Go

Last Sunday morning, while sitting in a coffee shop, listening to a friend tell a story, his phone just happened to receive a text message from an unknown number with the content "Have you gone to the teacher for the child yet?", my friend mischievously pressed "Yes" and immediately the number on that end replied "Go with an envelope or shampoo?" My friend replied "envelope", the other end asked "Go with which?". Knowing that I couldn't keep joking, my friend replied, "Sorry comrade, just joking, you've sent the wrong number". And the last message my friend received from the unknown number was "Go away!"

After telling the story, my friend thoughtfully asked me, “Sir, what does the word “go” mean here?”. I was completely stunned. Oh yeah, what does “go” mean? Originally, the word “go” was probably just created to describe the movement of moving by foot step by step. Now there are also “go co”, “go boss”… If “go co” is used, then what is “go”? And even by what “means”? Roughly speaking, is it “go with flowers, go with envelopes, go with shampoo or go… by car?” So what is “go”?

Sitting and searching through the messy dictionary in my old memory, I suddenly realized that, in addition to its original meaning, the word "go" is also used in dozens of other cases. Using a means of transportation is also called "go", for example, riding a motorbike, riding a bicycle, riding a horse, or going by boat. Doing a job also requires the word "go" such as: going to play golf, going abroad for medical treatment, going to a party with a front company. There are cases where the word "go" must be used to be true to its meaning, to have no meaning at all. Well, to help readers visualize, the author would like to boldly put some sentences with the word "go" as examples like this: "When the boss is flirting with the secretary, look away"; "Since the day they went to court, the two former generals have looked thinner"; "The way to understand the people of Thu Thiem is to be less bureaucratic"; “To get into the semi-finals, the Vietnamese team should pay less attention to the referee.” “If you have been found guilty of very serious violations, you better prepare yourself to go to jail.” “The confiscation of corrupt assets is being studied in depth by delegates.” “The high-tech gambling case involves a deceased deputy minister.” And so on and so forth!

There are so many examples, but it is not easy to cut out the meaning of the word "go". To save such a broad content for another time, today the author would like to mention only a small corner of the word "go" - "go qua"! Going is of course not running, the intensity of going is of course not as fast, strong and costly as running. The goal of going is also not as seasonal as running. Walking is a slow and steady rain, but running is a rain that comes and goes! It is just that in reality, there are many people who cleverly take advantage of going to... run! To be fair, "going qua" is not inherently a negative behavior. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a culture. Now, that culture is not only preserved but also wildly embellished by the community to the point of serious deformation. Going qua in the past originated from the depths of human feelings. From a basket of potatoes, a dozen eggs, a kilo of sugar, a can of milk, it gradually evolved at the speed of light. Beer crates, foreign wine bottles, and beef scales are outdated stories of the last century, “old-fashioned”. Overcoming all tenure-based thinking, through time, the giver and the receiver collude to cut holes to get past that fragile boundary. And feelings in this case are arranged as a clumsy and shameless camouflage for the ugly exchanges behind. For the influential but “spoiled” class, every Tet holiday is a bumper crop, while soldiers are cramming their necks with elementary school math. If the boss goes, the boss may forget, but if he doesn’t go, the boss is afraid that the boss will miss him very much. And when the boss has put it into his internal memory, it is easy to “go to waste”! So every Lunar New Year, the boss’s birthday, the boss’s wife’s birthday, the boss’s child’s birthday, the 16th death anniversary of the boss’s paternal and maternal side… 500 colleagues in the office sing in unison “Get up and go, my fellow countrymen”! The crowd is fanatical about a vague gratitude. Going is also miserable, but not going is… no longer miserable! Of course, don’t be foolish enough to forget, or you’ll die! The story goes that there was a boss who had four birthdays every year, one according to the solar calendar, one according to the lunar calendar, one his real age, and one his… profile age! Every time, his colleagues wished him a happy new year while counting on their fingers to calculate the next birthday! The person who knew him clicked his tongue, saying that he went to the boss so that he could have the opportunity to go to… someone else!

Going is also fiercely competitive, the quick ones go first, the ones with conditions go a lot. There are cunning people who "go individually", "tricksters" who gather together to "go collectively". There are also the schools of people who are indecisive and opportunistic, who "go collectively" while also secretly "go individually". Those who use tricks to find inside information like probing how much their brothers go, so they can spend a little more with the purpose of going above the floor price in order to extort the stingy attention of their boss.

At the super-famous gambling trial taking place in Phu Tho, a defendant confessed that he had once "gone" with another defendant a Rolex watch worth billions of dong. The world was still shocked by the long numbers when the other defendant denied everything. He admitted that "Party B" only took a bottle of liver tonic, a shirt, and the "billion-dollar beauty" watch came from a source that was similar to the source of broomsticks in folklore. Whoever believes, believe... go ahead! In this case, no one was accused of giving bribes, and if no one gave bribes, where would the bribe takers come from? They just "went" with each other, and they went with great affection, of course, wearing the cloak of affection, there is no crime. Our ancestors have a saying "following the devil, wearing a paper coat". Fortunately, the defendants in this case are all knowledgeable in information technology, all are real money-making talents, they are not ghosts so going with them does not require wearing paper clothes, just shirts!

Writing here reminds me of two classic love poems by Nguyen Binh:

"Yesterday I came back from the province

The scent of the fields and the wind blows away a little bit"

Of course, if you go to the province, how can you keep the whole countryside scent? If you just cling to the countryside scent like a treasure, what is the point of going to the province? The two words "go" in the two lines of poetry have two meanings. Nguyen Binh's wordplay is so skillful that we don't have enough time to comment on his poetry. Going back to the case of the super defendant, whether he "goes" with a Rolex watch or not, the reputation of the governing industry will probably "fly away more or less". Oh, but it's strange, the defendants were reported to have only received a bottle of liver tonic from someone, the defendants are not Nguyen Binh but they still play with words quite well. Let's give each other liver tonic. What a coward! If you're that cowardly, it will be a long time before you... go!