Tuesday, May 15, 2012

This morning we had culture class at UEF. We learned about different religions, customs and beliefs in Vietnam. The most popular religion in Mahayana Buddhism, but there are also other sects of Buddhists as well as Christians, Muslims, and Hindus in Vietnam. There are four sacred animals that were worshipped in ancient times that appear in many works of Vietnamese art and architecture: the bat symbolizes happiness, the carp is for students since it turns into a dragon, the crane is the holy bird of the gods, and the tiger symbolizes strength and power and is believed to drive away demons. Furthermore, they believe that the human is composed of the physical body, soul, and sub-soul (or vía). After death, the vía disappears shortly and the physical body decays, but the soul lives on forever. A man has 3 souls and 7 vía while a woman has 3 souls and 9 vía.

Afterwards, we had language class. Today we learned some more conversational phrases such as, “Where are you from?”, “Where do you live?”, “What are you doing?”, and “Where are you going?” as well as various responses to these questions. We had lunch at the Canteen.

In the afternoon, we visited Glass Egg Digital Media. Glass Egg is a 13 year old company that is responsible for video game production, including the game coding/programming. They have a staff of 189 people and 35 trainees. The company was started by Morgan Interactive and now services companies such as Codemasters, Microsoft Game Studios, Activision, Infogrames, and Electronic Arts. Their principle videogames are car games, including the “Driver” series. Glass Egg was responsible for the videogame art and graphic design of the games. The CEO of Glass Egg, Phil Tran, had a similar story to that of Ascenx’s Tung Bach. Mr. Tran’s great-grandfather was a successful developer in North Vietnam that worked on building railroads and other infrastructure. His family was forced to flee to the South during the rise of communism in the North. Mr. Tran left for California at 12 years old in 1975, went to college there, and then returned to Vietnam in 1994 when the U.S. embargo was lifted. Glass Egg also owns a night club called Lush that we actually had checked out Saturday night.

For dinner, we went to a street vendor. It surprisingly was a sit-down place that had waiters and waitresses. Apparently, years ago the food was sold along the side of the street, but as the city became more modernized, the street vendors turned into restaurants. We ate chicken and sticky rice, which was very good. Afterwards, we went to the New York Dessert Café, where we got cheesecake that was delicious. Then, we walked over to the mall across the street and just did a little bit of window shopping. The prices there were comparable to the prices in the U.S. At night, we went to Lush. The people we met with at Glass Egg called the club and reserved us a VIP table there. It was ladies’ night, so girls could drink most drinks for free until midnight. We all had a really fun time.