Berkeley is popular with Asian students. Last weekend, I heard that an acquaintance got accepted and would be travelling to Houston to start college.
But many young Vietnamese study abroad chose University of Chicago.
It is no surprise that Ngo Bao Chau, the math wiz, pitched his tent there.
Windy city. Cold. Home of Oprah and Ebert, the late movie critic.
I spent two years in a Chicago suburb, with my long coat in tow.
And one of my recent jobs was with a company based in Chicago.
So, Chicago, Chicago. Memories of jogging along the railway, in freezing temperature. You got to be there to experience heartland America. You have to read “The Devil in the White City” to understand Chicago’s place in the scheme of things.
Sears tower is no longer called Sears. Nor is it now world’s tallest.
Chicago itself used to be America’s number 2 city.
Now, at least, U of Chicago might, in a few hours, have its Vietnamese faculty receiving the highest honor in Mathematics.
I blogged yesterday about “revving without a cause”, about urban youth in Saigon. Today, I feel proud to share the heritage with one of world’s math treasures.
I ponder what makes someone a genius, while others would flush their lives down the toilet. Don’t they know, life zooms by faster than the speed of their bikes?
Even the author of Future Shock (Alvin Toffler) admits that his prediction wasn’t nearly “fast” enough for today’s speed of change. Bill Gates, author of “the Speed of thought”, missed the importance of the internet and the web (I know they are playing catch-up with cloud computing).
Energy, matters, and motion.
Cultures and technology converge and collide.
Generations with restless dreams, and unmet aspiration.
Fashion TV fuels the fire, while in reality its audience couldn’t afford a decent lunch (which is better than its models who mostly starved themselves to death).
So young Vietnamese girls try out for Vietnam’s Next Top Model.
The drop-outs packed up to work as “PR”, nothing to do with the profession of Public Relations. Tuoi Tre, syndicated through Yahoo Vietnam, ran a nine-part expose of the trade. Mostly about how young girls having to endure trade abuse just to get some tips e.g. old foreign man, putting kleenex in their chest, and pulling the tissues out as if their bras were a tissue box or the infamous tale of a gangster who used $100 bills, folded, to shoot at PR’s like young brats would at birds.
In this boiling hot-pot, I have found mixture of the good, bad and ugly.
Math wiz, born to be wild, and modern-day Geishas. All here, and now.
Some thoughtful folks would chuckle, yet end up de-sensitized because life is what it is. Yesterday’s enemies become today’s best friends.
And most surprisingly, it’s not our friends who know us best. It often is the opposite. I am thinking of the McCain (warship) once docked at China Beach.
I am sure someone on that carrier know the ins and outs of Da Nang’s terrains.
All quiet now on the Eastern front. For now, the nation stands still awaiting the news. Big news. All of a sudden, numbers and math become chic here.
And for once, I breathe a sight of relief. The audience is tuning in to a show other than Fashion TV or World Cup. They are tuning in to await Nobel-equal Fields prize for Math. It may very well be one of our own, Ngo Bao Chau.
http://vnexpress.net/GL/Khoa-hoc/2010/08/3BA1F68C/
As of this edit, Bao Chau indeed got the prize which mathmatically puts Vietnam on the equation (better than known for beer consumption).
Thang Nguyen 555 