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. 


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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.

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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 !

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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.

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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.
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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...