29 June, Mom's Birthday

Yesterday, 29 June, was Mom's birthday!! I called her twice, gave her best wishes, talked to her and made her laugh! I knew that she was happy!!!

But that's nothing! That's absolutely nothing comparing to my love to her and her love to me!!

Mom and dad have been struggling all their hard life to bring us the past, the present and the future. They have been spending every minute to take care of us, to teach us to distinguish the right and the wrong, to help us grow up physically and emotionally...

In many cases, people have to accept what their words could express and so do I. But I do wish I could have some way to let her know how much I love her!!! That's impossible. But that's also unnecessary! Because I believe that she knows how much I love her!!! Because she loves me!!

Mom, you have done enough for us! Take a rest and let us take care of you, let us make your life easier and cheerful!!!

Happy birthday to you, Mom!!!

Hurry Up, Man!

These're extremely busy days:

• Finish reading two papers to discuss tomorrow.
• Write a summary on Euclidean Steiner tree for Lauren, due on Friday.
• Write some more codes to continue the experiment on La Palma data, get the results, do comparisons and produce some comparative comments, together with some suitable pictures. This should be ready by next Wednesday.
  
• Discuss with Andreas to finish the abstract for Cambridge conference, due in next few days.
• Combine writings up to now, due in next two weeks.

Hmmmm, come on guy!! Come on!!!

@Update: Both the abstract for Cambridge and paragraphs for Lauren due tomorrow! Results on La Palma and the comparative diagram due next Monday, not Wednesday!! OMG, come on!!!

Who We Are?

We had a discussion on the question "Who We Are" in the first day of the trip to Lake District. Some people were tired after a long journey, so only 6 joint the conversation: Vera (UK), Gabor (Hungary), Kaba (Seria Lorne), Angela (UK), Lesley (UK) and me (Vietnam). Basically, we answered 4 questions in few words. Here are the questions and answers:

1. What are you good at?

• Kind, Calm, Friendly
• Patient, Will power, Understanding
• Friendly, Encouraging, Pottery
• Listening to people, Speaking languages, Taking an interest in many things
• Counting, Reading, Reasoning
  
• Friendly, Tall, Intelligent, Religiously minded
  

2. What are you bad at?

• Expressing ideas, Doing things that require too much physical strength, Playing guitar
• Accounts, Sport, Loosing weight
• Public speaking, Computers, Disagreeing (?) with people
• Bossy, Dishonest
• Practical things, Dealing with difficult emotional situations, Answering questions "on the spot"
• Cooking, Writing, Understanding myself
  

3. What are you?

• Sensitive, Caring, Try to lead the life guided by God
• Thoughtful, Worrier (?), People-oriented
• Traditional, Deep-hearted, Open-minded
• Respectful, Honest, Love for others (?), Godly
• Friends
• Polite, Sensitive, Friendly

4. What is the price of yourself?

• Priceless
  
• A dragon
• 1/5 billion
• I have a value because I was created by God to become who He wants me to be
• I am worth making people live happy lives/help to empower people
• To others and to God, I am priceless - sometimes I don't feel very valuable or worth much to myself (?)
  

Answers are in a mixed order and are not always clear since sometimes people (including me) don't really distinguish the questions very clearly, esp. Qs. 1 and Qs. 3. These answers could look funny but when you think that they come from people of different cultures, they would give you some ideas about who people are - a good guide to a very thoughtful and difficult question!

A note for family...

Dad, mom and sisters went to West Lake resort yesterday.

Planned many times and that was the first time being realised.

Swimming, water-sliding, and others were enjoyed. So happy listenning to dad and mom laughing.

Such a hard-working life, always be sacrificial, being worried much more than being happy...

How could I bring you more, and even more happy times?

Miss you all much...

PGR Day, 12 June 07

So it's called a day!

An excellent and useful day supported by such a hard-working day yesterday!!

It was so difficult to decide which content to put in the poster due to the limited space. There was a ridiculous problem setting the size of the slide but finally it was solved. The printer worked perfectly. The A1-sized poster was produced to a good scientific standard and very good aesthetic appearance!

Well organised meeting! Interesting talks and discussions! Good food and drinks! What more should one expect?!

Vote for a talk? Johann's.

Vote for a poster? Mine! :-D Actually, I like Costas's one since it was produced in LaTex! Well, I'd vote for him, not for me! ^_^



To see more photos, go to my Flickr corner.

Cheers.

Should developed countries be responsible for the world's poverty?

This was a part of the topic discussed in World Cafe three weeks ago. The other part was "if so, what would we [developed countries] do?". We sat around tables, making a big circle like King Arthur's knights did. There were "for" and "against" reasonings and the final voting resulted in "for" outnumbering both "against" and "ignore" ^_^. Belows are my arguments which develop into four aspects:

First, legally, there's NO obligations to make developed countries responsible for the world's poverty! Actually, if there were such an international law, it would be developed and agreed among rich countries who would not bind themselves into something that could be potentially troublesome to them!!

Historically, the development of rich countries was partly attained by exploiting the remaining bodies of the world, making these entities poorer and left behind. There was a time when Spanish and Portuguese ships kept coming to, mostly South, American and brought gold, silver, precious spicy,... back to Europe. There was a time when "the sun never set on the British Empire". There was a time when black slaves were brought to Europe, American to be sold and treated as animals. There was a time when the big closed China was divided like a cake by 8 western countries each of which had its own interests on the land of "the center of the world". There could be more, many more such examples to show how the development of some countries caused the poverty of the others. However, history is a sensitive issue. It's NOT really reasonable to ask current people in rich countries to be responsible for what their ancestors has done! It's also strange to me if someone said that I had to do some compensation because my grand-grand-grand-...-grand-grand-dad did something wrong. So, I'd not say that because of the events that happened in the past, developed countries HAVE to do something but because of those FACTS, they SHOULD think about doing something. Nevertheless, the discussion is about "should", not "have to".

(Source: http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/GlobalAffairs/)

My third argument comes from the view of humanity. There is a bundle of examples showing the inequality between the life of people in the western world and that of people in other area of the planet, especially in Africa. I did not collect facts and figures supporting this point but Justin had an extensive collection showing things like "the amount of money spent on perfume in 3 richest countries was enough to buy food for billion of starving people in Africa" or similar. As a human, it is really necessary to think about that, especially when you live very comfortably.

Finally, globalisation has been becoming an unavoidable trend. Investments are reaching to further corners of the world. Transportation is being expanded. Travellers are visitting places that they have never been to before. A stable and safe international environment is really important for all these purposes. And such an environment would be realised better if living standards were improved all around the world. Otherwise, environment has recently become a global interest: Forests are being cut pushing up the desertation, causing floods; global warming is melting ice in the two polars of the earth, increasing the sea level, threatening not only one country; etc. People in poor countries contribute a lot to destroying the environment but they are too busy seeking food so that they don't care about the surrounding trees and animals. However, they are not the only one who will be affected by the environmental consequences. Therefore, while helping poor countries get rid of the poverty, rich countries are also helping themselves.

So, 3/4 of my arguments lead to a "Yes" answer to the question raised in the title. Of course, how to handle the responsibilities is not simple and may make another piece of writing.

8 and 9 June 2007 - Party time

The last two days were full of parties ^_^!!!

First, it was the one with Tony and Indonesian fellows. The gathering was planned to be taken place in Tony's house but because of the changing weather, it was moved to the campus. Just met them once at Sugi's farewell party but I felt quite comfortable being among people. Tony was nice, of course, and he was the one who invited me to the. Everyone talked to him just like talking to an elder family member, respectfully and trustfully. I just now find that one of Tony's favorites is photography and he has a finely designed website here. Ima was like an elder sister of the Indonesian community and took care of almost everything: preparing food, giving speech :-D, taking photographs, etc. There were guests from Cambridge: Agi, Ade and another man to whom I talked in pleasure. Ade, Asim (a Malay guy, thanks Ade ;-) ) and I also had a funny discussion about planning the family perspective. Other people were also nice and even I couldn't remember all the names, I remembered almost all the faces ^_^. Photos will be posted once I got them from Ima. Now UPLOADED.

The other party was the one to say goodbye to Khiem to whom we played a wonderful match against Chinese guys. Taking place at Thang's house, the party was delayed due to an unexpected problem with his car and thus some ingredients for the food. I was hurry to get to the bus in the morning, so I didn't have my breakfast and was desperately hungry ^_^. But there was finally the second for us all (Thang - Thuy, Long, Hieu, Quynh - Ly, Khiem - Mai Anh and me) to raise the cups and say "Cheers" to our defender who would be drinking beer in Vietnam in a couple of days. Foods were absolutely delicious not just because they were prepared by our, or more exactly, Khiem's, great cook Mai Anh but also because most people were all hungry ^_^. The most impressive thing was "nước cà cuống" (Belostomatid essence) - a special liquid spicy extracted from a kind of small creatures found in Vietnam farms. I'm not too sure if such creatures could be found anywhere else in the world or if people there know how to squeeze the precious liquid from them. "Nước cà cuống" in the UK!! Just incredible!!!


We then spent the whole afternoon to talk about... everything. We went from a topic to one another: Photography, education, politics, life in the UK and things that we missed in Vietnam, etc. All people had their all experiences, examples and arguments, so the discussion was really nice and full of knowledge. By the way, Khiem took most of his time to sleep - he had to wakee up too early in the morning, and I spent some time to play with Jack - Phong's son, and Cyndrella - Thang's daughter. Having a child seemed to be sweet and it's even sweeter watching him or her playing around and laughing...


It was a cheerful weekend! The only pity was that I didn't have time to talk to my family and to you.

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7 June 2007, farewell football to Khiem

Khiem has been our team's defender for a long time and he has done the job very well. Not too tall, not too big but he is strong and solid as if he were made of steal. As an experienced player, he plays smartly and reliably: He does not blindly jump into the opponent's forward to be passed easily; instead, he waits and hinders the opponent calmly and tightly and is always ready to stop the ball at the very best moment. In case he is passed which does not usually happen, he follows the passing guy quickly and patiently and at the decided second, throws himself as an arrow to break the threat. I always like to watch him transform himself into a bullet like that. This style, naturally, is dangerous (I have to admit that I cannot employ that style in whatever situation ^_^) and sometimes causes injuries both for him and for the opponent. But well, it's football and players can get injuries everywhere on the ground.


The guy we are saying goodbye is also good at distributing the ball and support the attack. Having clever feet, he often does short- and middle-range co-ordinations to get rid of hamperers smartly to bring the ball forward, then either makes deadly passes for our forwards or shoots the ball himself. He has scored from such situations (unfortunately not today) several times but his favorite position is still the defense. He is the most reliable defender we Vietnamese students in Norwich have ever had.


A complete win against Chinese guys (12-5 or something like that after 2 hours :-D) who doubled us in the number of players was a great acknowledgement to him. Farewell, mate!!!

Cambridge and Ely, 3 June 2007

It was a very nice time to go out after several rainy days. There were too many things to see and talk about, so I'd choose one thing at each place to share here. If you'd like to see more photos from the trip, please visit my Flickr corner.

At Fritzwilliam museum, Cambridge, I took a photo combining two ideas in my mind: 1) It was several years ago when I was in Vietnam, I was relaxing myself in a silent corner in my favorite café, Báo (newspaper), when I noticed a group of friends. They seemed to be artists based on their appearance and the fact Báo was a popular meeting place for artists. They were talking to each others but a guy was looking around as if he was trying to find something. He took one of his shoes off, place it vertically, lying on a foot of the table nearby which looked quite funny. He then asked each of his friends to take off one shoe and place those shoes on the other sides of the table's foot - 4 sides, 4 shoes. Finally, he took a photo of the arrangement and them all laughed cheerfully with his work. I found the idea quite smart and funny and I remembered it from then. 2) The one-shoe image also reminds me of a poem learnt in high school. Actually, it was not taught but read to class by my favorite literature teacher. The poem was about a lonely left-foot shoe who was heartily waiting for the right one - an interesting implication of love. There came my own art below ^_^:

At Fritzwilliam museum, here come the right-foot shoe ^_^

At Ely, we visitors were all amazed by the great cathedral. Having visited Norwich cathedral and other churches several times, I still could not help myself impressed by the size, the architecture of the building. A local lady told us that the cathedral was first built more than 1000 years ago and had been being upgraded during the time. It was a big pity that the cathedral was closed when we came, so we could not explore its in detail. I believed that the two towers would be ideal places from which we could have a great view of the whole area. Oh yes, it should be mentioned that there was a large, ever-green park attached to the cathedral. The park would be excellent to accommodate visitors, give them somewhere to enjoy meals spiced with fresh air. Flowers were blooming all around the park, too.

Since the cathedral was too big, it could not be captured fully in one photo. Thus I had to be satisfied with a part of it which was taken when I was lying on the grass, trying to get the whole height of the front tower. And as you see, still only a part of the tower was captured. Believe me, it's much more exciting seeing the structure in your eyes than in my photo.

Part of the wonderful monster - the front tower of Ely cathedral

See you again, Ely...

My youngest sister Hằng's birthday

Happy birthday to you, my lovely sister!!!
Have a new age filled with cheerfulness and lucks...
Be strong physically and emotionally...
Attempt and success...
Be with me, as I'm always with you...

The boat and the sea

Xuân Quỳnh and her husband Lưu Quang Vũ were great poets of Vietnam (I don't really know much about Lưu Quang Vũ, who was also a popular drama writer having more than 50 works within 8 years). I love Xuân Quỳnh for the sweetly traditional femaleness in her poems. She loved. And love in her writings was so soft, realistic but not less romantic, always full of emotions. I love the way she used words, simple words to express a pure soul, fervent and ebullient but not less fervid and faithful.

It was the pudding & poetry night in World Café that I decided to translate a poem of Xuân Quỳnh. I wanted to choose a really good poem to present to people but had many difficulties making the decision because there were too many possibilities. Finally, thinking that love was one of the most common thing for all people around the world, I chose "Thuyền và biển" (The boat and the sea) almost immediately. In Vietnamese literature, especially in poetry, the image of "thuyền" (the boat) and "biển" (the sea) has long been used to express love in this or that way. And the work that I was going to exhibit was so famous that most Vietnamese people knew about it.

Their family: Lưu Quỳnh Thơ, Xuân Quỳnh, Lưu Quang Vũ, Lưu Minh Vũ

A remarkable feature of Vietnamese poems is that they are very harmonious, thus are easy to be transform to songs. Thanks to its greatness of that characteristic, "Thuyền và biển" has motivated two songs with its words altered minimally.

At that evening of 24 November 2006, I read the original poem, my translation and talked a few about the inspired songs. I would have sung the songs if I were not a little nervous :-D. And here is my translation with some minor adjustments, with my full respect to the author:

The boat and the sea
Xuan Quynh

Only the boat understands
How immense the sea is
Only the sea understands
Where the boat wants to be

On the day they don’t see each other
The sea misses the boat so much that its hairy waves are whiten
On the day the don’t see each other
The boat is as sad as if it were broken

Having to leave the boat,
The scean is sadly alone with its waves and winds
Having to leave you
I am alone with inner storms

Having to leave you,
I am alone with inner storms....

Translating the poem into English, I wish people to read it in the original form, to have a deeper feeling about a typical traditional Vietnamese woman soul.

Children’s Day - June 1, 2007

It’s the Children’s Day today - June 1, 2007 and we would go out together if I were at home. I would buy you a bunch of flowers and put it into a vase myself while you’d be looking at me, laughing when I did something stupid, and giving me some sweet award when I finished the job…. We would then go out to find something to eat. What would you like? Would it be fried shellfish (ốc xào) or grilled oyster (ngao nướng) or both of them? Or would it be a portioned meal in our favorite restaurant where I ate two single portions cheerfully :-D? Oh, I wish that I were at home to bring you to the Sword lake and enjoy the popular ice cream there. Whatever, we choose, I’d be happy to have it together since togetherness would be what we really want.

Ốc xào (Fried shelfish)

Having our stomach served :-D, would we wander around the city to get some fresh air? Would you hold me tightly and softly? Would we talk about some crazy things and laugh, and feel happy with all those small things? Would we stop by and take a corner on the side of the West lake to watch the water, the trees, the beautiful sunset and be together?!

Ngao nướng (Grilled oyster)

I wish that I could come back, even only for a while, with you!!!