I left work on Friday and headed directly to the airport to fly out to Houston for the UVSA/NAVSA Katrina Relief efforts this weekend. With two big pieces of luggage filled with baby diapers, office and school supplies, towels and other items graciously donated by friends and co-workers, I arrived at 2am in Houston Saturday morning.

Saturday morning I met up with the UVSA/NAVSA group of some 15 volunteers who drove in a van from Southern California to Houston to help with the relief effort. Frankly, the traffic at Hong Kong IV mall (the heart of the Vietnamese community in Houston) has subdued quite significantly. Most of the Vietnamese families have been relocated to off-site shelters, churches and temples, and the people who came into Hong Kong mall just needed to fill out FEMA applications.

We therefore concentrated on Saturday on just getting basic household items to the families. We went to Fry's and bought a ton of rice-cookers and delivered them to churches and temples. “Feels like a refugee camp”, I overhear someone saying, and I guess it does. Another sub group split off and was working with the Cedar Sinai medical center (that has sent a van to Houston) to help with translation, since they set up a mobile site right in the heart of the Vietnamese community there.

Yesterday, I spent most of the time in the office of the Vietnamese community in Houston to help with loading the incoming trucks with the tons of washing and toiletry items we have purchased. In the evening, we returned to Hong Kong to pass those out to the Louisiana victims.

Monday morning, I woke up at 4am local time to go back to the airport and flew back to the Bay area and directly go to work (and show up 30 minutes late into a meeting--oh well).

All in all, I had a “fun” trip. It's good to meet and work with like-minded people, and it's always fun to meet up with my old UVSA friends, but I nearly didn't get to do as much as I wanted to. I didn't get a chance in meeting too many families (because they were mainly off around busy rebuilding their lives or out at the Astrodome applying for FEMA money). I also feel that the volunteers that we had there were so underutilized. I guess I had a different picture in my mind with the many emails circulating around, but it seems that it might not be worth doing these weekend-volunteer trips. Let's just phrase it as such: I think the money spent on flying over there just for the weekend is better spent just as a donation, and then leave it up to the locals in Houston to coordinate the relief effort. We here in NorCal should worry more about providing housing and shelters, so I guess I will be working with my real estate friends here on that for now.

I am glad that the Vietnamese community is coming together and that people are helping each other in these times. While I was in Houston, the Northern California group was putting on a fundraising social on the same weekend, and as far as I know they have fundraised some $50,000 already!

More pictures here:
http://www.thsv.org/thumbs.aspx?folderPath=PhotoAlbum%2fHurricane+Katrina+Relief+Effort
http://christran.smugmug.com/gallery/799604

Yay!! I won my new fancy-dancy Yamaha PS120 at an eBay auction last week and personally picked this up in Southern California.

So my “old” Yamaha DGX-305 here:

will go into my office at work, so I can play there whenever I am sick of looking at code, while I continue to practice at home on my new Yamaha PS120:

And look: Charlie plays “Canon in D”!!

No Los Angeles Philharmonic season is complete without a film music concert at the Hollywood Bowl, and this year is no exception. John Williams, the maestro of music to the cinema (and my all-time favorite composer) returned to Hollywood this weekend for his annual appearance to conduct the Philharmonic under the stars, and I got to attend… yet again.

This was my fourth John Williams concert, if I am not mistaken, and I believe my fifth or sixth time doing the refreshing Hollywood Bowl experience. If you’ve never done the Hollywood Bowl experience, I highly recommend you guys try it out, even if you are not into classical music. You basically pack up high-class gourmet food, picnic in or around the open-air venue for a few hours, chat with the people you go with, drink wine, all while having the Hollywood letters on the hill in sight, and then watch the night’s performance under the (few) stars that you can glimpse in LA. Very much like the magnificent Getty Center, it's a must-thing to do if you call yourself a true Angeleno.

John Williams' program tonight consisted of the following (in chronological order):

Liberty Fanfare

-         I like this piece, it was composed for the re-opening of the Statue of Liberty on July 4th 1986 following extensive repairs. It’s a very good classical piece and can't be found in any of his movies.

Theme from Close Encounter of the Third Kind

-         It’s alright. Luckily, he didn’t conduct the entire full-length 15-minute piece, because I can imagine that this would not be for the masses.

Two pieces from War of the Worlds

-         It’s alright; I had high expectations for War of the Worlds, because of its infamous soundtrack from the non-Spielberg version, but the pieces that he chose didn’t really stand out to me much (yes, Minh hasn’t bought War of the Worlds yet, shame on him).

Pieces from Jerry Goldsmith, David Raksin, Elmer Bernstein and Miklos Roza

-         2004 was the year the film music industry remembers as the year where we lost these three great film music composers (Roza died in 1995), and John Williams conducted selected pieces from these composers. Williams was even mentioning how he was a student of the late Jerry Goldsmith at the age of 12 or so. I really like Goldsmith’s music very much as well. I even attended his premiere of Disney’s Mulan at the Hollywood Bowl just five years ago!

After intermission, Williams continued with

Montage of Villains, Beauties and Heroes

-         Ah.. the usual montage of tons clips from movie classics, joined with over-used themes like Jaws, Indiana Jones and Superman. It’s the kinda montage that the Academy Awards does over and over again, but apparently the audience loves these things.

Theme to Far and Away

-         Me like, but no comment

Theme from Amistad

-         The Cal State University Fullerton choir came in for this, and I believe that he arranged a slightly different variation found on the CD. Unlike what I remember from the CD, this version divides the choir into the female and male group, and Williams had different segments sang by one group only and in the end combining them both. Nice effect!

Theme from Schindler’s List

            - LA Philharmonic violin soloist Bing Wang had the honor to perform John Williams’ masterpiece, and boy, she did it sooooo well. It’s moving, it’s touching, it’s heart-wrenchingly sad.

Three pieces from the Star Wars trilogy

-         “Battle of the Heroes”, “Luke and Leia’s Theme” and “Duel of the Fates” were chosen to conclude the evening, and I guess these are very good choices. Besides two of them being main themes, “Luke and Leia’s Theme” is probably another very recognizable theme from the Star Wars saga, and a very beautiful one to perform to a non-classical audience, too.

Encores

-         Of course, no John Williams concert is complete with a series of encores, and this wasn’t the first time Williams had four additional bonus performances given the audience’s demand for it. Unfortunately, John Williams is doing what he always does at every concert; he conducts “Yoda’s Theme”, “Theme from Indiana Jones”, “Star Wars - Main Theme” and finally concludes with “Theme from E.T”, no surprise here, huh?

All in all, it was a pleasant night, but no big surprises. I wish that John Williams would play something different as an encore for a change, but apparently the audience always loves those pieces. I also wish that Williams would perform “Journey from the Island” from the Jurassic Park album some day, as I still believe that that’s one of Williams’ best compositions ever, but well.... looks like I need to write my fan letter after all.

This being my fourth Williams concert at the Bowl, I think it’s time for me to eye other events. Let’s see.... my next goal that I wanna accomplish in life before I die: attend a film music concert at the much-talked about and publicly-appraised Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, attend a Williams concert with the Boston Pops Orchestra or… (boy, can I even allow myself to wish this out loud?) attend a film music concert with the world-renowned London Symphony Orchestra --- that would be the ultimate cool-thing-to-do.

Let’s look at some pictures, shall we?

The Bowl changes colors with each piece. On big concert nights, it even has fireworks on the Bowl's circumference.

If sold-out, the Bowl can seat up to 17,000 people

Katrina Relief in Houston -- HELP!

Special Meeting: Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts Meeting

Lots of things happening, still busy with many upcoming community projects such as the DH4 North America campaign, the slideshows for the VietACT/VPS Gala in SoCal and Denver, the slideshow for the Vietnamese Heritage Society Garden Projects's “An Evening in Saigon” in San Jose, but all in all life's swell.

Life's swell because at last weekend's DH4 luncheon and nationwide DH4 radiothon hosted in San Jose, we fundraised a pretty significant amount of money for the Fourth International Vietnamese Youth Conference. A bunch of UVSA friends came up and stayed at my place as well, giving me an excuse to treat them with an extravaganza of sushi and playing poker until early in the morning. We went up to Sacramento for the DH4 event up there where I got a chance to meet more attendees. Over the past days I have received a bunch of more emails from more attendees buying their flight ticket so that we all can meet up in Honolulu to head to Sydney together for the conference... well, and today I got a hold on the DH4 tattoos - how freaking funny is that?  Aahh..... the DH4 momentum is rolling!!

Life's swell because unlike last month, I've finished my monthly scrum tasks one day ahead of schedule, even though I was so certain a week ago that I am going to have to work really late again, but ah well. This allows me to go happily into labor day weekend as I look forward to go down south, meet up with my lovely friends in SoCal, attend the much-anticipated Tran Trung Dao poetry reading in Little Saigon and the annual John Williams concert at the Hollywood Bowl this Saturday (yippee... I got tickets and I am going with my parents and some friends of mine).

Life's swell because I am excited about going to a Microsoft-internal 2-day ASP.NET 2.0 class this week, attending two film music concerts within the next two weeks (Video Game Live coming up the following weekend), buying my electric piano next week (I am eyeing the Yamaha P120), currently learning my all-time-favorite-classical-piece "Canon in D" by Pachelbel on the piano with my piano teacher.

Ah... life's swell, and to make my cats happy, I even bought Charlie a remote-controlled mouse that drives him nuts. Hihi... how fun is that. ;) Ah... life's swell..... if I now only find the discipline to start studying for the GRE and applying for graduate school....

So a friend of mine challenged me to bake cookies… and so I did. Whoa, Minh baking cookies? Can you even imagine? I am the most culinary inexperienced person I know. Ah well, I needed some time to relax from my stress lately, so I took an entire evening off yesterday to do this. I went to Border’s, researched on cookies and bought a cookie-book home, went to the store to buy all the utensils and ingredients, locked up the cats into the bed room and started my first-ever cookie baking adventure.

Boy, that was just tooooo funny yesterday. I cannot believe how much sugar and butter goes into cookies. When I mixed the ingredients together, I thought to myself “wait, this can’t be right, that’s sooo much sugar and butter, people surely must die from eating this”. When mixing the ingredients by hand, the margarine didn’t resolve and I just got so tired and just suspended everything to go back to the store to buy a mixer (haha, this shows how lazy I am). From the several sets of cookies that I baked, one set got burned, because I forgot about them (I am sure every first-time baker has to go through this experience).

Ah well, after some 2 hours of research and 4 hours of shopping, preparing, refrigerating, baking and cleaning, I am proud to have baked my first sets of cookies. Let’s look at some pictures, shall we? Tadaaaaaa:

Can’t wait to see my friend’s and my parents’ reaction to this. Of course, I think the cookies suck, they are way too sweet and a bit dry, but ah well. That was a fun experience.

PS for cat-lovers: don't mix up the Arm and Hammer baking powder with the ones you guys use for the cat litter box. I was pretty confused as well. :)

Charlie, the cat that punk, peed on the carpet today again. This time he did it without any remorse whatsoever. I was hearing some dripping sound, turned around, and there he is. Looking straight at me with his innocent face, while just peeing right then right there next to my bed. “Aarrghh—con mèo mày” I say, pick him up and rush him to the litter box, and clean up the mess, but the odor remains. No good.

So, during lunch, I went to the pet store, walked to the aisle of useless crap the pet industry wants us to buy (can you guys imagine that there is a bark-translation-device that displays what the dog says?). I bought a large blacklight and some hm... anti-pee-enzymes. Charlie, how can you do this to me? Never mind the fortune I am spending on you, never mind that you and Annie have already destroyed my futon, never mind that I spent $150 for a single veterinarian visit last time when you and Annie played and then got physically hurt. As I prepare for an evening of San Jose CSI detective work tonight to trace urine stains, I wonder… do I own two cats, or do two cats own me?

It is time, it is time to..... ăn thịt mèo. I always wanted to be more Vietnamese anyhow.

I just finished the ninth reading of my all-time favorite novel "Ender's Game". As mentioned in my earlier post, this time I wanted to write down all the memorable quotes of this great novel. Not all the quotes below necessarily reflect incomparable wisdom---these are just quotes that are just hella funny, made me pause for a few seconds, have been quoted many times before or only mean something to you if you are a true “Ender's Game” fan.

If you do intend to read the novel, I actually don't recommend reading this list until afterwards, but if you just stumbled on this page, I hope I have sparked some interest in this novel.

Enjoy,

Minh T. Nguyen aka enderminh

PS: Page references are from the author's definitive edition paperback version.

Page 323

That's it. Maybe I should do this for the other three Ender's Saga novels as well, as those novels are even much richer. Feel free to add your own favorite quote here!

I just finished Phu Heo's farewell video--not without shedding many tears again. Last weekend when I drove to Sacramento, I cried on the way there because I was listening to a radio show about Phu Heo. On the way back, I just cried because I remember talking with him on the phone for hours whenever I took the 1 1/2 hour ride from Sacramento back to San Jose. I finally found some time this week to work on the funeral video, and gosh, it's not easy to watch, let alone edit this video, seeing all my UVSA and community friends mourn the loss of a great friend, a leader to our community, a person who touched so many people’s lives. Two weeks ago I went to SoCal and finally visited him at the park again for the first time... again, not without shedding tears. Every Tuesday, when I drive home from my piano lessons, I keep on remembering that awful Tuesday night when I returned from my lesson, as big Phu called me and told me about Phu Heo's passing, and I remember having to pull over on the freeway, crying in the car there on the emergency lane for two hours until my car battery died out and I had to call anh Huy to come out and jumpstart my car.

With the looming presence of DH4, I can't help but miss my dear friend more and more.  He was supposed to be here with us. He would be so entrenched into this conference with so much enthusiasm and energy that keeps me in awe. Phu Heo, you are greatly missed, but you will always be with us. I'll take you to Sydney, my friend.

In order to raise funds for the upcoming Fourth International Vietnamese Youth Conference in Sydney this December, the North American delegation to this conference is organizing a fundraising tour throughout the United States.

The tour will kick-off in San Jose with a fundraising lunch at Thanh Duoc Restaurant, 1228 S Abel St, Milpitas, CA 95035 on August 27^th 2005, from 11:30am – 3pm. Besides a full 5-course lunch, there will also be entertainment consisting of singers, slideshows, raffle prices as well as an art-auction. The San Jose-based Vietnamese rap group Heart2Exist (“25 Years”), the traditional Vietnamese instrument performer Unity Nguyen as well as guitarist Cung Vu will be performing at this event.

In addition, Nguyen Hoang Thanh Tam, the co-conference chair is expected to fly in from Sydney to attend the events in San Jose, Sacramento and Chicago as well as attending other activities with Vietnamese youth organizations in North America.

To purchase tickets for the San Jose event ($25), please contact event coordinator Helen Huynh at (408) 892-3843 or email us at northamerica@sydney2005.net.

The current tour dates are as followed:

• San Jose 8/27
• Sacramento 8/28
• Chicago 9/3
• Orange County Concert 9/10
• San Diego 9/18
• Atlanta 10/01
• Houston 10/15
• Dallas 10/16
• Orange County Dinner 10/23

Proceeds to this fundraising tour will partially go directly to the conference in Australia, but will also be used to subsidize the cost that North America-based conference attendees are expected to pay due to extremely high airfares.

More information on the events in each city will be posted on the conference’s website at www.sydney2005.net.

About the conference: Every two years, the International Vietnamese Youth Conference is organized by the Len Duong International Vietnamese Youth Network to gather young Vietnamese from around the world to identify, discuss and resolve issues pertaining to contemporary Vietnam in the context of modern society. The conference was first hosted in Melbourne, Australia in 1999, followed by Paris, France in 2001 and San Diego, USA in 2003. This year, the conference will return to Australia where it will be co-hosted in Sydney in association with the Federal Vietnamese Students Association of Australia from December 27^th to December 31^st. For more information on the conference, please visit http://www.sydney.net or email sydney2005@lenduong.net

Remember Strive? The Vietnamese mentorship program at UC Berkeley? Every wondered what happened to little Anh? True that idlehouse-Linh has married another Strive alumni? Is Dung still changing her name every six months? Is Ky still volunteering at Huong Viet? Is Minh still signing off his way-too-long emails with Best Wishes? Is it true that Co Be Kieu Anh was in some kinda beauty pageant?

Ladies and gens, we invite you guys to the first-ever Strive Reunion Lunch! Please RSVP to this invite, so we know how many people we need to reserve the restaurant for. If you know other mentors or mentees who should be on this invite, please send us their emails or simply invite them for us!

Time: Sunday, August 21st, 1pm
Location: Jade Villa Restaurant, 800 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94607
Evite: http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?event=WDPPIQKKNCJNJVLRIFWS

Best wishes,
Minh T. Nguyen
nguyentriminh@yahoo.com

Just to get the news out first, the Fourth International Vietnamese Youth Conference fundraising tour is as followed:

The one in San Jose will take place on August 27^th 2005, from 11:30am to 3pm at Thanh Duoc Restaurant, 1228 S. Abel St., Milpitas, CA  95035, so keep your calendar open and hopefully I'll see you guys at the upcoming event. Heart2Exist will be there to perform, along with Unity. More info soon...

In the midst of all stress, project deadlines and DH4 action items, I did something pretty unintuitive yesterday. I took out my beloved author-signed copy of Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” and started to read it…. yet again. If I remember correctly, this should be the ninth time I am reading this book (yes, the ninth time), but this time I am having a different approach to this.

I’ve already written about why I love this book so much, and I mentioned that this book is full of great quotes and very memorable lines. Many fans have submitted their favorite quotes to Hatrack River’s quote database, but that database hasn’t been updated for a long time. So what I am going to do this time is to read Ender’s Game slowly and write down all these great quotes and lines and will then post my list of favorite lines on here soon. Oh, this is going to be fun, hehe! So, stay tuned while I compile this list. Hopefully I can spark some interest in you guys to read this novel.

Minh T. Nguyen aka enderminh

PS: I am the proud owner of three (yes, three) original August 1977 issues of the Sci-Fi magazine Analog, in which the very, very, very first version of “Ender’s Game” first appeared. How cool is that!?

It's 1:54am and I am still sitting in my office at work. Very unlike-me. I am usually the first person to leave the office every day, and I usually never take work home, because I believe in the clear-cut separation from office-work and personal time at home (but of course that doesn't help anyone, because at home I work non-stop on community projects).

Well, this week is crunch-time and I feel a bit stressed out. It's the accumulation of all project deadlines. It's not only my professional work where I am behind, but more so the many community projects that drag me down. I left the office yesterday around this time as well, and I am afraid that I might have to work from home this weekend too, even though I will be flying out of town (yet again). Not good. Sigh… when do I ever start to learn to say ‘No’ to projects or wind down a bit as 98% of all my friends are telling me to? Have I not learned anything from Phu Heo’s death?

A chat with my best friend earlier this week..

Friend: so how are you?
Friend: (the answer is likely, very busy)
Me: hahahahaha
Me: Wanna call me at home?
Friend: well.....not for too long.....
Friend: but ok
Me: haha
Me: that's alright
Me: we'll catch up another time
Me: In short, I have been superbusy
Friend: yeah....
Me: to the point that I am a bit stressed out
Me: which doesn't happen often
Friend: if you weren't busy
Friend: i'd think somethign is wrong
Me: yeah, but this time, it's just a bit too much
Me: I regret taking on too many projects
Me: I feel like I am losing contorl
Friend: ahha.....same old minh
Friend: you're always like this though
Me: well, this time it's different, because I feel that I am losing control over my time management
Me: which usually is not the case
Me: but ah well
Me: crunch time I guess
Friend: well...you're getting older
Me: hahaha
Me: shit

So, didn't I tell you guys that Charlie isn't afraid of anything?

Huh, what's this?	Can I touch it?	Oops, did I do that?

Boy, this has been and continues to be a busy month. I am involved into too many projects, and this week was the accumulation of all community work deadlines and crunch-times, and I am running low on fuel and resources. DH4 campaign needs to be kick-started and calling up people to follow up on the US fundraising tour is just so time-consuming. I still need to put together a prototype of the bilingual DH4 registration pages by this weekend, and while it looks like I am still somewhat on track, there is so much other work piling up: the upcoming Strive reunion, the complications with the VPS retreat in Seattle, the lack of interest for the VPS Conference 2006 that does start to worry me, the NAVSA IT grand project (which is pretty darn ambitious)…. VPS SoCal is waiting for me to jump on the VPS Gala 2005 bandwagon, but I can’t just yet. I look at my Outlook calendar, and it's so colorful with appointments it looks like a kids' game. To top it all, I am kinda behind with my work at Microsoft as well. Not good.

All that I really want to do community-wise is DH4 and VietACT only, and in my personal time, I really want to watch the many independent movies that I have on my list (Wong Kar Wai’s 2046, Supersize Me, Saving Face, Howl’s Moving Castle, etc…), read the book that Phu Heo wanted me to read before he died, play the piano more…. Yet, I continue to being dragged on to other projects and continue to let my good-friend Thien Tam down, as I promised her three months ago already that I want to commit myself to VietACT. Hm.. sigh….

At any rate, at least Bolinao 52 fundraising event is over now. We didn’t have the high attendance that we were hoping for, but we did successfully fundraise a good amount of money that will hopefully help director Duc Nguyen to finish this ground-breaking documentary over the next months. I had dinner with him after the event, and he told us how next month he will by flying to the Philippines to finish his Vietnamese boat people documentary and also be the media-watchdog over the interviews that will be happening there in regards to the entire issue with the 2000 stateless Vietnamese hoping to be accepted to the United States.

This is yet another big project, led by inspirational award-winning lawyer Hoi Trinh, whom I had the pleasure to invite to the VPS Conference 2004 last year. He’s a very charismatic, energetic and funny-as-hell guy. In a nutshell, after Hoi Trinh’s 7-year lobbying campaign, the United States has finally agreed to send a small team to the Philippines to interview 2000 stateless Vietnamese refugees for potentially resettling them to the United States. However, knowing that this team will be rather ruthless in following strict Patriot-Act-like protocols, Hoi Trinh has been lobbying the US government to apply more internationally-accepted (repeat after me: “more humane”) rules when performing these interviews. This is where you can help out. Please call your congress representative and ask about this issue and urge the delegation to treat these 2000 Vietnamese refugees as people and not as numbers.

More importantly, Hoi Trinh is desperately (and really desperately) looking for volunteer lawyers who can donate their time to go to the Philippines next month to coach these 2000 Vietnamese refugees and also represent them. Gosh, this is probably the only time I wish that I was a lawyer so I can help out. Anyone know any philanthropic lawyers?

Oi…soo many good projects, so little time. Life’s too short.

When people ask me for my favorite quote, I have always given them this:

"Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?"

       - Robert F. Kennedy
        (though he only adapted it from a play by George Bernard Shaw)

This week, my good friend Thien Tam reminded me of this great quote, which I shall include in my box of positive-thinking treasures:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

       - Margaret Mead

Ah... what an inspiring quote.

So my parents are in town this weekend, and I took them to see Victor Vu's First Morning / Buoi Sang Dau Nam, which finally premiered in San Jose here this month. It's a movie about a dysfunctional Vietnamese family broken apart by war, psychological trauma and Vietnamese father-is-always-right-and-it's-okay-to-beat-wife-and-children-chauvinism. Granted, this movie is not very well edited, doesn't have good acting, and the script is not very convincing, but the story itself is very touching and probably hits home to a lot of Vietnamese people.

In the past months, even before Phu Heo's death, I've been “playing” therapist for a lot of my Vietnamese friends. I don't know why they approach me, but even Phu Heo told me before his death that I should consider being a therapist, because I listen well. At any rate, it seems as if I am surrounded by dysfunctional families all the time in the Vietnamese community. It seems to me that a Vietnamese family that is NOT dysfunctional is out of the norm. The problem is that the Vietnamese family doesn't admit to it and certainly does not want to go to family therapists. For one, Vietnamese families are too ashamed of admitting that they have a problem. Secondly, they don't believe in family or couple therapy as that's not "hard science". I hope that this will change with the new 2.0 generation. I hope that the young Vietnamese American generation doesn’t shy away from approaching therapists, as I believe that they can be very helpful.

With all the dysfunctional families around me, I feel very lucky to have a very functional family. All of us are extremely involved in the Vietnamese community and we all have a passion for it (you think I am active in the Vietnamese community? Wait until you guys meet my mom!). Sure, we often don't see each other because of our busy community-work schedule, but I would say that we have a very happy family. We joke at the dinner table, go on vacation together, have our own yahoo groups to chit-chat, share stories and pictures, and so on.

Time to go political with my blog, so here it goes. I was cleaning out my inbox and stumbled on an old pre-2004 election email reply of mine in a rather heated discussion. Here's an excerpt:

[ Excerpt ]

... However, Bush made a joke of the United Nations and world community. The world was a safer place before Bush started this war. There's a reason why they call Bush Al-Qaeda's biggest recruiter, because he has turned the world against us, and we really have no friends left in this community except for Australia and Britain. It's our economic power that offsets our complete arrogance.
 
Before the war, Hans Blix and the rest of the UN team was urging the US to allow it to finish its WMD inspection program. Even with no WMD in sight, Bush lied to the world and its citizens and lobbied unsuccessfully for their support. We ignored the world community and went into war. Now that we are there and no WMDs were found, we now claim about having gone there to free the Iraqi people and bring peace and what not. Even though the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam, that's not what Bush's reasoning originally was, because if that's really the case, then we should have also go into East Timor, Vietnam and China as well. He's covering up the lies and diverting our attention that more Americans are dying daily in Iraq, where the majority of citizens consider the US an occupying force, more than a liberator.
 
So, where does this all lead us? 1000 Americans dead, 13000 Iraqis dead, the world against us, a "Patriot" Act that is as un-American as it can get, happy people at oil-industry giant Halliburton (which turns out to be Dick's company), billions of dollars spent in an unnecessary war that could have gone into education and healthcare and the guy who killed 3000 Americans in 2001 still running loose and gaining tremendously from US's unpopularity as they are preparing for their next attack.
 
So, what's my answer? Vote Bush off the island. A person who lies to its people, turned the biggest surplus in US history into the biggest deficit in US history, cutting Veteran's payment, and proposing to illegalize same-sex marriages does not deserve my vote. I don't claim that taking the longest vacation than any other US president has ever taken before is something that matters much, but it sure doesn't paint a picture of a leader to me. These are really just a few reasons why I will vote for Kerry, even though I very strongly oppose his voting records in regards to Vietnam Human Rights issues (and even lobbied against him last year).
 
Why do most people vote for Bush? Well, they didn't. The majority of the citizens in 2000 voted for Gore. ;) A lot of polls indicate that Bush's leading right now, but all these polls are missing out on the young generation who don't have a listed home phone and only a cellphone. That's a huge number of college students (who tend to be left-wing). A lot of polls are skewed (see moveon.org's ad in the New York Times this week) and the only poll that matters is the one taken on November 2nd. Those who are voting Bush are probably getting their news from Fox and CBS directly, instead of turning into NPR or non-American news....

[ end of excerpt ]

Ah.. sigh, I guess I was wrong in believing that Bush will lose reelection. Bush failed to fire Donald Rumsfeld over his involvement into Abu Ghraib, and I highly doubt that George W. Idiot is going to fire Karl Rove over Valerie Plame either. Looking at the Downing Street Memo, I am just extremely angry and wonder why in the world people can even continue to support Bush and his get-rid-of-all-evil-doers-while-meeting-with-Vietnamese-president-Phan-Van-Khai-anyways policy. By now 22,000 civilians have died in Iraq, some 17,00 Americans, some 13,000 wounded. This week, a very good friend of mine that I work with in the Vietnamese community is being sent to Iraq and I can't help but worry.

Sorry for the rant, let the flames begin.

On Saturday, July 23rd, 2005 at the NORTHSIDE COMMUNITY CENTER from 6-9pm (located at 488 North 6th Street, San Jose, California 95112), there will be a fundraiser event to support the completion of the documentary film Bolinao 52.   The program will consist of:

1) A Boat People’s Art Exhibit showcasing artwork by refugees from Southeast Asian camps collected by the humanitarian student organization, Project Ngoc-UCI from 1989-92;
2) A Boat People Photography Exhibit from the U.S. Naval Archives; 
3) A Screening of the Bolinao 52 trailer (25 min);
4) A Panel Discussion with Duc Nguyen (director), Tung Trinh (survivor), and special guests;
5) A LIVE! Auction of original art and other specialty items.

Bolinao 52 is a documentary film that follows a Vietnamese refugee’s quest to understand, document and speak to the world about the saga of the Vietnamese Boat People’s exodus after the American withdrawal in 1975.  Using his own memory as a boat person, the filmmaker draws parallels from his own triumphant experience in 1980 with that of an ill-fated boat that made international headlines in 1988.

The Bolinao 52 incident caught the world’s attention when the U.S. Navy court-martialed the captain of the USS Dubuque for his refusal to rescue the refugees.  After 37 days adrift on the South China Sea—ignored and neglected by over 20 ships-- the refugee boat was finally rescued by Filipino fishermen and taken to the island of Bolinao.  In order to survive, cannibalism was involved.  Of the original 110 refugees, only 52 survived.

Bolinao 52 reconstructs that horrifying event using eyewitness accounts of survivors and a crewmember on the USS Dubuque in search for answers and resolution.  Bolinao 52 is one boat person’s attempt to speak out about an unmentioned chapter in history.  His voice represents millions of silent ones. 

The main survivor of the Bolinao incident, Mrs. Tung Trinh, has a son who was only 5 years old in 1988.  He is now serving as a U.S. Marine in Japan. This summer, additional filming is planned in Japan and the Philippines.  The Bolinao team will first go to Okinawa to capture the reunion of mother and son Bolinao 52 survivors as well as their meeting with a retired U.S. Navy sailor who served on the USS Dubuque who now also lives in Japan.  Thereafter, the Bolinao Team will travel to the Philippines to fulfill Mrs. Trinh’s wish to re-visit the island of Bolinao where she was rescued.  Giving closure to this journey, a memorial service will be held in the Philippines in honor of the lives lost and saved in the search for freedom. 

Currently, there are 2,000 Vietnamese Boat People still stranded in the Philippines since the closure of all Southeast Asian refugee camps by the UNHCR in 1996.  These “Forgotten Ones” are awaiting resettlement to Canada, the US and other Western asylum countries.  To aid in their plight to live in a free country, Bolinao 52 will be hiring 20 of these current Boat People to participate in the filming of the re-enactment of the 1988 Bolinao 52 Boat rescue, thereby lending greater historical truth to the film, meanwhile helping them earn much needed income to finance their application process for resettlement.  The estimated cost to complete the film is $350,000 USD, of which, $60,000 is needed to complete shooting the film this summer.

HOW YOU CAN HELP?
- Visit http://www.rhimp.com/bolinao and tell others about it!
- Get involved by contacting the Bolinao 52 Team to rally support for the project and help raise funds.  Corporate, business and individual donations are welcome.  Donors of $500 or more have the option to be recognized in the film credits as well as all promotional materials in all nationwide fundraising events and the website.
- Donate to the project by either: 
 1)  Pay Pal or credit card at www.rhimp.com/bolinao or
 2)  Make checks out to:  VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS (Please write “Bolinao 52” in the memo line) and mail to Duc Nguyen at 626 Moulton Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90031.
- All donations are tax deductible as Visual Communications is a Los Angeles-based association of independent Asian-American filmmakers that qualifies for US Federal IRS 501-©3 Tax Exemption (Tax-ID #23-7108393).
  

CONTACT

Duc Nguyen
Director/Filmmaker
duc@rhimp.com
510.593.5395

Mai-Phuong Nguyen, M.D
Associate Producer/Publicist
maiphuong@rhimp.com
714.323.8078

Minh Tri Nguyen
San Jose Event Coordinator
nguyentriminh@yahoo.com
408.988.7330

Last weekend, I gave a workshop on “Creating Effective Slideshows” at the North American Vietnamese Student Associations Conference 2005 (NAVSA) in Chicago, IL. The workshop was supposed to be an hour long, but due to logistical reasons, I had to cut it down to only 30 minutes, so sorry for rushing through this workshop.

Here’s the full video.

Here’s the accompanying PowerPoint and below are some of the other slideshows/trailers I have created:

• Black April 2005 Vietnam Freedom March Slideshow
• Fourth International Vietnamese Youth Conference Trailer
• A Day in Hanoi
• Vietnamese Professionals Society North American Conference 2005 Opening Ceremony Slideshow
• Vietnamese Professionals Society North American Conference 2005 Trailer
• North American Vietnamese Student Associations Conference 2004 Opening Ceremony Slideshow
• North American Vietnamese Student Associations Conference 2004 Trailer
• Union of Vietnamese Student Associations of Southern California Promotional Trailer
• Third International Vietnamese Youth Conference - Locations Trailer
• Third International Vietnamese Youth Conference - I am Vietnamese Trailer
• Third International Vietnamese Youth Conference - Info Trailer
• Third International Vietnamese Youth Conference - Opening Ceremony Trailer

To see other people’s workshops from the NAVSA conference, please visit the UVSA website.

Every once in a while there comes a musical piece that just makes you pause whatever you are doing and just purely enjoy the beauty of the composition and appreciate music to its fullest extent. It's the acoustic equivalent of love at first sight, and happened to me with John Williams' "Journey to the Island" from the album "Jurassic Park", Alan Menken's "Colors of the Wind" from the "Pocahontas" (yes, I know it's a kid flic, but it sure is a beautiful musical piece) as well as Phan Van Hung's arrangement to "Bai Ca Dai Viet".

Well, after hearing "Going out" for the past months for almost every day, I've finally decided to shell out $30 to import Joe Hisaishi's entire album "Kikujiro no Natsu" directly from Japan. The CD arrived yesterday and I've been listening to it all day.... and here it happens again. I am "falling in love" with this new piece on the CD called "The Rain"---another amazing, nostalgic and quite romantic piece by Joe Hisaishi. It's a slow, sentimental violin piece that is accompanied by the piano, and just sounds sooooooo-so beautiful. It’s just pure, romantic beauty. Piano and violin always go together very well, and this piece exemplifies how powerful film music can be and how well it can evoke one's emotions. Enjoy!

Wow, what an amazing weekend! This past weekend, I flew to Chicago to attend the North American Vietnamese Student Associations Conference (NAVSA) / Vietnamese Interacting as One (VIA-1) Conference 2005 at DePaul University. This conference was co-organized by the Illinois Vietnamese Student Union (IVSU) as well as the Union of Vietnamese Student Associations of Southern California (UVSA). Looking at the program, you’ll see that the conference had quite a lot of great content to offer, and indeed I enjoyed listening to the lively workshop discussions and what everyone else had to say about it.

I’ve also presented on “Creating Effective Slideshows”, and promised to make my PowerPoint available online, so here it is:
http://www.enderminh.com/minh/blogfiles/creating_effective_slideshows.zip

At any rate, this conference was just pure joy, and I am deeply touched by IVSU’s generous hospitality. I’ve been to a lot of conferences, but nowhere have I been to a conference, where the core organizers found the time to personally take us out for dinner/night-life/clubbing/city-tours during the conference days. The first pictures and videos are already available on UVSA’s website, and the entire content of the conference will be made online over the next few weeks.

I’ve made some great new friends and I can feel that they will last a lifetime and can’t wait to see everyone again at NAVSA 2006 here in California or hopefully at the Fourth International Vietnamese Youth Conference in Sydney, Australia. I am back here in California and still have Celine’s catchy NAVSA 2005 theme song in my head and feel nostalgic as I think about the late night fun activities we had outside of the conference rooms!

IVSU, thanks for putting on such an awesome event. You guys rock!

For those who know me better know that I have a pure passion for film music. I literally listen to it all day. No, I don't like "soundtrack" as a lose collection of pop songs played in a movie--I hate when people refer to that as film music. What I love is the orchestral version of film music--Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones are classic ones to give you an idea of what I love.

My interest in film music started when my best friend in high school sold me his "Return of the Jedi" vinyl (boy, that alone categorizes me as old school). Quickly becoming a John Williams fan, I've started to attend John Williams music concerts in Germany, United States and even Hong Kong. I've seen John Williams conduct his own pieces at the Hollywood Bowl numerous times, and naturally with time, I've started to develop a taste for other composers and the entire genre as well. I've attended Jerry Goldsmith's world premiere of Mulan at the Hollywood Bowl and Howard Shore's world premiere of the "Lord of the Rings" symphony in Seattle. Besides the big names such as Goldsmith, Williams and Horner, I am also following and listening to other composers. Interested in trying out this genre? Check out my favorite online radio station from Singapore or the composers in my MP3 collection: Alan Silvestri, Basil Poledouris, Caroline Link, Cliff Eidelman, Craig Armstrong, Danny Elfman, David Arnold, David Grusin, Don Davis, Elliot Goldenthal, Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson Williams, Howard Shore, James Horner, James Newton Howard, Jerry Goldsmith, Joe Hisaishi, John Barry, John Debney, John Ottman, John Williams, Kitaro, Mark Mancina, Maurice Jarre, Michael Kamen, Nobuo Uematsu, Patrick Doyle, Philip Glass, Rachel Portman, Randy Edelman, Tan Dun, Thomas Newman, Trevor Rabin.

Lately, I have fallen in love with this one piece by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi. The piece, which I believe is called “Going Out“ is from the movie "Kikujiro no Natsu", and I swear, I have listened to this piece every single day for the past months. I have even learned how to play it on a piano now and enjoy doing so even though my performance totally sucks compared to the original piece.

At the dinner table with my family a few months ago, I told them that in the very long run I would like to be a film composer, so they asked me what happened to my previous long-term goal of being computer science professor, and I told them that I'll pursue that after I win the Oscar for Best Original Score, and they bursted out into laugher. Hm.. funny, I wasn't actually kidding. :)

Why this long intro for this post? Well, several things happening in my pursuit for being a film composer these weeks. A) I finally got my MP3 player installed in my car. Sorry NPR, looks like I will listen to less news now. B) Another piece that I love to death is Cliff Eidelman's “Orchestral Suite from the Lizzie McGuire Movie“, and I've got to use it in my friend's farewell slideshow. C) Video Games Live just announced their tour dates last week, and turns out that there will be one concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater--which is literally 3 minutes away from my office in Mountain View! Yippie… since I was already bumped out not being able to go to a concert at the renowned Walt Disney Hall yet, at least I have this to look forward to. D) I finally got my act together and am starting to look for my next great piano teacher. I left Seattle a few months ago, and due to too many things happening in my personal life, I never got a chance in finding a new teacher yet. So far, I've interviewed quite a bunch already and have narrowed down my search, but I think I will resume my lessons some time next week!

Lastly, did you guys know that there is an up and coming Vietnamese composer? Pay attention to Pete Nguyen! His composition for the second Vietnamese International Film Festival Trailer totally rocks. I've talked to him the other day--a very promising career he has. He even played the drums in Christopher Wong's Journey from the Fall. Check out the recording/brainstorming sessions!

This is a small movie that I have created in 2004, when I was in Hanoi for a few weeks on Project Vietnam's fall medical trip. I arrived in Vietnam a few days ahead of schedule, and was all by myself, since the rest of the group hasn't arrived yet. It was my fourth time returning to Vietnam, so I was honestly a bit bored, since I've done all the touristy stuff already.

So, I decided to rent a Honda motorbike and drove around in the city to capture the every-day life of Hanoi's residents. Hanoi is a very beautiful and romantic place, but a bit more laid-back than Saigon (though of course it's still a big and crowded city). Over the course of three days, I've captured quite a lot of video footage, but due to a malfunctioning of my digital camera, I've lost some very good ones that I wish I could have used in this short. Well, whatever good footage that I have left, I've compiled into this short movie that I call "A Day in Hanoi".

Enjoy!

Last weekend, I attended the fundraising evening for the Boat People documentary Bolinao 52 at the Nguoi Viet Community Room in Little Saigon. The well-organized event raised a lot of money for the much-needed funds to complete this project. For those who don't know, Bolinao 52 documents the tragic event of a boat people ship with more than 100 people that was refused to be rescued by a US navy ship in the Pacific Ocean, resulting to the boat people reverting to cannibalism before only 52 survivors finally made it to Philippines island of Bolinao.

The filmmaker Duc Nguyen showed us a short preview of this documentary, and even introduced us to co^ Tu`ng, one of survivors of this tragedy. You will see her in this documentary, as she describes the incident, and Duc's team are preparing to do the final shootings of this documentary, as they follow chi. Tu`ng to Asia this August.

I’ve met Duc Nguyen originally at last year’s VPS North American Conference, and support his movie. Very much like Journey from the Fall, this is a movie that needs to be told to mainstream America as well as the new Vietnamese American generation. Unfortunately, this documentary did not receive the grants from PBS for which Duc applied (though it was among the top finalists), so I urge that you help out by donating to this cause.

Now that I have relocated to San Jose, I will also get involved more and will help out setting up a fundraiser for Bolinao 52 up here. If anyone of you can help out, please send me an email.

I have been invited to speak at the upcoming North American Vietnamese Student Associations / Vietnamese Interacting as One Conference in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend. I will be speaking on “Media Editing” and will give a workshop on how to edit video and create effective trailers and slideshows for PR purposes. This is a great conference for Vietnamese youths across the country and just last year, I was very involved in starting this conference. Besides unimportant people like me, there will also be Three Seasons director Tony Bui, Project Vietnam director BS Quynh Kieu, presenters from VNHelp and many more. My friend and colleague Tammy Tran will also present on VietACT, a fairly new, but promising organization that combats human trafficking of Vietnamese women and children. 

Note only do we hope to have Vietnamese youths across the United States come together and network to build the strong national youth community similar to that that exists over in Australia, but we also want to come up with a concrete philanthropic project that will benefit a Vietnamese non-profit organization.

Today's the last day to pre-register. The $100 early-bird registration fee covers all the housing costs at DePaul University, meals for the entire weekend and the entire conference activities and materials.

Please help spread the word!

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Thirty years after the first Vietnamese refugees resettled in the United States, the second generation of Vietnamese Americans is now becoming tomorrow's leaders.  The NAVSA / VIA-1 Conference 2005 will provide these maturing youth with opportunities to learn how to effectively mobilize their communities, to improve their communication and media skills, and to explore unconventional advocacy, media, public relations and persuasive communication techniques, thereby allowing attendees to build on their existing talents.  In addition, through panel discussions with successful Vietnamese Americans from a wide range of occupational backgrounds (including entertainment, athletics, and business), the conference will highlight a few exciting, promising career options that many youths may not have previously considered.

But more significantly, the NAVSA / VIA-1 Conference 2005 will break new ground.  It will challenge the leaders of tomorrow to bring to life the conference theme, "Acting in Unity: Making Hope a Reality."  The conference will unite VSA chapters from across the continent behind a collective philanthropic project to be chosen by attendees at the conference.  Among the potential charitable organizations to be chosen are: Project Vietnam, VietACT, VietHope and VNHELP.  During the conference, attendees will brainstorm and plan how to best contribute to this project, and during the months immediately following the conference, attendees and their respective youth groups will execute upon the plan.

NAVSA / VIA-1 intend that this initiative will set a precedent for an annual collective philanthropy project.  Each year going forward, the NAVSA / VIA-1 philanthropy project will serve as a way for conference attendees to use their refined skills and give back to the community in North America and Vietnam.

The first annual NAVSA conference was held last year in Boston, MA, while VIA-1 has held past conference in Cincinnati, OH and Ann Arbor, MI.  Given the similar goals of both organizations, the conferences have been combined, and this year's gathering will be held in Chicago, IL, co-hosted by the Union of Vietnamese Student Associations of Southern California (UVSA) and the Illinois Vietnamese Students Union (IVSU).

If you are interested in this conference, please register NOW!  The $100 registration fee covers all housing costs @ DePaul University, meals for entire weekend, conference activities and materials.  WE HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!!!!

 

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http://www.thsv.org/special/ngocphu/default.aspx

Phu Heo--words cannot describe the pain that I am going through as I am trying to cope with your sudden death. I spent the entire weekend with you in SoCal two days before you passed away. We went to an all day meeting on Saturday, and on Sunday you accompanied me on a road trip down south, and then suddenly just a few days afterwards, you were taken away from us.

Phu Heo, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for always being there for me. You have helped me so much in the last months to deal with my hardship, and I am honored being able to be there for you through your hardship as well. Your loss has sent shockwaves throughout the entire international Vietnamese community and in this past week, I have received tons of emails from all over the world. Yet, even after you have passed away, you continue to make us a stronger community, as we have spent more times with each other as a circle of friends this past week than I ever had this entire year.

Phu Heo, even though I am grieving and trying to deal with the pain, I am happy and honored to have known you, to have worked with you on so many projects for a better Vietnam. You have touched so many people with your happy and altruistic character, and my heart aches knowing that you cannot be with us as we continue on our road to humanity. You always said "Chuye^.n nho? tre^n con ddu+o+`ng nha^n ba?n". Phu, you ARE that road to humanity.

Thank you for being my friend, thank you for San Diego, for DH3, for the Shaolin Brothers video, for being locked out on the roof during DH3, for misspelling Lien La.c on national TV, for the endless DaVinci Code discussions, for Tet, for Radio TNSV that gave me so much laughter in depressing Seattle, for taking care of our community, for your love of a country, for being a role model to us all. Sydney will not be the same without you this year, but you will always be with us, wherever our fight for a better Vietnam takes us. You have paved the road for us, and we all miss you greatly.

Meet my two little feline friends.

Meet Annie. I've adopted Annie as a kitten in San Diego some time early 2004. Annie is loving cat, but she is afraid of everything--and I mean everything. Whenever strangers come to my place, she would go under the bed and hide for the first 5-10 minutes, but once she gets used to your smell, she'll come out and play with you. Nevertheless, any sudden movements or cacophonies will have her run away immediately. Annie loves to sit on my laptop and has managed to shut down my computer on many occasions. I think it's just a matter of time until she one day accidentally sends out weird emails to my friends.

Meet Charlie. I've adopted Charlie as a kitten in Seattle some time towards the end of 2004. I didn't want Annie to be home alone, so that's the story about Charlie. Charlie is the complete opposite of Annie. He's bold, very outgoing, not afraid of anything whatsoever, extremely hyper and loves to push things off the table to see if it breaks. He is so hyper that it comes to the point that I can't even do my work.

Contrary to popular belief, cats have personalities and are very loyal friends. Whenever I come home from work, they would come to the door, greet and play with me. If I neglect them for a while, they would hop on my lap and ask for attention. I can ask them to "come here" or to "stop" doing whatever they do. They sleep next to me on the bed and would come and wake me up only after the alarm bell has sounded. The good thing about cats is that they don't need the level of attention that dogs do. I can leave them home alone for the weekend and you don't have to walk them every day either. Oh yeah, I think my cats are Vietnamese as well. They love to eat thi.t cha` bo^ng. I am serious. They would kill for thi.t cha` bo^ng!

Last week I've received an email from a colleague of mine in Australia who has used my VNI/VPS/Vietnet to Unicode conversion utility requesting to add a feature to retain rich text formatting when doing the conversion. This would allow you to convert entire Vietnamese Word documents or website fragments into unicode without losing the formatting. Using the supercool FreeTextBox, I've implemented a beta version of this new utility. It's really the same thing as the old utility just in blue. :)

I've already found a few bugs and have some additional feature wish-list items that I'd like to implement before I release the new version including a new method in the XML Web Service, but given my full schedule this month (in and outside of work) that barely gives me enough time to breathe, I am afraid that I won't get into this until some time next month. Until then, please try it out, provide feedback, comments and suggestions. I'd like to hear from you.

Anyone of you read OSC's Los Angeles Times commentary on Star Trek? Some copies are still floating around.

What do you guys think? I don't know, guys. I think the Ender Quartet are still the best novels I've ever read, and I've gone to several OSC book signings already and admire OSC's card writing style and his talent for characterization, but more and more do I as a fan feel out of touch with him.

The Shadow quartet doesn't come even close to Ender Quartet, heck, I didn't even enjoy reading them. The explosion of other EG-based novels that OSC has published within the last few years, just to ride on EG's success is ruining the Enderverse. The announcement to make an Ender's Game Christmas Story... puh-lease! Let's stop the madness! I understand that OSC needs to earn money and I have no right to tell him what to do, but I totally feel like OSC is trying to squeeze every single drop of water from EG's huge success and am feeling more and more "cheated on" as an EG-fan.

And now his last commentary on why Star Trek: The Original Series totally sucked. I don't know, guys. Sure, ST:TOS has some really bad acting, cheesy props and what not, and the storylines might seem like clichee now, but back then it was revolutionary. ST:TOS is what has defined Science Fiction as we know it now. ST:TOS, a "a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas."? I am sorry, Mr. Card, call this ST: DS9, but from all the series not ST:TOS. I don't think ST:TOS is a great series (I think TNG is the crown of all Sci-Fi series), but in all honesty, I can't say that TOS lacks deeper thoughts and is all about adventures, shooting and special effects.

Sorry for the little rant. These are my thoughts, what are yours?
Minh T. Nguyen.

PS: Read this as well: http://www.syfyportal.com/features.php?id=122

Yesterday, I went to the San Jose special screening and press conference of Ham Tram's "Journey from the Fall" ("Vuot Song"), which tells the story of one family's journey to the United States right after the fall of Saigon on April 30^th 1975. Often compared as the "Schindler's List" for the Vietnamese diaspora, this much-anticipated movie has been long overdue. All three private screenings in Washington, DC, Orange County and San Jose has been sold-out weeks before.

Boy, this is an heart-wrenching movie. I can't remember crying so much in a movie--gez, I think I've cried non-stop in this movie. Being a boat person myself who left Vietnam on a small boat with my sister and my parents and surviving the escape on our second attempt, I am truly touched by this movie. Even though my parents have told me the story of our escape many times, I am still shocked and touched when I saw this movie, that many of my colleagues, who actually went through reeducation camp, say is not exaggerated a single bit.

Actress Kieu Chinh, me and director Ham Tram at VANG

I've met Ham Tram at Vietnamese American National Gala in Washington, DC last week and asked him how come the movie has such a limited screening, given the high demand, and he explained to me that he is currently seeking a distributor for the movie. During the press conference yesterday, he mentioned that the Vietnamese community can help by calling the decision-makers at each movie theater and asking when and where we can see this movie. Let's face it, there is a demand for this movie and it's a story that needs to be told to the American mainstream. I will post more info on how you can help soon.

Ham Tram also gave me the 7-minute featurette and his permission to put it online (51 MB):
http://www.enderminh.com/jftf/journey_from_the_fall_featurette.wmv

Please forward this link to your friends. 9 out of 10 Vietnamese people either are boat persons themselves or have family members who went through the experience. Many didn't survive the escape (like my two cousins who we never heard of), yet many Americans never heard of this story.

On another tangent, there is another boat people film coming up called Bolinao 52. In a single sentence, Bolinao 52 tells the story of a boat people ship with some 100 Vietnamese boat people that was stranded in the ocean after a US navy ship refused to rescue them, forcing the boat people to starve to death, even though they started eating human flesh from the dead, leaving only 52 survivors which end up in the Philippines island called Bolinao. I've invited director Duc Nguyen to talk about this documentary at last year's VPS North American Conference. He is still working on it and hopefully will be out soon.

Switching jobs...

A lot of things have happened in my life lately. Besides some major personal stuff in my life, I have also accepted a new job offer in Mountain View. After working for almost a year with Expedia.com as a Website Development Engineer, I have now relocated to Santa Clara, California to start my new job as a Software Design Engineer with Microsoft (Silicon Valley Campus). After one phone interview, three full-day onsite interviews, 13 different interviewers from two different teams, I have finally chosen to join the Microsoft TV Foundation Edition team and can't be any more excited about this new position. At the same time, I am excited to be back in my beloved sunshine-state, as I really could not get used to the depressing weather in Seattle, Washington.

Going personal...

Secondly, I have decided to make my blog personal. It’s about time--I hate the fact that people only see my technical side here, as technology is not what drives me. My passion for programming occupies only my career life, but what really drives me on the weekend and takes up 100% of my spare time is my passion for community involvement.

Being Vietnamese...

People in the Vietnamese community probably know me as the co-host of the TV show Dien Dan Khoa Hoc, the co-chair of last year’s Vietnamese Professionals Society North American Conference, or as the creator of the slideshows and trailers for the International Vietnamese Youth Network and other Vietnamese organizations. I have been very involved with the Union of Vietnamese Student Associations for the last several years, and just came back from Washington, DC for the Vietnam Freedom March. This is what really drives me and is what my passion is, and I hope that I can turn my blog into my adventures into that world.

Pursuing Filmmusic...

In addition, I have started to set a new life goal: I hope to be a filmmusic composer in say 5-10 years. I have a pure passion for filmmusic (aka “score”). If the names Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, David Arnold, John Debney, Randy Edelman, Hans Zimmer, Craig Armstrong and Danny Elfman ring a bell, then you know what I am talking about. I’ve always loved this music genre, listen to it all day, in the car, at work, before I go to bed--you name it. I have taught myself keyboard as a kid, but you can only go so far without a private teacher. Now that I am finally taking private lessons on my cheap Yamaha DGX-305, I realize that I truly enjoy composing music and hope that over the next many years I can explore the musical side of mine more.

Wrapping up...

So, contrary to popular belief, I don’t want to be known as a techie or nerd. I do enjoy programming and still think .NET is the coolest thing out there, but if you think that programming is what drives me, then you are dead wrong. I’ll remove my blog from the .NET Developer’s Blog (since I’ll start working for Microsoft anyways) and will post more about my adventures in the Vietnamese community, my musical aspiration, my two lovely cats, my thoughts of being a high school teacher or college professor.... well, personal stuff, I guess.

Happy reading,
Minh T. Nguyen.