UCHANU- Me, You & Us

"How can I integrate the experiences of the semester into my life, and in what concrete ways can I remain connected to UCHANU and Vietnam?"

At the beginning  of the course, I thought that this course is simply made for American, especially Vietnamese American students since we talk about the development of Vietnam, the society, current situation and changes..., which Vietnamese students already know very well because it's the country where we were born and grow up.  Therefore, the ones who are more excited and able to gain more experiences must be UC students but not "local" students like us. 


However, after several lectures, discussions, field trips and of course interaction in the course, I learned so much more than I had expected. That even makes me feel so sad saying good bye to UCHANU on this Wednesday- last class. So sadddd... :(


UCHANU class first and foremost brought me the knowledge from different points of view, which means that although so many things discussed in the lectures and reading materials are familiar to me, I feel very excited to dig the problem in depth, listen to foreigners' ideas and challenge my mindset. I have been thinking a lot about Vietnam, development, society, human beings...much more even after the class. The experiences gained from UCHANU definitely encourage me to study more and find the way to act for the sustainable development of Vietnam. 


In order to integrate the experiences of the semester directly into my life, I have been working on a scholarship program plan at work (I have a non-paid job in VPV- Volunteer for Peace Vietnam). In that plan, there is 1 section evaluating the scholarship candidates, which I applied UCHANU course syllabus: attendance, weekly response & project. I also plan that each candidate has to create a blog :) writing about their feeling after joining VPV volunteer work- just like this blog !!! Hihi. 


---------------------------------
In terms of remaining connected with UCHANU and Vietnam, I think it's not difficult for me because I live in Vietnam :). I will continue this blog (so, this entry is NOT my last entry!!) because it becomes my motivation to write about academic ideas of development, which is also my favorite. This blog is still active and I'm willing to share with other UCHANU friends. I also encourage everyone to keep on writing because everything people have been written from the beginning of the course is just so amazing !!! It's also a good way to remain connected with UCHANU.


I'm also willing to join One heartland Vietnam next year if I still have chance. 


For all of you- UCHANU brothers and sisters, please keep in touch, I know it sounds very commercial but LET'S FACEBOOK, GMAIL & SKYPE :)))). I'll try my best to come to U.S again to meet all of you (at that time maybe mature versions of you ;) ) but you guys have to come back to Vietnam because we have a big family of UCHANU here and family members must live together !!! 


Love you all, buddies 

Story of Chim Sao's Group from my side

As you may know, my group has a "romantic" name: "Chim Sao"- a kind of bird, normally used to represent love, freedom of youths in the Vietnamese love songs :) So, just like the Chim Sao, we're group of active individuals: Chi, Kristine, Jesse, Thu and Mary.

------------
The first thing I learnt from group is understanding and warm friendship. We should be friends before being teammates! Back to the beginning of this course, due to my 3 month internship in Taiwan, I was the last person showing up in the class that means I missed the whole week of orientation, the first week of class mapping the city, even with my buddy- Kristine, I had just a little contact through email because my working condition in Taiwan did not allow me to access internet frequently. Hence, frankly, I felt worried joining in group at the beginning ;). The first class only focused on group's work of mapping the city, which I didn't involve in, made me feel like outsider. However, I'm such a lucky person because all members in my group are very friendly and sympathizing, they helped to explain to me what was going on , why and how they did the group work so far.

I still remember my first day in class, while everyone was discussing on the print version of the city-map made by 4 other members in my group with the name of Thu, Jesse, Kristine, Mary on top of the paper, Kristine quietly added my name "Chi" in that line. I have never talked to Kristine about that and I think she may simply considers it as a small action but it really meant a lot to me. :)

Being friends before teammates- that's the first thing I learnt from Chim Sao. The first day of mine in class was unforgeable !

----------------------
The second thing I learnt from my group is the balance between individual tasks and common tasks. Honestly,  comparing with other groups in Kiem An project, my group seems to be less dynamic because we don't have time to meet up, interact and do all works together, which personally I think would be more fun. Also, we somehow slowly react to the deadlines :) making our group work less exciting, sometime just purely following the due dates although Kristine does very good job motivating people, reminding and dividing tasks for the whole group. So, because the common tasks in my group are normally slow, we decided to increase the individual tasks, which means that one or two members work on 1 interview (both interviewing, transferring to GiG version and translating); the person who doesn't interview or translate will be in charge of editing. I think that method makes work done well because despite the lack of interaction or team building among members, we still complete work on time and smoothly. Therefore, I come up with the idea that in some cases when your group isn't good at interacting or gathering doing common tasks, improving individual tasks first and then asking others to help finish is also a good way to make work done.

-----------------------
In my group, thanks to my Vietnamese speaking skill :)), which I should be proud of, I'm normally in charge of  interviewing people, creating raw transcript and together with Kristine to translate. I also help Jesse or Mary translate if the interview is originally in English. Well, from the beginning of the course, I really wanted to interview people with UC friends or at least, me and 1 more folk going out to interview people, which would be so much fun. Also, by that way, we will avoid mistakes or misunderstandings during translating section because we both involve in talking to people and understand the original transcript right away. However, the reality kept me away from my initial plan. For example, the man who does spiritual work- fortune teller didn't want to be interviewed by many people and kind of worrying strangers; The chance to interview Dong Nat lady and Ao Dai designer was unexpectedly come to me, there was no time to call other groupmates or wait for them to involve in the interview. That's why I  interviewed 3 people by myself. Although all of these interviews are interesting and quite successful, I somehow felt guilty to take the chance of talking and directly involving in the reality of other members, especially UC friends. I remember talking about that to Thay Gerard and Thay said it was ok to do that because it's difficult to gather everyone and every tasks of the project (interview, translate, edit) is important equally. Furthermore, I also receive full of understanding and encouraging from my teammates, making it easier to keep on working hard. Otherwise, if I had chance to do more interview with my group or ability to change back in time, I would find more opportunities to go interviewing and interacting with others as well as take more pictures, tape and record the interviews better.
----------------
So, for the last words,


Thank you so much, Thu, Jesse, Kristine and Mary for your kind support, sympathy, hard-working and warm friendship :)


Go Chim Sao !!!

The farmer - The millionaire ?

Before going to class today, I accidentally read this article:
http://dantri.com.vn/c20/s20-437594/noi-dan-chat-vat-dem-tien-vi-nhieu-qua.htm

It's about many farmers from ethnic groups living around Truong Son mountain has been becoming  millionaire thanks to planting sắn (cassava) and directly sell their products to a private factory manufacturing Cassava powder.

Coincidently, in the early morning today, I watched a Vietnamese movie about major changes of a normal village in Vietnam after Doi Moi policy. In  the movie, the experts from Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam spent a lot of time and effort to figure out which plant the farmers should cultivate in order to replace the domination of rice because there is the fact that plating rice only can not make the farmer get richer. They came to a brilliant idea that the villagers (in the movie) should change all of their rice crops to plant Sugar cane. At the meantime, the government would build Sugar factory near the village to buy farmers' sugar canes and produce sugar. It's consider as a "Win-Win" cooperation: the state-owned factory has sugar cane- the most important input to produce sugar and the farmers have money from selling cane for factory. Such a brilliant idea!!

However, contrary to result of Cassava farmers in the article, the Sugar cane farmers in the movie had many challenges. Due to corruption, the Sugar factory hadn't been finished on time while the farmers had already cleared all of their rice crop to wait for the sugar cane plants. Furthermore, the price of the Sugar cane was much lower than the price announced by the private factories and sate-owned factory took a very long time to  pay money for the farmers that made everyone lose the trust to their authority and still poor people as they always are....

The article telling the REAL successful sample of changing cultivated plants making farmers become millionaires really brought me a different view point of Vietnamese agriculture. We can do much BETTER if we follow the right track, use our brilliant ideas and have hard-working and warm-hearted experts/ businessmen who aim at helping farmer escape from poverty and move to a sustainable  development.

Ugly Hanoi ??

" I have about 10 friends, who have visited Hanoi and 9 of them said: "Never come back again"

That's what I read from a blog of a girl living in Sai Gon and the name of that entry is "An ugly Hanoi". So, is Hanoi ugly? Well, I believe that everyone has their own answer, especially, you- UC students, who have just come back from the South, it may be easy now for you guys to make comparison. Hanoi or Sai Gon / the North or the South, which one is better? I'm not finding the correct answer for anything in this entry but try to figure out the cause-effect relationship between Urbanization- Development and Ugly Hanoi. 

Come back to the previous question: " Is there an ugly Hanoi?"

Yes! We see many ugly Hanoi people, hitting the horn continuously like crazy when the traffic red light still shows 3-4 seconds left and immediately yelling very bad words if you do not let them go first- just like they are super/ extremely busy people. But then, they- the same people- are also willing to stop right in the middle of the street and spend 2 hours on observing the traffic accidence curiously. That means Hanoian are not always in a rush, they're just simply angry, mean, annoyed and impolite sometimes. 

Yes! We everyday see annoying faces of sellers, waiters, officials...in Hanoi. Once you don't buy anything from the vendor, he/she will "face off" right away- change from very welcoming to totally ignoring , even say bad words to you behind your back. That was never happened to me when I was in the South or in other countries, "Cam on", "Thank you", "shie shie"... are the most popular words all over the world except for Hanoi (?)

Yes! Some people in Hanoi  are very 'nha que" (negatively rustic) because they mispronounce "n" to "l", "em" to "iem"... That should be the mistakes made by people in the countryside, not in the capital of a country 

But, "Are Hanoian ugly?"

No, none of original/ traditional Hanoian is ugly. They are the most polite, gentle and knowledgeable people. my grandparents are traditional Hanoian, who were born and grew up in Hanoi, even before America- Vietnam War, before the Doi Moi along with urbanization. My grandparents and other old Hanoian are always the most beautiful people I have ever met. They're not ugly.

Definitely, original Hanoian don't say bad words and of course can not make wrong pronunciation like people in the countryside.  New Hanoian like me and my friends also criticize impolite behaviors, bad words, annoying facial expressions to others...

So, "Who make Hanoi ugly?"

As I mentioned above, Hanoian are originally polite and gentle but urbanization has been bringing more and more people from different regions to Hanoi. The capital now is considered as the "hot pot" of so many cultures, mostly putting negative effects on local culture, image, tradition and therefore, making people misunderstand about Hanoi as well as Hanoian. Hanoi itself is not ugly but it day by day has to put on the dirty and patchy cloths as a result of urbanization.

The project of expanding Hanoi with the "ambition" of reducing the pressure from other provinces to Hanoi seems to be ineffective. People from other regions still have been coming to Hanoi to live, work and find their own way to survive in the big city. From the negative side, urbanization is destroying the culture. The most realistic and effective way Government should do is investing to develop good schools, colleges, state-own companies, factories...for students and workers equally in different provinces, so that people dont need to go to Hanoi but still are able to have good education, find good job and raise their living standard.Once the pressure- the burden that Hanoi is now carrying is reduced, culture will have chance to come back to the natural & beautiful origin - A lovely Hanoi

Clock repairman

A lovely autumn in Hanoi on Sunday...

My dad drove me to a clock repair shop near my house in order to change the battery for my watch. It is a tiny shop in Dinh Ngan street, which is also a small and quite street hiding behind many big buildings on Dien Bien Phu street.

I was so surprised seeing the clock repair man and his shop because it reminded me a lot of 18 years ago or even earlier, when I was a child following my dad to his place to fix clock or watch. All memories suddenly became so clear like a slow movie in my mind. He- the clock repairman was still there, doing his work with special glass to maximize every tiny and sophisticated  details of small watch's machine and his store, actually only a cabinet facing the main street, was exactly the same as well.

Inside his cabinet, there were still very old clocks and watches such as a bunch of "Chicken eating rice" alarm-clock, which was popular around 10-12 years ago. I used to have one "Chicken eating rice" clock, bought by my dad to encourage me to wake up on time by myself to go to school. "Time has many meanings..".- I still remember my dad's statement when he gave that clock to me.

The clock repairman and his small shop seem to be the only one still exists without changing on that street. I remember many years ago, the high building in front of his store used to have 2-3 big clock & watch shops, now they become a fashion shop and a "siêu thị điện máy" (electronic supermarket). The street also looks cleaner and less "vỉa hè" restaurants than several years ago. Everything looks so modernized now except for the shop, even inside, the calendar on the wall contains the old picture of Miss Vietnam 1992. So classical !!

The man and his clock repair shop gave me a idea of particular people doing only one job for the whole life, the income is always in the middle- enough for them to maintain the living standard but not enough to expand the business and open a bigger store. However, they still have their own "brand name", which make people like my dad come to his store every single time they have problem with their clock or watch. They have their own customers and their own market. 

Before leaving his store with a fixed watch, I was thinking about Hanoian people who doing small and particular job like repairing clocks, shoes, cloths... Maybe it's not always the reason of money that prevents them from expanding their business. It is their choice- their preference to work peacefully and regularly without any competition in their own market, they choose to be middle class working people. 

And as a Hanoian, I love every small corner of the city, where I'm easily able to find  my old clock repairman,  chả cốm seller, traditional phở  owner and even the lady selling me candies through the small hole of the elementary school's gate... I love Hanoi because of many tiny unexplainable reasons like that :)

Áo Dài ơi.... (My third interview for KiemAn project)

" I love my job so much- It's my whole life to make people become prettier. I love my job so much..."

 Bac Kim Mui, the owner of Ao Dai Kim Mui shop on Doi Can street talked about her job as an Ao Dai designer with a delighting voice and happy facial expressions. I feel like she can keep talking about Ao Dai as well as her passion for designing transitional and modern style of Ao Dai for  the whole day.  She loves her job that is so obvious, she started falling in love with  Ao dai when she was every young, cycling around Old Streets of Hanoi, seeing Vietnamese ladies in Ao dai and many different famous Ao dai stores near by the Hoan Kiem lake. At that time, almost every young girls in Vietnam knows how to sew, fix and make cloths for family, Bac Kim Mui- at that time, only made Ao dai, not anything else. She even quited her stable job in medical field to focus on designing Ao dai. She loves her job...

As you may know, Ao Dai is very different from other clothes, it is supposed to cover the whole body of the girl- the traditional style  doesn't show too much girl's skin, but at the same time, very sexy because Ao dai is made tightening up the body. However, it doesn't mean that Ao Dai is only for young and perfect body- Bac Kim Mui claimed that- It so much depends on the creative and sensitive sense of Ao Dai designer. There are many ways to make you fit in an Ao dai perfectly even though you're too chubby , too short or too skinny. If you are small, Bac Kim Mui will make " tà cộc" Ao dai- shorter lap of dress and let you wear a tight jeans with high heels, you will definitely look much taller ! Although making Ao Dai is very difficult, Bac Kim Mui is very confident with her skills, experiences, creativity and especially, strong passion for Ao Dai...

Interviewing the Ao Dai designer makes me feel more respectful when wearing traditional dress. Vietnamese girl was born to wear Ao dai and only Ao Dai- I believe that.

Bac Kim Mui is measuring Ao dai for my mom :)

P/S: after the interview, Bac Mui impressed me so much that I ordered 2 Ao Dai right in her shop. I have just got them several days ago and trust me, they're just perfect ! :D gonna wear for you all to see very soon...

The Factory Worlds

Yes, it should be "the factory worlds" instead of "a factory world" because there are actually completely different worlds in different factories with (of course) different life-stories of factory workers. That's what I learned from the field trips to Hanosimex- a State-owned sewing company in Linh Nam and Yamaha- a Japanese motorbike company in Noi Bai.

First off, Hanosimex brought me the feeling of a "very Vietnamese" company, which warmly welcomed us with water bottle on the long table and a sort of long speech made by a company leader in the meeting hall, decorated with red curtains, yellow stars, slogans, Uncle Ho statue...The first machinery workshop was so noisy with loud sewing machines and a little polluted with fibre and  cotton-wool flying on the air. Although I found that area was really interesting with modern machines, soft cotton made every minutes, it is still considered as uncomfortable working place for me that reminding me how hard the workers have to suffer to produce a small amount of cotton in the factory.

The second sewing workshop, where people sew cloths, warp T-shirts, cut the wasted stuffs out of the jeans..., surprised me with the music entertaining for all workers. Loudly sounds and smooth music- such a distinction ! The workers in Hanosimex don't wear uniform, making the whole factory colorful and lively- at least, personally I think so :P. People seem to be close to each other, enjoy their job and really hard working folks. In general, it's still there- the feeling of a "very Vietnamese" company, where workers don't need to hurry, wear their own "random" clothes, stay together in the dormitory of the company, just a few walking distance far from the working area... They have time to chat, discuss, rest and even... catch the fish in the water basin (along with Emily :) )

The second factory- Yamaha impressed me firstly by the bright, large and white meeting hall, which strongly reminded me of "Resident Evil" :P.

 The factory is very well organized, professional with a lot of assembly machines, workers in uniform, the electronic watch counting productivity and target achievement, the board with bad products... Yamaha differently brought me a real picture of capitalist factory, highly specialized labor force, strict regulations... The fact that Yamaha only signs the contract for worker around 1 year and sign another year contract to them if they perform well at work may cause the competition among workers encouraging them to work as much as they can. Walking in Yamaha (without taking any picture) for a while and seeing people working so fast near the assembly lines, I understand why they say: "Money never sleeps"

"The Art of not being governed" & The Art of governing

Stuffs on my mind...

---------------

Reading the article of Nguyen Van Chinh about "Swedden/ Shifting cultivation and Sedentarization/ Fixed farming, settlement", I found it very interesting to figure out the distinction between Vietnamese and foreign anthropologists attitudes towards Sedentarization policy of Vietnamese Government. While national anthropologists consider the policy as the effort to improve economic condition and quality of environment in mountainous areas as well as the rightness of Government to change the "backward" economic activities; the foreign ones point out that Government has used the policy as a method to control the ethnic minority people and as assimilate ethnic culture. That point was even analysed deeper in the class today along with the ideas of "The Art of not being governed" (James Scott). 

The thing striking my mind is that how come foreigners are always doubtful about the freedom and control level of Socialist country like Vietnam? Is it because of the prejudice started from the past of lacking human rights, freedom, democracy in Communist bloc? 


And most important, we already know about "The art of not being governed" but how about the 'art of governing"?

Of course, we all agree that every small changes in economic field can affect the culture, tradition and custom of local people, especially ethnic minority groups and they themselves also don't want to be governed by keeping moving and hiding around. However, it's undeniable that shifting cultivation is a sort of "backward" agricultural form leading to many other social problems such as children cant go to school frequently, daily life becomes unstable, low educated and isolated... As a result, the government can't help these minority groups when they're in damage or emergency, for example flood, uncontrollable burned forest, famine ... because authorities don't know where these people are located and how to contact to them. So, "controlling" or "governing" is really necessary for ethnic minority people's own seeks. 


The question is how much governing/ controlling is enough and appropriate.


It reminds me a lot about the controversial 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for a Chinese citizen named Liu Xiaobo, who actually is serving 11 year jail sentence due to opposing the Chinese politics, strongly criticizing Communist Party of China's core principles and establish so-called "Chapter 8", which provides some changes in the Chinese politics in order to give the full freedom and democracy back to Chinese people. Reacting immediately to the Nobel Peace Prize, China angrily criticized Norway for violating the Nobel Prize's spirit by honoring Liu- a "criminal".   Whereas, Norway said that they had already expected the controversy and still kept their opinion of Liu -" non-violated way of fighting for peace, freedom and democracy of Chinese people". Significantly, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was such a "slap on Chinese face". 

Liu Xiaobo

So, by honoring Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Prize, which actually is foreign actors criticize China for her over governing and controlling, even violating the human rights and rights of freedom. 


In quest of answering the question above, I remember the time I was in Tiananme Square- Beijing and first time heard about the horrible Massacre in Tiananme 1989, in which thousands of Chinese protesters were killed (the exact number has never been estimated and announced officially). It became a back day, a bloody day in the history of China and no Chinese people are willing to talk about that openly. Obviously, Tiananme event horribly violated the human rights, democracy of Chinese people- a terrible massacre. However, for a country with billion population like China, if the Government tanks hadn't came to clear protesters, they would have made China in chaos and the whole country security would have been in damage. Personally, I strongly oppose the way Chinese did in Tiananme but there is an undeniable fact that they "must" have the strong action to govern their citizens. 

Tiananme protesters

When I was in Taiwan, I discussed this topic again with a Taiwanese philosophy scholar and he told me that most of Chinese young people in the generation after Tiananme event were  educated to be nationalist and understand deeply the reason why Government made that decision for Tiananme protesters. He said, now, if we ask any young Chinese  about Tiananme event, they will act like we shouldn't talk about that because it may be harmful for the Chinese image and Chinese Government was right to make such massacre. 


Ironically, I think of Vietnam with "Vietnamese Liu Xiaobo" like Le Cong Dinh, Le Thi Cong Nhan, Nguyen Van Dai...who we call "phản động"- the dissidents. If Liu Xiaobo was already honored,  whether these Vietnamese people will be considered as "freedom protesters", too? The predicted conflicts between democracy and government's rightness to control citizens in order to maintain national security  soon will be occurred. And how about national sovereignty and Westphaila - "the non- intervention of foreign actors (normally states) to other sate's matters?  


Well, in the world of globalization, Westernization where people highly appreciate the democracy, human rights, freedom..., the Authority's controlling/ governing  is aggressively criticized although in some extents, it is extremely necessary. We again need to think of "The Art of governing" - how much government should control their citizens and what method they should use to balance the democracy and national administration.  


  

Scrap Iron - Nghề đồng nát (my second interview for KiemAn project)

"Đồng nát" - Scrap Iron is a job collecting almost everything that people don't want to use anymore such as used papers, empty bottle, broken radio, books, iron, steel....

-------
Such a hot afternoon !!

I have just finished the lunch with my dad, was holding a bunch of  watermelon peels outside and on my way to find "thùng nước gạo" ( a vessel containing  rotten food, vegetable, peel...for pig) to throw those peels. Accidental, I found her - my "cô đồng nát" :) was fanning herself with "nón" (traditional hat) , sitting in the shadow next to my house.

" Oh !! I need to sell you my stuffs!!!"- I shouted excitingly  - "Could you please wait, I will come back after throwing these peels".

She smiled brightly,quickly run to me and took all the watermelon peels - "Let me do it.. Let me do it..." - she said- "It doesn't matter... It's alright,,,".

She is such a very nice person!! Although her tired eyes and old cloths let you know that she has been having a very hard life, her face still brings you the feeling of happiness and honesty. She is also very shy, she kept hiding her face behind her "no'n" -" Ohh.. Please don't take picture of me !! I'm wearing ugly cloths and my stuffs (dong nat') are very messy. You can go out to take picture of pretty young girl carrying fresh fruits - That's considered pretty..not me!.."- She kept smiling and told me that.

She have been working as scrap iron dealer for 20 years (since 1989). Every time when the farming seasons are gone, she has nothing to earn money in her hometown ( Nam Dinh province, 100km far from Hanoi), she comes to Hanoi to work. Her job basically is to collect everything useless for normal families, carry them to the place gathering all scarp iron stuffs and category them into material group, paper group, electronic group... then sell all for the bigger dealers, who are in charge of sending categorized stuffs to different factories in order to recycle and reuse them. ( It is a very nice job contributing for recycling, saving and preserving resources, right? :D) 

Her job is not an easy one. She has to walk the whole day, suffer the hot, cold or rainy weather, carry heavy stuffs on her shoulder and sometimes no one sells anything for her at all...However, "I have very rare choices for my family", she claimed that, the profits gained from farming work is unstable because of the changing weather, harmful insects, bad seasons...and after harvesting the rice, she has no more work to do while the demand of money for her 2 children and her family is always there. Even though she has to move to the city far away from her children, rent a small shelter to live with other people in Hanoi and work very hard everyday, she is still happy that thanks to this job, she is able to send money back home for her family and does not need to worry about work's capital and loss so much.

In contrast with my previous interview, which was happened in a very serious, quite and mysterious atmosphere, this time interview was very natural, comfortable and open with many smiles, laughs and share...Talking to people doing manual works like "cô đồng nát" makes me realize that whatever job you choose, you won't feel passionate and happy doing it unless you satisfy with it,deeply  understand that it's the best choice for yourself, your family and your kids.


Once you know how to satisfy, life will be much easier !! :)

What if your fate is written? (1st interview for Kiem An project)

Still remember?

My favorite movie - Slumdog Millionaire was started with 1 question: Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it?
A. He cheated
B. He is lucky
C. He is genius
D. It's destiny/ It's written

And the answer given at the end of the movie - the answer for Jamal's whole life is D- It's written !

.....................


My first interviewee for Kiem An Project- a Spiritual guy tried to tell me exact the same thing in a very scientific but also mysterious way of explanation.


-----------------

He is a small guy, around 40 years old, very polite and wide knowledge with the an official job at Museum of History in Hanoi and an "unofficial" job in spiritual field. But the thing impressed me most when I first saw him was his smile which mysteriously made the others feel like he know about everything.

He graduated from The Social Science University with History as main major. However, in the second year of university, he especially felt interested in spiritual stuffs after one time doing research in a pagoda near Hanoi. Passionately,  he focused on studying and analyzing Vietnamese culture of traditional religious and Chinese spiritual culture. After many years working on spiritual works, he becomes a master of predicting fortune, "Boc Mo" (tell death people's family whether they should dig the tomb, clean and replace the death body as a traditional Vietnamese culture), "Phong Thuy" (tell people where their house, their office should locate, how to decorate the room...in order to bring the spiritual support for them) ....

The first thing he tried to emphasize in the interview was that although people are used to considering that spiritual work is suspicious, it is a very scientific work requiring a wide knowledge, statistics and even high-tech softwares to predict and estimate the human's fates. Sounds interesting, huh? :)


He shared some real stories from his job:

"........ this one time, there was a sick man who needed surgery. The doctor gave the man a 50/50 chance of surviving the surgery or not. The family went to many other conveyances like me to look for answers. They all told them that their son will survive and to go ahead with the surgery. However, when they came to me, my three coins read that they should not have surgery. If they did, he will die. They trusted me and listened. The son eventually went on to live a successful life and even got a promotion in his work. For even successful cases such as these, I never accept money because my work involves a matter of life and death.


Another example is about a newborn baby boy. He was sick and the doctors wanted to send him to the cold room to die because he could no longer breathe. When the family went to see me, I read my coins (The Can Long 3 coins to tell fortune), and told them that their baby boy has a chance to live. So they made the doctor take the baby out of the room and to give him some oxygen. After two hours, the baby boy survived.

Another example about the power of my work is about a girl who went to study abroad. She was fatally sick. So the parents sought me out. After reading the coins, I told the dad that his daughter will die. He got very angry at me. He yelled at me and kicked me out of the house. However, I was not sad about this, because it is a normal and expected reaction. A few months later, his daughter died. He sent me a lot of money, but I did not accept it, because again, I do not accept money when the situation is a matter of life and death. But if it’s about personal gains and promotions, then of course I’d have to accept money......"

Did I successfully scare you by letting you read those stories? :)

For most of Vietnamese people, we believe in destiny, each person has their own fate and there is an underground world,  another world beside the earth- the world of people after death... But it doesn't mean that you cant do anything to change your destiny, of course you can !! That's why the spiritual works like my interviewee are still exist to let you know what you should do in order to change your future and warn you about the potential risks. This kind of job develops gradually and quietly beside the modern and normal world, becomes a very important part of Vietnamese culture and religious.

The interview lasted for 1 hour and was really interesting in a mysterious, quite and serious atmosphere :)). The first interview brought me lots of deep thoughts and unidentified questions about spiritual field and the world that we will never know ...  :)

"The truth is out there" (X-file) 

Let's read more Christopher Hill's

During 1 week without UC class and UC friends, who must be very happy now enjoying the Mid-Autumn festival in the central of the country, I decided to finish reading IR reading material in order to prepare for re-taking IR test next week.

Frankly, I got troubles reading Christopher Hill's "The changing politics of foreign policy" in the last semester, which seemed to be so long, complicated and difficult to read. However, I still enjoyed reading Hill's so far because of the wisdom knowledge of Foreign politics of Hill in the book is really wonderful. The thing is that we need to read patiently all of his complex argument, explanations and examples until suddenly realize the deductive logic of his ideas in the end of each chapter.

In the first chapter, Hill clarified the idea of foreign policy in the past and the present, between non-academic people and specialists- How foreign policy means to them. A formal and orthodox definition of Foreign policy is created by Hill : " Foreign policy is the sum of official external relations conducted by independent actor (usually a state) in the international relations". Moreover, the first chapter tries to explain for readers some basic definitions of high- low politics, foreign policy-makers, politics and coherence...

The second part of the first chapter lists 6 completing approaches of International relations which are: international history, rational choice , realism, neo-realism , country studies, post-positivism as well as the function of FPA (foreign policy analysis)

Hill centrally focuses on the 3 changes of foreign policy which are: The end of Cold War ( created the better relationship among countries in the world and the demand of coherence); The globalization ( raised the link between economic and foreign policy that increase the interstates co-operations) and the Westphalia system (establishes the idea of sovereignty and non-intervention)

The rest of the chapter, Hill spends to argue the challenges of FPA and other structures which seem to be not so important and necessary for the IR test , so I just read it quickly.

Reading Hill's takes me a lot of time, not just understand only but think, guess and link his advanced ideas logically to be easier to simplify. In general, it's a fantastic book for diplomat and diplomatic students as well. There are still more chapters in the IR text book from Hill, which I have to spend more time within this week to finish.

 I may be back and write more about Hill's writings (If I am not lazy as normal and Mr.Hill and his work are not too difficult to approach :D)

Luxury "The Manor"

After 15 minutes by bus, passing by many popular city's places such as Big C, National Convention Center, Hanoi Museum, we came to a "new metropolitan areas" called " Khu đô thị Mỹ Đình- Mễ Trì". We easily found the Manor, which standing out from other high buildings with its impressive blue roofed and white painted blocks design.

We walked around The Manor from its outside walking line to the area's center. In general, the Manor has 2 floors with several blocks, which looks exactly the same (same architecture, design, paint color, welcome gate...), so it's really easy to get lost there :)). However, they do category these block with the different letters such as block B, block C, towel E...written on the big gates in front of each block and the map boards located in many different corner of the Manor.  

The Ground Floor of The Manor

The ground floor is well organized with series of offices, which are mainly opposite to the main road and fancy restaurants serving everything you need like smoothie, Pho, buffet, rice, noodle, coffee with quite high prices than normal restaurants and cafeterias. Especially, there is a big department store called The Garden, which including 3 floors and 1basement, provides many famous fashion and electronic product brands. The Garden has their own Big C- the second Big C supermarket of the city located in the second floor of shopping mall. One thing needed to emphasize is that Big C -The Garden is different from Big C- Tran Duy Hung at some points, it more focuses on daily products such as cooked and uncooked foods, drinks, fruits with cheap prices and good quality than electronic and heavy products. Big C- The Garden is such a convenient place for all busy officers who do not have time to prepare for their meals because everything is available in Big C. Beside Big C, there are many other convenient stores, mini and minimum supermarkets around the area such as K-Mart, which provides mostly Korean products and 24h supermarket, which actually follows 7/Eleven model. The kindergarten, clinic, pharmacy, sim-card...are also available right in the center of The Manor. I feel like people living here don't need to go anywhere else because everything is well organized, clean, fresh, qualified and available around their apartments. 

The 1st Floor of The Manor

Entering the Building gate after receiving the allowance of a security guard (The Manor security is very strict, especially for strangers), we mounted a very beautiful French-style designed staircase to the first floor of The Manor. The first floor is beautiful with many apartments located around a green garden fulled of flowers, trees and green grass; it also has play area for children, big swimming pool and public toilets. We saw some nannies    were playing with children peacefully and relaxingly there. The whole The Manor was also very quite and peaceful during the time we visited. 

After one afternoon in The Manor, I feel a very convenient and luxury life here where people, mostly Korean officers, can easily purchase everything for their daily life without any problem of communication, cultural differences and languages. The security in The Manor is also very good and well organized. However, there are just a few people, mostly children and baby-sitters stay in luxury The Manor in the day time. It can be indicated that the real owners of those fancy apartments, who are rich Vietnamese or foreigners, are always too busy to stay home or spend time with their families. Maybe that is also the reason why they choose The Manor because everything here is available and convenient 24 hours, providing a comfortable life for busy people.

Mary- Kristine- Jessie- Thu & Chi-Chi enjoyed a "luxury day" in The Manor

GiG-Crime Scene cleaner

I love watching movie! One of my favorite movie is about an old man, whose wife for some reasons shot herself inside the house, always felt guilty and moody living in the same house with full of bad memories about his wife's suicide. So, he decided to become a professional crime scene cleaner, who clean the house for clients after hornicides, suicides, dead accidents... because he believed that his job was to help erase the bad memories, make everything neat and peaceful like it used to be before the tragedy. This touching movie brought me a new idea of a job like that, which may easily make people feel disguised and get misunderstanding but actually is really useful and necessary for today's society.

And such a coincidence! Just like me, the man, interviewed in "GiG- Americans talk about their jobs", also got the idea of opening his business- crime scene cleaning from a movie. He has been working in this field for 6 years and still loves it although the job somehow made him sacrifice several important things in his life.

First and foremost, thinking of crime scene cleaner, we may feel like it is a kind of disgusting work, in which workers always have to touch blood, dead bodies and even part of human brains when someone shoot themselves in the head. It requires the cleaner have a cool head and cold heart. Definitely, it is not the "dream job" or the job for everyone. In GiG, the crime scene cleaner also described in detail frankly how difficult, dangerous and gross his job is such as when he had to clean the room with a dead and decomposed body dead after several weeks and faced to brain, blood, liquid, smell... However, through his neutral and realistic words, we understand that crime scene cleaner is a serious and necessary job for many families who are in tragedy. He said: "If you have your son's brains dripping from your ceiling, you want it taken care of yesterday" - there is no need more evidence to claim that you need someone working in this field to help you deal with that. Besides, crime scene cleaner is also a good business and help not only the man in this interview but also many other unemployed citizens get their job. 

Sometime in the middle of the interview, the man seemed to be too realistic, negative and aggressive talking about American violence, his difficult and "different" job, the workload, the wife who he had to leave because they didn't have enough time for each other... At the meantime, they are all real and emotional feelings of a man doing his business with dead people, trying to always make his mind straight and more than anyone else, he knows that he sacrificed so much for his job. In the end of the talk, he mentioned about family again and children in the future, when he will stop doing this work and take care of kids- the reason for him to give up and come home at night as normal people doing normal job. The man's lines are very touching and very true.

"Crime scene cleaner" article brings many useful and realistic informations towards a new kind of job in today's society. Furthermore, it give every readers the lesson of business and family's balance - sometimes you have to choose to sacrifice one of those but in the end, you will realize that family is much more important and it is the reason for your entire life.

First story

Many people said that I'm very good at telling stories, especially fairy tails , sometimes I just make up own fairy tail by adding some funny details and a happy ending to my real life story :)) and children love it.

However, in this very first entry of the blog, I am going to write down simply about my life 100% true. After reading, if you like, you're free to add a happy ending in somewhere for it :).

My full name is Nguyen Phuong Chi. (My friends & my parents often call me Chi-Chi)


My birthday is May, 23rd, 1989

I was born in Hanoi and live with my family in the center of the city (near Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, opposite to Lenin statue & next to Hanoi National Fag Tower). I love Hanoi, love every tiny, quite and old corners of Hanoi, love Hanoi's foods, fruits and even "Hanoi's smell" (the smell mixed by flowers, fruits, trees, wind, river...). I often call it: "My little Hanoi- My gentle Hanoi".

I like doing volunteer works and travelling. I have done many volunteer activities in Vietnam and abroad with children, poor people, people with disabilities, old people... Volunteer works keep me busy always after school and I'm also kind of person who cannot stand for having nothing to do for a long time, so volunteering becomes a part of my life. I have learned a lot from that and I can see myself grow up significantly after every summer camps, volunteer events, volunteer trips... Along with working in community services frequently, I have been travelling a lot almost every year. I did  travel to almost every places in Vietnam from the North to the South; have been in China 3 times; visited some states in U.S. and Peru for 1 month...and recently I have come back from Taiwan after a 2 -month- internship. An American professor, who knows me quite well for 2 years often says that: "Chi-Chi, you're so adventurous!!". And yes, that's true. I'm very adventurous, always willing to take the risks and eager to see new things, gain more first-hand experiences. But just like my mom's famous quote: "Travelling far from home is to learn how to find the way coming back home", above all adventurous trips, I love my lovely family, my small city and Vietnam so much.

In the daily life, I'm a friendly person who people find very easy to make friend and hang out with. I'm also really interested in historical, cultural and religious fields, places and events.

I really hope that I have chance to make good friends and learn more things in the next 2 semesters- my last year in University. It is extremely great to start my "new adventure" with UCHanu :)