“Nothing colonial about the way I live,” says Tây Hồ teacher

Tây Hồ, Hanoi – As the nation reluctantly returns to the putrid swamp of gainful employment following Vietnam’s 74^th Independence Day, local Tây Hồ turd, Kevin Jennings, is today denying claims that aspects of his life could be considered dimly colonial.

The long weekend commemorated Hồ Chí Minh’s historic 1945 reading of the Declarations of Independence in Ba Đình Square, where he addressed the nation to inform them that they were at last free from the scourge of foreign empires. Jennings meanwhile spent the national holiday drunkenly berating Hanoi’s netizens.

“Honestly, this has been a huge misunderstanding,” pleads Jennings, who recently spunked a prime wad of gibberish onto Facebook, causing others to suggest he may indeed be a neo-colonial piece of shit.

“There’s nothing colonial about the way I live,” argues the 24-year-old Tây Hồ resident and part-time ESL teacher after looking up the word colonial.

“Yes, I have a maid who cleans up all my detritus and washes designer underwear that she couldn’t afford after a year of wiping up my vomit puddles, but I think she likes me” he contends, “I always give her a big smile and sometimes even a 15,000 VND tip – if I’ve had a particularly big weekend of shagging.”

Typically ignorant to the fact that his monthly spend on pizza alone is more than the average salary of many Vietnamese citizens, Jennings confesses he still hides the money from his cash-in-hand English teaching gig whenever the cleaner comes.

“It’s not that I don’t trust her, but I just can’t know what she’s thinking and I earned that money fair and square – yes, as an illegal immigrant lacking both paperwork and the intention of doing any real good during my time here, but I stood in those classrooms for the allotted time period and so they paid me, it’s up to me where I hide it,” he says, becoming defensive.

“Sure, I drink and drive and it’s true I’m yet to face a single consequence for any of my actions since moving here, but I am a teacher, I’m here to educate,” he states plainly, “Well, that and get rich, laid and fucked up.

“Of course I’d love to learn the local language, but it’s really very difficult, too many vowels or whatever – so for the sake of ease, I’d appreciate it if we could just all use my language – English – which you can pay me handsomely to teach to your youth, despite the fact that I graduated with a BA in Aromatherapy and Horticulture and am yet to find gainful employment outside of a supermarket back home, but I am however, very, very white,” he says in a breathless splurge of ignorance.

“Some people have told me that there’s a certain irony to moving to a country less economically developed than my own, not even trying to learn the language and extorting countless hopeful locals who believe I’m their ticket to a better future courtesy of my inherited English, but I’ve not reached the chapter on irony in my TEFL course yet, so personally I don’t see a problem with the current system,” he admits with a bashful smile that manages to colonise his entire face.

The interview ended abruptly, after Jennings was asked how he celebrated Independence Day, to which he asked if Will Smith was Vietnamese.