Focused on the Future

The view from a Glass Egg office

It's pretty late and I'm exhausted, so today's going to be a short post; bear with me. We headed to UEF this morning for a lecture on Vietnamese history/culture and another language class. The lecture was fantastic and just so interesting!! I found myself wondering why I like European history so much if Asian history seems so much longer and more intricate. The guest lecturer was from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City and he actually reminded me a lot of my mom's siblings. Their mannerisms and way of speaking were SO similar. He spoke about the evolution of the different ethnic groups and the language through the various invasions from China, France, America, etc. Today was an especially interesting day for this lecture, as tensions are rising between Vietnam and China in the East Vietnamese/South China Sea (see this article). However, I found what he said about Vietnam and its animosity toward its past invaders very wise and accurate after being so welcomed by the Vietnamese people. He said, we cannot take into account past hate to make decisions for our future, otherwise we don't get anywhere. I know he meant this especially because Vietnam is a small country often threatened by large powers (China), but it's really true for real life. Was that getting too deep? Sorry, I'll keep it light.

After the lecture and class, we visited Glass Egg Digital Media, a Vietnam-based video game developer (outsourcing). They also will be launching a Southeast Asian Tinder and a couple of game apps within about a year. The culture there is really cool; it promotes a lot of creativity. It's also interesting because Glass Egg is the basically the first of its kind in the world and has been über successful.

Today was an awesome day food-wise, I ate both crocodile (tastes like chicken) and frog legs (also chicken). The seafood is great too, the squid and octopus tentacles are my favorite. A couple of us ate dinner at this barbecue street joint and I had the goat. It was tasty. That's all for today...