July 26, 2014...
Yesterday was full of joy. As a rule, I left my house, bicycled to the familiar bus stop and caught the bus number 15. I don't know what happened to its schedule, I remember one day before, this bus stopped at Long Bien terminal but ironically yesterday it didn't. After about 40 minutes on the bus, I realised there was something wrong with the route so I asked the bus conductor for sure and then I got off the bus. I found myself quite lucky as I met a kind taxi driver who showed me the way. After waiting for almost 10 minutes, I finally caught the right bus to get back Long Bien terminal and from there I went to Hang Than street to go to my English center on the bus number 31. I was almost half an hour late for the class and the teacher cracked a joke by saying that I must submit 5000 VND for each minute late. :D. Luckily, I didn't miss many contents and it was not until when I got there that the lesson really started. :D. After the class, I made up my mind to wander around Hoan Kiem Lake (Restored Sword Lake) with the intent of catching some foreigners to practice English with. I took all my courage to say 'Good afternoon" to a man sitting on a bench with a black girl. He said he comes from America and the girl from eslewhere I didn't remember as at that time, she was talking to a Vietnamese student who was looking for foreigners, just like me. He is an English teacher, an assistant, to be more precise in a Japan high school. He told me that Japanese students are not very interested in English, that they are rather good at reading, but feel afraid of speaking. Well, I suppose this is a common problem among all language leaners. :v. Also, he used to major in History in some university in America and once read a great deal of information regarding Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh and many other great figures but he liked Ho Chi Minh most. He also said that during the time he had spent in Hanoi, he didn't feel much the existence of "Communism" here by virtue of private businesses. Well, thanks to this conversation, I found out that European people think of "Communism or Socialism" as working and sharing together and countries with all state-owned companies. It's so interesting. And something else I discovered is that in the American education system, students are not taught much about Vietnam as well as all terrible things, sufferings American troops made the people to bear, it just mentions how bitterly the American military was beaten in the battlefield here. And it seems to me that people from European countries really know the problem of the present regime in my country which is corruption. They said that if corruption could be radically eliminated, Socialism would be a good political institution by virtue of the fact that there are almost no bomb threats, terrorists, uprisings, protesters and the like in socialist countries. To be honest, it is a little bit astonishing for me that all people I met said that they are not very contended with their political system (Capitalism). In the case of America, this teacher and another American girl I met on the bus yesterday said that both of the two parties namely the Republican and Democratic are much the same in essence. "Both always fight against each other, they always make lots of promises during the election campaigns but then they don't make things. Candidates get enormously financial support from figures in weapon and oil industries. As a result, after winning, they have to compensate these businesses by giving them more credit and ease so governors have not developed much green energy like solar, tidal, wind power." said the girl with the middle name "Rose" I talked with in the bus. To make matters worse, there still exists corruption in this system. Actually, I don't care much about the politics, and in my view whether it is socialism or capitalism doesn't matter as long as governments can give their citizens a prosperous life and ensure security, that's enough. :D. And something else I need to say that I hate some people who'd like to interfere with internal affairs of other countries. As I know, there are many people who always condemn Vietnamese government for violating liberty of conscience, liberty of the press and liberty of speech. I even feel sometimes the government is not tough enough to punish some betrayers of the country, good-for-nothing protesters who do nothing more than creating traffic jams and conveying a bad image of a peaceful country....From my experience, it seems to me that talking with people at the same age is so exciting and vivid because of their curiosity and friendliness. Last week, I had a chance to shoot the breeze with two girls from Scotland. They are both so young, cute and so enthusiastic to explain what I couldn't catch. Every now and then, they wrote down words I did not know, let's say "cathedral, National Health Service" and taught me how to pronounce names like "Edinburgh"...It was absolutely amazing. :))). The girl with the middle name "Rose" and the first name meaning "Blooming" I met in the bus yesterday was also so very cute. She admitted that she is a travel lover. She is at my age but she confided that she didn't perform very well at school so she made up her mind to work part-time so that she can afford her journeys instead of enrolling in a university or college. And after this trip, she's planning to work for non-profit organizations and she's totally partial to teaching mentally-retarded people. Wow, she must be so kind-hearted. :). When she asked me what job I'd like to work, I replied that I would love to work in an international auditing company although I know it's so far from my reach. And when I told her that I'm so passionate about English and often go to Hoan Kiem Lake to meet and talk with foreigners but sometimes I met someone who's not very interested in talking to me and they seemed to just want to focus on their own businesses, her facial expressions were so funny. She squeezed her voice to simulate a difficult visitor refusing to buy items offerred by the locals: "No, no I don't want to buy anything". It's so cute. :)). She also said that she would definitely come back to Vietnam some day and hope to see me again. We exchanged each other's email addresses and promised to keep contact. Well, actually, she's so sweet and open but I know the prospect of one day we'll meet again is so frail. :)). Oh, it doesn't matter, I will remember these valuable moments forever. :)).
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