Blogging for "Tết" - Vietnamese New Year

Today is the last day of the old year - the year of Cat. There are only a few days to the new year of Dragon.

Although I'm a 100% Vietnamese and from a very traditional family, I don't feel crazy for Tet like others, especially the religious side of it. For me, Tet is a precious opportunity that family's members gather to their hometown and together they do preparing and celebrating for Tet. Without Tet, people would probably be super busy on their own and tend to forget about their small family back to the faraway hometown. I even strongly believe that it's the core meaning of Tet, which was decided and created by our great-fathers thousand years ago. It means for Family, not for Religion, not for Big meals in 3 days, not even for our ancient ... it's for ourselves- now.

However, Tet in Vietnam and possibly in other Asian countries celebrating it has put too much pressure on the women. The more modern the world is, the more crazy people become to prepare for the Tet. They are willing to buy a small Peach tree with 50 millions, which ironically equals to total income of a working person in a year, just for decoration in 3-5 days of Tet. The women become the slaves themselves in their homes. My mom has been so crazy since the recent 2 weeks by talking too much on what she needs to buy for Tet, what she wants to do but she could not because she is very tired, by feeling so scary of religious things and by being mean to me sometimes when she gets stressful. I love my mom - there is no word can describe that. She is my angel guidance. So I hate Tet for making my mom stressful - I also hate the modern people for making Tet so complicated but missing the original meaning of it.

I can write a forever long essay about Tet and how much I hate it. Nevertheless, since it is the last day of the old year, when people forget and forgive everything and are looking forward to the bright future, I decide to temporarily forgive Tet ;) (It is temporary because I doubtlessly will hate it again next year at the same period of time- :D). Anyways, Tet is forever in my heart as a Vietnamese girl and I will miss it so much if I travel far from home. Maybe when I am at my mom's age, I will start acting crazy for Tet, so my children don't understand why and they begin their blog for Tet just like this one. :).

We don't know about our future but we never stop believing that is why Tet- a signal of the new year, is so important for Vietnamese. So, I believe in the brightness of the Dragon year and wish everyone the best!

Happy Lunar New Year! Cheers !

In the middle

There were so many things happened in the last couple days. I don't know how to start ...

I just want to make my mind straight by writing down all everything below, so for any of you, who by any reason, read it and get confuse, I'm so sorry about that.

The first thing striking my mind right now is my future, which has been partly showing up, even still foggy, after almost one month at work. At work, there are many people having master degree from foreign education system, have been doing the same job as mine. Of course, they may have higher salary and allowance but the type of work is almost the same. It makes me wonder who I am going to be in the near future.

I mean, after a few weeks, I feel like the only dream I have is studying abroad and so do my parents. But no one ever ask: "What's next?". Actually, the only reason why I want to go oversea to study is to have a better future for my family and for myself as well. The more mature I am, the more I feel like should be some "mistakes" in my characteristics, making me love and hate being in Vietnam at the same time, making me be so confuse all the time staying here and forcing me to find the answer for the question of who I am... ]

However, what will happen after a master degree?

A. Coming back to Vietnam and back to the job that does not require my master degree
B. Staying in U.S. or any other countries, living like a foreigners for the rest of my life and work like crazy to keep my job
C. Master - Husband - Kids --> Family model

I used to think that there are only girls, accepting the "normal life" after having no chance for higher education, decide to become housewives. But now, here, I see many nice, talented and educated ladies who work very hard at work as well as cover all jobs at home for the lazy husband and small kids. In addition, they "accept" their type of job instead of "enjoying" it because the current job is already much better than other ones.

I like my job, actually. But I also feel like I deserve to work in other place, devote myself for other field and end my single life in a different way.

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Second,

As you may know by updating my facebook, Douglas D.J., my greatest teacher passed away a few days ago.  I was so regretful that I haven't done anything which I had planned for him. I was too busy and depended so much on my own excuses. I hate myself taking others for granted. Just miss him.

I remember  Doug talking in class with the background of black slideshow. I have just told chi Trang, who sitting next to me at work, the day Doug died, "I like the lecturer delivering black and white slides with many gaps- their lecture will fill in the gap for students". I love his lectures. He's the one that I have never claimed for anything, just great.

I remember Doug working as Hanoian tour guide and introduced me to many tourists : "my great student! she knows every thing". It's the first time I worked with my first $70

I remember Doug teaching for kids at Dr.Lan's English class, remember the potato chips, cheese cake, water he likes and the way he ask : "What's going on?"

I remember An and I came to Doug's flat in a rainy day, asked him about everything but could only give him back a fruit. We were both so childlike.

Doug's passing away taught me so many lessons of life. They would not be called "self lessons" if I list them down here, so I decide to keep all for myself. :).

Thank you Doug.

And Thank God for leaving me here enjoying my own sky.

One day I will go visit Doug, thầy nhé ! hugs

The start of something new :)

Panda at work

Suddenly, I become an officer- a teacher in International School, Vietnam National University. Today is my 6ht day at work.

There are many reasons why I applied for the job and I can list them all right in a few second. I knew that from the very beginning when my mom convinced me to finish my application form although I was totally busy with the TOEFL and GRE study. Of course, my final objective is going aboard to study master- sooner or later. But the new job really rocks my world and gradually gives me the chance to see the "adult wold" in a different way.

I cant believe that one day- like today, I wake up at 5:45 with the first thing in my mind: "What am I going to wear to work", stop going to the gym, prepare lunch box, wear make up with "working make-up style" and leave at 6:45. It is great somehow, I mean, when you look at the mirror and see a mature teacher-officer is smiling to you in a childlike way. I like that feeling. :)

Well, there are many things about work I want to share but they all can wait for another free time. This entry is just for Chi Lan, my colleague :D. I have just known CL for almost 1 week but very early C.L became my ideal model. It's very funny that in other places that I used to work, I was always the one who rearrange everything from messy stuff and create the handy technique to deal with problems quickly, and in this place, C.L is the one. I feel like I meet the mature version of mine, or at least, I wish I could be someone exactly like C.L.in the near future.

From this work, I will be trained for details rather than the general/ abstract points as many previous working places, which is also a thing making me stay with this job.

As the time for lunch soon ended, I need to take my nap now :D

Random thoughts

Well,

It has been such a long time since my last blog entry although I promised to write more, even after UCHanu course. Sorry for that. As you all know, time flies fast and there have been so many unexpected things happened recently in my life, preventing me from keeping my writing habit. But just forget about it and let's talk about something else !

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So, what the hell is happening to the world now? :P

We have talked much about the situation of Vietnam and other South East Asian countries when fighting against Chinese benefit towards South China Sea. Beyond my expectation, the South China Sea dispute this time has been affecting many young educated Vietnamese much more than the previous time although Government doesn't want to publish too much information and citizens are still afraid of Anti-Communist force's taking advantage from the dispute. Youth is simply pure and easily vulnerable- it's understandable why they enthusiastically take part in the protest and are willing to do everything to show their patriotism. 

It reminds me to the case of Norway in the last few days, when the locals were terrified by a young gunman, who seems to be a victim of mental disorder, causing his extreme reaction. So, vulnerability of young people may lead them to nowhere but hurting themselves and even others. However, it is obvious that vulnerability is a part of growing process and once people get over it, they will gain so many experiences and become a better people in many ways. It was claimed in one speech, named "The art of vulnerability" that Sam shared me last week. We did discussed a little bit on email: 

"... I agree that vulnerability is in the border line of shame- fear and joy, happiness. People need to accept or even try their best to practice their vulnerability to grow up. My old boss always says that :"when you feel challenging, it's the time for you to grow up..."

Just a few thoughts running out of my mind before getting in bed.

 I'll be back in the next day as "tomorrow will be better" (Hilary Clinton).

 LUV

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.