Starting a Business / Guest Blogger, Lisa Kaiser
We're starting a business! When we were thinking about coming to Vietnam, someone, I'm not sure who, maybe Otto from Prescott, it certainly sounds like something he would say, told us just to tell people we were going to Vietnam and it would happen. He was right.
So: we're starting a business. We've been talking about it for a while; well, Hoa, especially, has been talking about it for a while. We're going to start a business teaching English for the workplace. Probably most of the classes will be held at the offices of the companies that hire us. So we will not need classrooms of our own, and we should be able to keep overhead low. We decided that working for other people teaching English was never going to make us much money and would become a little boring pretty quickly. So, here in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, we have decided to start profitting from the labor of others by getting contracts with the businesses and hiring other teachers to do at least some of the teaching. We may begin by focusing on hotels and restaurants; Hoa has already been meeting with people at one of the biggest and most succesful coffee house chains in Vietnam.
My role: being the white face of the business, which is important in Vietnam, especially for English training. I am perfectly capable of fulfilling this role, although I really should buy some nicer clothes to make people think I'm a responsible, professional adult. I'm also the "big picture" and "idea" guy. I have already come up with, within seconds of being asked by Hoa, a terrific name for the business. (This will have to remain a secret until we have our business license.)
Hoa's role: everything else, including all the real work. I'm just kidding of course. But developing curricula is obviously something she is much better qualified and better able to do than I and is something that needs to be done immediately. So this will be one of her priorities.
We welcome advice from all of you. Neither of us has ever started a business before. But we really think this should be a relatively easy, low start-up cost business to get into. And it could be pretty lucrative. That fact that Hoa is considered "overseas Vietnamese" (and therefore subject to some preferential treatment over other foreigners by the government), that I am more obviously a native speaker of English, and that we both speak some Vietnamese (Hoa quite a bit) all should help us get this going.
I'm still enjoying teaching at the university. We've really had some interesting discussions about environmental ethics (and ethics in general) and utilitarianism and animal rights, among other things. Today we talked in one of the sections about "lifestyle choices" to protect the environment, which is discussed in the book. The idea, for example, that someone who can afford a car or motorcycle might choose to ride a bike out of concern for the environment was entirely foreign to them. Right now, the vast majority of Vietnamese are understandably concerned with improving their material standard of living, but soon many will reach a standard of living at which they may begin to think more seriously about improving their quality of life. Actually I was suprised to hear that most of my students think that the average resident of HCMC has adequate housing that satisfies their "needs" and that increasing the standard of housing would be fulfilling a "want." I suspect they may be overestimating the standard of living of the "average" person and may be assuming that they are average when really their standard of living is far above average. Anyway, it's certainly interesting for me to be talking to students in the developing world about issues like this. We've also discussed recently Utilitarian arguments for considering the "non-human" great apes (as the animal rights people describe them, in a scientifically accurate way it seems to me) -- chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans -- to have the rights to life and liberty and for the middle-class and wealthier people in the developed world to donate substantial portions of their incomes to charities providing the necessities to the poorest people of the developing world. (If you're curious there are articles by Peter Singer about these topics at www.project-syndicate.org) I'm surprised that most of the students seem to agree with ideas like these, or at least with ideas such as animal rights. I expected that people in the developing world would think it's a waste of time to be concerned about animals when there is so much human suffering in the world.
I also usually enjoy teaching at the language center, but, for some reason, I don't really look forward to it the way I look forward to teaching the class at the university. I probably won't continue there too much longer, but we're pretty darn cash-poor right now so I should continue for a while I suppose. Although I won't be able to continue there beyond about a month and a half anyway, because I only have three months from when I began there to get a TESL certificate of some kind, which I'm not going to do. I originally told the people at my language center I couldn't work beyond mid-July (because of the university position), so they shouldn't be surprised. In the fall I probably will get more hours at the university.
That's enough for now.
Now, here's our guest blogger, Lisa Kaiser who, with her husband David, recently visted us here in Vietnam:
"Reflections on trip to Vietnam David and Lisa Kaiser took from 7/14-7/22
Hoa's parents and several folks in Prescott have asked me to urge Hoa and Tom to update their articulate and exciting BLOG. Inquiring minds wanna know what's the "haps" in Vietnam. With that in mind, I promised Hoa I would compose an entry on my reflections of a trip David and I took last week to see Hoa and Tom in Vietnam. Here we go . . . . . . . . . . . .
We arrived in steamy Ho Chi Min City late Friday night, July 14th (late as in late at night, and our flight was also late-- it must have been around 10:45 pm). Tom picked us up and took us to a guest house within hundreds of yards to his and Hoa's new apartment, where they had only lived a week or so. The couple who owned the home Ms. Loan and Mr. Thang Loi, were extremely gracious and kind. Mr. Thang Loi spoke 5 languages, including some English (thank goodness!), and at 15 yrs of age fought in the Cambodian Revolution. He had 4 children, two of whom had recently lived, studied, and worked abroad, but were home for the summer.
While Hoa was gone on business-- presentating and training teachers on English instruction in the classroom, Tom met us in the afternoons between his teaching gigs and we ate well at side street mom and pop places and a restaurant near the tourist district. Man-- the blends of lemongrass, cilantro, beef and noodles still make my mouth water. David asked that I get a Vietnamese cook book immediately--'cause he's already missing the food. This will come as a surprise to Hoa, who took offense at David's ordering a steak and fries in Da Nang, our second to last day in Vietmam (SMILE!)
Tom also took us to some contemporary gallery spaces. One in particular exhitited a retrospective of this amazing contemporary Vietnamese painter, draftsman, pastel artist-- who created eloquent figure studies w/ Sumi-e ink on rice paper, and equally beautiful seascapes in watercolor and pastel-- really reflective!
It is worth noting that Tom is darn proficient in Vietnamese! His intonations sounded "dead on" to me, and more importantly, folks seem to understand him just fine. He claims however that he speaks better than he comprehends others when they speak.
Juggling two part-time jobs~ teaching youth English, and an environmental ethics class with adults, Tom has his hands full but is seemingly energized by the students, content, and challenge of career change. Hopefully, Tom and Hoa's respective new jobs and schedules will allow them to do some more traveling in Vietnam, it is quite a LOOOOOONG country, and so much to see in the way of diverse terrain, architecture, people/cultures, etc. as we found in the short time we were there.
The evening before we took off to hither and hon to explore other parts of southern and central Vietnam, Hoa and Tom took us out to this smokin' (literally and figuratively) restaurant, that specialized in goat. One of Hoa's cousins and another cousin's girlfriend, Mariko-san from Japan, and Tracy and Maggie from China all came and we shared a nice big table together. The food was of course, to die for! Afterward, we went to a sophisticated and saavy cafe for tea and coffee, and said good-bye to Tom for the remainder of the week. The next day, Our close friend and expert tour-guide Hoa took us to many a town and village in southern/central Vietman requiring-- motorbikes, boats, trains, buses, and even an airplane ride back from Da Nang to Ho Chi Min City on our last day. I tell ya, Hoa's skills in managing multiple tasks, destinations and people have only become more refined since her arrival to Vietnam.
Our first excursion out of Ho Chi Min City entailed a 6-hour bus ride to Nha Trang, in which David sat several rows behind Hoa and I. While Hoa slept, I watched a pretty surreal and fairly bizarre film which I'll affectionately refer to as Mechanical Girl. While I could NOT understand the dialogue as subtitled text was in Chinese characters, and verbal sound was dubbed in Vietnamese, the springs that would pop out of mechanical girl's hands prior to putting her boyfriend in the dryer were pretty innovative (SMILE!). Now whenever David does something I don't like, I threaten to "turn Mechanical Girl on him".
Arriving at Nha Trang close to midnight, we strolled on the beach, and were invited to join a circle of 20 year old college students/waiters and waitresses in the sand for a mini party. We all shared a "wine" made of liquor and punch from a Heinneken (SP?) bucket with several straws. These young men and women were soooooo sweet. They shared some fruits and dried squid with us, inquired about our stay, and where we were from. We sang a little, and prior to our leaving, I was donned with a grapefruit skin hat-- no joke, the grapefruits are sooooooo huge there, the peeled skin was even large enough to fit my bobble head!!!! The following day, we rented motorcylcles, drove out to some amazing cascades, Buddist temples, and then went to and art museum that featured both ancient works of the Champa people, a group of people who live in Vietnam of Malaysian and Chinese ancestory, as well as a contemporary sculptor whose work is influenced by the Champa. The Terra-Cotta fired pieces of women, children and family were really fun, engaging, friendly, and had incredible form! The prices were extremely low by our standards, and Hoa had her eye on a couple, just in case she and Tom move into a bigger place. That evening we ate at a Turkish restaurant, with sexy waterpipes that you can smoke tobacco from. The Turkish owner spoke of commonalities between Turkey and Vietnam in terms of celebrations, and histories of rebellion and self-defense for autonomy from outside powers. Hoa, of course interpreted a great deal for us, and got us to many a destination safely. We also travelled on a small tour boat with folks from Vietnam, Taiwan, Australia and Canada. The 20-something tour guide referred to Hoa as his little sister. Several folks thought David and I were Hoa's parents, probably 'cause we look so much alike (psyche! I wish). This small electric blue wooden boat, not only had charm, but had a rock band too. The tour guide was the lead singer and knew songs in Vietnamese, Spanish and English, and the cooks and captain played electric guitar and drums made out of large plastic containers tied together with rope. The bench seats we were sitting on were folded down flat for the stage! I loved it- it was my favorite part of the boat ride! If that wasn't enough, the boat stopped at beaches, aquariums, etc. David's favorite part about Nha Trang was meeting an internationally renowned photographer whose work was breathtaking!!!! Thank goodness for Hoa, who engaged the photographer in conversation for a good half hour. This man was not only a talented artist, but a GREAT storyteller, and extremely personable! David bought a print of his entitled "Raining", and yes, we will no doubt have to take down one of my paintings to hang his print up (SMILE!)"
LISA KAISER
TO BE CONTINUED
PS
To: Hoa's Mom, Me Huong:
From: Tom
Co Lisa da viet den de nuong. Co de nuong o "SF Bay Area" khong? Khi chung con di ve my, se rat nho di an de nuong vi di an de nuong vui lam, ngon lam. Hien nay tuan nao chung con cung di an de nuong. Con xin loi chua biet dung "Viet Key" de viet bang tieng viet dung.
So: we're starting a business. We've been talking about it for a while; well, Hoa, especially, has been talking about it for a while. We're going to start a business teaching English for the workplace. Probably most of the classes will be held at the offices of the companies that hire us. So we will not need classrooms of our own, and we should be able to keep overhead low. We decided that working for other people teaching English was never going to make us much money and would become a little boring pretty quickly. So, here in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, we have decided to start profitting from the labor of others by getting contracts with the businesses and hiring other teachers to do at least some of the teaching. We may begin by focusing on hotels and restaurants; Hoa has already been meeting with people at one of the biggest and most succesful coffee house chains in Vietnam.
My role: being the white face of the business, which is important in Vietnam, especially for English training. I am perfectly capable of fulfilling this role, although I really should buy some nicer clothes to make people think I'm a responsible, professional adult. I'm also the "big picture" and "idea" guy. I have already come up with, within seconds of being asked by Hoa, a terrific name for the business. (This will have to remain a secret until we have our business license.)
Hoa's role: everything else, including all the real work. I'm just kidding of course. But developing curricula is obviously something she is much better qualified and better able to do than I and is something that needs to be done immediately. So this will be one of her priorities.
We welcome advice from all of you. Neither of us has ever started a business before. But we really think this should be a relatively easy, low start-up cost business to get into. And it could be pretty lucrative. That fact that Hoa is considered "overseas Vietnamese" (and therefore subject to some preferential treatment over other foreigners by the government), that I am more obviously a native speaker of English, and that we both speak some Vietnamese (Hoa quite a bit) all should help us get this going.
I'm still enjoying teaching at the university. We've really had some interesting discussions about environmental ethics (and ethics in general) and utilitarianism and animal rights, among other things. Today we talked in one of the sections about "lifestyle choices" to protect the environment, which is discussed in the book. The idea, for example, that someone who can afford a car or motorcycle might choose to ride a bike out of concern for the environment was entirely foreign to them. Right now, the vast majority of Vietnamese are understandably concerned with improving their material standard of living, but soon many will reach a standard of living at which they may begin to think more seriously about improving their quality of life. Actually I was suprised to hear that most of my students think that the average resident of HCMC has adequate housing that satisfies their "needs" and that increasing the standard of housing would be fulfilling a "want." I suspect they may be overestimating the standard of living of the "average" person and may be assuming that they are average when really their standard of living is far above average. Anyway, it's certainly interesting for me to be talking to students in the developing world about issues like this. We've also discussed recently Utilitarian arguments for considering the "non-human" great apes (as the animal rights people describe them, in a scientifically accurate way it seems to me) -- chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans -- to have the rights to life and liberty and for the middle-class and wealthier people in the developed world to donate substantial portions of their incomes to charities providing the necessities to the poorest people of the developing world. (If you're curious there are articles by Peter Singer about these topics at www.project-syndicate.org) I'm surprised that most of the students seem to agree with ideas like these, or at least with ideas such as animal rights. I expected that people in the developing world would think it's a waste of time to be concerned about animals when there is so much human suffering in the world.
I also usually enjoy teaching at the language center, but, for some reason, I don't really look forward to it the way I look forward to teaching the class at the university. I probably won't continue there too much longer, but we're pretty darn cash-poor right now so I should continue for a while I suppose. Although I won't be able to continue there beyond about a month and a half anyway, because I only have three months from when I began there to get a TESL certificate of some kind, which I'm not going to do. I originally told the people at my language center I couldn't work beyond mid-July (because of the university position), so they shouldn't be surprised. In the fall I probably will get more hours at the university.
That's enough for now.
Now, here's our guest blogger, Lisa Kaiser who, with her husband David, recently visted us here in Vietnam:
"Reflections on trip to Vietnam David and Lisa Kaiser took from 7/14-7/22
Hoa's parents and several folks in Prescott have asked me to urge Hoa and Tom to update their articulate and exciting BLOG. Inquiring minds wanna know what's the "haps" in Vietnam. With that in mind, I promised Hoa I would compose an entry on my reflections of a trip David and I took last week to see Hoa and Tom in Vietnam. Here we go . . . . . . . . . . . .
We arrived in steamy Ho Chi Min City late Friday night, July 14th (late as in late at night, and our flight was also late-- it must have been around 10:45 pm). Tom picked us up and took us to a guest house within hundreds of yards to his and Hoa's new apartment, where they had only lived a week or so. The couple who owned the home Ms. Loan and Mr. Thang Loi, were extremely gracious and kind. Mr. Thang Loi spoke 5 languages, including some English (thank goodness!), and at 15 yrs of age fought in the Cambodian Revolution. He had 4 children, two of whom had recently lived, studied, and worked abroad, but were home for the summer.
While Hoa was gone on business-- presentating and training teachers on English instruction in the classroom, Tom met us in the afternoons between his teaching gigs and we ate well at side street mom and pop places and a restaurant near the tourist district. Man-- the blends of lemongrass, cilantro, beef and noodles still make my mouth water. David asked that I get a Vietnamese cook book immediately--'cause he's already missing the food. This will come as a surprise to Hoa, who took offense at David's ordering a steak and fries in Da Nang, our second to last day in Vietmam (SMILE!)
Tom also took us to some contemporary gallery spaces. One in particular exhitited a retrospective of this amazing contemporary Vietnamese painter, draftsman, pastel artist-- who created eloquent figure studies w/ Sumi-e ink on rice paper, and equally beautiful seascapes in watercolor and pastel-- really reflective!
It is worth noting that Tom is darn proficient in Vietnamese! His intonations sounded "dead on" to me, and more importantly, folks seem to understand him just fine. He claims however that he speaks better than he comprehends others when they speak.
Juggling two part-time jobs~ teaching youth English, and an environmental ethics class with adults, Tom has his hands full but is seemingly energized by the students, content, and challenge of career change. Hopefully, Tom and Hoa's respective new jobs and schedules will allow them to do some more traveling in Vietnam, it is quite a LOOOOOONG country, and so much to see in the way of diverse terrain, architecture, people/cultures, etc. as we found in the short time we were there.
The evening before we took off to hither and hon to explore other parts of southern and central Vietnam, Hoa and Tom took us out to this smokin' (literally and figuratively) restaurant, that specialized in goat. One of Hoa's cousins and another cousin's girlfriend, Mariko-san from Japan, and Tracy and Maggie from China all came and we shared a nice big table together. The food was of course, to die for! Afterward, we went to a sophisticated and saavy cafe for tea and coffee, and said good-bye to Tom for the remainder of the week. The next day, Our close friend and expert tour-guide Hoa took us to many a town and village in southern/central Vietman requiring-- motorbikes, boats, trains, buses, and even an airplane ride back from Da Nang to Ho Chi Min City on our last day. I tell ya, Hoa's skills in managing multiple tasks, destinations and people have only become more refined since her arrival to Vietnam.
Our first excursion out of Ho Chi Min City entailed a 6-hour bus ride to Nha Trang, in which David sat several rows behind Hoa and I. While Hoa slept, I watched a pretty surreal and fairly bizarre film which I'll affectionately refer to as Mechanical Girl. While I could NOT understand the dialogue as subtitled text was in Chinese characters, and verbal sound was dubbed in Vietnamese, the springs that would pop out of mechanical girl's hands prior to putting her boyfriend in the dryer were pretty innovative (SMILE!). Now whenever David does something I don't like, I threaten to "turn Mechanical Girl on him".
Arriving at Nha Trang close to midnight, we strolled on the beach, and were invited to join a circle of 20 year old college students/waiters and waitresses in the sand for a mini party. We all shared a "wine" made of liquor and punch from a Heinneken (SP?) bucket with several straws. These young men and women were soooooo sweet. They shared some fruits and dried squid with us, inquired about our stay, and where we were from. We sang a little, and prior to our leaving, I was donned with a grapefruit skin hat-- no joke, the grapefruits are sooooooo huge there, the peeled skin was even large enough to fit my bobble head!!!! The following day, we rented motorcylcles, drove out to some amazing cascades, Buddist temples, and then went to and art museum that featured both ancient works of the Champa people, a group of people who live in Vietnam of Malaysian and Chinese ancestory, as well as a contemporary sculptor whose work is influenced by the Champa. The Terra-Cotta fired pieces of women, children and family were really fun, engaging, friendly, and had incredible form! The prices were extremely low by our standards, and Hoa had her eye on a couple, just in case she and Tom move into a bigger place. That evening we ate at a Turkish restaurant, with sexy waterpipes that you can smoke tobacco from. The Turkish owner spoke of commonalities between Turkey and Vietnam in terms of celebrations, and histories of rebellion and self-defense for autonomy from outside powers. Hoa, of course interpreted a great deal for us, and got us to many a destination safely. We also travelled on a small tour boat with folks from Vietnam, Taiwan, Australia and Canada. The 20-something tour guide referred to Hoa as his little sister. Several folks thought David and I were Hoa's parents, probably 'cause we look so much alike (psyche! I wish). This small electric blue wooden boat, not only had charm, but had a rock band too. The tour guide was the lead singer and knew songs in Vietnamese, Spanish and English, and the cooks and captain played electric guitar and drums made out of large plastic containers tied together with rope. The bench seats we were sitting on were folded down flat for the stage! I loved it- it was my favorite part of the boat ride! If that wasn't enough, the boat stopped at beaches, aquariums, etc. David's favorite part about Nha Trang was meeting an internationally renowned photographer whose work was breathtaking!!!! Thank goodness for Hoa, who engaged the photographer in conversation for a good half hour. This man was not only a talented artist, but a GREAT storyteller, and extremely personable! David bought a print of his entitled "Raining", and yes, we will no doubt have to take down one of my paintings to hang his print up (SMILE!)"
LISA KAISER
TO BE CONTINUED
PS
To: Hoa's Mom, Me Huong:
From: Tom
Co Lisa da viet den de nuong. Co de nuong o "SF Bay Area" khong? Khi chung con di ve my, se rat nho di an de nuong vi di an de nuong vui lam, ngon lam. Hien nay tuan nao chung con cung di an de nuong. Con xin loi chua biet dung "Viet Key" de viet bang tieng viet dung.
posted by Tom Holz | 1:27 AM
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