“Mom, I’ve decided to buy a convenience store.” Vihn helped her make the bed and clean the hotel room while she worked so he could talk to her. It was among his oldest memories, spending time like this with his mother. She’d taken him to work with her until he started school, and on days when school was closed down, because she couldn’t afford and didn’t want day care for her son. Vihn loved the time he’d been able to spend with her and considered it perfectly normal to help her.<\/p>\n
“How you pay?”<\/p>\n
“I have a down payment, and I have financing arranged for the store and for initial inventory.”<\/p>\n
“Financing mean loan? No loan!”<\/p>\n
“Mom, I have to get a loan. There’s no way I can buy this building without a loan.”<\/p>\n
“Loan bad. You talk father.”<\/p>\n
“I did talk to Dad, Mom. He understands.”<\/p>\n
“Why so hurry?”<\/p>\n
Okay. Maybe he didn’t love this part of their conversations. She was such a stickler for paying in full in advance. How was he going to explain this opportunity? “I’m twenty-five. I’ve learned everything I can learn about the convenience store business working for someone else. You know I want to serve in a community that doesn’t have easy access to quick food, staples, and gas.”<\/p>\n
She was impatient. “Of course, I know that. No reason make loan.”<\/p>\n
Vihn ignored her and continued on. “I found an ideal setup in Granite Hill. The building is available and in good shape. The owner is willing to sell. Not lease. Sell. It would be my store.”<\/p>\n
“No!” she interjected vigorously, “Not your store. Bank store. Take anytime. You lose. Bad.”<\/p>\n
She stopped work and began a long tirade in Vietnamese that he mostly followed. He didn’t need the details. The gist was he was making a huge mistake and even if he was Mr Big Pants Twenty-Five, she didn’t have to stand aside and let him make it. Neither did his father have to do so. They would talk. He was dismissed.<\/p>\n
He kissed her on the forehead before leaving, “Yes, Mom. I’ll see you at home tonight.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Mom, I’ve decided to buy a convenience store.” Vihn helped her make the bed and clean the hotel room while she worked so he could talk to her. It was among his oldest memories, spending time like this with his mother. She’d taken him to work with her until he …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-z-challenge","category-granite-hill"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}