The Manor

To answer thầy Nam's question: I will not live in The Manor (even if I were rich) for the following reasons:

1. I live with my mother and I'm sure that she could not live here. She need communication, she need to talk everyday. She start a new day with a short conversation with a woman who sells rice next to my house. If some neighbour passes, she will say: "hello, where are you going?", that ppl: "I have just gone to market, luckily, today I got a fish with low price blah blah...". And my grandmother, she is too old to go out. So everyday, she sits on a chair next to the window of the first floor, waits for the neighbours passing to chat. She reminds me of the girl in my favorite book "The little girl at the window- Totochan", that girl also need to communicate so she stands at the window to wait for ppl passing.

[empty street]

It's so hard for her to imagine a day without kinds of communication like that. Meanwhile in the Manor, it's hard to find residents (but security guards are everywhere). I dont know why. Is it too expensive for so many ppl to buy? Those ppl living there prefer to stay inside their safe houses?

[even most of them are foreigners, my mother does not speak English or Korean]

2. Living in the Manor means: when I wanna hold a party in my own house,

+ I can not do that because my friends are not allowed to come in. They would be look like those guys sitting at the left of this pic :))- excluded :(

+ Or I need to make an application to the manager of the building for allowing my friends to come inside, wait for approval (don't know how long, the guard said " It's depend on you" (how?)).

+ Or invite friends and ask them to split out into small group of 2 or maximum 3, pretend to be residents, then steal into the building. And when being captured, just try again =)) :))

+ Or just show them a "secret way" from Highland coffee :)) [Finally, the reason they kept us out of this building - security- turns out a bullshit, we did steal into it] :))

3. What can I do if I suddently crave for Phở, sấu dầm, bún thang, nộm, kem Tràng Tiền, cơm tấm, ốc luộc, trứng cút lộn etc [ :p~ ] ? The Gadern only has Italian food, Japanese food and some kinds of Vietnamese food.

Urban development - is that taking rural land to build skycraper and luxury buildings for Vietnamese upper class and especially rich foreigners who want to be isolated from the unsafe area outside? Then the rural land becomes urban, which shows the "development" of the cite?

For the next four months...

Hopefully, I will:

• Study 2 subjects that I hate most with all my heart :)) (They are: History of The Party and Chu nghia xa hoi khoa hoc). I don't hate the subject itself but the way they teach these kinds of subject. It is so boring. But I guess I have no choice. In the 1st semester, I got only 5 point and for Marxist- Leninist Phylosophy. I'll try to not to fall asleep in these class, listen to the lecturer, take it seriously. I think I should start to accept the fact that I will have to do many things else I don't like in the future. So I'd better try it now.


• At the end of the course, I'll ask Mindy "What is communism?". She said that she comes to Vietnam to figure out this question. So I also want to know it because I myself don't know the answer.


• Work well with my fellows in this class to set up an effective and practical NGO. But the point is to find what we can do. After the 1st field trip last week, I think that perhaps we can help Friendship village to improve the effectiveness of vocational training course, but I still need some more concrete ideas.


• Find a new part-time job. Need money for shopping and travelling.


• Make final decision for my future after graduating next year, study overseas? [if yes, which major] or find a job?
• Figure out how Vietnam and Hanoi look like in the eyes of outsiders, namely UC students. I was born in Hanoi and have lived here for 21 years, so I'm so familiar with everything here and find almost nothing to complain, except for 2 things: the polutted air in recent years and people who dont stand in line while buying something. [That's why I no longer eat kem Tràng Tiền at night, I know I don't have enough patience and strength to fight against such a disorderly crowd for an ice-cream.]
• Gain weigh. : People say that my face looks like a skull >"<
• Go to hospital to check my health. I feel not good recently. The line of my hand says that I'll be not long-lived. I'm not superstitious but I'm a little bit worried :(

My favorite scene

Sunset at 7 p.m [in Summer- 6p.m in Autumn] - Youth st.- West Lake

I was late for it yesterday. The sky already turned dark. I'll come earlier in next weekend, definitely.

1st time meet children affected by Agent Orange

I've seen a lot of pictures, documentaries about these people but never meet them face to face before.

Actually, I was not shocked at all because these children in the village affected not as much as those I saw on newspapers and TV. This takes me back to the question of thầy Nam: Why this village no longer accept the children seriously affected? I asked anh Long but he has no idea.

However, after talking with anh Long, I think that I have some ideas.

According to anh Long, officially, the period for each child to stay in the village is only 3 years (as the director said), however, for those who can be trained (as weavers or something else) the period is extended until the training course finishes. [that answers for the 2nd question of thay Nam]. The point is that after being trained for a job (often craft), they will be "sent" back to homes. They come from different areas, mostly rural areas where the craft industry is underdeveloped and almost there is no organization to support them to find adequate jobs. Finally, it turns out that what the village can do is just merely share the "burden" with their families by bringing up and taking care of them for some years, so their families can save money and time [ i think so]. I think that this way of operating is kind of wasteful. They waste their resources to train people without orienting their future jobs. Because with their own ability, these children hardly can establish a craft organization [for example] themselves, neither they can find their trained skills usable in their remote hometowns.

So, I think something should be changed here. Maybe a shop to sell their craft products in Hanoi?

Back to the visit, I had chance to play with a girl who is 13 years old. She told me her name is Ba (or Va?), but other kids called her "Dung" [like mine]. It's hard to figure out what she said. When she asked for a "cái bút" to draw, I totally couldn't understand. Amazingly, Diane could. The way she sang the song "Cháu yêu bà"- a very popular kid's song- is like my 3 years old brother. Agent Orange did make a 13 year old girl became a kid who only can babble...

My autobiography

My full name is Pham Thuy Dung. At first my parents intended to give me the name "Duong", but they found it sounds like boys so finally they picked the name "Dung", which means beauty in Vietnamese. Both of them don't speak English so they have no idea what it means in other language.

I'm the first grandchild in my family, which means something in my life. As the first grandchild, I have caught attention of the whole family. My grandparents, uncles, aunts an my parents, they all indulge me. In addition, they tend to idolize me. In their eyes, I'm really cute, talent, docile, hardworking and seem to be perfect. Some stories about my childhood have been told again and again as legends. The "story" of my first vaccination has been told for dozens of times. That I was the only kid who did not cry when being injected made my grandmother really proud. They has made me become a great model for all of my younger sisters and brothers. It has become a kind of pressure on me because I dont want to make them disappointed, I dont want to ruin that perfect image. Fortunately, it is a positive pressure which forces me to act in a right way, not kind of pressure which makes me feel exhauted.

[am I cute?]

Until now, the person who has biggest influence in my life is my grandmother. As I say above, all of my family members indulge me and perhaps she does most, even when she already has up to 7 children. She is always on my side even when I do something wrong. Once time, when I was in grade 3, I aked my mother to buy a stylish pen like my friend's. My mother bought a pen for me, bu not the stylish one so I sulked. She was angry and wanted to teach me with a rod. But my grandmother protected me, even she blamed my mother for buying a wrong pen. She overindulged me but somehow it made me feel even more regretful than any scolding. Moreover, she taught me to be a good person not by delivering speeches but by her own behavior. Since I watched the way she offered a poor old beggar a cake, I have had a special sentiment toward the poor old people. I wish to establish an organization which can help old people. I wish someday I would not see the scene of old people begging on the street or working hard to make a living.

[my grandmom and I]

If there is something that makes me feel unpleased with my life, it must be a serie of physical pain that I have suffered since I was young. It started with a terrible accident when I was 2 years old. People say that while chasing a cat (that's so strange because now I'm extremely

afraid of cats), I jumped into a big hot pot. My right leg was scalded severely. The first hospital gave up. Luckily, my family did not. They found another one to cure me and they did succeed. This accident left a big scar on my skin, which reasulted in another surgery when I was a teenager. It was not only a cosmetic surgery but also a need to prevent a kind of cancer. Now, I'm facing with another surgery with my jaw, again not a mere cosmetic surgery. And while writing these words, the incision at my gums is killing me. Sometimes I have a grudge against this life. Do I deserve to suffer this pain? Why did that accident happen? Why dont I have a healthy jaw like everybody? This life seems to be so severe with me. But when I look around, I see one of my friend from FIS suffering deadly cancer, I still think that life is so unfair, but not to me.

About the obituary of Natalia Estemirova

I am asked to choose an obituary and say something about that person. When skimming through a list of obituaries on Economist Magazine, I suddently found an obituary that sounds a little familiar. It turns out that I have already skimed through a news about the death of this person on a Vietnamese magazine. I only remember that she is a human activist who was killed in some country which sounds like a battlefield to me. I thought that it's just a everyday occurrence. Many people die in battles daily, she is just one of them. But now I need to choose someone so I decided to read more carfully. After reading more carefully, including browsing the overview of Chechnya's history and current situation, she becomes my "chosen person".

Natalia Estemirova is a human campaigner who was kidnapped and murdered for what she advocates. She had a lot of conflict with Ramzan Kadyrov- the authoritarian Chechen president as she opposed the Chechen government for violating the civil rights. She was also the one who revealed hundreds of cases of kidnapping and mudering which were conducted by the government. She loved to tell the truth and she died for that enthusiasm.

It reminds me to the death of someone else- professor Seymour Papert- a professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When being in Hanoi for a conerence, he was amazed and frightened by the traffic here. He found a similarity between the way Hanoian travel and one of his theory about human behaviour (In there he compared the traffic in Hanoi with the way a flock of ants moves). Moreover, he even intended to build a mathematical model to examine Hanoi's chaotic street. I read about his thought on a magazine and was very eager for his findings. Unfortunately, he died in a traffic accident while talking about that project.

These two people both died while they were working hard and pursuing their roads, their passion and ideal. Natalia loved and respect human and took risk to ask for human rights. Seymour loved science and was kill by the very object he was researching.

In some sense, I dont think that they could be a good model for me ( ofcourse I dont want to die while doing my favorite stuff). But they show me a way to have a meaningful life, that is to have a passion and do your best to pursuing that passion until the end of your life.