Vietnam
Vietnam: History, Culture and Economy
July 31, 2010 by Victoria Levy
Vietnam (pronounced /ˌviː.ɛtˈnɑːm/ VEE-et-NAHM; Vietnamese: Việt Nam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Cộng hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea, referred to as East Sea (Vietnamese: Biển Đông), to the east.
With a population of over 86 million, Vietnam is the 13th most populous country in the world.
The people of Vietnam regained independence and broke away from China in AD 938 after their victory at the battle of Bạch Đằng River. Successive dynasties flourished along with geographic and political expansion deeper into Southeast Asia, until it was colonized by the French in the mid-19th century. Efforts to resist the French eventually led to their expulsion from the country in the mid-20th century, leaving a nation divided politically into two countries. Fighting between the two sides continued during the Vietnam War, ending with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975.
Emerging from this prolonged military engagement, the war-ravaged nation was politically isolated. In 1986, the government instituted economic and political reforms and began a path towards international reintegration. By 2000, it had established diplomatic relations with most nations. Its economic…
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A War of the Words – But Who’s Words?
July 13, 2010 by David Everitt-Carlson
Fresh from a week’s worth of Facebook blackouts, the helicopters of the resistance flew over the CBD dropping leaflets with reverse propaganda decrying the propagation of the other propaganda. A ballsy move for sure but a move aimed at infecting the masses with the new media message that the more the powers that be try to suppress and control information, the more information will behave in the manner of a thousand one-celled animals and simply multiply – exponentially.
This cartoon by Stuart McMillen juxtaposes the views of Aldous Huxley & George Orwell. In short, Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information (The Chinese model) whilst Huxley feared those who would give us so much information, that we would die in our own bullshit (The American model). And who’s to say who’s right? Both models suck – and in a perfect world we would get all the information that is valuable to those of us chasing the pursuit of happiness with all of the chaff filtered out from the wheat of knowledge that we need. But it’s not a perfect world, is it?
Ministry of Manifestos. Distopian Soup
For all those
10th Anniversary of the Kidney Center in Hanoi
July 13, 2010 by Kiyoshi Kurokawa
In the morning of 9th, after the dialogue session with Mr. Toyama, I left for Hanoi. This travel is to join the 10th anniversary of the Kidney Center which I helped its foundation with Dr Tang and Dr Ann whom I have introduced to you last year. This plan is also an outcome of the effort by the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) for these 20 years of focusing its activities to the programs for developing countries.
In 1990 the ISN meeting was held in Tokyo. I have been leading the ISN activities as a committee and executive member and later as the President (1997-99) of the ISN, so I was naturally involved in COMGAN program in reaching developing countries since its very beginning, and have traveled to Asia and many other parts of the world. Through various activities such as COMGAN, ISN has succeeded in constructing the networks of people throughout the world for 15 years including kidney specialists in many developing countries of the world. We celebrated the 50th anniversary of ISN last month although I had to be excused because of…
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Fired for online activities? Join the club.
July 8, 2010 by David Everitt-Carlson
a life with no passion is no life at all. Learn to feel it, revel in it, harness it and put it towards some greater good in life, work and the hereafter. I was told once, in relation to creativity, that you can always pull a crazy idea back in a bit, but you can never take an employee who only comes up with average ideas and get them to do crazy when you need crazy.
The smart employer will see the energy and inherent creativity in their employee’s online efforts, and learn to harness it, encourage more of it and apply it to productive tasks. And the dumb employer will get to hire all the other wallflowers who don’t know the difference between a well-phrased Tweet and an ill-punched timecard. Viva la difference!
A Face Lift: WWED Remodels
July 3, 2010 by David Everitt-Carlson
Watch out for that paint can! Things are a bit of a mess around here. I had a birthday last week and decided a face-lift was in order. This growing old business ain’t pretty, so please bear with me.
For the next few days, and maybe weeks, we’ll be tinkering with this thing and getting it just perfect, but for right now – don’t walk under that ladder – you’ll just have to live with it. I’ve got gay interior designers running all over the place trying to sort this out. It’s making me a little wonky.
And, somebody shut my Facebook down again. Welcome back to Vietnam. It’s just like it was when I left, only commie-er.
I’m sorry if things are a bit hard to read, but nobody reads most of this stuff anyway. My best customers are here for WWED Radio, and that’s going to be having a face-lift as well, as GarageBand is closing down and I’m trying out a new service in the next few weeks – so sit tight and let Michael Jackson’s doctors work on this face.
As was asked of me a few months
Citizen Kha’n: The minister is dead! Long live the minister!
June 29, 2010 by David Everitt-Carlson
The deposed Minister of Noodles entered shrouded, round shouldered and avoiding all eye contact. He had agreed to meet me in a coffee shop and sat with his back to the wall like a Chicago gangster, all the while REM-ing the joint for rats, informants, spies and the lowlife spineless bastards who had done his blog in – my Deep Throat, my whistle blower, my inside man – now on the outside, but maybe not for long. , I asked him. “I complied with the contract”, he answered in hushed and muffled tones. This was a clandestine meeting with a man who had had a contract on his head – a man who nearly blogged himself to death at the hands of grimmer reapers than even the souls on death row had to kneel to. We sat in silence as he sipped his coffee under his hood and through his ski mask – damn brave bloke to be wearing that getup in the sweltering Vietnam heat.“Rosebud” it said. “Rosebud”. This Citizen Kha’n had just micro-blogged his last word and the final clue to
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What price freedom?
June 20, 2010 by David Everitt-Carlson
The answer is not a series of integers with a dollar sign in front, and the question is who said it? And in all my Googleness I can’t find the original quote – and even I had appropriated it and used its spirit in an advertising campaign for GameBoy at one point in time. But the question goes deep into men’s hearts when it comes to the freedom one has in one’s daily life – to choose the cigarettes one likes, or to smoke at all – breasts or butts – tall or short – secrets or transparency? The only way to understand one’s freedom is to have it taken away, or to allow yourself to get to a point where you have unwittingly surrendered it.
a little bit of support, and a little bit of freedom.”
~ Jerry SeinfeldA friend of mine said recently that the advice in my friend Hugh MacLeod’s book, Ignore Everybody, had come too late in her life because she had long ago “sold out
Noodling Around in Vietnam
June 19, 2010 by Gayle Keck
Yes, Italians have their pasta shaped like butterflies, ears and angel’s hair – but on my recent trip to Vietnam, I saw noodles in the most unusual forms I’ve ever encountered.
You can grab a hearty bowl of pho at almost any street corner (BTW, don’t call it “foe” – it’s pronounced “fur” in north Vietnam and “far” in south Vietnam.) Pho’s basic, fettuccine-shaped rice noodles are just the beginning of the Vietnamese noodle empire.
In Hanoi, I sampled wonderful steamed rice-noodle crepes, wrapped around minced mushrooms and topped with fried onions…
It was mesmerizing to watch the store-front chef pour the batter into her cloth-lined steamer then, a few minutes later, peel the slightly gummy translucent crepe off (all while holding her baby) and hand it to her husband, who added the filling, rolled it and snipped it into four floppy sections with a pair of scissors. You can see the whole process on this video:
In Hue, the last imperial capital, all sorts of dishes were invented to coddle the whims of Emperor Tu Duc, a legendary picky eater. His 50-course banquets were a parade of winsome…
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What to expect in a Vietnamese Restaurant
June 15, 2010 by Sherry Ott
Eating in Vietnam
Going out to eat at a restaurant is easy, right?
…not always.
Often when you find yourself in other countries, even though there’s a waiter, a table, you are putting food in your mouth, and there’s a bill – there are many things that can be vastly different. As I lived in Vietnam there were many little differences I noticed every time I went out to eat. Most of these things confused me at first, but most all of them I grew to love….really love. Now as I’m back in the US for a while, I miss these Vietnamese restaurant oddities!
If you are traveling to Vietnam, here’s a few things you can expect when going to eat in a restaurant – consider this pre-travel preparation!
It’s safe to drink!
It’s safe to drink!
Drink the Water!
Yes, you CAN have ice in your drinks; and most of the time you can drink the water in restaurants. I know this seems strange, as every guidebook tells you not to drink…
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The Ministry is Dead! Long Live the Ministry!
June 11, 2010 by David Everitt-Carlson
Bee-da-bee-da-beep! Newsline. Dateline. Bee-da-bee-da-beep… Come in Radio Free America, bizzz…….da…bizz……..da….. ……come in dammit! ‘Ministry of Noodles’ has been compromised! Repeat. Send no more agents through the Ministry of Noodles! I saw dead noodles! Napalm fried, agent orange depersonified dead friggin’ noodles baby! It’s hell comrads! War is hell my friends———— ————————— The journalistic free press war is over ———————————– —————— ————————————– ————————–!
Click here for the final chapter!
Dis is yer man in Saigon with a …………. ………b..e..e..p.., Can you hear me dudes? I’m dyein’ man! I’m in the jungle!
I just got in this crashed plane in the jungle and managed to juice the battery for one last transmission.
Come in Houston! C’mon in baby! C’mon baby. I can hear the commies commin’ – through the air, through the ground, all over my skin! Ahhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhh!
The ministry is dead! Repeat. The Ministry is dead! Operation
It’s a trap baby! It’s a friggin’ trap!
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the latest from Radio Free America…… ……………… …….. ………..
-Dateline…
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