Gifts

Q: When do people give gifts in your country? A: There's no shortage of occasions, honestly — birthdays and weddings obviously, but also Tet, when almost everyone exchanges something, and there's a whole unofficial economy around visiting someone's new house or congratulating a new baby. Gift-giving here is less about the object itself and more about acknowledging the relationship — showing up empty-handed can read as a bit careless even if nobody says anything. I've noticed it's often more about the gesture than the value. Q: Do you enjoy choosing gifts? A: It depends entirely on who it's for. For close friends I actually enjoy it — I'll spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about something specific to them rather than just safe and generic. For distant relatives or colleagues, though, it turns into more of a chore, because you're trying to find something inoffensive rather than something meaningful, and that's a much less interesting problem to solve. Q: What was the last gift you gave? A: A cookbook, actually, for a friend who'd just moved into her first flat and kept complaining she only knew how to cook two dishes. I put a bit of thought into it rather than grabbing something obvious, which I think is why it landed well — she sent me a photo of the first thing she made from it a few weeks later. Q: Do you prefer giving or receiving? A: Giving, without much hesitation. There's a particular satisfaction in getting something right for someone — seeing their face when they realise you actually paid attention to what they'd mentioned in passing months earlier. Receiving is nice too, obviously, but it doesn't come with that same sense of having done something well.