes back to something my grandmother told me when I was a kid.
"Holden," she said, "The big bucks are in d*ck and f*rt jokes." She was a church-goer.
- Chasing Amy, by Kevin Smith


I need to admit something. I can be a real juvenile sometimes. I can be remarkably simple. it doesn't take much to keep me amused. A typical example was back in high school when there was a student that came in named Phuc. That's right, Phuc. Phuc Doan. I mean, how do you pronounce the name Phuc??

"It's pronounced Foo," he would explain on a fairly regular basis in class and when meeting other students. "Foo, Foo Doan (like Moan)."

Yeah I know, it's a fairly obvious joke, it's just like giving every chest with a fcuk emblazoned on it a second look and sniggering (because of what's printed on the t-shirt I meant. I don't know what you were thinking).

I don't recall ever having made fun of Phuc to his face, but everytime I saw him or heard him utter a word, his name would just come to mind based purely on the english phonetics I possessed: It was pronounced Phuc, just like truck, and it would make me smile. It was as simple as that.

It probably didn't help that I was partly in awe and partly bitter about the fact that he was a fairly well adjusted overachieving teenager who was such a model Asian son. He excelled at all his schoolwork, won heaps of school awards and colours, racked up truckloads of volunteer hours presumably earning lots of good karma, AND he was comfortable talking to girls. How is that possible??

This was in contrast to myself, who was not as model an Asian son, and was fairly awkward and angsty. I was also terrified of talking to girls. How things change. Now I am only somewhat awkward and angsty. I still find girls however somewhat terrifying....

In all the years I've left high school, I have never really given Phuc a second thought. That is, until I've arrived in Vietnam and met our IT manager.

"Ben, this is our IT manager Phuc."
"Hi Ben."
"Hi Phu- uh, hi there. Hi."
I spend the rest of my time in the room smiling like I'm happy to meet him. That's what I tell myself.
I should mention here that it is not the same Phuc I went to high school with. It's a different Phuc. I have since come across quite a few Phuc's in Vietnam.

I had a similar reaction in Vietnamese class when my tutor was teaching me how to pronounce words. I giggled like a 5 year old for 10 minutes when he told me how to pronounce the word 'siet'. I think he's lost a little respect for me, but that's ok, I still snigger when I think about it.

After that initial meeting with Phuc though, I felt really guilty. I was going to have to work fairly closely with Phuc but I was having significant trouble pronouncing his name. Firstly, it's not pronounced 'Foo', like the Phuc at school had said. It was definitely similar to truck but different (yeah, same same but different), but I couldn't figure out how it sounded yet. So everytime I met him it was always 'Hi there', 'Morning, how's it going?', 'Hello, how are you?' and so on.

A week later, after hearing other people say it I finally figured it out.

His name is pronounced like the word book. So it's Phuc. It's not pronounced like truck, so it's not Phuc.
It's Phuc, not Phuc. Got it? I have.

Look after yourselves,
Ben


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You either found that really funny or really lame. Eitherway let me know. If you thought it was really lame, I promise I will never attempt to write another word play narrative again....

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Comments

[Leslie]

VERY FUNNY!!
...and here I felt juvenile for looking it up! But we were looking for a unique and potentially humerous name for our all black cat. I stumbled upon "phuc" as a translation for "good luck/fortune"... UREKA! =)

[LE]

Funny
I read this whole email and mentally pronounced Phuc,.... phonetically as you say. Reading it brought a big smile to my face too, because I went to college with a Phuc. Actually, with quite a few Phucs!

[anonymous]

fook