Finally! My aunt (dad’s eldest sister) has a website up and running: Nhã Uyên Fashion.
In fact, ever since I visited Vietnam for the first time… I have had pants made by her and I have never gone back to wearing or purchasing any slacks in America since. Yes, I am a very happy camper.
Some of my favorite blouses and shirts come from my aunt, or replicated from her fashion house. So yes… I may be a little bias.
In other news:
Finally we have the fourth and final team for whom we will look at the breakdown of the seven vocalists as they are whittle down to five.
Taking a look at the official posted results we can easily figure out at least two of the final five that will be moving forward.
First off let us get the runaway favorite out of the way for this team who happens to be Bùi Anh Tuấn who sang Hoang Mang (Bewildered). He received 47.2% of the total team vote.
The second place public vote recipient went to Đinh Thị Thanh Hương (13.81%) who sang Forever And One
So who were the lucky vocalists to be given a free pass by the judge to move on to the next round?
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As I have done in the past for the Thu Minh and Trần Lập Editions… this time around the vocalists for the teams of Đàm Vĩnh Hưng and Hồ Ngọc Hà.
First on the list: Đàm Vĩnh Hưng.
Now just like with the previous two teams, The Voice of Việt Nam have posted on their website the results of the public voting.
So just like the previous two teams, the top two contestants of the public vote get an automatic pass to the next round and they are:
Vũ Thanh Hằng who sang Thu Cuối (The End), she received 26.93% of the total vote for the team.
The second highest public vote went to Phan Ngọc Luân who sang You’ll Be Sorry with 17.92% of the total votes of the team:
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This was one of several movies I watched on my flights between Chicago and Vietnam that I either
1: did not watch entirely on my own (meaning someone else had it on and I just happened to be watching over his shoulder and consequently I felt that I needed to watch it in its entirety later on
2: was watching on my own, however fell asleep at some point during the movie that I missed crucial moments and as thus didn’t have a chance to watch in its entirety
3: was watching but fast forwarded parts because I got bored quickly but wanted to see what happened towards the end.
So which movies had this dubious pleasure? Based on the above criterion:
1: Battleship
2: The Lorax, Puss in Boots
3: Footloose
I am sure there are others and eventually I will watch the above movies in their entirety in the comfort of my home and review about them.
Granted there were probably a lot of other movies I glanced at, but at the moment they escape me… however should I remember of any others than the above I am sure I will post the movies here and link back as well.
However in the meantime…
The first in the above series? Battleship and The Lorax.
As I did with the Thu Minh Edition… I will look into what happened with Trần Lập’s team and how they got whittled down from seven to five. If you do not remember how the breakdown happened go to the post of the Live Round Edition – Whittling Seven Down to Five.
Looking at Thu Minh’s team there is a massive run away winner in the public vote. In the case of Trần Lập’s team there were three member that got the lion’s share of the public vote with everyone one else trailing a bit behind them. The top two of the three got an automatic in via the public vote:
Nguyễn Thùy Linh (31.7%) who sang “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”
Trần Thi Kim Loan (31.63%) who sang “Và ta đã thấy mặt trời” (Finally I Saw the Sun)
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With the second round of two teams of seven participating in the second Live Show from teams Hồ Ngọc Hà and Đàm Vĩnh Hưng, let’s look and see how the first two teams fared in the first set of Live Shows. In case you do not know how the teams are whittled from teams of seven to a team of five head to my post: Live Round – Whittling Seven Down to Five.
Taking a look at the online list of how the public vote was separated, Thu Minh’s team had a clear winner in the popular vote running away with more than half of the votes that were called in and everyone else just trailing behind.
The Public Vote winners of Thu Minh’s team were:
“Phạm Thị Hương Tràm” who sang “Anh” (You). According to statistics she apparently earned the lion’s share (57.23%) of the public vote from her team.
… in case you did not know, she sang a Whitney Houston classic during her blind audition.
As for her team mate Dương Trần Nghĩa he sang Bay which translates to Fly (mind you Bay is the Vietnamese word, not the English word). He got about 11.09% of the vote.
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So I was catching up with The Voice of Việt Nam, Việt Nam’s version of the United States hit The Voice.
A lot of the premise is still the same, but there are some things that I found to be rather interesting.
First let’s go back to what I mentioned about reality television in Việt Nam in general
I didn’t realize this show existed until I was chatting with family in Việt Nam and noticed a news article on Yahoo.co.vn site about a contestant on Việt Nam’s version of The Voice… also known as “The Voice of Việt Nam”. Complete with a Facebook Page, “The Voice of Việt Nam” is similar to that of the first two seasons of America’s version of The Voice. The blind auditions, the battle rounds, then the live rounds.
Each judge/coach has to comprise teams of fourteen vocalists from the blind auditions, then during the battle rounds those fourteen are whittled down to seven. As of this past Monday (September 24) the Live Rounds have begun.
The judging / coaching panel includes:
– Thu Minh: Dance, Pop Ballad
– Trần Lập: Rock, hardrock
– Hồ Ngọc Hà: Pop, R&B, Ballad, Dance
– Đàm Vĩnh Hưng: Việt Nam PopUnlike the United States version of The Voice, the judging / coaching panel tend to stay more in the similar realms and don’t really stretch out that much.
So it has been two weeks and already there are changes between the Việt Nam version and what we know in the United States:
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So while I was in Việt Nam, I found out (and I don’t remember how) that when I came home from that hospital over thirty-odd years ago… originally my “given name” or rather “first name” was my Vietnamese Name (which is now my “middle name”).
Say what?
Without revealing my entire name… right now it looks like this:
| FIRST | MIDDLE | LAST |
| Westernized | Vietnamese | Surname/Family |
Whileas when I was borne it was originally this:
| FIRST | MIDDLE | LAST |
| Vietnamese | Westernized | Surname/Family |
Interesting. Mind you my mother was having this conversation about names in the car with various other relatives and the question of changing names came up and she mentioned that if you need to make a name change you just go to city hall. When asked more about it she told them that she did it for me when I was a baby. (I may not speak Vietnamese, but I definitely understand it… don’t I make a good spy? :D)
When I asked her about it, she mentioned that she did it within a year after I born to make it easier for me to live and survive in the United States. Makes sense… Now I am wondering how much would my life have changed if my name was different… and trust me, we may not place a lot of emphasis on names… but a direct change like that does change a person’s outlook on life.
Out of curiosity one day I decided to look into the meaning of my (names) and this was what I was able to discover:
| WESTERNIZED | VIETNAMESE | SURNAME/FAMILY NAME |
| Who is Like God | Noble – Intellectual Brightness | (unknown believed to be “lake”) |
So what is the meaning of my name? Well… let’s look at Kabalarians for the hell of it:
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According to Vietnamese anthropologist Phạm Công Sơn (1996):
Death is not the end but is the final stage of one life to be transformed into another.
Two years ago I went to Việt Nam for a spell, to visit family while my paternal grandfather (ông nội) was still alive and ended up connecting with my paternal grandmother (bà nội). As my family and I were getting ready to leave for the states my paternal grandfather’s health made a turn for the worse and suddenly my father asked if I would be willing to stay behind to watch over my grandfather and keep everyone up-to-date in the states.
For a few minutes I was tempted… more than tempted really. However in the end I decided against it and went home, only for my grandfather’s health to deteriorate to the point that my parents and all my dad’s siblings flew back to Việt Nam to bury their father. I stayed home… wondering if perhaps I should have stayed in Việt Nam… I never got a chance to see the burial process, I was unaware of the traditions involved…
Over Labor Day weekend my father’s side of the family suffered a devastating loss… only two years after the passing of my ông nội (essentially the patriarch in the family)… The loss of the matriarch. This time I had a front seat view of the traditions since the timing was as such that within hours of setting foot in Sài Gòn my family and I would be saying goodbye to my bà nội.
Since this is my first time going through all the Vietnamese death rituals and traditions it is still kind of hard to describe a lot of what I just went though – being a first-generation in America I only know so much – so I scoured the internet for some thing that would go into enough detail of what I experienced and I could just add in my thoughts along the way… eventually I did.
At Ethonomed.com there is a very thorough article to goes step by step of what happened within that family and the rituals they have undergone and most of it is very accurate to what I have gone through.
Originally I was going to add photos to this to give an idea of some of the sights through my eyes, but on second thought those are very private photos and photos that I personally would not feel comfortable showing to a public audience. So instead the photos here are those of a similar nature that is a reflection of what I went through, but not exact. This is to protect the privacy of my family and relations not only stateside but in Việt Nam as well.
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My little sister arrived in Việt Nam about a week after I returned to the states and in less than eight hours since her arrival (approximately 10pm Việt Nam time zone which would make it 10am Central US time zone) she has had three full meals, leftovers for a snack and a glass of coffee. Not only that she was going through my Facebook albums of Việt Nam Food that I had posted, asking my mother what each dish was…
I think the irony is that the word on the street is that she wants to have a few chicken dishes made using the neighbor’s rooster as the meat source… I share her sentiments considering the damn rooster starts crowing at 4:00am every morning without fail and every hour on the hour since then… but that’s a different story.
All that aside below are a small sample selection of some of my favorites dishes from Việt Nam over the years. Including those made at “home”… because my family has the best hired cook in Việt Nam. 🙂
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Yesterday I posted up a summary of “Việt Nam in Pictures“, but my sister managed to get the one picture that I was unable to capture myself.
So she decided to post the following on her Facebook Page:
I didn’t think that people actually woke up by a crowing rooster anymore. I obviously was very wrong. 4:30 EVERY morning. Somebody needs to tell them the definition of “vacation.”
Don’t believe her? Here is something that may convince you:
She has managed to take a picture of the roosters… I haven’t even been able to do that!
Mind you, this is the middle of Sài Gòn… which is a city with lots of people and the homes are compressed against one another. There are barely any green let alone yards.
Waking up by the crowing of the rooster became normal for me while in Việt Nam… so as much as I hate to admit it, I miss it… a lot. 😀 Ah well.
Be lucky you darn Westerners / Americans… you have no idea how good you got it here. 😛
Long over due I am just going to post all the albums of Việt Nam that I took over the years…
2008 December / 2009 January
My first trip to Việt Nam lasted approximately four weeks. It started in mid-December of 2008 going thru mid-January of 2009. The first two weeks focused around Sài Gòn (well as much as possible since I was ill for most of it) with a quick trip to Bình Dương to visit Đại Nam Văn Hiến (a massive tourism complex)
Then the second two weeks my parents, my parents’ friends and I went on a group tour through North and Central Việt Nam. This included the following stops:
North Việt Nam: Hà Nội, Vịnh Hạ Long (Ha Long Bay)
Central Việt Nam: Huế, Đà Nẵng, Hội An
South Việt Nam: Nha Trang and Đà Lạt
While at Nha Trang we stayed at the island resort of Vinpearl Land just off the coast.
2010 November
In the first week of November of 2010, I flew to Việt Nam to join my parents (who were already in Việt Nam for two and a half weeks by that time) and stayed primarily around Sài Gòn with a one / two day trip to the Canary Resort in Phan Thiết which is close by Mũi Né which are both in the Bình Thuận Province of southeastern Vietnam.
2012 September
For September of 2012, I returned to Việt Nam once again for a week and a half. Once again we stayed close to Sài Gòn which a quick one day trip south to visit Mỹ Tho in the Tiền Giang province right on the Mekong Delta. We also spent some time traveling through Củ Chi and revisited Bình Dương.
Below is a sample selection of my favorite photos:
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So I have this little obsession, not really obsession but something that I haven’t really voice all that much before. I have an addiction for reality television… but not necessarily in the states… in Việt Nam. Quaint isn’t it?
It all started with my love of reality television (Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, America’s Got Talent and The Voice) and blogging about them. Which is bad enough as it is… then I learned a long time ago (aka a couple of years ago) that there is a version of Dancing with the Stars already on the airwaves in Việt Nam. Well needless to say I tried to figure out a way to watch it… but to no avail. Ah well.
The same goes for the other reality tv competition shows… no way for those Vietnamese-Americans on state side to watch if we wanted to, so off to YouTube we go.
Anyway what drove me to write this post? The following clip that I saw while at Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport (aka Saigon International Airport):
Recently I was asked to participate in a production of “A Piece of My Heart”. I had other plans and ideas, other productions I wanted to audition for: but once I knew more of the story and the characters I realized that this was one of those stage productions that I would ultimately regret turning down.
From Shirley’s webpage about this stage play:
The true stories of six courageous women sent to Vietnam and their struggle to make sense of a war that irrevocably changed them and a nation that shunned them. A work with the music and soul of a tumultuous era in our history.
Also from the Samuel French website:
This is a powerful, true drama of six women who went to Vietnam: five nurses and a country western singer booked by an unscrupulous agent to entertain the troops. The play portrays each young woman before, during, and after her tour in the war-torn nation and ends as each leaves a personal token at the memorial wall in Washington.
Before I go on… typically I would not talk about any productions that I have been a part of because by that time I would have a very biased view of the production that I would be able to give a reasonable objective view. However, after the first read through and the first rehearsal I felt that it is necessary to write my thoughts and feelings down about this production else it might overwhelm me… it is that deep and thought provoking… right up my alley.
So for the sake of keeping this as objective as possible I will not mention the remainder of the cast, production team or where this production is going to take place… if you are interested in knowing more about this production you could message me directly from my personal Facebook Page or send me a tweet and I will provide the information. But for the purposes of this blog post I just won’t place any bias on this script and story.
Viet Nam’s gymnasts have been making a strong splash in the past couple of years. During the Beijing 2008 Olympics the only gymnast from Viet Nam was Đỗ Thị Ngân Thương (names are reversed in Viet Nam as opposed to English so her family name is Đỗ while her given name is Thương) who was invited via the Tripartite Invitation. This invitation is a collective effort between the International Olympic Committee and the International Federations to develop systems that would allow the best athletes to compete but also adhere to the principle of universal representation. She did not pass the preliminary round and ended up being disqualified due to a banned substance found in her system. After a year or two she came back to competition stronger and wiser, as thus she was granted a place in the London 2012 Olympics via the Olympic Test Event (placing 72nd overall) in January due to injuries to many of the world’s top gymnasts.
The other female gymnast that qualified for the London 2012 Olympics is Phan Thị Hà Thanh (again Phan being the family name while Thanh is the given name) earned her ticket to the London 2012 Olympics via her vault score at the 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo, Japan. She received the bronze medal for the following vaults:
The final gymnast that qualified from Viet Nam is Phạm Phước Hưng (Phạm being the family name and Hưng being his given name). Much like Thương in the female gymnastics competition, Hưng also qualified via the Olympic Test Event. Not only that, a rising star in Vietnamese gymnastics, Hung showed his prowess by winning the gold medal in men’s parallel bars at the Challengers Cup 2012 International Gymnastics Tournament in Belgium (placing 43rd overall).
With only two medals total in the Summer Olympic games, both silver in Taekwondo (Trần Hiếu Ngân for the Women’s 57kg event at Sydney 2000) and Weightlifting (Hoàng Anh Tuấn for the Men’s 56kg event at Beijing 2008) it is difficult to say how the gymnasts would ultimately place… but I am fairly confident that as the gymnastics program in Viet Nam strengthens so will the talent pool and I would not be surprised to see their gymnasts stand on the podium in future Olympics if not for the upcoming one.