the next whatever

Read This

t* — Sun, 03 May 2009 08:12:13 +0000

I just finished reading a beautifully written and compelling essay on rumpus.net called "I Want You To Want Me." It's one of the most moving things I've read in a really long time. I don't want to spoil it for you, so go read it and come back here later for my commentary. I want to let it sit, anyway.

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A Couple Mindblowing Stats About Internet Usage in Vietnam

t* — Sat, 02 May 2009 18:22:11 +0000

I'm slowly chipping away at the mounds of research I have to do in order to finish my independent study project for school. The ideas are coming together – at this point I'm interested in studying how Vietnamese companies/consumers communicate with each other through the internet. The social, cultural, and economic forces that make this challenging in the near- and long-term. And how best to manage the limitations and create successful customer engagement strategies.

Ambitious for only having two more weeks in the country!

Anyway, I'm looking up internet usage statistics in Vietnam. Here are a couple interesting facts:

First, Adult Friend Finder is the number 36 website in Vietnam. Go figure. Though the ranking seems a little suspect to me – I find it hard to believe that a great number of Vietnamese are going online to find casual sex!

Second, when I was first here in 2000, there were only 200,000 internet users in Vietnam according to the Internet World Stats. I remember internet being extremely expensive and extremely slow, but only 200,000?! By 2005, that number had exploded to over 10 million. Believable, but still pretty wild.

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April 30

t* — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:07:33 +0000

April 30 marks Independence Day in Vietnam, when the North officially
defeated the South and the country became one again. Of course,
overseas Vietnamese call it Ngay Mat Nuoc, or The Day We Lost Our
Country. I wonder why the government just doesn’t call it
Reunification Day, which seems a lot more neutral to me. Can’t really
argue with reunification.

Anyway, the great thing about long holidays in Vietnam (tomorrow is
May Day ) is that every Saigonese leaves Saigon! Oh what heaven! The
streets are empty. The air is a bit cleaner. And the Saigonese who
stay in town seem to relax a little more. What a pleasant and livable
city Saigon would be, if oh, about 4 million people moved out!

I was talking to my roommate about this, and he reminded me that
Saigon was like this 10 years ago. Though I disagreed, since I was
here at that time, I do remember the streets being a lot emptier. For
goodness sakes, I used to be able to bike about 3 km from the city
center to my family’s house. These days? Are you kidding? Riding a
bicycle in Saigon is like a death wish. If you’re not clobbered by a
truck or bus, you’d just slowly die from carbon monoxide inhalation.

Anyway, my roommate moved out today – heading home to Wisconsin after
a year and a half in Saigon with me. I also began the packing process
today. I took some pictures of my neighborhood, to mark the occassion
of April 30 and my final days in Saigon.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Why You Should Wash Your Rice Before Cooking It

t* — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:59:39 +0000

On a day trip out of the coastal city of Nha Trang, I caught this
common scene: Women drying rice on the side of the highway. This is
Highway 1 in Vietnam, mind you; the busiest highway in all of Vietnam.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Conference Craze

t* — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:17:40 +0000

I love going to conferences. Especially when they're free. Fundraising conferences, open source software conferences, education in Vietnam conferences, Vietnamese-American nonprofit conferences, internet retailing conferences. I love the break from work, the exposure to new information/ideas, the opportunity to meet interesting people – and in some cases, establish meaningful professional connections – and well, I even like the free lunch.

Sadly, the last year has been dry in terms of conference-going. I'd been holed away in what we call the "bat cave" (Vietnamese staff don't seem to like sunlight even with the air conditioner on!) on average 12 hours a day. And there simply wasn't much opportunity for a project manager at an outsourcing company in Vietnam to conference-go in HCMC.

Well, all that's about to change as I'm about to embark on a Bay Area conference craze. Turns out, there are TONS of conferences happening immediately upon my return. Unfortunately, most of them cost an arm and a leg for someone currently in a state of joblessness. No fret. These techies have hearts big as nonprofiteers. Being jobless means also being able to apply for scholarships or having the time to volunteer in order to get a free pass.

Going!

WordCamp: May 30. A one-day gathering for WordPress bloggers. Author Tim Ferris will speak, which is kinda cool because I read his book and met him here in HCMC. $25 – can't beat that! Though I did. Scholarship.

140 Twitter Conference: May 26-27. A 2-day community event for avid Twitterers. BIG names in the Twitter space including Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester Research analyst who reports on the social web, and Robert Scoble, a prolific technology evangelizer and blogger. $249 – not bad for a 2 day event with industry experts. But again, free for me. I'm a volunteer online evangelizer!

CommunityOne: June 1-3. A 3-day super-geeky event for open source developers. I probably will only understand 5% of what the speakers and other conference-goers will talk about. But this one actually IS free, so that makes the 5% worth it. Plus, it's at the Moscone Center. Ooh la la…

Not Going :(

Penguin Day: Sadly this event took place on Saturday. I attended Penguin Day a few years back, and it offers really informative sessions for cash-strapped non profits in need of technology solutions. Sorry I didn't announce this earlier.

Another Twitter Conference That Shall Not Be Named: It's happening within the same week as the 140 conference. But since I'm volunteering already for 140, it's a bit awkward to try to do both :( Also this 1-day even happens to be $595. Hmmph.

Online Community Unconference. June 10. An informal gathering of developers, community managers, and online marketers to talk about building online communities. $145 – not bad again, but will work for free pass? Have emailed. Will see.

Gosh, I wish I could go to school all over again and major in something like The Social Web. Anymore conferences out there I should go to? Sen

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WSJ Gets It Right with Feature on Best Dish in Vietnam

t* — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:57:28 +0000

The ancient central Vietnam trading port of Hoi An has much to offer the traveler, including a well-preserved historical center (a Unesco World Heritage site) and dozens of skilled tailors ready to stitch local silk into a resplendent outfit at a moment’s notice.

View Interactive

For the culinary-minded, the town’s most notable asset is the water drawn from its centuries-old square wells. It is crucial to the making of Hoi An’s specialty, cao lau (pronounced gaow laow), a textural tour de force consisting of thin slices of soy-simmered pork, crispy fresh lettuce and herbs such as basil, cilantro and mint, and crackly squares of deep-fried dough, all resting on a tangle of bean sprouts and wide rice noodles. It’s drizzled with just enough rich meat broth and served with sweet and hot chili jam and half a lime-like kalamansi, for squeezing.

via online.wsj.com

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Rice Paper Snack

t* — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:29:30 +0000

Who woulda thunk that a simple mix of rice paper, chili, lime,
Vietnamese coriander, and salty goodness would taste so yummy?
Apparently, the lady who sells this delicious treat outside my house
every evening. MMMmmm!

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Zac Efron No… What?

t* — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:24:43 +0000

Vietnam cell phone networks seem to have no idea how much they’re
annoying me right now. About every 5 minutes, I get an advert on my
cell phone. From time to time, the message is quite cryptic, like the
one below…

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The Whale Temple

t* — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:58:46 +0000

On my second day in Qui Nhon, my friend and I rented a moto and drove down the coastline about 25 km south of the city. Ivan had been in Qui Nhon for nearly two weeks already, visiting for the third time in a year in order to continue his research on the social and cultural impact of overseas Vietnamese remittances in Vietnam. We turned off on an unmarked dirt road towards the beach, and bumped along the sandy path until we hit a lone building on the beach.

It was a whale temple, and Ivan had discovered this particular one on his many moto rides up and down the coast. Every fishing village has a whale temple, to pay respects to the Whale God who is a protector of the seas and the men who fish for their livelihoods. Once a year, an entire fishing village celebrates and makes offerings at the whale temple. The rest of the year, the whale temple is quiet with a villager assigned to care for it.

The whale temple provided the necessary shade from an oppressively hot morning. We dipped in a sparkling blue-green ocean, the most beautiful I had ever seen in Vietnam. It was a long stretch of completely deserted beach – not a single food stand or guesthouse, and only the occasional fisherman setting out to sea in his basket boat.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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The Train to Qui Nhon

t* — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:45:21 +0000

It's amazing how little and how much things change in Vietnam in the nine years that I've been living or making visits here.

Take the train for instance. I hadn't taken a train trip in Vietnam in 4-5 years so was looking for excuse to get out of town again. I booked a ticket on the overnight hard sleeper. While the counter now had a ticket machine and customers were asked to get a number, the several people who arrived at the same time or later than me were still pushing their way to the front of the line and slipping their ticket to the ticket agent. She made no notice of what order the customers' numbers came in, reliably serving the pushiest customers first.

The train still looked like a relic from the past, even though the name "Golden Train" was inscribed on the side. My berth was still made up of six basic wooden surfaces with straw mats and floral polyester pillows. The people I shared my berth with were friendly and inquisitive as always. The train still lunged and jerked, and slowed to a standstill as we approached each stop.

But now, the train agent handed out a free bottle of water and wet napkin to each passenger. And when we arrived at each stop, the agent announced our arrival over the intercom – welcoming us to each new city and translating this to English for tourists. When we arrived 30 minutes late to one stop, the agent even apologized to the passengers for the inconvenience. Afterwards, he played a recording of a British woman's voice, describing the cultural and historical significance of each city, followed by traditional Vietnamese music.

The coastal city of Qui Nhon is another perfect example of the change that is taking place in Vietnam. It's a city at the peak of change. A two-year old boulevard and public park follows the city's long stretch of beach. It's a development plan that has been in the works for approximately 15 years, according to our host Barbara, a New Zealander who moved here years ago and opened Barbara's Kiwi Cafe and dorm.

In the past few years, the local government began to resettle much of the fishing community along this coastline, to several resettlement villages in the surrounding areas. Remnants of their former homes can still be seen – piles of broken bricks and concrete line the park behind the beach. These families were compensated, but how much I'm not sure.

And of those homes which were spared, a few looked as if they were sawed in half and others face the ocean with their backs. These families haven't saved the money to renovate their homes yet, but are probably grateful that their homes lay just outside the development zone.

It seems that most of Qui Nhon's inhabitants are benefiting from these changes. A walk along the beach before sunset is still the time when the entire city seems to descend on the beach. Shirtless boys playing soccer, girlfriends chatting and laughing, children racing each other on bikes a wee too big, and couples enjoying mango and shaved ice shakes. What was once a dirty shore and haphazard collection of fishermen homes has become a scenic backdrop for nightly rituals on the beach.

Note: By the way, if you're planning to visit Qui Nhon, dorm rooms at Barbara's Kiwi Cafe are very basic and warm, but extremely cheap – $3 USD as of this writing. Plus, Barbara and her staff are quite helpful. Whatever you do, don't stay at the Lan Anh Guesthouse, which is attached but a completely separate entity. I had heard the owners and staff were rude. This was confirmed when they tried to tack on inane charges to my moto rental.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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