New plan: 200 words of the day

So this is my new plan to keep up with my blog more frequently. I read a lot of articles everyday, so starting today I will try to keep up a daily journal of my opinions on the most concerned article of the day. My personal response, however, will be limited under 100-200 words so that I can (1) make sure I won't spend too much time on my blog and (2) short posts are easier to be kept updated. To ensure flexibility, I will give myself 2 "free days" per week that I can skip, just to make sure I can sustain the plan even at busy times.

I will name this plan Daily Opinion. I would really appreciate it if you also contribute your thoughts to the conversation in the comment box :)

SO HERE IT GOES:

DAILY OPINION #1

(Saturday, January 14th, 2012)

Topic of the day: Please view this article:

http://www.baomoi.com/Nhieu-nguoi-bat-binh-clip-teen-tung-ho-Le-Van-Luyen/104/7710108.epi

For summary, the article talks about a murderer who intruded a gold merchant store, killed three people of a family and cut off an arm of an 8-year-old girl. He was sentenced for 18 years in prison. However, when he was escorted off the court, there were a number of young teenagers who publicly praised his name and supported him like an idol. 

My concern is: How can those young people idolize such a gruesome murderer?

Response:

Many people blame this strange phenomenon for bad education, lack of family concern, the degraded behaviors of the young generation, etc. They are all true. However, such blames are already old-fashioned, the kind of blames that I started to hear in middle-school about 8 years ago. Is there then any newer explanation for this new phenomenon?

That was what I wondered at first, but later on, I wondered a different question: Is this phenomenon new at all? Or is it just a long hidden social issue that we just start to observe and be surprised?

The kind of murderer in the article is not rare, and there have been tons of murder cases committed by under-aged teens. We are so used to reading that kind of news that we are more “immune” towards reading about murders. In short, will you still be surprised if another teen commits another murder? No, not that much.

Now, if there are many people similar to that murderer, it is just completely normal that the murderer had supporters during his hearing at the court. Those “supporters” are eventually potential criminals that have yet to commit an official murder.

In the end, we have long been alarmed; and instead of fixing the problem, we slept in that alarm. Now the alarm changes its ringtone, the problem reappears, not new, but just in another form, and that’s why we are alarmed again. Hopefully this time we will act.

Thinking of politics

Recently, I got caught up with Politics. Not that I was not interested before: I checked a Vietnamese newspaper ten times a day during the peak of the 2008 US election just for the curiosity of whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic Party nomination. It's funny though I never paid attention to any election in Vietnam; or maybe, just like one of my friends had said, we have no real election in Vietnam. But I do remember people excited to go cast a vote on election day - or at least many of my friends were so eager to turn 18 just to get to put a little paper into a sealed box. That sounded fun, but after the paper went inside the box, no body really cared who would be elected. Probably they thought it would not make any difference anyways.

Now that I thought again, my attention for the US election that year was just as pathetic as the Vietnamese people's attention for their country's election. I loved to read statistics, loved to see who was winning, waited to see Hillary Clinton be nominated. But I never knew why I wanted her in office - nor was I aware of how she was different from Obama. This has a little bit to do with my childhood: I was born when Clinton won the office, and during most of my childhood, the US economy got such a boom and budget surplus that my parents, admiring Bill Clinton so much, decided to give me the nickname Bill Clinton. So I was their little "president" for a few years. (Sadly the next president Bush was hated and henceforth my brother didn't get to have a presidential nickname) Back to the point, probably because of my childhood's affiliation with the name "Clinton", I wanted Hillary to be in office, that's all. Never knew what she was good at.

So my friend was both right and wrong in saying that Vietnam had no real election. First, just to be sure, I'm not talking anything about the single-party rule of Communism, since I do believe that one party is enough for a country. But here I'm not trying to argue for/against that. The real problem in Vietnam election is that within many Vietnamese Communist party candidates, it's usually hard to pick the right one. This is, I believe, mostly due to the lack of campaigning process; no one really goes out there and speaks his policies to the crowds. It's rather ironic to be able to vote, but when looking at the candidates list one cannot decide who's better than whom, and this case is not rare. I remember a kid in my middle school class used to tell other kids in the class: "Tell your mom and dad to vote for my dad to become the provincial congressman." Some days after other kids so proudly replied "My parents voted for your dad. They didn't recognize any other name."

That goes to the second problem: The Communist leaders aren't really close to the people, and the party's presence is more and more unpopular each day. That wasn't the case some years ago. When I started to go to school some ten years ago, most teachers recognized me by my last name, for my grandpa had been the provincial governor some years before. I was so proud, though, for the public's compliments about his good works. Now no one really cares who the leader is. That explains why the potential candidates for the government positions are so unfamiliar. That also explains why I was never interested in Vietnamese election before; simply because no adult bothered to talk about it, and we kids tended to pick up most information from them.

Today I sat in a lunch table at Princeton, and the kids started talking about the Republican primary in New Hampshire. That was so my topic! I didn't know why I spent so much time watching Republican debates, observing voting results, reading news, etc. or even went back to see a fight in the US Senate there years ago (Now I feel guilty for not studying for my final exams right now). But I love it here that so many people care about their nation's future, and consequently, their future too. Now thinking back, I can't think of many friends in Vietnam (who are already better than a standard Vietnamese young generation kid) that care that much about politics.

That's not to say the situation is very gloomy right now. The government, the congress and the party are doing a better job now than what they were doing five years ago. A southern economist became Prime Minister, a Speaker of the Congress that is more fierce in questioning the Cabinet and a new Party general leader that recently (and finally) admits the fact that the party is losing its popularity,... all are going in the right direction. It seems like better and more responsible people somehow managed to assume power now and they are leading the country in the right direction. I watched a Vietnamese Congress meeting last month, and for the first time I could spend an hour just listening to their debate. That's a good sign.

Even so, there is still much more to be done. Congress meetings are still far from being effective, many congressmen still lack both responsibility (they don't speak at all during the meeting) and sufficient knowledge to contribute. Some ministers still don't know their jobs, and the prime minister still hasn't been able to fulfill every of his promise. The party recognized the problem but still hasn't proposed any practical solution. I will wait to see what they will do to maneuver the country in a hard time like this. And watch out for 2022, I may be running.

Money and Myself

Today I read an article on my favorite newspaper about a boy who chose not to have breakfast everyday to save money for his severly ill mother and his poor family. The story has become a new phenomenon online, and people can't help complimenting such a caring son. I admire him too, but to me the story has a different position from just merely admiration.

I'm the saving kind of person, since I was young. I save for different purpose. When I was in elementary school, I saved the money my parents gave me for breakfast every morning in order to secretly buy a new power ranger DVD, a new set of superhero cards or go out and play videogames with my friends. At the time, I was already aware that our family was not even as wealthy as an average Vietnamese family, and that's why I had never asked my parents for any extra money for entertainment purposes. I thought that I had done the right thing, that I had been a responsible and reasonable son, until my parents found out how I had been spending their money. They god mad at me.

When I left my family to atten high school in Ho Chi Minh City, it was the first time I had to manage my own money. I was a good kid. I understood my childhood lesson well, and I promised to myself that I would not waste any money, if it was not for studying or living purpose. My parents frequently called me during those two years of high school, and the one question they always asked was "Do you still have any money left?". I knew well that they would not be hesitant to send me more money, even if it meant they had to tighten their spending on the rest of the family for the rest of the month; yet I rarely asked them for more money. I also chose not to have breakfast every morning (and that's why the article about the boy just reminds me of my time in High school) just so that I can use less money of my parents. Sometimes I gave up though, like a morning when I felt starving, then I would buy a bowl of noodles to have for breakfast, and try to cut spending somewhere else to compensate for that bowl of noodles. It was a hard time, but I felt so happy that I spent my parents' money well.

During those two years of high school, my consciousness about helping my parents with their finance grew so much. My parents trusted me more than any other parent could trust their son: they never asked what I spent the money for. Never. I guess through two years they knew well what kind of person their son was. One night, my bicycle got stolen due to my carelessness. I called Dad and cried, begging him to move my rented room to a more suburb area of the city so that the living cost would reduce to compensate my stolen bicycle. He refused, but then he had trust in me completely. I, too, promised not to lose their trust.

Three years after that night I got my bicycle stolen, I'm here in America. My parents no longer have to pay for my tuition, nor my living costs, nor my spending. I also worked hard, for two jobs, and earned my own money. The other day, I was skyping with my parents, and they asked me how much I had earned and spent. I earned a lot, but I had spent almost all of them. I didn't feel as bad when I spent the money as when I had to tell Mom how much I spent. It was only then that I realized I had lost my care for my spending, and also my care for the family. Originally, I intended to use the money I earned to send back home and pay my parents' debt. I never did. I spent everything.

Mom heard my answer about how much I had spent, she was silent for a moment, then she said with a smile "Now that you are a University student, there must be so many things to spend on." She didn't ask how I spent the money, because she wanted to keep her trust in me that I would never be wasteful. She was wrong. But I felt bad.

I guess someone has realized something big.

-------------------
Baltimore, November 2011.

The first lessons at Princeton aren't academics

Classes started. I'm taking 5 classes: Math, Spanish, Macro Econ, Computer Science, and Time Travel Writing Seminar. They are great - lots of work, but also lots of new things to learn. Done academics update, and this post from the title is obviously not about academics. Lectures with eminent professors are great, yet there are bigger lessons I've learned here at Princeton.

1.
I came to Princeton unemployed. By economics definition, being "unemployed" requires three conditions: (1) be able to work, (2) doesn't have a job and (3) actively looking for jobs. I was not working before, but I was not looking for jobs either, so I have never been unemployed in my life and this is the first time. I have two big reasons to work, and I was so determined to get a job before I came to Princeton. Yet when I came, no job was available.

Then I understood, being unemployed is by itself an emotional thing, like any other feeling: sadness, happiness, anger or jealousy. It's the mixture of eagerness, disappointment, worry,... altogether, so complicated that unless you are unemployed you won't ever understand. I went around asking for jobs, called different people, sent email to many departments asking for open positions. My consistence pays off: this week I've got hired for two jobs: circulation desk assistant at Princeton Humanities Resource Center and Office Assistant at Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS).


Having a job doesn't only mean getting money; it also means learning how to spend that money. Never had I thought so carefully before deciding to buy something from a store, considering whether I truly need it or not. Not that I were a lavish consumer; I just became even more thoughtful for the very penny I earned. Before, buying an 11-dollar object would just mean spending 11 dollars out of my parents' or financial aid's money. Now, it means spending an hour of work. Everything is no longer monetary figure, for it is converted into time and effort now.

That's my first lesson.


2.
I promised not to talk about academics, but here I will bring up the subject again. I'm taking five subjects, and in combination with two jobs and 1 community service in the fall semester of freshman year, it appears to be way too much. No, it IS in fact way too much.  My parents have expressed concern, and even I myself am concerned. But currently I just have to sleep a bit later than midnight, try to arrange my time in the most efficient manner, and wake up a bit earlier than 9a.m. (college students tend to wake up very late, some people won't have class until 11am or 1pm). I just have to extremely focus when I study, cut off the time I waste on facebook or stop the habit of procrastinating. I just have to sacrifice a little bit here and there of the unnecessary pleasure, and things go under control. I still have time to do things I like: I can still take guitar lessons, hang out with my friends, watch movies with them on weekends, or just hang a bit on the dining table to have a conversation about whatever on the news. Life was hard, or at least I thought it was, and when I push myself a bit to be more efficient, life doesn't seem unmanageable anymore.

Pushing myself a bit, that's the second lesson I've learned.


3.
Princeton is full of talents, obviously; but there are many opportunities as well. I wanted to join a singing group at Princeton, either the University Choir (Glee Club), Chapel Choir or any of the ~10 a cappella  and theater groups (Especially Triangle had been my dream since Princeton Preview Weekend). It was, certainly, very competitive, but I was confident that there would be a place for me somewhere in that pool of opportunities. But, yeah, life is unpredictable, a chance event, a dice rolling game that any face of the dice, no matter how cruel, can turn out.

Truth is, last week was the week that I got the most rejection letters ever in my life; it alone is double than the total number of rejection letters I previously received in my whole life combined. Sunday I received two, Monday I received three, Tuesday two, Wednesday two, etc. The number of rejection letters I received in a day last week can be described as a linear function of the number of auditions I underwent: f(N) = N. This, I could never imagine, even though I had prepared myself for this worst situation.

I felt bad. I thought I was good enough. I didn't know why I didn't get in. Or, can it be that they hate me as a person? Can it be that they have already favored someone else? That was how I felt on Sunday and Monday.  I was really an ignorant idiot trying to explain whatever happened to him so suddenly. It was not until two days after when I overheard someone's practice, and someone else's audition that I felt so happy. Literally SO HAPPY. They were so good, and their voices were god-like. That was such a soft, easy-going yet confident sound. No wonder I was outweighed. At that point, I no longer felt bad, for I had totally understood why I deservedly was pushed out of the game. In fact, I felt so good that here there are so many talented people who would (1) make Princeton even better and better, make it deserve being the place I chose and (2) motivate and challenge me to better. Not that I like competition, but I chose this competitive environment because I wanted to be better anyways. So, this is perfect.

At Princeton, I learned to accept and move on.

I have to write one separate post for my best Princeton experience.

Outdoor Action 2011 was rather an unusual one. (Note: Outdoor Action is a wilderness program at Princeton University, which brings a groups of 10 students and 3 leaders each to the woods for a week). There was continuous thunderstorm and rain for three days straight in the Pennsylvania and Virginia region, resulting in the evacuation of all OA groups. As people joke around the fact, OA 2011 is the first time ever in the long history of OA that our wilderness explorers ended up staying in the hotels and eating pizzas for dinner. It seemed - to an outsider - as if the purpose of the trip, i.e. bring the groups together through the difficult time in the woods, had been ruined. Some people even laughed hard at the fact that our OA lasted for 3 days, instead of a week, and in their laughter they wondered "Poor guys didn't get anything out of the ruined trip".

We, the insiders, understand the matter better: Before we got evacuated to the hotel, we stayed for more than 2 days in the non-stop rain. Even now when typing this note, I still can visualize the raining days, the unclear vision due to dripping water onto our disrupted eyes; I can feel again the wet clothes sticking to the body and the water running from head to toe; I can remember clearly the disappointment when we had no way to light up a fire  for all the woods collected were drenched in water, or the self-asked question "How are we to sleep tonight with our sleeping bags wet?". Since we hadn't brought that much clothes to the wild, in order to make sure we had dry clothes to sleep with every night, we had no choice but to put on our wet clothes again during the day-hike. It means, there's a pair of wet clothes that you had to constantly put on every morning, even though it felt like the grossest thing ever. Never before have I missed home, pitied myself and wanted dry clothes so much.

LADIES OF THE TRIP
A few minutes before the thunderstorm commenced a week of raining and a potential flood.

Yet, there's always light in the darkest moments. If it hadn't been for the severe weather, we wouldn't have got so close as a group. Our group - LH98 - started off our trip as complete strangers playing awkward games; yet, after only three days we felt like we had been best friends for long. One night, we - 13 people - had to sleep altogether in a shelter that had a maximum capacity of 5 people. None of us could lay down our tiring bodies entirely, and each of us had to sleep in a weird position. Alvina - a dancer - felt comfortable in her yoga style: slept sitting and laid her head on her toes; Alomi slept sitting the whole night; Evan slept between Julia's legs (this sounds very inappropriate); some leaned against the wall; and I and David just slept one on top of another. That night I couldn't imagine how I would get through the long night, but eventually everyone passed down due to exhaustion and woke up the morning after finding each other in a weird position. It was in no way a comfortable experience - but it was fun though. What's worse that night, there were only 4-5 dry sleeping bags for 13 people, and the night was really cold. We ended up sharing the sleeping bags, using them as blankets to cover more people at a time. I could only get the "blanket" to hide my toes, considering my wool top kept me comparably warmer than others.

This is the first night when we can actually lie down.

Then there was that one afternoon we were waiting for the support van in the windy cold. The wind just made everything worse: it penetrated into our clothes, made the cold colder, made what's wet wetter. I no longer remembered how long we waited, maybe almost 2 hours. Those 2 hours may have been the worst part of OA - and the most desperate moment for me - and it may have been the best part of OA at the same time. There are several things people can do when they are extremely desperate in the cold: they can huddle and kick a nut around the circle (pretending to be playing soccer while not being able to run around), they can play pokemon (just act silly), can play human Tic-tac-toe, or do the simplest game: throw rocks at the tree. That said, it should be clear how cold and desperate we were; but at the end of the day, it turned and transformed into the best moments one could have in life.

Okay, this can go on and on if I can't control myself. There are tons of other things that made OA the best thing that could ever happen, and hopefully even though they are not written here in this blog, I won't forget them.

I think I'm just bad at concluding things. Let's just leave it the post unconcluded.

Wake Up Inside Forbes

My first night sleeping at Princeton lasted for an hour (for clarification from the title, Forbes is my residential college, aka dormitory). One old Vietnamese belief states that when you first sleep at an unfamiliar place, you can't really sleep because you are not used to the bed. This is true for my case now, but I can't complain about the comfy bed. When I woke up at 4 in the morning, tried to close my eyes and found out that I had to leave the bed while everyone else was still enjoying their pillows, I knew jet-lag was still controlling my brain and, what's worse, it would put me into a coma during the day when I would be supposedly joining the orientation activities. Well, I have no better choice than to make use of the time then.

I decided to write a blog post.

Truth be told, this post has been a procrastination. Back to my last days in Vietnam, I wanted to write a post telling how much I loved my friends there and how I realized I was so unwilling to leave my parents and the little kitties (my siblings), yet when I would rather use that time enjoying the last moments, I didn't put myself to write anything. When I finally had time, even ample time, to write something when being stuck at the San Francisco airport, I was already too tired to type anything good.

My little HP corner in San Francisco Int'l Airport

In fact, Princeton is making me miss UWC. It is such a different world. There are so many more people (about 6,000 compared to 251 at UWC-USA [200 students + 50 faculty + 1 post office workman]) that you have the excuse to just not look at the eyes and pass by someone, pretending not recognizing their existence. I still have the UWC habit so when I came to campus this morning, I said hi to the people I met on the way to my dorm. Guess what, they said hi back, while looking like "Hey, do I know this strange guy?". They don't say hi to someone they've never met, and I knew that when I finally realized I was no longer at UWC, when you just approached a new person in orientation and started your favorite sentence: "Hi, I'm [dot dot dot] from [dot dot dot]". Well, I was a bit uncertain and shaky about my choice to enroll Princeton a very tiny bit this morning because one of the big factor of my decision was the friendly environment that really resembled UWC, and it just didn't turn out to be like that anymore. Luckily, when I and Jane passed by Whitman residential college (residential college is Princeton's term for dormitory) in the evening, we saw a group of 20 students making a circle on the grass with three people playing guitars and ukulele while the rest sang. That was just so UWC! (especially Ghost Ranch and random picnics on the field in summer). Princeton had proven itself to be not a bad choice at all.  I really didn't choose wrong hehe.

I told my father last year that I wanted to become a Princeton Student. And now, I am an official tiger.

I got reminded by a close friend that I shouldn't make getting into Princeton a big deal. I agreed with him by then, since I really believed the college admissions process, despite however objective, was partially random. Many good people aced it, and a small portion of equally good people just didn't have that luck for several reasons. That said, I am proud of myself for the effort I spent rather than for the fact of being accepted by Princeton, since I may (or may not) have made it this far merely by luck. However, above all that talk about college admission, getting into Princeton is really a big deal however. It's important in the sense that now I have access to the world-class education, the great academic environment surrounded by wonderful people, and the unlimited source of opportunities; now it's up to me to make that advantage really useful. I was a bit afraid this summer about whether I would have enough capability to make this chance a blast or I would just let it bypass; yet, as I find it challenging, I am eager to do it.

Recently people asked me what I wanted to study in college, and my principal answer which I didn't tell anyone is that I will study anything that would make me as useful as possible for this society, with Vietnam being the priority. That said, I used to dream to become a computer scientist, made cool stuffs and earned lots of money. I could make software that would help people, making their lives more convenient. However, one day I realized that without software we could still survive, even at a lower living standard from the one we currently have. That's not to deny the importance of Internet or Windows and Google or whatever, and as a computer person, I can claim to understand that better than many people. However, as of now, I want to have a more direct impact. I want to become an economist who will either contribute to control the rather unstable macro-economy so that it will have less effect on the lives of people, especially the poor and workers, or contribute to make economic development a real concept, eradicate the poverty with little trade-off on environment and social equality. This may sound too serious, or even like a cliché essay in the college application but I really mean it, and I want to do it.

Okay, it's long enough. I hope this post can be a reminder to myself about what I want to do and why I want to do, as well as how enthusiastic I am when I put my first steps in college. Now the sun is up, and it's time to move out.

P.S: This post ends with a bonus picture of me and my brother 8 years ago:

Orientations - Random Big Old Memories.

All these randomly written things were randomly remembered, of random big old memories.

Too many people...

"Hi, I'm Vuvu from Vietnam."


Two orientations, 3 classes, 300 people and 300 times. That's probably the number of times I've repeated this sentence over and over. I've said it so many times that it's probably hard to point out a single person I haven't told him/her so. Now to think about it, it was probably a wise choice to pick a nickname such as "Vuvu", since it should have been much easier for people to remember compared to tons of other names on campus.


Remembering names during orientations at UWC was like... having a quiz: "Hey, wait! Don't tell me yet! I think, your name is...". The next thought would probably be "Damn, he forgot to wear his name tag". That was why Linda tried her best to persuade students to keep wearing their name tags even after orientation. She would be standing in front of the cafeteria with a basket of candies, ready to be given out to "good" people who still wore their name tags at the fourth week at UWC.


Then, having to get to know some two-hundred people at once was even more problematic at UWC. The trouble doubled: you have to remember not only one's name, but also his/her country. That was rather confusing, and people had the tendency to put one person into another country different from his own. Eyad and many thought I was from Cambodia, while most of the Latinos didn't even bother to remember I wasn't from China.

I even got lost at UWC-USA.

Maybe Einstein's Relativity can explain whether UWC-USA was actually big, or I was actually so stupid that I couldn't remember my way during my first orientation, or both can be correct depending on specific reference frames. My first day in Montezuma, I came to UWC-USA on the 1-AM bus, and the only place I had known prior to my arrival was the Montezuma Castle.


I woke up the day after in Denali, and walked downstairs to the backdoor exit. There happened the odd: When I came inside Denali from the front door, it only had two floors; yet for sure Denali looked like it had three floors from the back! Another story, they were playing hide-and-seek in the castle. I was in student center, I walked up stair, and I was still at the ground (while I thought I should have been at a second floor). There came the explanation: I never encountered a house with basement in Vietnam.


During my first campus tour at UWC, I was so confused with all of the buildings they showed, then the Cross and the hot spring, which even made it harder to remember places' locations. One year later, I - a tour guide then - enjoyed seeing that confusion on the new-comers' faces. And another year later, I realized the place was actually not as big as I thought. Or maybe, it had shrunk since I had known it better.


Now I have known it so well. Maybe that's why, no more orientation for me.

Dance Fun, Mahii Ve and Random Singing sessions

My roomie said I had no sense of rhythm. Probably that was a joke, with a bit of bitter truth, just like how he told me I had no sense of humor. Yet, little did he know I was so into Dance Fun and Mahii Ve, and that was one of the highlights of on-campus Orientation. I didn't especially like the song, nor the dance. They were okay, but what impressed me was the image of two hundred people trying to dance the same movements of Mahii Ve, the movements that they would still remember several years later. That reminded me of the High School kids in some American movies. Now and then before coming to UWC, I stared at the TV and caught the image of student mass-dancing at US schools, and that looked real fun. I did break my own limit a bit when I did the sexy movements during Mahii Ve, probably the Vietnam authorities and traditions would never want that. But wasn't it what UWC was about? Overcome yourself here and there to try on new things, wasn't it?


Another great moment was the random singing circle in front of Denali and Kili at the orientation in my 2nd year. I felt like, and I could be certain, that was the moment that UWC students were connected the most, united the most, UWCed the most. Wahhhhh, I really loved that.