Groupwork

I’ve never seen a group that can be effective as we were while the main means of communicating was email and cellphones. I really missed the time we spent outside schools on The Amazing race and Mapping. It’s like we were really close to each other. I wanted to have more groupwork meetings directly members in the team but personal businesses seemed not allow us.

However, I think that effective work allocation, online communication and attempts and responsibilities of each member contributed to our results. And we were quite satisfied with the interviews we did. We even finished 4 interviews in the first three weeks during the project which enabled us to go slow later on. Hanu students were more in charge of trancribing and translating and Ucers helped loads in editing and proofreading. It’s like we have small groups in our big teams and we did interviews ourselves without all gathering. I appreciate that everyone trusted confided in each other.

I love my project teams and I wish we had more time L

Nghe An

I was so excited about the trip to Nghe An and to be honest, I considered it a pleasant journey, in which deadlines and assignments are completely left at home. Indeed, Nghe An trip was quite relaxing. Other than moments of happiness among UCHANU folks, there were “awkward” times I shared with people there. Times I could hardly explained.

First impression, Vinh is a fine city. Looking at its road, buildings and space and hearing from the Vice President of People’s Committee, I felt that Vinh was on the way of “developping” and there’s little to worry about it. (Anyway, you can not believe a person like him when he deliver a speech of achievements, somehow those must have been exagerated). The only problem I might think about that time was that the rich would get richer and the poor would be poorer. Then I was so eager to see all the children we were going to, as thinking they were gradually left out of the “developping” society there in Vinh.

I was so surprised when we came to the schools. Teachers were wearing uniforms (seriously, that was never seen before in any big or small city I’ve been to). I wanted to ask them but I was afraid my cluminess would offend them. Maybe they were not as poor, or maybe those were Teacher’s day gifts. From whatver did they come, I felt a glimpse of joy to make my discovery. Those teachers actually deny discrepancies. They must have been different; they must have come from different contexts; some maybe richer, but they refused to show that. Uniforms mean that everyone’s equal, no one’s more imposing, no one’s inferior. That I have not been able to do in my life; I always wanted to be notice.

It was so so so happy giving jackets to children. Although the thought of not really giving right jackets to right children bothered me, I realized that everything would go around and no matter what, we‘ve contributed to wealth being; jackets would later be transfered to whoever need them. It was also joyful to put each and every single jacket on the kids, something filled up my stomach, still now it’s so hard to explain. The teacher kept making children to say how grateful they were and that these gifts we gave were godsend. I couldn’t stop her but in my mind, this was not a mercy action of mine to the kids, it was actually what calmed and pacified my heart. It was them that gave me happiness.

People there were so poor, I heard that everytime a group of UCHANUers came back from local houses. I went to one family that had only the son and his mother. The mother’s a cultivator for hire, and she had been away for 2 or 3 weeks, leaving his son on her own. He’s 10 years old. At ten, I was peacefully spending everyday in love of my parents. I avoided looking at him with hesitance and compassion, he needed stimulation and strength. When walking around with Lan, we noticed that houses there were all built out of wood; but most of people there managed to have a motorbike. Therefore, I assumed that landfield in Con Cuong was not suitable for building brick houses. A local citizen affirmed that they could not afford to build brick houses; woods were from the forest; they just had to pay a little in construction. Motorbikes were crucial now, they must borrow to buy one in stead of upgrading their accommodation. All must have been for the long term sake of lives there.

The South

UC folks just returned from HCM city, and I have been there several times. Since I’m going to work there in the next 2 or 3 years, I’d like to write about the city this week.

There is a fact people have concerned much about for a long time. Many northern citizens are moving to HCM city for job opportunities, I am included. These people, in the north, are always considered better than those in the south and generally speaking, there’s a widespread but inofficial belief among the Vietnamese that Northern people are smarter and they work better. This explains why most going to the South find a way to succeed. Even successful rate in HCM city is accounted by more of Northerners.

Northern people, in fact, are hardworking. Women are harder than men in their jobs. And they always have a heart for excelling. They always make efforts and sometimes they put work top priority rather than pleasure. So normally, they go out at weekends only; and they also come back home everyday before midnight, when most of whom in HCM city are spending time out enjoy nightlife. However, the business context in the North, as far as I know, has many problems. While workplace environment in HCM city is said to be very professional; people point out that it is more open and effective, employees understand fully their responsibilities and always take full charge of what they do, most of those in the North need observance and reminder all the time to finish work. I’ve experienced these characteristics when I had chance to work in some companies before. To be honest, I was really annoyed by the fact that my coworkers only care about themselves and they are not so ethical in minding others. Nepotism is what I really hate doing business in Hanoi or other Northern cities. Although some are much worse at their performance than others, they are covered by “ big shades” and remain still a liability in companies. This, in fact, rarely happens in the South. People are just more fair there; performance is the only benchmark for worker evaluation. Everyone has chance to espose themselves to equal opportunities. HCM city, seemingly, is more appealing and is talent magnet. Somehow, it’s not those who are Northerner are always better. It’s actually good workers that are mostly attracted to the South.

One more discrepancy which is quite interesting between HCM city and Hanoi is that HCM city attracts more tourists and investment because it is considered more “developed”(Vietnamese literal meaning). In reality, services in HCM city is way better than in Hanoi. Service providers there, pay a lot more attention to training their employees how to please customers. They show their clients that they need them. On the contrary, most services in the North keeps the perspective that customers come to them because they are in need, it’s customers who must find them; it’s not them who try to retain customers. Now that everyone is demanding more than they do in the past, bad service seems not to be a good “strategy”. I think I know two of the reasons that make difference: either Hanoi service players do not gain proper enough understanding of what is good or some of them think they are beyond good and don’t mind losing a number of consumers. In HCM city, infrastructure are better, people are more aware of their lives, at least they obey the rules while driving; those makes flow of everything in the place more effective and efficient.

Well, I may have complimented HCM city a bit too much, but this is also what Northerner like us should think about. Anyway, I’m going to work in HCM city and definitely I’m going back to Hanoi cause what I love is here. I hope to go back to a better place in the next few years.

It's been nearly a month since the 1000 anniversary of Thang Long - Hanoi but I'm still keeping parts of my thoughts for it. Maybe the fact that I can still see posters, band rolls of the ceremony everywhere, I am reminded of it once in a while.
It gave me lots of impression; however, not all of them were nice. I remember a huge amount of money being spent, more than 90 thousand billion VND, a tenth of our GDP. And to be honest, not all of that amount went to useful things. I appreciated that people built and widened roads, that they built a museum, that they had activities with purposes of telling stories of Hanoi a thousand year and there were so many things I felt grateful for. Like, constructions were pushed up, the capital looked so glorious and everyone was expecting. Although I was not from Hanoi, somehow I was proud that I lived here.
But a celebration like that was hold, seemingly, the true value of a thousand year standing had been misunderstood. A thousand year was only treated as a number and nothing more. It was like an old man celebrating his 100 birthday and no one cared what he had done his whole life. There was one man with an article I read somewhere just recently; he suggested that in stead of counting from a thousand to one till the anniversary, they should put the number of national debt there and count. Of course, should that happen, the whole country would be even more eager to see it gradually go to zero. Why until an event like this did people decorate, did people try to increase productivity. So what actually lay within. Was it truly for the sake of the whole country, or was it because it was a thousand year. Was it the heart and the soul or the face and the clothes.
While a lot of people in the central of Vietnam suffered from flood, even now they haven't recovered; some was asking what was in it for them, what was for them from The Thousand. It'a kinda sad to me through the celebration. The only joy was to see Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung abandon Hanoi and travel to flooded areas

The interview with a translator

"You can not live by this job" - this was what the interviewee told me.
He's a translator. He translate German books to Vietnamese. He had a lot published, even one was a best seller for children last year, yet he can not live just by being in his job.

It was a nice chance to talk with a man like that because he was frank. He told me what a Vietnamese would not normally tell should they know their stories would be posted or even printed. Most Vietnamese people would not go again and again about publishers (big ones) as being slow and effective, or about Vietnam Literature Association as "stupid" and "ridiculous". I just thought: "Wow, I did a real Gig"

His talks revealed a lot of thing: that training at school was not proper enough for language students to do the job (this failed me considerably as I used to think language was one of the competitive advantage students in language departments of Hanoi university possess); that translators struggle because of fake books and no one has nothing to do with it.
I remember the old time, it was precious how to be given a book. Seems like books' value deteriorates in terms of quality. So many books regardless of suitability and content was translated and published. Last week, I went to a book shop and pick up a book with the title: "How to plan for your wedding" and it said about church or things that were not applicable and traditional in Vietnam. I realized that it was a translated book. I wondered was it a dilemma for translators: to translate what they want but hard to sell or to do easy reading type and earn an amount from that.

The Gap

The poor ...

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1.03.01

My amazing trip while UC buddies have theirs

I kinda want to keep this fresh in my head while I write it so although I'm flooded with works, more urging ones,now, I spend sometimes for the blog. I have to do it tomorrow anyway. So here is it, a week without my UC buddies.
It sucked till the end of the week. Living here for 3 years now, I thought I got used to seeing so many people everyday commuting to and from work and school. Maybe because of the coming 1000 anniversary of Thang Long, Hanoi becomes incredibly crowded, annoyingly crowded. I hate it when traffic jams are turned into norms, into something people start to endure and consider a must. The weather also should be mentioned. It was unbearable for me. I think I had eating disorder. My only rejoice of the whole week was to wait and expect for my trip to the North West of Vietnam. And I was right to go on the journey, it was really a peaceful and relaxing time.

I have a team, a traveling team and I love it every time I join them for a motorbike trip. We always travel on motorbikes no matter the distance. Vietnamese people call it "du lịch bụi" or "phượt". This time, we traveled to Yen Bai and Sapa to enjoy natural attractions on the way: Khau Pha - Khau Co - O Quy Ho and Mu Chang Chai. They are amazingly beautiful. I thought it was a wonderful coincidence I read about high lands and low lands relationships and exotic tourism just days ago and at that time, I could view the life there under different eyes as I had known more than I used to.
The sight, they are gorgeous. Never in my life have I seen such a beautiful picture. So beautiful that I wanted to throw my camera away. It could never capture such a thing with its rare and natural beauty. I wished that they could have invented a camera that was similar to your eyes, operated the way eyes and brain worked. I would rush to buy it if they had one. Terraced fields were what I enjoyed the most. Together with land fields, they made adorable shades of green and yellow and brown, but mostly green. Mountains were everywhere, they continuously headed off each other, it was like I was lost in Inception where all the cities were upside down. There, I didn't want to be on the road, I wanted to dissolve myself in the clouds flying around the top of those hills. And when we went higher and higher, the whole became so imposing, so huge, so enormous that I kept a surprising and indescribable happy look on my face.





People there are just nice. When I wanted to take photos of them, they kept running away or hiding faces. But when I went into the markets, they surrounded me with stuffs. They even complained if I bought too much of the Dao people but not anything from the Mong people (different minority groups). And what's really funny was that they wore clothes from China, but they sold their authentic hand made clothes, embroided and took at least a month to finish and were expensive, much more expensive. In the past, those used to be for their festivals, holidays to go out or even for weddings.

I came back Hanoi Monday morning. It took 3 nights and 2 days on the trip and I rushed to school the moment I set foot on the capital. To be honest, I felt a little tired and depressed as spending the time outside enjoying few-people-places with fresh and cool air and only green color, I just don't want to suffer again from congestion, from unbearable heat, from people who annoyingly horn through the traffic lights, etc. I just had no clues where life is taking us. Probably not to a good place.

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