Although growing up in a multicultural environment is no piece of cake, I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to experience multicultural life first-hand.

I was born on June, 15th 1978 in Saigon, Vietnam. When I was one, my family and I escaped on a tiny fisher boat from Vietnam and were rescued by a Germany-based charity group. I therefore grew up in Germany, had German friends and went to school there and speak German as if it was my native tongue.

I went to the Leibniz High School in Gelsenkirchen, West Germany but already in my 11th grade, I had the opportunity to get a glimpse of multi-cultural life, as I left for a semester abroad to attend Buena High School in Ventura, California. After returning to Germany, I finished up high school and graduated from Leibniz High in June 1997. At that time, my green card application was also finally approved, and my sister and I left my parents to immigrate to the United States to start a new life.

I continued with my undergraduate studies at Santa Monica College, California, and here is where for first time in my life, I was not in the minority being Asian. I loved the experience of making friends from Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines and China and, for the first time in my life, I felt a little closer to "home"--whatever "home" might mean to me. I spent two years at Santa Monica College, enjoyed my involvement in campus activities, made friends all over the world, and fell in love with multicultural life.

My next two years were spent at the University of California, Berkeley. Although the workload was extremely heavy there and although I barely found time to breathe, I enjoyed it very much for I made a lot of Vietnamese friends (something I was never able to do so), was very challenged, exercised my desire to learn, all while getting involved in student activities.

Suddenly being part of a group with Vietnamese peers, my interest to visit my motherland grew, and the winter break in 1999 marked my very first return to Vietnam that I truly loved and that had a profound impact on me.

With my fascination with Hong Kong that developed during my Santa Monica College years, I also studied abroad in the Fall of 2000 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. That marked the first time for me being in an all-Asian society, and I certainly loved that experience (and the magnificent city for that matter).

Upon graduating from Berkeley, I then moved back to Southern California, where my parents reunited with us. It was a time, where I can truly say that our family slowly achieved our American Dream. My sister and I had respectable and stable jobs, while my parents fulfilled their dream of buying a house in Little Saigon. It was also the time that marked the start of my heavy involvement in the Vietnamese community, which to this day defines my personality.

Even as I moved to San Diego for two years and then relocated to Seattle for another year, I continued to be involved in the respective Vietnamese communities while often return to Orange County for the big Vietnamese events and conferences.

These days, I have resided in San Jose, California for my work as a software engineer will always keep me here in Silicon Valley, but I always long to return home to Little Saigon, for that’s where my family, my friends and my community always remain.

When I take a look at my past, I realize that I had a pretty chaotic life. I was born in Vietnam, grew up in Germany, studied abroad in Hong Kong, worked in San Diego and Seattle, and currently reside in San Jose, while always travel back to Orange County on the weekends. Yet lately, I have played with the idea of returning to Vietnam to live and work there for a long period of time or maybe even for good.

I don’t know what future brings, I just hope that I will be happy in my life and be able to smile, no matter where I live and what I do.

Minh T. Nguyen
Updated February 2006