Em hãy miêu tả cơn mưa.

Hàng ngàn bong bóng nước tan ra trên sân, cái sân lớn đến nổi chiếm luôn cả mặt đường ngập lụt. Nước mưa ứ lại, thu thêm nhiều rác và trở nên vừa đen vừa nâu, cứ như cà phê sữa cậu uống mỗi sáng. Ngập lụt thế này cho cậu biết rằng, trong trường hợp mực nước biển cao thêm 1m, cả vùng 20.000km2 của Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long sẽ chìm đi và nhiều người phải chạy trốn lên Sài Gòn, nơi mà bạn gọi là ngôi nhà thứ hai của mình.

Đâu đó trên con đường vắng hoe, cậu thấy một chiếc xe hơi chạy đến, sau nó là một chiếc xe máy màu vàng mà bạn nghĩ rằng sẽ không qua nổi cơn mưa. Điều gì ấy mách bảo với cậu, rằng người nhà giàu toàn đi xe ô-tô sẽ qua khỏi những cơn mưa phía trước và đến một lúc thích hợp sẽ nuốt chửng cả nền kinh tế, trong khi mấy người chạy xe máy sẽ dần mờ đi, cứ như bong bóng nước tan chảy vào dòng dơ bẩn.

Ở bên kia con đường, cậu thấy có một ngôi chùa sặc sỡ đang chống chọi với cơn gió dữ, cơn gió đập vào mưa và làm nước rơi thẳng vào mắt cậu. Nước làm mắt cậu nhòe đi, nhưng cậu vẫn thấy được hai lá cờ trên đỉnh ngôi chùa đang bay dữ dội. Tiếng nhạc lớn từ quán cà phê gần đó khiến cậu cảm giác như thể những lá cờ đang nhảy múa theo cơn bão nhạc rock. Một thầy tu mở cánh cửa màu xanh phía tay trái ngôi chùa, gióng lên hồi chuông và đi mất, làm cậu cứ ngẩn ngơ với một loại âm thanh trái ngước với tiếng nhạc từ quán cà phê vắng tanh gần đấy.

Cậu tưởng tượng rằng mình đang đi dưới mưa và Phật đang ở cuối con đường, vừa bước ra từ ngôi chùa và đứng đấy chờ cậu. Cậu thấy hụt hẫng và không muốn đi tiếp nữa, vì dù cho cậu có lắng nghe và quan sát cẩn thận đến mức nào, cậu vẫn không bao giờ chạm vào được cốt lõi của vấn đề. Tệ hơn là cậu nhận ra những gì mình nghĩ về Đạo Phật, rằng Đạo tin tưởng vào bản chất tốt đẹp của con người, là sai. Điều cậu biết được, thay vào đó, vì cậu vừa nghe được trên facebook, là Phật không dạy gì về "cái tôi" và nói với chúng ta rằng chúng ta trở thành những gì do chính mình tạo ra. Mọi thứ đều là phù du, nhưng cậu vẫn thích sáng tạo nhiều hơn, diễn nhiều hơn và phát minh nhiều hơn. Chúng ta múa may theo nhạc điệu của cuộc sống và trở thành con rối của nó, con rối trang điểm đủ các kiểu. Dù chúng ta có dành bao nhiêu thời gian cho việc tìm thông tin và đặt những câu hỏi hay, cậu cũng không bao giờ tìm ra ý nghĩa thật của điều gì. Rồi cậu mong rằng cậu sẽ tiếp tục cố gắng và ngày nào đó sẽ trở thành con người sâu sắc hơn, biết nghĩ hơn. Nhưng kết quả đơn giản là cậu hài lòng với những thứ bề nổi và giả tạo, rồi mong muốn số lượng sẽ trở thành chất lượng.

Cậu cảm thấy lạnh, thật sự như vậy. Cậu nhớ bài hát mà người bạn tốt nhất của mình thường hát. Vì thế cậu mong bạn ấy sẽ đến dưới cơn mưa, ôm đàn và hát như bạn từng hứa.

Đây là ngày thứ ba của năm mới. Cậu ở Vĩnh Long xem mưa và thấy lạnh. Cậu biết cò chuyện gì đã sai rồi, và ảnh hưởng của biến đổi khí hậu đang dần rõ ràng hơn.

Nước cứ rơi xuống từ bầu trời, và đem theo nhiều việc hơn cho mẹ và ông bác của mình. Mẹ, có lẽ đang ở nơi nào trong trung tâm Sài Gòn lúc này, hẳn phải thấy khó khăn lắm khi tìm đường về Quận Bảy, vì cậu biết mưa ở đấy cũng đang nặng hạt và tạo ra cái biển bé xíu trong thành phố. Ông bác, có lẽ đang ôm đứa con gái bên hông phải của mình, đang tìm cách không cho ống cống bị rỉ, trong khi nó chứa đầy rác và nước màu nâu.

Trước mặt cậu là hai đứa trẻ, đứa mặc áo xanh và đứa mặc áo cam, chúng làm ồn và tỏ ra la ó lớn hơn cả cơn mưa. Cậu muốn không thấy bọn chúng nữa, bởi vì chúng chơi say và có mùi nghe rất tởm. Cậu không biết bao giờ chúng nó sẽ dừng lại, và bắt đầu càm ràm một cách bí mật.

Cơn mưa cứ đến và bầu trời trở nên tối hơn. Cậu được bảo là phải bật đèn lên, nhưng chẳng biết đâu là nút cần ấn vào, vì trước mặt cậu có đến mười tám cái nút.

Cậu nhìn ra cửa sổ và khẽ cười, biết rằng những động cơ nhỏ trong chiếc xe máy kia đang được tắm mát, nhờ vào cơn mưa. 

Raining in Vinh Long and elsewhere.

Thousands and thousands of bubbles spread quickly across the floor, the one that is so wide that it involves the flooded street. The water accumulates more trash and gets a little black and a little brown, looking like that white coffee you drink every morning. This flood warns us, then, in case of sea level rises-up to 1m, an area of nearly 20,000km2 in the Mekong Delta would be flooded and a great number of people will flee to Saigon, a place that you now call your second home.

Somewhere down the empty road, you see a car running in, behind which is a yellow motorbike, which probably won't survive such a heavy rain. Something tells you that the rich, using cars, will continue to live the rains and at a certain point in time eat up the economy, while the ones riding motorbikes will fade out just like those bubbles which melt into the dirty water.

Across the street, there is a colorful pagoda standing against the angry wind, which blows through the rain and makes it go straight into your eyes. The water blurs your eyes but still, you could see the flags on the top of the pagoda waving like crazy. The loud music from a nearby cafe makes you feel as if those flags were dancing to a rock storm. A monk opens the blue window on the left hand side of the pagoda, strikes the bell, and then goes away, leaving you with the resonance of a kind of sound that totally contradicts the music from the empty cafe you just saw.

You imagine that you're running under the rain and the Buddha is at the end of the street, coming from the pagoda and waiting for you. You feel helpless and don't want to continue running because no matter how carefully you listen and observe, you never seem to reach the core of things. Worse is that you realize what you thought about Buddhism, that it defended the good nature of human beings, is simply false. What you know now instead, because you've overheard on facebook, is that the Buddhist teaching doesn't recognize anything like "the self" and tells us that we're what we create. Everything is euphoric, yet you still like to create more, act more, and invent more. We dance to the music of life and become its doll, wearing all kinds of make-up. And regardless of the time you spent on getting more information and asking better questions, you never come to realize the true meaning of anything. You then hope that you will keep trying and will someday become deeper and more thoughtful. But the result is simply that you contend with the surface and artificiality you have and wish the quantity would become the quality.

You feel cold, actually. You miss the song that your best friend usually sings for you. So you hope he'll come under the rain, singing and playing the guitar as he promised to do.

It's the third day of the Lunar New Year. You're in Vinh Long watching the rain and feeling cold. You know something is going wrong and the impacts of climate change are coming to realize themselves.

The water keeps falling from the sky and it means more work for your mother and uncle. Your mother, probably in downtown Saigon at the moment, must find it difficult to find her way back to District Seven because you know it's also raining and creating a tiny sea in the city. Your uncle, with his daughter on his right hips, is perhaps figuring out how to stop the sewer, carrying with it lots of trash and brown water, from leaking.

In front of you are two kids, one in blue and one in orange, who are making noise and preventing the rain from shouting louder than them. You want to get rid of them because they, after playing so hard, smell bad. You don't know when they'll stop, so you start whining secretly.

The rain keeps coming in and the sky gets darker. You're asked to turn on the light but don't know where is the right plug, because there are eighteen of them in front of you.

You look out to the window and you smile, knowing the motors and other engines inside that motorbike are having a great shower, thanks to the rain.

"What's your take on having children?" a friend asked me. I let him know that I wouldn't want to have a daughter or a son because if I did, I would make them grow up in my preferred way of life and thus create a dictator out of me.

Then I asked my friend when he would stop being single and get a girlfriend or a spouse. "Do you agree we should love humanity?" was my question. My friend said "Yes" and it was my conclusion that each of us in the end must get married, because it's how we bring that general statement into reality. As we cannot meet every human being in the world and yet love humanity, we must learn by example by being committed to taking care of one person - true and real. To me, it would be a joke for one to claim that he's a virtuous person loving human beings in general and cannot prove his love for any specific individual.

My friend fought back, saying that the best example was himself - someone who sided with him every awake and asleep moment. To him, our love for humanity can be manifested in that we take care of ourselves.

Thus our consensus is that we all learn by example, but where should we find such an example? In ourselves? In a particular person?

Several months ago, I found a video on velicamer's YouTube channel, which is now defunct, about Hegel's idea on the family, the market (or civil society) and the state. It's in the family that self-sacrifice is most valued. On the contrary, in the market, we all find egoistic relationships and act in our own interests. Between those two entities is the state, where there must be a government acting in the name of one nation, representing a population which includes themselves. Because each of us has the aspiration to identify ourselves universally with humanity and there's a need for us to have an attachment to or feel grounded in a visible group of people, we join organizations, associations or any entities we could name. We call it a local example of our global love.

Each person's example is different. It can be big or small. To me, the example is LIN, a Vietnamese not-for-profit organization. It Listens, Inspires and Nurtures my wish to work for those who are left out and to finally contribute to the common good.

I sometimes ask myself why I don't identify myself with RMIT, a place where my "Eastern" values have been questioned and then reinforced. The reason is simply that it's too big. Too big that we don't know who is and who is not feeling the way we do. Too big that the president never talks to you on Mondays. Too big that we don't gather to sing the national anthem every week.

Today we sat inside an Effoc cafe listening to Suddenly I See, whose music was captivating. Nghia was still a gentle person, perhaps more gentle than a boy and as gentle as a girl. Duy still had his funny face, talking about his application to a university in Amsterdam. We didn't mention "humanity" in our conversation because it would be too big a word. We virtually agreed that contemporarily it would be best to break big ideas into small steps and to justify our decisions using particular examples. But again what should be the scope of our examples? Where should they stand - closer to ourselves or others? We were pretty unsure and in the end, we'll continue to live with uncertainty. Even when Duy's found his girl, there's no guarantee that they can be together in two years' time. The problem with having an example is it's always... an example. The general doesn't change but the particular can be replaced, as long as the examples are of the same type.

At eight o'clock in the morning, we find ourselves at Soai Kinh Lam, a market that sells virtually only fabrics. Under the shiny sun, no one seems to stand still - a scene that might discomfort those who are familar with shopping at large and air-conditioned malls.

We then arrive at kiosk numbered 503 on Tran Hung Dao B street, having a brief encounter with the lovely Ms. Trang, who enthusiastically tells us about the business that appears beautiful and at the same time streneous. She says that Cò, meaning brokers, would go from kiosk to kiosk all day long, presenting the kiosks' owners with new fabric designs and colors. These owners would decide on certain orders, depending on the season and the trend they perceive to be popular. The fabrics that are supplied to them have been well-processed and usually bear the signature of the owners' taste and market responsiveness.

The brokers come and go, sometimes just in the blink of the eye. They don't have the concept of "contracts" because, if this word means anything to them, are wasted paper and they instead conduct all the business transactions using word-of-mouth and phone calls. This reflects something interesting about the Chinese-Vietnamese, who occupy a large part, if not all, of Soai Kinh Lam market, that is, they easily give out trust and have no need for written records.

Continuing our conversation with Ms. Trang, we learn that her kiosk has to pay a tax of VND 20 million per month, which is, surprisingly, just a very small part of most of the kiosks' monthly revenues. That's perhaps why the Chinese-Vietnamese in District Five, Saigon, usually enjoy higher living standards than Vietnamese intellectuals, farmers and workers.

The minutes go by peacefully, with strangely little noise, although everyone looks busy. And the busiest must be those middle-aged men unloading bundles of fabrics from trucks and carts. Holding heavy bundles, weighing almost twenty kilograms each, they appear - you must go there to believe - to be calm, physically strong and full of character. Overall Soai Kinh Lam's structure is plain, if not a little bit messy due to the unplanned styles of its kiosks. The little market spans two streets, including Tran Hung Dao and Do Ngoc Thanh, being the fabrics hub of the whole Saigon. Retails and wholesales there help people to make suits, áo dài, woman dresses and even special costumes for actors and attresses of Vietnamese traditional performance arts.

Two weeks ago, the LIN Center for Community Development organized the second event in its Networking for a Cause series. The topic, "Supporting Migrant Workers and Their Familes," was all-encompassing enough, attracting a turnout of nearly 200 friends.

The LIN team was able to align the event's purpose, i.e. fundraising to support projects that aim to enhance the quality of migrants' lives, and its core activity, i.e. letting the audience vote for the best proposal. Everyone walked away knowing a little bit more about the situation of migration in Saigon, having voted and probably got engaged in several meaningful conversations about a project dear to their heart. This is worth great recognition because a lot of fundraising events are intent on, say, collecting donations to help kids with heart diseases and yet have their core activity as, for instance, dancing (!), making the audience sometimes unaware of their beneficiaries or forget why they came to the events in the first place.

Out of the thirteen proposals submitted to LIN, there were three chosen to enter the community grant ground, which were presented at the Hard Rock Cafe, Distric 1, on 18 December 2011.

• A New Day proposed to form a self-help group with young factory workers, who are immigrants from provinces around Saigon and who are working in Tan Binh Industrial Park (Tan Binh District). They would hold meetings every other week to help those workers understand their rights and learn how to build healthy relationships. This group finally received 46 votes.
• Thien Tam Shelter targeted a niche group, i.e. immigrants with disabilities, and gave an interesting presentation on how they would help those people to learn jobs like sewing and making traditional handicrafts. Their idea got the support of 60 voters.
• SPI House (Ho Chi MInh City Child Welfare Foundation) presented the idea of supporting young migrants by (1) facilitating their process of applying for personal documents, such as identity cards (which are ultimately necessary and yet are usually difficult to get/renew especially when you come to Saigon from a remote province), (2) offering life skills training and (3) leading them to a career of their choice in the city. They got totally 79 votes and won the first prize, which was indeed deserving of attention because they were very clear about what they would do and their target group - young Vietnamese older than sixteen years old - are usually left out by social organizations, being assumed to have the capacity to live and find jobs on their own.
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The event was also a chance for those concerned about migrant workers issues to meet with Mr Le Van Thanh, Head of the Culture and Society Research Department (Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies). He informed us that characteristic of Saigon's population are the facts that it is big and growing, that the density is considerably different in various districts, and that, last but not least, there're more and more imgrants to the city. The current number of immigrants to Saigon makes up, quite notably, 30% of the city's population (a). Such a high percentage can be explained by that after 1975, Vietnam introduced the household registration system, binding citizens to their hereditary homes and making it hard for immigrants to legally apply for registration in Saigon. In addition to that, many immigrants only consider Saigon as a place to study, work or earn money, and there's no point for them to upgrade their household registration status because one day they'll leave the city (b).

Soon Saigon will become the first mega-city in Vietnam (c) in terms of population because it receives about 200,000 new inhabitants every year. It's expected that the number of immigrants to Saigon will increase tremendously in the future, when the impacts of climate change on Vietnam become clearer and when refugees from the areas surrounding Saigon, especially the Mekong Delta, seek for better settlement (d). According to Mr Le Van Thanh, there will be 10-12 million citizens in the city in 2020-2025, which will then account for nearly 45% of Vietnam's urban population. Quite exciting, isn't it? Or quite daunting - it is.

Perplexing is the fact that people just keep coming to Saigon like a bee blindly heads into darkness. Rural inhabitants, with poor living conditions, go for it. University graduates, with fresh knowledge, stay in it. People who are even at the peak of their caeer, with money and social status, pursue higher goals in it. Don't say that you're so talented that only a big city can afford to use you - Make a successful career somewhere else. Don't say that you love Saigon so much that you must stay in it to help solve its inner problems - Going away from it is the solution. Don't say that it's such a land of opportunities that it'll make your miserable life better - There're hidden potentials in far-away that need your investment.

People say that in Australia, blessed are those parents who have their sons and daughters return to the countryside after they graduate from college. In Vietnam, on the contrary, parents encourage their children to stay in the city, in Saigon, and would tell them off or consider them as incompetent if they express any idea to go back home in a town, a province.

If we keep cheering up Saigon, one day Saigonese will cry. Saigon prides itself upon being young and dynamic. It's high time that we stopped this type of false optimism. We cannot deny the fact that it used to be the Pearl of the Far East and is now a Third World city.

Going to events like those organized by an NGO makes one feel like a better person. But layer after layer, event after event, we'll just come out being aware of something, getting excited about it, sleeping on it, and one day forgetting what we meant to do. Different NGOs pick different topics and focus on different things. It goes without saying that no one can be attentive to all problems. However, by doing-our-own-job and forgetting the rest would lead us to alienation and lack of vision. There must be a big brother coordinating, not just watching over, the activities of a variety of NGOs in Saigon, sustaining and leveraging their efforts for a larger collective effect, and engaging its citizens in what the city needs the most right now - a master plan.

It's raining in District 7. How will this rain look like in ten years' time? A tiny human induced sea, not so far away, awaits our fear.

(a) Le, VT 2011, Di dan voi phat trien kinh te xa hoi thanh pho Ho Chi Minh, LIN Center for Community Development, viewed 1 January 2012, <http://www.linvn.org/cms/upload/FCKFile/file/Workshop/Tinh%20hinh%20nguoi%20nhap%20cu%20TPHCM.pdf>.

(b) Simon, DT 2010, Organizational responses to urban imgration in Ho Chi Minh City: adapting to the challenges of a highly regulated environment, MIT, viewed 1 January 2012, <http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/67238/759123436.pdf?sequence=1>.

(c) Gubry, P & Le, TH 2002, Ho Chi Minh City: a future megacity in Vietnam, IUSSP, viewed 1 January 2012, <http://iussp.org/Bangkok2002/S19Gubry.pdf>.

(d) Eckert, R & Waibel, M 2009, Climate change and challenges for the urban development of Ho Chi Minh City/Vietnam, Dr Michael A. Waibel, viewed 1 January 2012, <http://www.michael-waibel.de/pn31_waibel_eckert.pdf>.

The Century of the Self (2002) is an interesting documentary that Adam Curtis produced for the BBC. Of its four episodes, the third one is the most informative. It's a narrative of how society, over the past century, has repressed and eventually inflated the idea of the self.

*****

BAD Nature

The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), was quite consistent throughout his life when he held the belief that what lurked behind just every single man's face were irrational and primitive inner drives.

• Politicians, as seen in The Century of the Self, thought that it was the unleasing of such drives that led to the brutality of the Nazis during World War II.
• Anna, Sigmund Freud's daugther, was a devoted promoter of her father's thesis, believing that human nature - dark and evil - must be controlled using the means of education.
• Edward Bernays, who bragged about being Freud's nephew and who's said to be the father of PR (while I'm a PR major myself, I've never seen his name in our textbooks), taught corporations to see everyone as consumers and to contol people's so-called "inner madness" by satisfying their drives with products. He was also one of the first PR men to conduct focus groups, drawing upon his uncle's idea about humans' inner sexual desires and asking the respondents how they would link the products in question with what they, inside themselves, wanted.

GOOD Nature

Freud's "enemy," as indicated in the documentary, was Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957). This man argued for the opposite of Freud's central idea, saying that human nature was good and that preventing people from expressing their true selves made them worse than they originally were. From this came the Human Potential Movement in the 1960s, which was quite political. Followers of this movement attacked American corporations and the State because they realized it was those entities, through advertising and propaganda, that had occupied their subconscious and unconscious, making them stray away from their true and wonderful nature. That's why the title of the documentary's episode three is "There Is a Policeman inside All Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed."

Believing in such human goodness, people at that time, as well as today in many bourgeois societies, were in dire search for the self. Along the way came the proliferation of the self-help industry and the number of psychologists who taught people that the first and foremost duty of each individual was to be true to oneself or activate their inner goodness, which, in Maslow's words, was "self-actualization."

NO Nature

After the Human Potential Movement, there emerged a new view on human nature, showcased by the EST Trainings. At the heart of those trainings was an interesting idea: After people went from layer to layer and reached the core of one's nature, they'd find out that there was actually no nature at all. In the middle of such emptiness, there should be enormous freedom - the freedom to create and to invent oneself. Well, it sounds pretty Marxist.

While the Human Potential Movement was political, the EST Trainings led to an individualistic and apolitical attitude. The former perceived that one couldn't transform himself without transforming society; whereas, the latter focused solely on the self - one could find ultimate freedom within himself. People thus started to think that without a fixed self, they could be anyone they wanted to be. Consumer goods, while previously mass-produced, now involved variety in order to augment everyone's individuality. The idea spanned from being whoever I wanted to be to buying whatever identity I wanted to buy.

Focus group, which had been ealier used to link products to consumers' inner drives, was now utilized to explore different ways to market to different segments because the no-nature viewpoint urged everyone to create, instead of searching for, something unique about themselves. How? By buying products that made them different from their peers. Further, focus group was used to study people's needs, giving businesses a hint of what they should produce. That people wanted individuality and non-conformity was no longer a problem to corporations. Instead, they started to go together because products became endless offerings which consumers could rely on to express their individuality.

*****

Since then, we've come to be familiar with the I-AM-ME generation, to which I'm extremely ALLERGIC. People have been so crazy about being different, being true to oneself, searching for one's self, et cetera and et cetera. I believe in both the essence and the existence; in other words, I trust that I was born with a certain nature, making me able to do a few things well and many others badly, but I also tell myself that spending my life search for my self, or any self, is the greatest waste of all and in fact a type of alienation, selfishness and locking myself in an unencumbered bubble. In addition to that, I have a leap of faith in the other position, or the first stand presented in this entry - I'm afraid that if there's a self to be actualized, I may come to know that at the core of me is wrongness, irrationality and cruelty.

It seems I'm a believer of all the three positions. Recently I heard something intriguing from Le Hoang, a renowned Vietnamese film director. His opinion resonates with the second stand, that is, humans by nature are good and loving. However, he might not agree with the followers of the Human Potential Movement, who encouraged everyone to freely express themselves. He thinks that human nature is good, but it's not enough for it to be revealed layer after layer. Apart from such a good nature, people need knowledge and rationality in order to act wisely. And thus we need education. Le Hoang is very much opposed to those crowds who promote loving each other but are naive or ignorant.

By the end of the day, it's hard to decide where I am in the discourse of human nature. Just several days ago, chi Van told me that Protestants believe in humility and that each of us is a sum of mere sins; whereas, Buddhism teaches its followers that we can be our own Buddha(s) and the right thing to do is just to be true to ourselves - we're all good people who can afford to express our true nature. Perhaps Freud and Reich - through the scientific path, and we - in many other ways, would just travel long and interesting journeys just to find our way back into religion.

So now, where do you stand? If you believe that we don't have any nature, you'll probably spend your life running around, trying out new things and thinking that you can learn to do anything you want. Yet, if you believe we have a nature, one that needs actualization, then you're running the risk of accepting there might be a negative and alienated you.

 

Time after time, Saigon's ached because of its lost sense of community. However, somewhere in Ward 11, District 5, people are celebrating a communal, sometimes spiritual, life thanks to the so-called remnants of the past, or its assembly halls.

These halls were originally built as representative offices of the Chinese coming to Vietnam for a living, each being managed by a particular group of ethic Chinese. Together they oversaw memorial houses, schools and theaters which were designed to serve the specific needs of Chinese people and those who wanted to learn about China's cultures. Today such institutions operate independently, but are still supported by the halls through donations. 

All of the assembly halls found in Ward 11, District 5 share a more or less similar style in terms of architecture. Dating back to as early as the 1700s, the halls are shaped like 国, a character that means "nation," perhaps telling us that while in Saigon, the Chinese still yearn for the love of their motherland. In the middle of every assembly hall lies a temple, whose both sides are connected with two small houses. Spacious and filled with the pleasant smell of incense, the temples change colors all the time, due to the sunlight shone through their heavenly wells - the wells from which we migh feel that the matter and the spirit are all but intertwined.

The locals have different ways of calling the halls. If one is famous for the god or goddess it worships, then it's referred to as "Temple." Whereas, if a hall focuses on secular activities, such as chess playing, information sharing and community gathering, then people call it by its full name, i.e. "Assembly Hall."

Many visitors find it a surprise that those Chinese halls do not serve Buddhist or any religious purposes. Instead, they worship Shen Xian, a group of Chinese figures who contributed to community development and passed away. At Quynh Phu Assembly Hall and Ba Temple, they venerate Ms. Tian Hou, or "the lady of the sea," who is said to help Chinese people have safe trips overseas. And just about a hundred meters from Ba Temple, on the same street named Nguyen Trai, is Ong Temple, where there is a grand shrine to Mr. Guan Gong, a symbol of the idealist and entrepreneurial, who - as the Chinese believe - makes their businesses a success.

How many assembly halls do the Vietnamese have? None. One might argue that we instead have cultural houses, parks, pagodas and so on. But they either are governed by the State or serve planned/staged events. But they're either noisy because of the cries, the market and the propaganda that make people so excited, or filled with lonesome feelings because each individual just does his part, leaving their souls disconnected. If only we had a park that's not commercialized, a square where spontaneous acts are permitted, and a place in which one could be at ease with himself and yet feel attached to a good larger than himself.

Amidst the alledged and silent hatred that Vietnamese people have towards the Chinese and of our unsettling dispute over the Spratly and Paracel islands, it would make one a fool if he said we need to learn from the Chinese. Yet it's true - more assembly halls could be a solution to the city's soul-ache. 

If you haven't been to the IDECAF Theater, which is part of the Institute for Cultural Exchange with France, then you should make time for watching a play at 28 Le Thanh Ton because it's one of the very few things which could be considered Saigon's authentic specialties.

In late 2010, IDECAF made an attempt to revive A Stolen Life, a drama originally written by Morimoto Kaoru (1992-1946  1912-1946). With the effort of Tran Minh Ngoc - who directed the play for the first time in Vietnam in the 1980s and other renowned Vietnamese artists, A Stolen Life has been performed twice a week at IDECAF.

Kei, born into a poor family, was adopted by the Tsutsumi family, which owned a big import-export business with China. Hardworking and innocent, Kei was loved by the family's two sons. When time was called for, their mother, Shizu, who was now a widow, asked Kei if she could marry her eldest child, Shintaro, and take over running their business. Kei nodded "Yes" although her only true love in life was Eiji, the younger son of the family. A nod that completely changed her life, making her the most powerful businesswoman in the area.

The more successful their business became, the more Kei was distanced from her husband, who was adept at Chinese and yet never showed any interest in trading with the Chinese. While Kei overcame her dumbness, mastering all the business skills and making bold claims on the political scene, Shintaro criticized her for not taking care of Chie, their daughter, and the family at large.

She was also criticized by Eiji, who had secretly supported the strikes against Japanese capitalists, including Kei and by extension, the Tsutsumis. With his love being denied, Eiji found refuge in the romance of Socialism and thought Japan, after the first Sino-Chinese war, must leave China. Kei, on the other hand, believed that the Chinese would be better off with the Japanese, and that the way she was running the Tsutsumi business or the way she was promoting Japan's interests in China, was not only necessary but also inevitable.

Chie, depressed and terrified by her mother's cold behaviors, ran away from Kei. Shintaro left Kei for a poor teaching career and came back home just to find himself dying in front of his wife. More sadly, Eiji was imprisoned by the Japanese police due to Kei's revelation of his involvement in the Chinese reisstance.

What's noticeable about the Vietnamese production of this play is that Kei is depicted contemplating her life amidst the Tsutsumis' fortune being destroyed due to Japan's defeat after the Second World War; whereas, in Morimoto Kaoru's original script, which was finished in February 1945, Kei is said to loathe herself when her neighborhood was celebrating Japan's victory at Pearl Harbor. Isn't it that the Vietnamese version tries to say Japan's involvement in China, and by implication - Kei's doing, was totally wrong? Does the Japanese version, when juxtaposing Kei's qualm and the Pearl Harbor victory, say "we won but we lost? In fact, professor Poulton (2011) posited that Kei is a metaphor for Imperial Japan, who thought she was protective towards others and later came to "an awareness of her own fatal flaws as a human being."

The three main characters represent different views on love for China. On the one hand, Kei believed China needed Japan's protection - "when you love something, take it with you," so to speak. On the other hand, Eiji was assertive that self-determination was essential to China's prosperity - "when you love something, just leave it there," as we say. None of them was right, according to Shintaro, because he saw the importance of mutual understanding - only cultural and traditional discourses between the two countries could resolve their conflicts. 

Who was right? "It depends" is a relativist and easy answer. It's only difficult to the people, Kei included, who take firm actions convincing themselves that they are right regardless of their fear of being wrong. And how can you confirm you're wrong when saying so risks indicating your country is wrong too? Or how could Kei accept Japan's mistake while all she'd been trying to do was not only expanding the Tsutsumis' business but also maximizing her country's benefit?

After all, one doesn't want to believe that either her race or she herself is weak. To feel strong, Kei had to tell herself that she had her own free will and must not blame anyone, "No one else chose this life for me. It's the road I chose to walk by myself." Nonetheless, somewhere in her mind, she also pretended that she'd tried the best she could, forcefully acting according to the predetermined situations; otherwise she would have chosen to fulfill her role as a mother, a wife and a sister who loved her brother-in-law. When you argue with yourself, jumping between free will and determinism, all you'll get is a vicious circle - strong and yet fuzzy.

We, part of the Vietnamese audience, applauded, shed a tear, and stayed there for five minutes hearing the song - sung by Thanh Loc (in the role of Shintaro) - fade out and seeing Le Khanh (as Kei) stand motionless perhaps because her soul had been stolen by Kei. 

Curiosity made its way to Saigon, attracting people to a smashing exhibition in Thien Son Plaza, district 7. "This kind of art is very popular in the West, but it's totally new to the Vietnamese audience." Such is an easy, and yet effective, way to introduce something "modern" in this country. People, young and old alike, enjoyed the exhibition, so much so that going to the plaza was temporarily not seen as a cult of consumerism, but an act of art lovers.

Although the pictures brought to us were based on "Trompe-l'œil" (Frech for "deceive the eye"), an art technique in which artists depict objects on a flat surface and they'll appear in three dimensions. Perhaps "Trompe-l'œil" is too difficult for Vietnamese people and "Trick the eye" is too long a phrase, so the organizers named the exhibition Trick eye Art. 

Hardly did anyone take photos of the so-called paintings themselves. Instead, we focused on our own image. "I must be included in the photos" appeared to be a rule - never written and yet agreed upon by all the art enthusiasts. To many of us, the origins of the paintings were irrelevant. And even when we could spot one or two pieces originally painted by famous artists and later recreated by someone behind the scenes, we didn't bother to criticize the distortion. Edvard Munch. Leonardo da Vinci. Who cares?

Thinking about the artists' intended meanings was a waste of time, firstly because we're all busy modern human beings and secondly because, in many cases, no meaning was intended at all. The familiar rules. The mundane rocks. What were you thinking when you painted a picture of a pizza, artist?

What emerged, however, was lots of creativity. Different viewers had different interpretations of the same paintings, as seen through how they posed for photos. "The author is dead" - you can say. In modern societies, only the author had the exact meaning of his artwork, although people may have understood it in a variety of ways. Under the postmodern condition, viewers can not only give meanings to paintings in whatever fashion they like, but also express them as they please.

All in all, the viewers' involvement was encouraged, utilized and maximized. It felt as if the traditional idea on beauty, i.e. loving an art piece because of its aesthetic qualities and the emotional/phenomenal reaction to the world that it creates, had gone forever, being replaced by utility, i.e. the fun that we had when making a silly pose, the photos that we could bring home, etc. Not all of the tickets were sold, but it definitely sold much better than any typical, free and open-to-all art exhibitions by Galerie Quynh, ZeroStation or San Art, because the best they can do with them is to take photos of the exhibits and engage in a conversation with the artists, whereas Trick eye Art gave you the enormous freedom to create new meanings, express yourself, and worry nothing about the artists, their contexts or their message to mankind.

Trick eye already came to town, while Santa Claus is yet to be seen. When he comes, let him know that we need another exciting thing - more fun, more popular, more Western and - again - totally new to the Vietnamese audience. 

I'm aware that whenever an experience is reported upon, its nature is lost. Yet, if we don't archive our lived experiences, they'll simply evaporate. Archiving, however inaccurate, provides the continuity needed to weave our past into our future, keeping our personal narratives going.

"... the old is interesting for only so long before it is remixed/revised to the new. Becoming old is a natural process and in that span, things are lost in order to make room for the new. Can the archeological/archival forgive or even encourage loss?" 

-- Streitmatter-Tran (2010)

So it was TEDxSaigon. We couldn't follow through with this event series and many said it was a failure. Nonetheless, as my deepest reflection goes, it was loved and will forever be so. It was the first time I'd ever navigated this city, through working with speakers, calling for sponsorship and getting to know credible, as well as incredible, people.

• Theme: Dream, Diversity & Development

Dear Idea,

My name is Saigon. I've grown up from war, and over the past decade, my economic growth has been quite compelling, compared with other cities in Vietnam, as well as neighboring countries.

Which is accompanied by increasing income inequalities, friction between consumption choices, difference in cultural identities, and loosened social ties. 

However, as a young, dynamic and highly resilient city, I know I'm not alone in the midst of those mega-city questions. I've seen a diversity of people coming here - Vietnamese from all parts of Vietnam, non-Vietnamese who have become my friends, and Viet Kieu who now understand me more than I do. Most of them meet at the on-going dream of development. They carry it out using their own expertise, be it architecture, education, social work, media, or music...

"We hope you'll continue this letter by participating in TEDxSaigon. [...] We invite you to think, take the opportunity to deliberate and collaborate with other prepared minds, and take actions on your dreams.

If all that is not persuasive enough, think of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem: no closed logical system can stand alone. Core to Saigon's culture is embracing your unique ideas and perspectives."

• People and Talks:
  • Mr. Truong Pham Hoai Chung and The Benefits of Liberal Arts Education: a Perspective
  • Dr. Lukas Parker and Looking beyond My Homes
  • Mr. Nacho Bui and Looking for My Vietnamese Soul
  • Mr. Krisztian Kelner and Revitalization Center in Kor-ker Global Village
  • Dr. Ngo Viet Nam Son and The Soul of a City
  • Ms. Dana Doan and Building a Strong Community, together
  • Mr. Richard Streitmatter-Tran and About Taste
    • Lucky we have a video.
  • Mr. Nguyen Huu Tri and Learn from War, Prosper in Peace
    • Well someone gave us another video.

K. Kelner tells us that all construction sites require the involvement of the people affected by them, which resonates with D. Doan's idea that community-based groups are best situated to understand their beneficiaries' problems. In addressing our community's needs, we oftentimes forget to identify or reach out to agencies, organizations and groups that are already working to meet these needs. Right - I think the most disempowering moment is when one has to do it all alone, feeling uncertain instead of seeing Nike's Just-Do-It spirit. 

Another interesting point, as D. Doan's train of thought goes, is that a company's progress is not measured by its top employees, but the pace of its weakest performers. I find it reassuring when L. Parker shares a similar remark (though in fact, his talk came before D. Doan's), citing Mahatma Gandhi: "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weast members." 

Coincidentally, those three people, out of the event's eight speakers, are all foreigners living in Vietnam. Isn't it true that when leave our home behind and come to a new land, we have a deeper understanding of community, of treating people with equal respect and dignity?

Perhaps gone are the days when we could have absolute belief in either free marker or egalitarianism. The media has repeatedly said - and I agree - that We're-All-In-This-Together. Entrepreneurial spirit should be encouraged, but more importantly, we've got to do it in a way that serves the common good. John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (1971), said it best when he put forward the idea that a just society is one in which:

• basic liberties, such as freedom of speech, assembly and personal property, must be ensured;
• there is equality of opportunity;
• and the talented, wealthy, etc must work towards the benefit of the least well-off (the difference principle).

Many people say that the difference principle is merely a tool to justify the inequalities generated by capitalism and is thus wrong. To me, such people have misinterpreted Rawls. The difference principle does not say "I'll get super-rich and work on my talent first. After that, I'll help others." Instead, this principle indicates individuals should develop his talent in a way that it'll simultaneously benefit him and his community. What is difficult, alas, is finding a niche in which you can further your inner strengths (how many people know what they are really good at?) and utilize them for a good lager than himself. 

After all, memories - when reflected upon - are to convince ourselves there's a better future to be lived. There's an ideal to be experienced. 

"Things are beautiful when viewed from a distance." That's what I've repeatedly heard from my circle of friends and what I myself have said several times. Stress usually leads to distress towards the world, one that never stops or slows down when little A feels dead, big B is angry, or stupid C is making the biggest mistake of his life. However, when I take a step back, having all the strain removed and instead looking at the moving world from a bubble's standpoint, things will become illuminating.

Just like the way it is now. Or is it?

I think I'm a pretty lucky person. Given that I believe in both existentialism and essentialism, with a dear inclination towards the former, I would still long for the path I've gone through, if I was asked to go back in time and draw up the most desirable life. I'm not destined to do social work, and thus I appreciate the fact that I was brought into contact with this sector in my early 20s.

What I regret, nonetheless, is that I was a modernist and sympathized strongly with the socialists, giving myself the illusion that it was both my duty and ability to help all, say "Yes" to all, and consequentially control all. The overall result, understandably, was screwing things up, just like the socialists promising an excellent welfare system and delivering a shortage economy. The modernist in me said that truth was my supreme master, and "preference" didn't exist in my vocabulary. In other words, I was totally against the idea that we could support cause A and ignore cause B just because we liked A. We had to, as the line of reasoning went, support whoever was in need. "To each according to his (whatever) needs," so to speak.

I was wrong, and yet I still take it as my responsibility to separate truths from mere preferences. If you listen to me, I'll say, "Don't give to causes that you like. Support the ones where you can make an impact." Why? First, there're high and low preferences, and having them control one's judgment makes him not only irrational but also selfish. Second, we're far from a post-scarcity society, and thus must think about efficiency even when we do something as emotion-rich as charity work. After all, we're born with limits, so we'd better uphold the endeavors which we really believe in and which allow us to leverage our expertise, relationships and resources. The trick, unfortunately, is we often don't know what we're good at and what we truly believe in. But, to mention a cliche, we'll never know until we try.

And now, let me try to examine whether caring about migrant workers is the right thing for me, given that they're the most vulnerable group in Saigon. In this master's thesis, the author fairly points out that there are few organizations in the city that address the chronic needs of migrant workers. The organizations working with this group, alas, are not effective enough, granted that Saigon's civil society is highly regulated by the state.

If we were not to look outside our comfort zone, we wouldn't know that, appallingly, one-third of children born to migrant workers are HIV positive. And should we keep staying in our bubble, we'll never know that about half of the migrant workers are denied resident ID cards, making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to fulfill basic needs, including employment, education, health and housing. Let's hope that the author is wrong, as he had access to a database of only 243 organizations. Let's hope he's wrong, as the method of one-on-one interviews wasn't justified. Let's say I'm not convinced that discrimination against migrant workers is unjust.

I can't feel the music of the following video. Yet I appreciate the effort of those who're good enough to empathize with people different from themselves. You're beautiful, Migrant Workers, when I see you from a distance.