New Followers?

Not sure why I’m getting new followers on this website as my friend and I who used to write for this have since shelved the project. For now, it’s just a repository of all writing when I used to live in spiritual communities and do more meditation and read a lot more poetry. Given busy lifestyles and the proximal death of poetry, it’s hard to continue writing. For me, I think poetry takes a lot of silence and contemplation. It takes a state of mind that is slightly removed from the world enough to glimpse insights into how people are, how you see things yourself, what it feels like to walk, and other deeper aspects of life and death. Being in the world too much and the social pressures of work life don’t usually give enough space for poets. This is why I admire poets so much who dedicate their lives to the art of poetry in the midst of a bustling world.

Anyway, thanks to the new followers for even clicking on follow, but I think you’ll find most of my newest posts on the Oi Blog.

Sincerely,
Minh

Homonin Evolution

Criterion for understanding technology.

Something that is important to do today, to work on.

What is happening today on earth is a multi-racial and multi-cultural (fueled by economic success) response to Western post-colonial baggage. Some may call it a backlash. But the emergence of more than one dominant cultural machine (Lead by Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, etc.) will

There is a new earth that is emerging from an amalgam of knowledge.

I think it’s very important to calculate how much knowledge and “new ideas” we accumulate per decade. Or new content that we are producing. This content can actually be a guage for

This would help us understand the pace of human mind evolution.

The amount of data being processed (data = ideas) would indicate to us, how much thinking is going on.

Measure human content numbers against animal content.

The brain contains information. It gains information and loses information. Plants cannot do this. But our weakness is not being able to remember. We need to embed deep values into objects so that remembering is organic.

How is information relevant or beneficial to energy? How is energy a necessaity for information to exist? (firing neurons requires electricity)

How much information do humans process per day? And how is that number increasing per year?

What are the most important values that can be embedded in an object?

Videogames are the future…

Are video games the future of human interaction with space and time?

Building detail and freedom into systems challenges the mind and encourages the interaction between neurons.

Can video games create a sense of freedom in its design?

Virtual reality can be educational. And help people develop their wisdom and knowledge faster.

How fast and deep do you integrate new systems of thought design?

What types of humans have died, their genetics thereby not entering our present humanity.

Pop Enigma (continued…)

­Two years later Julon teleported the kendrals back to their planet. Upon immediate arrival on their planet, they transmitted their knowledge and proposal for their plan. Universe hopping was not an option for the amount of sentient beings in this universe. If they were to transport themselves via wormholes, via teleportation technology, cloning consciousness or whatever was possible, there just wouldn’t be enough energy to do all of that in the estimated time that the Pop Enigma were to come into contact with the first most vulnerable civilizations. It would take over a billion times the amount of energy present in their civilization.

The kendrals, the youngest civilization in this universe, proposed a plan to create another anomaly that would cancel out the effects of the Pop Enigma. Their logic being, if the Pop Enigma signified a breach in the principal laws of the universe, than it would be possible to sow back that tear. Of course, enigmas such as this perplexed Julon and Sa Krei Sha deeply; namely, because it also signified a rift in the entire multiversal matrix. Thereby calling into question their very efficacy as the oldest sentient beings in their known multiversal matrix (not that thoughts as benign nor superficial as these thoughts actually crossed their deeply ancient minds) mainly because the fact that the existence of anomalies like these could lead them to discover things much older than themselves, and whose existence might even be conducted by entities beyond consciousness.

In this case, Julon and Sa Krei Sha felt it was a harmless enough situation that they could experiment with the possibility of converging enigmas. Sa Krei Sha had a healthy amount of energetic data stored in her mind (and body) about various enigmas that had come into existence. Julon had the ability to teleport into these particular enigmas. Julon only thought it natural to let the kendrals take a look, and take samples, if you will.

On an isolated planet (5,000 times the size of the Sol, our sun) about 5 million light years away from the Pop Enigma (what appeared to them to look like a huge piece of charcoal, which was of course the extremely old decomposed body of an earth human who used to live in a suburb of Eastern Europe during the 25^th century after Christ and whose nose was quite famous for being comically huge) the beings in this universe assembled representatives across their entire universe.

In what to us seems rather cruel or maybe wiccan, Sa Krei Sha started to disassemble each of their bodies and their consciousnesses into an odd multi-colored fireworks display at the center of a large “all-the-beings-of-the-universe” hand-holding séance circle. As all the colors and elements spun together into a single point in mid-air the silence in the cosmos was altogether eerie and binding. Sa Krei Sha’s arms sunk to her sides, spent. Just at that moment, looking up to the dark night sky (for there was no sun on this particular planet) a huge storm had started about on the planet. It was as if there was a huge dark cloud floating across the universe, emanating from the charcoal. At that moment Sa Krei Sha felt Julon’s arm on her shoulder, and they were immediately back at their island planet again.

Krei Sha upon teleportation had also felt, for the first time, a blankness of energy. Upon their instantaneous arrival on the planet Krei Sha felt as if coming out of a dream of no sensations into a world of only sensations. This new sense of everything was immediately turned towards the Pop Enigma from which they seemed to have escaped. The entire universe had its eyes (and their sensor tech, of course) on the Pop Enigma, and their amalgam of consciousness, life, energy and being which Krei Sha had assembled into a ball of multi-color spinning light seemed to be stretching out with tendrals of arms of light emanating in all directions and surrounding the cloud of dark gas.

It would be cheesy to say that it looked like a 3-dimensional cosmic yin-yang, or a black hole concept. What’s important is that these two entities, whatever color they may be, untethered and untied each other. It was as if two paintings of knots tied themselves into a real moebius. The result became something Krei Sha had never sensed before, and Julon had never seen before. The resulting pop sound reverberated through the entire multiversal matrix, and from the center of this multi-dimensional phenomena rippled a wave of energy that came flying out into all the universes. At this exact moment, Julon grabbed hold of the island planet. And jumped through the space-time continuum straight into the moebius.

(to be continued…)

Up next…The Story Of Julon

The Pop Enigma (sci-fi draft)

The Pop Enigma
Every ten years every living thing this zany character comes into contact with mysteriously pops into nothing.

50 million earth years later. 20 million multiverses away. A new planet is being born. Supernatural beings on this planet are taking shape from the still baking lava that has just come into contact with a liquid that fell onto this planet only a million years ago. Over the course of ten earth days the liquid has metamorphosed, generating a conscious sentient asexual mass that starts replicating itself. Each time it replicates itself, it refines its biological structure and that of its copies. Within two years a large populace civilization has come into being on a planet the size of the largest star in our multiverse (6th quadrant, multiverse #1037). By the tenth year of this civilization they’ve already developed teleportation, relative immortality and multi-consciousness connectivity. 50 years later, they discover the pop enigma in a universe hidden deep in the 20th quadrant multiverse. Precisely 3 multiverses away.

Their population now numbered 50 billion beings. By their calculation the pop enigma had swallowed up over 15 million multiverses since it’s beginning on planet earth. What was once a human earth man that literally swallowed up living beings had now become a metaphorical black hole in the form of a large piece of coal. Now, rather then only popping living beings it had evolved into causing anything from matter to dark matter to anti matter to disappear. It would obliterate a universe every three years. It was estimated based on the coals current rate of growth that the black coal would eventually meet their multiverse within 200 years.

The kendral(s) (plurality merely a formality given their uniform consciousness) had found a new quest. How would they stop this enigma/threat to their newfound yet advanced existence?

The first tests began only days after the enigma was discovered. Test 1: teleportation of several individual kendrals within the vicinity of the enigma. This test proved fruitful only because the individuals that came into contact with the pop enigma were connected directly to the the consciousness of the entire kendral civilization. Though those individuals were sacrificed all now knew what the experience was like to be zapped by this pop enigma. Over the next few months thousands of tests were conducted. On the third day of the third month they encountered a federation of star fleets that were surveying the outer edge of a universe that was about to be obliterated. Kendrals’ size compared to these other beings was miniscule. It proved humorous at first when trying to make contact for the first time. Especially when most of these other beings resembled nothing like the kendrals who resembled to everyone else like bloated amoebas.

The federation ships held a psychic conference which lasted less than five seconds. Especially fast as kendrals shared their advanced communication technology.

Research was transferred and a trans-multiversal research institute was started. Using kendral tech all living beings in the multiversal matrix were made aware of the impending pop. Adversely giving birth to the theory of universal survivalism. Kendrals decided to start analyzing communication between the stars. Stars are large amalgamous living beings whose communication between universes is well-known. Communicating with them takes millions of years of research and recorded data. The reason being that their language is far slower and rhythmic. I.e. It takes two nearby stars two million years to complete the phrase. “hello, how are you? A nice day today isn’t it?” and another three million to reply with “quite nice here. But rather too cloudy for my taste.” of course, star talk would be more tasteful and certainly richer in content. Content that spans aeons.

Therefore. Information from all races concerning the fluctuations and communications between stars was CCed to the kendral civilization.

Upon analysis on the first day it was clear to them what the stars understood of the enigma. Of course since all beings could now xpmmunicate across the entire galaxy, the observation was almost like an eternal standstill. All eyes on kendral research on the kendral planet.

The stars had anticipated the coming of the pop enima long ago and coordinated across vast multiverses that they must create beings that would help eventually solve this multicosmic event. Stars, with their inladen wormholes and communication portals to nearby dimensions become the transmitters of the most ancient signals of each universes birth and death and neoghboring universes. Their light pulses are shared.

Cut to the heroes of this story. An old woman and a young man. One is a transmultiversal time traveller. The old lady is a master of energy. They are trillions of years old. They have seen space and time warp. The ends of planets, galaxies, universes, multiverses and multiversal networks. Possibly the oldest sentient beings in reality.

They are here merely to spectate. Of course, they will be deeply confounded by the kendral solution to the problem of the pop enigma. But this pair have seen stranger multiversal enigmas indeed. They both live on a planet the size of a small island. And for the sake of this plot they’re humanoid. Over the aeons of their existence they have both  developed senses that stretch out into the universe. They feel everything in all the possible fields of multiversal reality.

As they came here to spectate this certain pop enigma along their universe hopping trip. They were intrigued by the sentient beings in this particular multiverse quadrant. They had all successfully achieved one continuous consciousness across a whole quadrant. To be fair, this is the main reason why they came to this particular place. They sensed the oncoming of a multiverse that might actually be able to undo the effects of a universal enigma such as this.

The plot thickens.

Universe hopping was the first precautionary thing the kendrals suggested as a plan of action. The next option was to devise a way to neutralize the coal. Was there a substance or power in the multiverses that was capable of isolating the pop enigma?

This question was ever so subtle that it reached the ears of the two island planet folks. Immediately julon teleported to kendral planet and teleported the whole planets population into a reality that was almost completely created by julon. His universe bonsai. As the kendral planet was so small they fit floating and rotating at the top of julons finger tips. But all deeply connected to julons consciousness. Their conversation lasted two seconds. But the content was as follows.

“I’ve grown this universe for a trillion years. It has been my business to use this particular fabricated universe as a blueprint for my understanding of the multiplex universes.”

“what have you seen that has lead you to come here? ”

“my partner and I have roamed the I infini-plex for trillions of years. Your particular universe is peculiar to us in that you haveco e into contact with a rather weak anomaly.”

“anomaly?”

“yes. Your so-called pop enigma is weaker than ones we’ve seen before. Also, your universe has also achieved full complete multiversal psychic communication. That’s quite a feat. I haven’t seen anything like that in all my time travelling.”

“what is the best course of action?”

“look at this baby universe again. It’s cute and innocent. Galaxies thrive and pass away. Intelligences get splattered all over the individual cosmoses.”

They teleport back to the home of julon and sa krei sha.

“come look at this universe”

Over the next few days sa krei sha had magnetically shrunk the kendrals universal quadrant to the size of a small bead. And julon teleported them to the island. It took minutes before kendrals had fully understood the technology therein. Excited as they delved deep into data trillions of years old.

The kendrals eventually spent two years there. Replicating themselves to become smarter. More refined. Etc. The information opened up to them.

They found that the pop enigma is an example of when the law of the universe has been broken.

facebook’s dead

Hi everyone, I’ve been having too much trouble with facebook, so I’ll just update you with how I’m doing through my blog, and if you want to contact me directly, please use my email. See you later!

it’s true, you californians, asia IS holier than thou, so come on down.

i haven’t written on this blog in awhile. I figure that facebook is really the future of blogging, but you can’t really write a full “status update” on facebook, really. it’s really just pictures and snippets. Content is merely a symptom of facebook, rather than a goal or a result. So, at last, a new blog post makes its daring appearance.

I’ve been in Long Xuyen city, Vietnam country for about 2 years and 4 months now, and the story gets worse, I want to be here longer. I can’t put my finger on what made me fall in love with this place. Was it the innocent lazy nature of my students? The ongoing problem-solving related to all things termed improvement and development? The food that I get bored with every few weeks? The general hideaway from everything Californian and family? The escape from elections and the general doldrums of American politics? The all-night binge-drinking followed by incoherent singing followed by incoherent mornings followed by incoherent bureaucracy followed by a bombardment of incoherent Asian (with-a-Vietnamese-twist) hysteria? The appeal of a birth of cool in this country as opposed to the rebirth of post-post-modern hip in this American generation (which can only lead to the path of further boredom, or so i thought)? or maybe most of all…bragging rights?

What keeps me here is rather ineffable other than that it somehow will make a coherent appearance in my resume and shepherd me somehow to the next place. I’m sure everyone wonders what they would say to the self they were two years ago. I’d probably cuss myself out. “You fucking idiot, don’t fuck up! And fix your haircut! Why are you wearing a t-shirt? Are those flip-flops? Why haven’t you grown your mustache yet?” In two years from now, I’d probably say to the me that is now…”Why the fuck are you monologueing again? Don’t you have better things to do? You’re wearing a shirt with no tie? And why do you still have a mustache?”…Who knows?…Most of the time I’m not looking for much upward mobility or anything. Let alone peace of mind (which can be rather worrisome).

When it really comes down to it, I’d just as well clone myself, and have the guy do all the work. Make him get the Masters in Interaction Design for me, make him go out and meditate in the Nepali mountains for me, make him tell all the jokes at my stand-up comedy routine, and make him get all the praise for anything and everything that he might do. It’d be a load off my mind. I’d use the money that he embezzled to buy an island and watch his life from a satellite, and just feel oh-so-gleeful that I cooked up such a great scheme. . .  But maybe that’s actually how I feel sometimes, except when I have to put in the effort.

Most of the time, I think that’s what I’m training myself most in, here in Vietnam. Effort. California had this real easy comfortable life that I just couldn’t stand after awhile. I mean, really, if I got that free pass to an unmarked island off the coast of Indonesia with no tsunamis in sight, I’d probably end up immolating myself out of some kind of gripping realization with the grating nature of life without causality. I may be the laziest person I know, but god forbid me to be a mere stapler.

No, I actually have nothing against Californians, per se. It’s the gold that is in California that I’ve got some issue with. California’s gold is America’s hipster dream gone liberally righteous, and I think for me, back three years ago, that meant that the entity or philosophy that is California itself missed a projected humility that I needed to learn about humanity’s role in the god-forsaken Universe. I think now, I’m rather okay with thinking that the state of California is merely another means to an end. So it’s not cynicism I subscribe to as much as a practicality that it’s in detention.

Ironically…quarantined pragmatism is what both Buddhism and Vietnam have taught me about life thus far. Making efforts and trying to get results out of some kind of samsaric bureaucratic catch-22. And on top of that, freedom is rather elusive and mysterious, which is actually just fine with me.

Dream Jobs

10 Dream jobs: 1) information media analyst expert consultant. 2) cyber cosmic priest. 3) strategic management specialist. 4) philosophical design therapist. 5) dimensional researcher. 6) astral astrology manipulator. 7) mental-space cartographer. 8) evolutionary liquidation officer. 9) political movement structuralist. 10) human-birthing systems technician.

May13th – Literary attempt

Options are open.

Fucking a, alright i understand. Let’s do this. Fuckin a dude. I love the raps man.

Oh, okay. It’s just wow, alright, okay. Whistles. Well… I’m a failed artist, oh my god. I don’t kno about this man. This sounds cool. I’m finally back. after a long upheaval of many spheres and many rungs to climb and hop and jump yeah i wouldn’t say that the spirit is treating me so badly and a man can let it just be for all, because life isn’t just as serious as you take it. and ultimately there is no such thing as true desire. and i’m only hear to speak the simple word and say good bye because i don’t want to drag thin(k/g)s along because in the end why can’t we stand on the good deeds because ultimately the clouds come and go and so when it comes down to this, so whatever man, you can go outside of nothing to get something in the end, to be ultimately forever.

It’s good to have friends here every once in awhile. They become portals with which we can see the outside world. through conversation, information, news, etc.

Jokes. Are Funny.

So are you, bitch.

Don’t twitch, because i’m gonna bust in your face.

Some straight hard none-but-tomfoolery like mace,

and in the right place, it’ll stain you forever.

Severe Diarrhea…

Episodes upon episodes.

Fucking each other.

Cherry-picking hot babes in the morning

For a hot grill in the evening

What does that mean?

I don’ t know, i’m just playing with thoughts dude.

For what?

Satisfaction of something.

You don’t know what it’s for?

‘Course not,

I’m just following it til it goes in a direction that irks to satisfy or quench an unknown thirst iso excruciatingly have.

Do you find yourself to be particularly perplexing?

I find a few things particularly perplexing, quagmires, per se, 3. exactly.

1. why do i want what i want?

2. What ought we want?

3. what happens at the moment of no wanting?

Maybe these are questions that I peruse that make me seem Buddhist (among others). And honestly, the genericness of being associated with a buddhist is laughable, because i wouldn’t really say that i’m a Buddhist unless I could actually truly understand Buddha’s “ish”.

Oh God, that’s such a Buddhist post.

Dude, that’s an epitaph.

all posts are epitaphs.

The Internet Dwarves have arrived from Universe #29!

3 screens coming soon to a room near you.

i’m getting a new latop.

therefore, ubuntu, television and MBP.

Exciting.

My data exudes from facebook biatch!

(and wordpress, word up)

We’re just full of great thoughts

in Vietnam.

but with usually no execution.

I’m constantly wondering if tully is getting the better end of the bargain.

tully! help me! i’m trapped inside of this facebook account and i can’t communicate with the outside world, and my physical body is now a silicon chip. i’m fucked!

{3 months later}

Dude! i got installed into an awesome light bubble body.

Of course, I hope I get the better end.

What if you met a guy who was dematerializing slowly?

What would you say to that man?

Worldly People vs. Spiritual People

These are jokes:

Worldly people laugh at jokes because they’re funny. Spiritual people laugh at jokes because there’s something wrong with them.

Worldly people are cleanly because they don’t want to be dirty. Spiritual people are cleanly because they don’t want to be dirty, at their own expense.

Worldly people eat because they enjoy food. Spiritual people eat because they prayed beforehand.

Worldly people look into clouds and see teddy bears. Spiritual people look into clouds and talk too much.

Worldly people want to be happy about life. Spiritual people want to be loyal to life.

Worldly people are curious because they are innocent. Spiritual people are curious because they desperately want to be innocent.

Spirituality represents emotions for worldly people. Whereas to spiritual, spirituality represents the inner significances of their own bullshit.

agutaskforce blog wins focus

Well, it’s been a long time since I updated this website, along with Tully. Since Tully has arrived here we’ve tweaked our project a bit, and well….I’ve realized a bunch of other projects and have maybe neglected, in some ways, to focus on writing that represents an inward bent. That’s alright, I think it’s important to find a balance around these things in a certain way. Nonetheless, I’m focusing my efforts on a relatively professional blog…namely, agutaskforce.wordpress.com which I hope will be a forum and place for me to share projects that I’m working on here in An Giang University. Please check it out.

the problem with Viet Kieu’s

This post comes from a place of angst and anger. Basically, Viet Kieu’s (the general populace and not individuals) piss me off. I don’t like the art we produce as a community, I don’t like the way we work or don’t work together as a community, I don’t care for the so-called accomplishments we’ve made as a community, I don’t like the way we view our own culture, and I don’t appreciate the way we view our so-called homeland.

Granted, I grew up in white suburbia and feel that such an experience gave me enough space to never really feel Vietnamese-American as much as I felt like a fan of Pink Floyd and hacky-sack among other things. I’ve also never really had Viet Kieu friends. More than anything I remember crying in my mom’s arms at fifteen whilst mulling over the nostalgia that I live in the country that bombed my blood’s country. Furthermore since I came to Vietnam over 18 times now I never had any feelings that Vietnam was a communist place. My parents have also been doing humanitarian work in Vietnam since I was a child, ever since I can remember, and despite my allergy and distance from the Viet Kieu community I think that I’ve seen enough to say what I’ll say here. (But I hope these words aren’t only seen as admonishment but also as a motivation to look back)

Concerning Vietnamese-overseas, nothing pisses me off more than anti-communism. I mean, McCarthy’s Red Scare, US-Cuban embargo, Stalinism, North Korea,etc. aside, I think it’s deeply plagued the Vietnamese-overseas community in so many ways. It’s basically made Vietnamese-Americans blind and stupid. I think it’s ridiculous that people who work to help Vietnam could be called, by the anti-communist community, communists. And I know, many people were hurt by the Vietnamese communists after the war came to an end, and that essentially democracy and capitalism appears to give people more freedom.These factors though, rather than causing people to want to get involved in a useful way has caused people to be petty, vengeful and hateful. It has also caused people to feel a sense of entitlement, unwarranted privilege, pretention, and for them to look down on Vietnamese people as if they’re less educated, politically stagnant, and basically unmodern. Is this a mature way of acting?

The irony is that Viet Kieu’s (even those that have lived, worked, and traveled here) don’t understand Vietnam’s current state of affairs. As the Vietnamese community continues to whine over a fucking red-yellow flag, they’re missing the full spectrum of colors that are currently and have been manifesting in Vietnam since independence. Viet Kieu’s are stuck in 1975 while Vietnam has moved along at its own pace until 2008. Consequently, they are the one’s that are less educated, politically stagnant, and basically unmodern.

(One side note about the alleged beauty of American capitalism versus the frowned-upon Vietnamese communism. Our capitalist system, although fueling competitiveness and professionalism, has of course resulted in a country with too many lawyers and insurance companies. And although a country hailed as individually-driven, it’s pretty hard to own things such as your own cellphone, your own car, your own house, your own bank account, etc. etc. Not to mention the economic crisis)

The above indeed fuels the rest of my issues with my own ailing ethnic community. That’s that for now…more later…

An undying love for comics

This is a picture of my current comic book collection as I’ve accumulated it since being here in Vietnam. Half-Vietnamese, half-American/foreign (the black one with the red letters: Epileptic is French). Since childhood I’ve developed a love for comics. The first comic book I ever read is:

Not only was this an introduction into the artistic medium of comics but also my first introduction to Buddhism. Basically, an innocent beginning. Although I’ve gained some maturity in both subjects, I still feel quite innocent. It’s a healthy innocence though, that’s coated with a sense of wonder and curiosity. But I’d rather only allude to my own spirituality and speak directly about my love for comics, I think that’s most fitting.

Lately, in Hollywood Hellboy has become a big blockbuster movie production with Guillermo Del Toro as director. I appreciate Hellboy the comic though for so many reasons. I think Mike Mignola is a bit of a genius. I daresay, it’s comic LITERATURE, not just a book. I think the character Hellboy, more than anything else, is based on demeanor. Hellboy’s character itself carries the comic to its end. It’s not so much about his powers, and his cosmology but about his moral dilemma, it’s about his resistance against imposed destiny and fate. I love to relate to this aspect of Hellboy.

Hellboy is not only in constant realization of his own essential free will but he also carries himself in relation to circumstances with a certain perceptive nonchalance. He is sensitive to what’s going on whilst also himself amidst it. He is human as well as sarcastic. Generally, he doesn’t give a fuck.

I’m not, by any means, opposed to Japanese comics as well. When I think about Osamu Tezuka and how he pioneered comics. He viewed comics as a medium that could evoke moral feeling. I view him as the basis for manga today and his moral-social sentiment permeates contemporary manga. My favourite currently, of course, is Kekkaishi. I guess Kekkaishi translates as “Barrier Master”. What fascinates me most about Kekkaishi is the creativity of the writer (I’m always more impressed by well-written comics than by art, although there’s an allure to good art). Various characters have different powers that are mind-boggling…from people who can contain time and space in clear boxes, to people who have to cultivate three years of blood to create a bird to fly on, to people who can create mental birds that can kill or control people, etc. etc. But I’ve never really been into supernatural heroes because they’re supernatural. I’m not a Marvel or DC fan at first glance. I appreciate supernatural worlds that result from moral dilemmas or vice versa. I look for Kurt Vonnegut and Isaac Isamov and Philip K. Dick in my comics. Not Harry Potter nor Hollywood. Kekkaishi is quite quintessentially asian in its treatment of family, responsibility, inheritance, effort, community and power. I appreciate most the way the characters grow together as people. The subtle differences in their personality play out in the way they use their powers. It’s an interesting matchup.

A voyage in the heart of pedagogy…

At least 50 years ago my grandfather was the Vice Minister of Education of Southern Vietnam. He passed away more than 4 years ago now, and I can still remember one of my most vivid moments as I stood over his open coffin making silent vows to myself and maybe to him about education in Vietnam. My grandmother asked me what I said to “Ong Noi” after I had been standing there for ten minutes or so. I guess I kinda shrugged and left it to be my dirty little secret number fifty-six. Now I find myself in Vietnam, an English teacher, and walking that uphill battle to fulfill one of the promises I’ve made in life. I’ve still got a lot of big promises to keep so it’s a reason to keep on living I suppose.

I haven’t lived up to my promise to my grandfather yet. But I am getting a glimpse of what kind of work needs to be done. about 8-9 years ago he went back to Vietnam and kinda got a glimpse of the country that he tried to build up and the, he argued, ruins that had been left behind by the war, and the impoverished government (in more ways than one). He compared Saigon to Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and lamented the wide gap between the industrial, technological and economic progress of the cities. Vietnam has been playing catch up for the last ten years for a number of reasons that I won’t mention here. Nevertheless, you could tell that in his heart he still wanted Vietnamese education to develop. Although he had a Masters in Physics he foregoed it to get a Ph.D. in Education because he felt that it would help more people. I mean, I idolize him now that he has passed, but one thing that I do admire about him is that his mind was flexible, and he knew how he could be of use to others, and he had the energy and intelligence to go in the direction he thought was most fruitful. This is something for me to live up to. After all, despite my half-assed but honest journey into Buddhism, I feel that if I can’t even beat my grandfather, how can I beat Buddha?

There’s this saying in Buddhism…”If you want to compete against someone, compete against the Buddha.” The sentiment being that you should set your goals beyond yourself to the point of extremity (taking into account the Middle Way, of course).

So, where am I shooting in education? Ever since I was a child performance has been the center of my life, this doesn’t help my self-involvement since I’m an only child, and it doesn’t help that blogs are the most self-indulgent thing the internet has come up with, nevertheless…I digress. Ever since I picked up my violin at 5 years of age I’ve been on stage at least 20 times every year. From stand-up comedy to jazz band to theater to teacher. It all culminates in the last. There’s nothing more satisfying than leaving a classroom with everyone smiling and excited to learn more, where people look forward to the next class. I want to end a class the way a great stand-up comedian ends their act. Teaching, to me, is really an act. “All the classrooms are a stage.” – Minhspeare. An act that must benefit the audience in their lives. Over and over again Lillian and I have talked about how English teaching is not just English teaching, that we are social workers that are building humanitarian-oriented community.

I want to walk into a classroom and inspire in others the need to improve together as people with English as a mere medium to instill learning. Doing so to me means making a creative space for people to interact in a new way with each other. It also means pushing people to think in new ways. I want to challenge others. All of these goals, of course, need practical applications. I do most of my activity experimentation with my university students whom are, more often than not, more forgiving than students out in the community. It’s all about finding the right pedagogical formula for the group before you and adding to and elaborating on it. I like this formula for my students…a warm-up activity/game that gets them talking about mundane things…move into a short lecture about whatever our topic is for the day, eliciting their main ideas about the topic and writing those on the board, then splitting into small groups to discuss the deeper details of the subject, then maybe moving into presentations/skits or deeper discussion as a whole class. Of course, reviewing the significant platitudes. This formula seems to work well with me. Sometimes I end with a song just for fun. But that’s just a nice formula for a fun easy speaking class, if I’m lazy. If I really feel inspired I’ll spend over ten hours lesson planning for just one hour of class, because I want that one hour to be supercharged with life significance. Students here are already interested in the progress of their country, but they need to be given the tools to bring that goal into fruition. They need content. I think choosing the right subject for the right class is an art that cannot be achieved through one’s own thinking. And not found in answers to questions like “what do you want to learn?” People don’t always say what they truly want, and maybe what they truly want is not what they need or what you can offer in light of that. In light of this, it’s certainly one of the reasons why I want to improve myself for my students, so that I can be a more informed guide than just an older person with a few more years of maturity. It took me 6 months to realize that English is not worth teaching and 6 more months to realize what English should be used for.

The 4 Stages and Comicbooks

It seems that my stay in Vietnam could be summed up into 4 main phases, upon reflection. And I’ll outline them here for mere posterity, if that.

First Phase: Characterized mainly by a sense of delirious acceptance amidst a world I didn’t understand but thought I was getting to understand. It took me a full 5 or 6 months to break out of this phase and realize that everything I was learning was all to naught. That what I was learning was mainly just dictated by what I wanted to learn, not by what I ought to learn, or could have learned. This first phase I was mainly fucking around, learning little by little, but not invested in the place that I was at. In many senses, being intoxicated, and not taking my role here very seriously. My students were generally secondary, although I really appreciated interaction with them. My friends were paramount. In earnest, this part of my stay is a bit hazy to me.

Second Phase: This basically came around the second semester. Eric, Lillian, Steven and Bich had all left. It basically came down to me and Emily. With Emily as my ever-increasingly close friend. We shared much in common. Philosophy, vegetarianism, raw experience with Vietnam, open conversation about romance and sex, and trips to Saigon. This open friendship helped me to kinda reflect on my experience in Vietnam. At this same time, I had accepted a bigger workload, teaching people from 6d, 7d, and 8d all at once. It was in this semester that I began to understand more deeply the politics and concerns of the students and teachers. Mainly I got deeper into what I saw were managerial problems with the Foreign Languages Department and the started to put together how I saw Vietnam, with respect to the present and the future. It’s around this time that I started to have almost daily realizations about Vietnam and Vietnamese people. Something clicked. All the cards that I’d been seeing and thought I understood, and didn’t understand were falling together: losing face, politeness, lack of promptness, family obligations, poverty, supposed government oppression, coffee, drinking culture, etc. etc.

I think it’s around this time that the thought that I was developing during the first phase came to fruition. The thought that Viet Kieu’s in the USA don’t really know what the hell they’re talking about when they talk about Vietnam. As I came to understand Vietnam more deeply I realized the way that people in states talk about Vietnam reveals their lack of understanding. Interestingly enough, my three years of studying colonialism, Orientalism, neo-colonialism, capitalism, global capitalism, etc. came in handy in seeing the psychology hegemony of “privileged Viet Kieu’s” versus Vietnamese. But of course, no book can truly tell you how people live, and how your personality is bound to react to them.

Third Phase: With the departure of Emily I was faced with a hole. She left for some international travelling across Southeast Asia. I was stuck here, and decided to finally implement a project with ten students over the summer to put a backbone behind the Foreign Languages Department. I also spent more time getting to know my colleagues more deeply. I think this is when learning about Vietnam wasn’t just restricted to one or two things daily, but every few days, my entire view of Vietnam changed completely. This is one of my first positions as a manager in Vietnam. The repurcussions of this risk helped me learn a lot about Vietnamese people and to gain some great friends. This was of the most pressing times of my life. The challenges that I met with here though were only precursors to what were to happen in the fall, when new students arrived and the supposed backbone we were trying to build was put to the test.

Fourth Phase: The income of fall students, and the reality of our planning came to fruition. I have never learned more about people than in the last two months. The reason for this is that my understanding of Vietnamese social interactions had come to a certain head. I feel like I can navigate the people quite smoothly, and naturally. I understand most of their generic intentions. And by understanding at least this much it’s helped me understand where I fit in as a semi-foreigner, how I can contribute to their culture in a way that is useful and sensitive, and how can I share myself in a suitable way (maturely compromising my own needs for acknowledgement and self-worth).