Of course, these videos are no substitute for actually living in the Valley, but they each give an intimate picture of what happened. I’ll summarize each movie one by one.

I’ve listed the non-documentaries first (made by Hollywood) and then the documentaries in order of what time period they cover. So, the documentaries move from the 1950′s to now. This will be easier for you when you decide to watch them in order.

If you’d like to know how to find them online, you can buy them or there’s always torrents.

Non-Documentaries

These movies feature actors from Hollywood that portray the Silicon Valley. They’re good because they give you a very realistic and day-to-day picture of the most important events of the stories they tell. But they’re NOT documentaries.

Pirates of the Silicon Valley (1999)

If you’re too lazy to read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, Pirates is one of the best pictures of the early lives of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs you will find. It’s the story of the rise of the personal computer. You get to see how Bill Gates out-witted IBM and how Steve Jobs created the Macintosh team.

Although made in 1999, it’s still very applicable today. When the film was made, no one knew that Steve would come back and introduce the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. But it still gives one of the most compelling pictures of Steve and Bill in the early days.

The Social Network (2010)

Of course, this is the new hot movie of the startup industry. The movie paints the picture of how Mark Zuckerberg came to create Facebook back in his dorm room. How he outfoxes his friends, meets the creator of Napster and builds an empire in the Silicon Valley.

This is like “essential watching” for people who want to understand the early days of Facebook.

jOBS (2013) (unreleased and delayed)

This movie stars Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs. The movie’s unreleased so it’s actually hard to say what it’s all about but at least we’ll get to see more than what Pirates presents about Steve. But honestly, the most I learned about Apple was not reading about it in Walter Isaacson’s biography but in a book called Inside Apple. So we’ll see how good the movie is.

The Internship (2013) (also unreleased)

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in a comedy about two outdate businessmen who get into an internship at Google? Sounds hilarious.

With Hollywood making several films about the Silicon Valley, it’s clear that the Valley has taken hold over the world. Hollywood executives believe that viewers care enough to learn about Valley companies. And the TV Shows section only underlines this further.

Documentaries

Okay, so…seriously forget about the fictional movies up top. They do a good job of “Hollywood-izing” the Silicon Valley. But it’s the documentaries that have the real interviews with actual people in the industry.

Of course, documentaries have their own agenda, but they have more journalistic integrity than Hollywood movies.

Something Ventured (2011)

This is the most thorough documentary about the Silicon Valley. It’s told from the venture capitalist side. It follows the contributions of Arthur Rock and his venture capitalists buddies through the path of funding Fairchild Semiconductor, Atari, Intel, Cisco, Apple, and more.

The film goes into deep detail with interviews with all the most important CEO’s in the valley. It follows the story from the late 1950’s to today. In one movie, you get to see how the Silicon Valley started from one person all the way to the startup machine that it is today.

PBS’s Silicon Valley Experience (2013)

Just recently released, the Silicon Valley Experience is like a plugin to Something Ventured. It focuses very specifically on the very early 1950’s-1960’s Silicon Valley. It’s all about Robert Noyce, the Traitorous Eight and the early day of developing chips. The foundation of the Silicon Valley.

This is where you get to see how the Silicon Valley culture truly began.

Triumph Of The Nerds (1996)

Although the host is very nerdy, this is not a bad companion to Pirates of the Silicon Valley. Mainly because it has interviews with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniack, Steve Ballmer, and Paul Allen in the early days. The movie is in three segments and follows the battle between Apple and Microsoft, and ends with footage of Bill Gates doing a product launch event for Windows 95.

The movie gives you a very good idea of how Microsoft beat Apple in the 90’s. Like Pirates, Triumph of the Nerds also comes before the return of Steve Jobs.

Company Stories

For movies that cover the 1990’s onward, there’s more focus on individual companies. And that’s super cool. It’s very influenced by the Dot-com Bubble and there’s different lessons to be learned when looking closely at companies.

Startup.com (2001)

This movie focuses on the story of govWorks. It’s a company that was attempting to build an add-on service for citizens that wanted to pay their fines and bills easily. But the story isn’t about them, it’s about how to found and run a company.

The govWorks team makes so many interesting mistakes that are now essential lessons to learn before starting up in Silicon Valley today.

E-Dreams (2001)

E-Dreams is pretty similar to Startup.com, it follows another company destined for failure. This company has an even more interesting idea though: delivering products in under one hour. The company even got millions of dollars of investment from Amazon.

This movie outlines issues of scalability and especially takes a close look at how the Dot-com Bubble destroyed the hopes and dreams of companies.

The Pixar Story (2007)

Well, the late 1990’s wasn’t all bad. Those were the days when Pixar released Toy Story (1995), A Bug’s Life (1998), and Toy Story 2 (1999). Once again we get to see Steve Jobs in interview, but from the creative industries. And the best part? we get a close look at Jon Lasseter, his team and the early evolution of the one of the hippest tech startups.

This movie is a must-see for people in startup and who also love Pixar’s movies.

Control – Alt – Compete (2011)

And finally, Control-Alt-Compete, this movie is great for people interested in modern Silicon Valley. It takes you through the new hip industry that the Silicon Valley has turned into; where almost anybody can call themselves an entrepreneur and there’s a PR machine that churns out good and bad startups alike.

The movie follows several early stage entrepreneurs as they get prepared to pitch at various events like SXSW and DEMO. A prettying interesting peek into the hype machine.

TV Shows? WTF?!

Like I said earlier, Hollywood is starting its infatuation with the Valley, and major TV channels getting in the mix is only more evidence for that. So far, the TV shows are crap. But maybe journalistic integrity will prevail?

Start-Ups: Silicon Valley (2012) – this is a shitty TV show

I guess I had to mention this reality TV show. It’s not particularly insightful or anything, but it takes a funny look at some entrepreneurs who are trying to make it in the Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, it portrays the Valley as a place for rich college students to pretend to make it big. It’s bullshit.

Untitled Silicon Valley Project (2013 – unreleased)

HBO, possibly in response to the above mentioned TV show, is currently filming this TV show with Mike Judge, creator of Beavis and Butthead. I’m pretty confident that it will be a satire.

Honorable Mentions

These movies don’t really focus on startup. Revolution OS is more about how the FOSS (Free Open Source Software) movement began. Welcome to Macintosh is more about the culture that was created around Apple. There’s no interview with Steve Jobs in the Welcome to Macintosh movie, it’s more just for fanboys. It’s also made pretty early, so you don’t see the introduction of iPhone and and iPad.

Revolution OS (2001)

You get to see interviews with Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds and other significant people who built the FOSS movement to what it is today. Pretty cool if you love FOSS, Linux, and the idea of open source. In my opinion, FOSS is a really important movement and I really support. I used to use Ubuntu, after all.

Bonus! This movie also shows why Bill Gates is a dick about software. But, to be fair, it’s also how he developed such an empire.

Welcome to Macintosh (2008)

I don’t really like this movie. It’s just fanboys talking about Macintosh and how it affected their lives. For example, you get to see the guy who bought the first Apple II ever, and people who have been collecting Apple products for decades. Not particularly insightful but interesting for people interested in the Apple sub-culture.

Conclusion

Well, that’s it! If you think there are any movies or TV shows that I missed, please let me know by contacting me here.

The post The Best Movies About the Silicon Valley appeared first on Minh Oi!.

In 2010, my friend Hy and I went to the Malaysian Bloggers Conference, where we first met the awesome community of bloggers in Southeast Asia. It was awesome. Bloggers from all backgrounds: from travel to food to commercial to civil. The event spurred a dream that I packed away for later: to be paid to blog.

2011, And Bloggers Conference in Bali

In December 2011, I got an invite to go to a Bloggers Conference in Bali. At the time, I was Marketing Manager at Indochina Tourist & Trade, my boss was away, and I decided, “Fuck it, I’m just gonna go”. It was an abrupt and naive decision at the time, especially because I needed approval and because I do respect my boss a lot. Nevertheless, a free ticket to Bali and to hang out with bloggers across Southeast Asia? Honestly, how could I pass that up? It was once in a lifetime.

I mean, look at all of these faces. Honestly, in my life, I’ve only met a few hundred bloggers in Southeast Asia but my impression is that Southeast Asian bloggers are absolutely awesome. They’re smart, tech savvy, socially conscious, and extremely friendly. And I got to hang out with them for free!

On the plane ride back, Tai Tran and I got stuck in Kuala Lumpur because President Barack Obama’s plane flight delayed everybody else’s flight in Bali. Between naps waiting for the next flight back to Ho Chi Minh city, I wrote my letter of resignation.

2012, And Blogfest Asia in Siem Reap

By February 2012, I didn’t have a job. And I refused to get an office job. I was sick of it and I was determined to do whatever I wanted, whatever that was going to be: playing music, teaching, writing, theater, and event organizing. It was difficult. Most of the latter half of 2012, I was living day-to-day with just enough money to eat. But I was resolute.

By November 2012, the stars aligned again. Friends in Cambodia invited me to Blogfest Asia and I got sponsorship from SEAPA, who were absolutely gracious about supporting bloggers in Southeast Asia.

The event was a recharge for the ol’ 2010 dream. Southeast Asia is such a richly diverse place. We’ve got the largest Muslim nation in the world next to top third most populous Catholic state. We’ve got one party systems, multi-party systems, and monarchies. Each with its own language, and different types of scripts. It’s that kind of diversity that inspires such a rich regional blogosphere.

Enter Tech In Asia

Fast forward to December 2012. The determination to not get an office job was catching up to me. I was happy, but I was broke. And there’s two truths here: 1) being happy and broke is better than rich and unhappy. I meet way too many people who complain about their job depsite being paid $2,000 or more. 2) Being broke eventually leads to unhappiness. But eventually, if you’re brave, patient and focused, you can find the balance in between those two.

One of my favorite lessons from Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address, which I cry every time I watch, was that “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” That’s precisely what happened in 2012. I was event organizing and MC’ing in the technology scene, and blogging. All the dots were there.

That’s where timing comes in. Friends were introduced, emails were sent, and I got an interview with Tech In Asia. Within a week, I wrote my first article.

This year, I’m writing. I’m not poor. And I’m still doing what I want.

Shoutout to all my wonderful Southeast Asian friends who inspired me, and are totally absolutely stupendously fucking awesome.

The post Fuck It, I’m a Blogger appeared first on Minh Oi!.

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Bạn đến một cửa hàng ngay trung tâm của Sài Gòn và hiếm khi nào bạn chắn rằng những hàng hóa ở đây là hàng thật hay hàng nhái. Thực tế, các bạn đều biết rằng chúng không phải là hàng thật. Người dân Việt Nam lớn lên trong một thế giới toàn những hàng nhái. Họ chú ý đến điều đó.

Bạn đón ta-xi và người lái xe chở bạn đi sai đường chỉ để có thêm 50,000 vnd. Điều mà bạn thất bại trong việc ghi nhớ chính là một gia đình đã nuôi nấng anh ta với tư tưởng như thế.

Một gia đình Việt Kiều mở công việc kinh doanh trong thành phố và cho người cháu của họ làm kế toán. Một năm sau, người kế toán bỏ trốn cùng với tất cả số tiền. Có hàng ngàn lời đồn. Câu chuyện không hề mới và cũng không gây ngạc nhiên. Nó rất bình thường và không biết làm sao, gia đình bị đổ lỗi cho việc không chăm sóc và nuôi nấng đủ tốt.

Một nhóm bạn cùng nhau mở một trường mới. Họ không muốn chia sẽ chương trình giảng dạy với những giáo viên khác bởi vì họ sợ những người đó sẽ lấy cắp chương trình và tự mở trường để dạy. Mỗi trường đều hoạt động một cách riêng lẽ.

Một người bạn trai cũ theo dõi bạn gái cũ của anh ta. Đột nhập và email, Facebook và điện thoại của cô ấy. Có những dịch vụ chuyên làm những công việc như thế. Việc theo dõi được chấp nhận một cách kì quặc.

“Nhỏ Mà Có Võ” (tiếng anh viết là “small but has kung fu skills”) là một câu thường dùng để tán dương giá trị của những người nhỏ bé trong một tổ chức. Người giữ sổ sách dường như không có một quyền lực hữu hình nào trong tổ chức nhưng toàn bộ công ty sẽ tan rã nếu không có họ.

Một số doanh nghiệp trẻ phó thác cho một vài nhà đầu tư. Những người trẻ thì phấn khích, những nhà đầu tư thì thích thú. Một vài tháng sau, tiền vẫn chưa không quay về với những nhà doanh nghiệp trẻ, và bằng cách nào đó ý tưởng của họ đã xuất hiện trên thị trường. Họ không hiểu chuyện gì xảy ra ngoại trừ bài học: ngừng chia sẽ.

Trong một gia đình ở nước ngoài, con gái nuôi của một gia đình gọi cảnh sát đến để cô ta có thể chiếm công việc kinh doanh Phở của họ. Những sự kiện như thế không chỉ xảy ra ở Việt Nam.

Một bạn mở nhà hàng địa phương và thuê nhân viên mới. Anh ấy không chắc được thời gian mà nhân viên của anh ta ở lại và khi nào họ nghỉ việc. Việc thuê mướn nhân viên liên tục, theo một cách nào đó, là một tình trạng bất ổn.

Khóa cổ xe của bạn vì một ai đó sẽ lấy cắp nó.

Niềm tin đã đổ vỡ bởi vì sự vô đạo đức đã trở thành tiêu chuẩn. Nó đã được chấp nhận. Trong xã hội Việt Nam, thật là ngu ngốc nếu bạn không chuẩn bị cho những thái độ không đáng tin cậy của người khác. Bạn được dạy để không tin ai cả. Một trong những lời lăng mạ tàn nhẫn nhất trong xã hội Việt Nam là “mất dạy” (lost teaching) và theo một cách tế nhị hơn chính là “gia đình đã không dạy dỗ bạn đúng cách”. Làm một gia đình tốt là cả một nghệ thuật và khoa học. Vậy thì gia đình có phải là nguồn gốc của sự Khủng Hoảng Niềm Tin? Tóm lại, họ là những người bắt buộc những đứa trẻ của mình đi học và có những đứa con đã 28 tuổi đầu cả gái lẫn trai về nhà trước 10 giờ hoặc thậm chí 9 giờ tối. Thậm chí có những gia đình dạy cho con cái của họ cách để lừa gạt người khác Nó là một Orouboros (biểu tượng của sự tuần hoàn), trừ việc xã hội đang ăn “phân” của chính mình thay vì chỉ cắn đuôi.

Bây giờ tôi không chắc rằng gia đình có thật sự là nguồn gốc hay không. Tôi không chắc rằng sự khủng hoảng niềm tin thật sự đến sau sự xuất hiện của Mỹ và Pháp hoặc trước đó (đừng bắt tôi vì đây chỉ là một câu nói đùa). Tôi không chắc rằng có phải là do sự chấp nhận một cách rộng rãi và tính lãnh đạm của dân chúng, về mặt cơ bản đã cho phép điều đó xảy ra. Tôi cũng không chắc, đó có phải là sự bắt chước về mặt văn hoá giống như con thuyền trên dòng sông Mekong, nơi mà truyền thống đã thay đổi bộ mặt của con tàu và mọi người đều chấp nhận nó một cách nhanh chóng như những người khác. Sự giống nhau về mặt văn hóa đã tạo nên những con đường đầy những cửa hàng thừa thải. Thật ra, tôi có khuynh hướng nghĩ rằng nó đã tồn tại qua thời gian nhưng vẫn chưa trở thành một cuộc khủng hoảng cho đến khi gặp những nhu cầu của xã hội hiện đại. Đây là một cuộc khủng hoảng hiện tại bởi vì đó chính là thứ mà mọi người trong xã hội mong muốn.

Một vài người muốn một thứ gì đó mới mẻ, thành công, thực tế, và một chút Tây. Một số người lại kiên quyết bảo tồn những gì thuộc về người Việt (áo dài?! thật chứ?!). Một vài người thì muốn ném đi tất cả truyền thống của Việt Nam, trẻ em và cả nước dùng để tắm. Tất cả những yếu tố trên như cột sóng thuỷ triều va vào nhau tạo nên một viễn cảnh khủng hoảng niềm tin như hiện nay. Đây là một sự giao thoa một cách ngẫu nhiên giữa các giá trị. Những giá trị mới đan xen với những giá trị cũ xưa dẫn đến một kết cục mà ai cũng đoán trước được. Đây chỉ là một gợn sóng nhỏ mà chúng ta đang nhìn thấy trong xã hội Việt Nam hiện nay.

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You go to a local shop in downtown Saigon and you’re barely sure if the brands are authentic. In fact, you’re pretty sure they’re not. Vietnamese folk grew up in a world of fake brands. They’ve got an eye for it.

You take a taxi and the driver takes you for a ride down wrong streets for an extra 50,000 vnd. What you fail to remember is a family raised him with that kind of wit.

A Viet Kieu family opens up a business in the city and gets their cousin to be the accountant. One year later, the accountant runs away with all the dough. Thousands hear rumors. The story isn’t new and it’s not surprising. It’s normal and somehow the family is blamed for not being careful enough.

A group of colleagues get together to open a new school. They don’t want to share their curriculum with other teachers because they’re afraid people will steal their curriculum and start their own school. Each school takes its steps alone.

An ex-boyfriend spies on his ex-girlfriend. Hacking her email, facebook, and cellphone. There are services that help with this. Spying is oddly accepted.

“Nhỏ Mà Có Võ” (literally “small but has kung fu skills) is a famous phrase extolling the values of the little people in an organization. The bookkeeper’s got no visible power but without them the entire company would fall apart.

Some young entrepreneurs pitch to some investors. The young guys are excited, the investors are interested. A few months later money doesn’t go to the entrepreneurs and yet somehow their idea is on the market. They don’t know what hit them but the lesson is learned: stop sharing.

In a family in the States, the daughter-in-law calls the cops on her in-laws so she can take over their Phở business. Events like these don’t just happen in Vietnam.

A friend opens up a local restaurant and hires new staff. He’s never sure how long his staff will stay and when or if they’ll quit. Hiring is, in some ways, in a constant state of unease.

Lock the neck of your motorbike because somebody will steal it.

Trust has broken down because immorality is the norm. It’s accepted. In Vietnamese society you’re stupid if you don’t plan for the untrustworthy behavior of others. You’re taught to not trust others. One of the most cruel insults in Vietnamese society is “mất dạy” literally meaning “lost teaching” and more aptly “your parents didn’t teach you right”. Good parenting is a science and an art. So are parents where the Crisis of Trust begins? After all, these are the same people who force their kids to study and have 28-year-old sons and daughters come home before 10pm or even 9pm. These might even be the same parents that are teaching their children to cheat the system and/or other people. It’s an Orouboros, except the society is eating its own excrement instead of just biting its own tail.

Now I’m not sure if parenting is really the root. I’m not sure if this crisis of trust actually arrived after the American & French occupation or before (that’s a tongue-in-cheek-please-don’t-arrest-me comment). I’m not sure if it’s because there’s a broad-based acceptance and apathy that basically enables it. I’m not sure if it’s caused by the copycat culture as ancient as the boats on the Mekong delta where the tradition has been to change the painted faces of a boat as soon as someone else does. The same culture that breeds streets with redundant shops. Actually, I’m inclined to think that it has been around for ages but didn’t manifest as a crisis until the new needs of modern society arrived. It’s a crisis now because of what people want the society to be.

Some people want something new, successful, practical, and something Western. Some people are determined to preserve what is “Vietnamese” (an áo dại?! seriously?!). Some are eager to throw away Vietnamese culture altogether, the baby and the bathwater. All of these tidal forces sloshing up against each other possibly cause and certainly perpetuate the crisis of trust. It’s in the unseemly haphazard intersection of values. A new hurried modern value crisscrosses with an ancient value giving birth to a whole new predicament. This is only one of the rippling underpinnings we’re seeing today in modern Vietnam.

The post Vietnam’s Crisis of Trust appeared first on Minh Oi!.

I’ve been on Quora for over a year now and although I’ve started spending less time here, the main Top Stories Home Feed always provide something I’m completely shocked to know. One of the favorite things I’ve learned is that this guy exists in an answer to the question “What are the most gripping stories in human history?”:

A quote from the Quora answer via Wikipedia:

Dashrath Manjhi’s claim to fame has been the herculean task of single-handedly carving a 360-foot-long (110 m), 25-foot-high (7.6 m) and 30-foot-wide (9.1 m) road by cutting a mountain of Gehlour hills with a hammer, chisel and nails working day and night for 22 years from 1960 to 1982. This passage reduced the distance between Atri and Wazirganj blocks of Gaya district from 70 km to just 7 km.

The great thing about Quora is that the answers to various questions often give you very unexpected ideas and facts. Another one of my favorite quotes from a very long and illuminating Quora answer to the Question “What does it feel like to be the CEO of a Start-Up?”:

You have to be willing to sleep in your car and laugh about it. 

Quora also does a great job of organizing the content by Topic and interesting users. A few of the problems I see with Quora though is that most of the time most Answers get less than a 100 upvotes (Answers with the highest amount of votes go all the way into the thousands though), sometimes asking a Question takes a really long time to answer and/or costs a lot to ask in terms of Quora Credits, and search still needs some serious improvements. Despite the above issues, the Quora development team is really active and is constantly making deep improvements to the site (deep meaning they’re not just focusing on superficial UI design changes like Foursquare and its latest update to its mobile app) which always brings me back. It also must be noted that Quora is light years ahead of Yahoo Answers. If Yahoo Answers is flying to the other side of the earth than Quora is flying to the moon. At the same time, I did leave Quora for a month or so to spend more time at Reddit because…

Reddit is one of the biggest concentrations of active engaging communities on the web that I have found so far. (If you know a bigger and better one, please let me know!) Especially for specific topics that I really love. Quora is great because you can follow a Topic like “Philosophy” and see fascinating questions and answers about Philosophy from time to time but Reddit includes not just Questions and Answers but is highly emphasized on posting interesting links and thoughts followed heavily by fascinating Comments. In Quora, Answers are the main commodity. In Reddit, Comments are king, which means that conversations are king. In Quora, the community (via upvotes) pressures you to produce excellent Answers. In Reddit, the community (via upvotes) pressures you to produce excellent Comments. Both of these systems are pretty vicious. If you’re not witty enough, not well-researched enough, not thoughtful enough, you become irrelevant and ignored. On the other hand, if you provide words that have behind them experience and thoughtfulness, you’ll be handsomely rewarded. Therefore, in the world of Reddit, with Comments taking the mainstage and with well over 10 million users and more than 1 billion pageviews in a month (an answer I found on Quora via Googling) you can already tell that there’s a lot of Conversation going on at Reddit. But where Reddit excels is giving me fascinating new links and facts that I don’t find as quickly as on Quora. Quora Boards (a Quora built UI designed to allow people to share Links) is nothing compared to the Reddit Frontpage. For example, I follow the TIL subreddit, short for “Today I Learned”. Here’s a few headlines just for today:

• that a bottle of $1.99 wine, “Two Buck Chuck”, beat 2300 other wines to win the 28th Annual International Eastern Wine Competition
• irish people were also enslaved in the americas
• a technique called “circular breathing” allowed a saxophone player to hold an E-flat for 45 minutes and 47 seconds.
• that “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” is the first and ONLY fantasy film EVER to win an Academy Award for “Best Picture”.

Facebook, on the other hand, as people are so eager to compare the two so I must oblige, is an intellectual wasteland. It’s interesting to find out that your high school friends, college friends, work friends, acquaintances etc. don’t really want to engage in in-depth conversations about whatever topic it is. I’ve wondered if this is due to the people that I run into (most people aren’t really into science and lifestyle changes anyway) or because of the User Interface of facebook. Facebook itself encourages you to share about yourself…photos, links and what’s happening in your life, but if you post a philosophical query, the perception from the “community” (if we can call it that) is often just trite. Somehow, facebook does not encourage in-depth conversation. People don’t want to challenge themselves, challenge others, and challenge ideas on facebook. They want to go to “socialize”, and somehow facebook has hijacked “socialize” to mean photos, links, etc. I think facebook is amazing, this need to “socialize” is clearly a very important need since we humans are so intensely social. Unfortunately, Facebook’s mobile app sucks. Twitter has the simplicity thing down perfect and if only Facebook could somehow figure that one out.

After reading this Quora answer: Should Facebook be worried about Google+? I decided to give Google+ a second chance. And then nothing happened, haha. I’m still logging in from time to time to see what’s up but I still get the best stuff out of Reddit and Quora so why go to one other places for mediocre links?

Anyway, that’s my latest assessment on content in the social media sphere, do you guys know any other online communities out there?

EDIT: It seems there’s a new Social Media network for nerds on the up (they’re currently in beta) called Branch. I’ve only started playing with it today but so far the User Interface is really nice. We’ll see what happens when they go live and also develop a Mobile app.

I’ve also recently got into Stack Exchange but that’s pretty dominated by computer folks.

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This is a poetry reading I did from one of my absolute favorite poets: Cold Mountain. The event was called “Vita E La Morte”, themed around Death and Life. Really great performances and it was a privilege to share some Cold Mountain with people.

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Briefly speaking with Tomo Huynh on what US entrepreneurs can learn from Vietnam at BarcampSaigon for Tech Cocktail’s Vietnam start-up exposé.

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1. Nothing is as it seems – Vietnam, as many other Asian nations, is a world of appearances. That lady you meet down at the end of your block may smile every time she sees you, but the minute you walk around the corner, she’s talking about how your belly’s a lot bigger than it was a few months ago. You propose a new project to a bunch of Vietnamese people, and despite all the Yes’s you heard, nothing happens for months, making you wonder what those Yes’s really meant. Vietnam and its layers of culture and meaning make it a sometimes excruciating but fascinating onion to peel. I’m definitely still peeling.

2. Language is the key – Without Vietnamese language one’s understanding of Vietnamese culture just scratches the surface. But once you get the hang of it (which starts with the tones), it’s quite a ride. Vietnamese language, with its innuendos, puns, nuances, plays-on-words, spoonerisms, politenesses, coarseness, connection to old Chinese words, adoption of French and American vocabulary, and its ability for cussing people out (chửi thề) makes it the number one gate into the nitty gritty of Vietnamese culture and society, and the deeper you go, the greater the rewards. (How do you learn? Well, as most VNese people would say “get a girlfriend/boyfriend!”;-) I’m inclined to say, “get a job that forces you to think and use it”)

3. Pronouns – “How old are you?” is a common question that Vietnamese people ask because they want to know where they stand with a new person, and how they should act towards that new person. This system of politeness gets mind-bending! My grandfather’s older sister has great great grandkids (because her offspring all got married early) who call me great uncle Minh (Ông Minh). When I meet xe om drivers on the street, I often call them “Anh” (which means older brother), but they also call me “Anh” since we won’t have time to know each other’s ages we’ve made our polite formalities and placed the other person above ourselves semantically. Becoming more and more a part of and adept at this elaborate naming system punctuates an initiation into the rather familial atmosphere of Vietnamese society. It just feels different to call people by their proper pronouns. “Tính Tiền em ơi!”

4. North, South AND Central – The average tourist and/or ignorant American will come to Vietnam or speak of Vietnam as comprising of only the North and the South whereas every Vietnamese person knows that the imperial capital was in Huế, and that there are three dominant accents in Vietnamese language, not just two. There’s the lazy, rolling Southern style, the strict proper Northern style and the sweet but heavy Central style. Each adding their own panache to the Vietnamese language (and culture). Enjoying, or for that matter, understanding these three is a real art. Not to mention there’s no end to how many jokes there are that go across accents. (“Bạn có tới Vietnam đủ chưa?” is a classic Huế accent joke that plays on the word “đụ” (fuck) – “Have you had enough of Vietnam?” or with a Central accent, “Have you fucked in Vietnam yet?”) Also, getting familiar with these three regions is at least a 10-20 year project.

5. Cutting in line – Some people may disagree with me on this one, but…People interrupting your drinking table, cutting in line at the supermarket, zooming obnoxiously past on a motorbike, honking the horn just to get by, only staying until the final fight scene in a movie, taking off seat belts before the airplane fasten seat belt sign turns off etc. are a bit annoying at first but are part and parcel to general Vietnamese society. If you can’t learn to appreciate this, which sometimes manifests as a welcoming gesture to drink beer and other times as overbearing, you’ll probably leave Vietnam within months of your arrival. I’ve asked some of my close Vietnamese friends why this is the case, and they’re also perplexed by this counter-intuitive behavior. In a place where politeness towards strangers and elders is paramount it adds some perplexing flavor to Vietnam.

6. The countryside village mentality – The deeper you go into the countryside in Vietnam, the more contours you get to see of Vietnamese people and their natural welcoming attitude (among other things). When you go to a cafe alone with a book, the waiter just might ask you “Why are you lonely?” or “Where are your friends?”. These questions can be summed up with “Càng Đông Càng Vui” meaning “the more people there are the more fun there’ll be.” This mentality permeates Vietnam and makes up the fabric of every part of Vietnamese lifestyle.

7. Complicated past, seemingly hopeful present and an ambiguous future – The last hundred years in Vietnam has had the imperial court, colonialism, World War 2, capitalism (post-colonialism), communism, and a buregoning market economy, etc. (some of these things have come to haunt contemporary Vietnam). Vietnam’s present is characterized by (possibly naive) optimism, greater presence in the SEA region, wonderful FDI statistics, booming private sector, a catch-up public sector, among other things. But when we look at the future of Vietnam there’s so much going on I wonder what will happen…odd new policies, one step forward two steps back, makeshift infrastructure, huge amounts of money, fast food, new bridges, intense rapid progress in some areas and intense slowness in others….all this makes for an exciting unknown future. But as my Vietnamese drinking buddies in the Mekong say “Tomorrow never comes…”

8. The tool in front of you is the right tool – The other day I was driving on the street and came upon some construction workers that had stopped traffic. They had chained the back of a dirt truck up to a tractor and were trying to pull the tractor out of a pit. All the motorbikes on the street waited for 5+ minutes before the chain finally broke and the tractor fell back into the pit, we all sped off chuckling to ourselves, but knowing full well that these workers would probably come up with another idea and eventually get the tractor out of the pit, chain or no chain. Vietnamese problem solving consists of using what is around to squeak by a solution that lasts for that moment at most.

9. The traffic is a metaphor – Some advice on keeping up with Vietnamese traffic: be perceptive (look everywhere), be adaptable (to poor infrastructural circumstances), pay attention, be alert, react quickly, obey most of the rules and keep enough money in your pocket. Western traffic is usually more simple: turn on your left/right light signal, look both ways, drive in the lines, follow the lights, etc. Basically, in the West, just remember to follow the rules. In Vietnam, follow the rule of no rule, look for the easiest legal route and go for it. Vietnamese people seem to emulate the way their traffic looks. All the advice I listed above are equally applicable to everyday Vietnamese society.

10. Emotion vs. Logic – Some say Vietnamese education is a cause of many of the holes in Vietnamese logic but putting that aside, emotion still takes precedence over rationality in Vietnam despite education. I think this may be one part of why many Vietnamese Americans have culture shock when they go back to USA from visiting Vietnam. Upon landing back in the states people are struck by how physically and socially cold Americans are compared to Vietnamese people. When you leave Vietnam, those people that met you and became close to you let their emotions pour out and you realize why you love Vietnam, the people. Sometimes even Vietnamese acquaintances react with more feeling to your departure than your best friends!

11. Everyone is outside – It only takes a day to realize that everyone in the country spends more than 50% of their time outside, be it on motorbikes, on street side coffee-shops, at pubs, on their porches, etc. It makes you wonder sometimes if anybody’s working in this country, but it’s an extension of that “Càng Đông Càng Vui” mentality and the coffee break culture. It also makes everybody a spectator for motorbike accidents, street fights, etc.

12. Humility? – If you’ve been in Vietnam long enough you’ll probably know the meaning of “lemon question” or Chảnh (if you don’t know, ask your Vietnamese friends!). I think this new lingo is a modern manifestation of the Vietnamese sensitivity to humility. And although there’s an emphasis on the concept of humility, it doesn’t mean that people are actually so. A new acquaintance may meet you for the first time, and act all humble and polite with you, but it’s just for show. People may be so humble (or obsessed with the idea of humility) that they don’t believe they could ever be right (currently a problem in Vietnamese education). My new colleague asked me “Are you a good karaoke singer?”, I said “I don’t know.”, she said, “Ah, so that means you’re good.” If I had said “Yes”, she might say “Hehe, We’ll see.” The ins and outs of Vietnamese humility are hilarious.

13. Public vs. Private – As some of us may have all experienced, that classic barrage of Vietnamese questions: “How old are you?” “Are you single?” “How much do you make?” “What did your parents do?” etc. …some would get annoyed by the above, but the beauty of it is that it gets everything out in the open and is another manifestation of Vietnamese people’s need to know where they stand with you. Honestly, American privacy issues in the face of these questions stems from an obsession with the self and it makes sense that it would be challenged by a society that is obsessed with being connected and knowing one’s specific place in that society.

14. Red envelopes – I can’t talk about Vietnam being Vui without mentioning money in its most well known packaged form in VN. If you’ve been invited to a Vietnamese family’s Tet party, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. And if you’ve seen a circle of uncles, aunts, and grandparents getting well wishes from their nephews, nieces and grandchildren the chaotic schizophrenia that is Vietnamese society enters a calm familiar and familial quality that somehow synthesizes the essence of everything mentioned above and below.

15. Big circles run around the straight forward – Just as much as Vietnamese humility is complicated so is the Vietnamese way of expressing themselves. Ask a direct question about how to complete a task and they talk about how they came to be here, summing up everything that is not relevant to the question. Want to get something done, and you find yourself running around from one department to the next with no one taking the blame nor taking a risk. Some would say it’s a waste of time, but it’s definitely not a waste of Vietnamese time.

16. Mày – This word encapsulates so many of the coarse parts of Vietnamese society that I’ve come to love deeply. Mày is used to talk to dogs, to nephews, nieces, grandchildren, to cats, to your children, to strangers that you’ve met that are considerably younger than you and clearly more innocent and in a way to subtly insult them, to people you want to fight or kill, to brothers and sisters, and to best friends. It takes at least a year to get on the level where you’ll be calling your Vietnamese friends “mày” and vice versa. But once you’re there, it’s a closeness you’ll find once in a blue moon.

17. Đám – Vietnamese people love to party. They love to get together, talk, gossip, eat and drink, and there are so many reasons to do so. So it’s no surprise that Vietnamese people try to celebrate all the Western holidays in addition to their own. Not to mention all the “đám’s”: wedding, wedding anniversary, death anniversary, engagement party, funeral, festivals, and feasts. Do I even need to mention “đi bão” (to “go storming” through the streets to celebrate Vietnamese football victories) and “rửa” (to “wash” your new belongings with alcohol)?

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