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 :)