Tuyen's Blog

Posts for Tag: vietnam

Vietnam schools teaching kids skills for the future

This is a must read.  It's pretty sad that it takes a foreigner to teach me new things about my motherland.  Neil Fraser is an engineer at Google who made a recent trip to Vietnam and found that Computer Science is being taught at all levels.  What surprised me even more was that he said some of the school work they are doing would allow half of the 11th graders to pass the Google interview process.  That's worth repeating ... 11TH GRADERS PASSING THE GOOGLE INTERVIEW PROCESS.  How many 11th graders in the US could say the same?  We need to wake up to the fact that the world is passing us by in terms of educating the next generation.  I for one shall be enrolling my daughter for computer camp as soon as I can.

Interesting article about District 1 in Saigon

via news.cnet.com

Dong Ngo of CNET wrote about his current trip to Vietnam, specifically Saigon (I won't call it the other name). My cousin in Saigon also wrote about his latest night out. It's been 8 years since my last trip to Vietnam and it looks like a lot has changed. But it looks like progress is being made and people are generally living better lives. Can't wait to go back.

Unfortunately, racism still exists

I'm having lunch at my local Vietnamese joint and I'm overhearing a political discussion (in Vietnamese) regarding McCain and Obama. One guy is saying that he's voting for Obama because he thinks Republicans have messed up the last 8 years and he wants a Democrat to be in office. The other guy basically agrees with him that the nation has been screwed up but said he would vote for McCain because he didn't "trust" a black person.

I have to say I'm pretty ashamed that a Vietnamese person would rather vote for a candidate who publicly used a racist slur to describe Vietnamese people than someone who was black. How fuckin' stupid are you? If you won't vote for Obama because you're a registered Republican or you think he'll raise your taxes or you don't think he has enough foreign policy experience, that's cool. Those are valid reasons. But to base your decision on someone based on race is just ignorant.

To be fair, McCain did apologize and tried to justify the use of the slur by saying it only applied to his captors. But as I've said to many a person before, once you have reached the level of hatred for a group of people to actual use a racial slur to describe them, it's not easy to distinguish individuals. You can't say, "I hate [insert racial slur], but not all [ethnic group] people. Just those who wronged me." Why not just say, "I hate the people who wronged me"?

And so I don't sound hypocritical, I'm not voting for McCain because of the racial slur. I don't agree with his tax policy, "my way or else" foreign policy, and his poor choice in running mate.