Goals for Vietnam 2009

After studying abroad in Shanghai last year and experiencing the entire culture shock and realizations about my own culture, I’ve set more specific and more meaningful goals for myself. Instead of setting out to confirm my biases and stereotypes about Vietnam, I want to observed and understand what life is like for a typical Vietnamese person. I have a general sense of how they probably view life and it has always been a negative one. However, I wish to participate and engage in conversations with local Vietnamese and hopefully not be viewed as a foreigner passing by.

The original goal that brought me to Vietnam was the business opportunities that still remain hidden in the country. I have no clue where it is or how I can become involved with. Yes, I originally came here with intentions of exploiting the vast amounts of cheap labor and natural resources but the more I learn about how this conflicts with my morals the lower it is on my list of priority. However, at this point, it is still on my list.

Another goal I have is to better understand myself, I don’t mean who I am or whatever, but a sense of how my relationship with people develop. I make a lot of friends but I end up losing a lot of them. I don’t know if its my natural tendency to do so because I’m so involved with many things (which I feel is the main reason) or if its just my personality is not compatible with anyone else’s. Whatever it is, I want to find out and work on it in the next few months.

Obituaries: Alan Landers

Cigarette smoking is a very interesting topic in that there are so many perspectives relating to this topic. In regards to Alan Landers, I think he learned his lesson too late. It sounds as if he truly thought that cigarettes do not harm you. I think that people who smoke choose to do so and they are knowingly harming their bodies and know that they may potentially develop various kinds of cancer, yet they do so. You can't blame the tobacco companies for making the product, but you can blame them for creating lucrative marketing campaigns to manipulate and set social standards/opinions on smoking. Fine, if a person has a biological need to nicotine to have a better life than so be it. But if one is smoking because they feel there is some sort of social reward, then there is something wrong with that. Either way, it is the individual choosing to make the decision to light that cigarette up. The tobacco companies are not putting the cigarettes in their mouth and lighting it up for them.

I guess the lesson here is that in life, certain things are already there. The air quality in your neighborhood is what it is, the pesticides in fruits and vegetables in Vietnam are there, any social standards in society, and it’s all there. Even though these things directly contribute or shape your life some how, you can't blame them for anything that goes wrong in your life. It's the cards you were dealt. What you can do however, is learn to accept these things and avoid or resolve these things them if you don't want to put up with it.


Alan Lander's obituary can be found at http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13276462&mode=comment&intent=readBottom

Brief Autobiography (More like random rambling)

My name is Scott Nguyen. I’m currently 21 years old and still single. I spent my 21^st birthday in Vietnam at a bowling alley. I had a beer and it was fun. Only in America is turning 21 a thing to look forward to. I’ve always imagine that it would be a breath taking event, an action packed day with an itinerary that includes crazy activities like sky diving, fishing, clubbing, drinking, and hanging out with friends. I’ve always dreamt about uniting my friends in one big house to celebrate my birthday. It’s kind of hard to do so when your friends are on the other side of the planet and even though the number may be really high on facebook, the same can’t be said about the quality of the relationship. Like many things in my life, I’m spread a little too thin. Kind of like a fart, which disgusts people when concentrated but has little effect when dispersed, my desires to improve the world or make something out of myself when I don’t focus on any single idea or goal. I’ve studied abroad in Shanghai before this study abroad experience in Ha Noi. I don’t why I went to China but it was probably one of the best decisions in my life. I chose to study there in order to run away from the embarrassment I felt after trying to run for president of my fraternity. My fraternity, at one point in my life, meant everything to me. I guess the past few years of my life I had a single thing that my life revolved around. The furthest I can think back to is when I was with my first girlfriend, then it moved onto my fraternity, then it moved on to learning and living in China, and now its learning and living in Vietnam.

I suppose the correct way to describe someone’s life is to talk about it a timeline starting from the beginning and ending in later years. I’d like to try and see what would happen if the story was told backwards. I think this makes more logical sense because we can describe what recently happened better than things that happen further in the past. However there are lots of cons to this but I choose to ignore them.

I guess I would say living in Vietnam is a humbling experience that is allowing me to have a better understanding of the meaning of your life. Actually, it helped me define and have a better vision of who I am. The image isn’t clear yet but I don’t think it can be clear until you die and when its set in stone. Like many young Vietnamese Americans, I’ve always had a condescending view of people living in Vietnam, as if they were some kind of primitive species or society compared to the western world and after talking to certain people I’ve met in the past couple of days, I guess its because growing up in a western world, all you really care about is the productivity of a person and not the person themselves. We based the value of a human being based on what he or she can do to fit this economic model that we have built in our minds. I believe I still carry very capitalistic ideas and values but in the past two months, my perspectives have changed greatly as I begin to question and reflect upon myself, something I feel people seldom do enough for themselve. These experiences here are the observations that I’ve made about everyday life and interactions between people in Vietnam. There’s no possible to explain it in a few words and no if I spent my entire life writing about it, the true experience will never be transferred in its original form to the reader because experiences aren’t meant to be read, they’re meant to be felt. Words do lead people to feel, but each word in a sentence builds the experience and the experience itself does not build the experience. (I took grammar courses in college because my English was that bad). Anyhow, looking to see if my perspective will change further while I’m in Vietnam.

Before Vietnam I studied in Shanghai and for some reason I feel a lot more at home in China than I do in Vietnam. I don’t know what it is but China was a big turning point in my life. It too much for me to go into details but I could put it into bullet points.

- Met a wonderful girl name Sarah Zhu

- Interacted with students from the East Coast for the first time

- Learn to drink at all you can drink bars and clubs

- Taught by, serious, the most caring teachers in all of China who drank, partied, and hung out with us. (they were more than just teachers, they were friends).

- Rode rickshaws, taxis, subways, motorbikes to get around the city, half of which are illegal.

Things I learned about my life

- It’s not easy to start a relationship and know that its going to end

- No matter where I am or what I’m doing my family will still be there for me

- My life in America is dull and boring, there are more options and choices for what to do with my life

- We’re not citizens of any one country, we’re citizens of this world.

- It’s really nice to not center your life around trying to make as much money as you can and to meet new people and enjoy the presence of others

As for my experience with my fraternity I pushed my mental capacity to an extent I never knew was possible. The journey into this organization was long and tedious yet very enriching and fulfilling. I can’t mention the details of what I did but I did things and dealt with situations I would never have done in my entire life.

- Made lots of new friends and got over the anti-social, I’ve got a girlfriend mode

- Realized that sometimes the biggest barrier to our achievements are our mental ones

- You can’t do the impossible but you can redefine what the impossible is or is not

- Appreciate the people who have grown beside you and don’t forget them

- Sometimes people may not be who they seem to be. You may see your relationship one way and they may see it another and that not good but its not bad either.

My first relationship was another major milestone in my life. After one and a half years, I’ve realized a lot about love and girls and relationships. I’m sure all these perspectives will change as I get into more relationship.

- Love vs puppy love

- Getting into a relationship in the first place is a very interesting thing. We became involved in the relationship because some junior high kids I was tutoring pushed the idea to us.

- We went through high school together but never met each other until the end of the year when I start doing good things (tutoring… for money)

- I’m very afraid of being comfortable. It’s a scary feeling.

- Sometime is better to buy a new tire rather than trying to patch all the holes.