Open Thread: Your Chance to Participate

This is a new feature: the open thread! Here you get to bring up your own topics and musings, initiate the conversation and generate your own discussions. This dialogue is open to non-Vietnamese topics so feel free to bring up others.

[before we begin: have you heard about our subscriber drive? win an iPod and other prizes!]

Is there something worth mentioning in current events? Something interesting happening locally? For instance, I just figured out that Macs have an innate ability to type Vietnamese. How come nobody tells me these things? (if you’re interested, here’s a walkthru)

Vui quá! (“Too much fun!”) or, as I’ve seen some kids online write… Vui wá (where is an incorrect spelling of quá, but it expresses the Southern Vietnamese dialect using English phonetics as there is no “W” in the Vietnamese alphabet). Enough rambling from me. What’s on your mind? Type into the reply box below.

And yes, I/we will be reading and responding our best to anyone who posts here.

–Julie Nguyen

Julie Nguyen likes toads a lot but only eats vegetables. She’s still wondering how she got picked up as a contributor on diaCRITICS. She enjoys drawing and creative writing, and has been self-educating herself on Vietnamese history, both the documented and the mythological, as well as improving her comprehension of the language so she can pass it on to her funny daughter. She resides in NYC.


8 COMMENTS

    • điều đó sẽ làm nhiều người vui lắm! just teasin’…well, half teasing anyways. i’ll stop now.

  1. As long as it takes you to write it and share it, BlogBlarg ^_^
    I’ll race you there, but first I have to move back to the NW. And it does get cold enough for snow in the mountains of VN (just google Sapa).
    And thank you.

  2. How long do you think it will take before there is a myth about the diaspora? I want to hear the story about how Au Co’s Cascadian (Washington) children see their breath in the morning though her original fifty never did. ( I assume it never gets cold enough in Vietnam to see your breath?) Love the beautiful illustrations, thanks!

    • The first time I saw my breath, before coming to the U.S., was when we took a family vacation to Da Lat, a region with temperate climate similar to that of the NW. Pine trees, fog, mists, even hydrangeas. Since Au Co lived on the mountains, I’m sure the original fifty saw their breaths.

  3. Cool! I always need recommendations!
    Amazon provides a sneak peek into this book if anyone else is interested. I like how it starts out by mixing story, prose, geography and history, and with nice pictures too… thanks for sharing this, Marcelino!

  4. Dear Julie,

    If you are interested in Vietnamese history, please let me advise you to read A Story Of Vietnam by Pr Truong Buu Lâm (my uncle, a retired professor from the university of Hawaii) published by Editions Thanh Cao, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2010.
    It’s very easy-reading but profound.
    Yours,
    Marcelino Truong from Paris, France

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