In order to explain the lack of content on this site, i thought i’d divulge a little about what i’m doing over here. Not everything though, it’s top secret, i’ll have to knee cap you kind of stuff, so secret that i’d have to knee cap myself if i knew the secret stuff i was doing.

Above is a little screen grab from the software i’ve been programming away at. “Working on Software!?”, “Doing Programming!?” you say, “I thought you were an accountant, you studied economics right!?”. Well it’s a “Yes” to the first two, and a “half yes” to the last one. For some reason people have assumed that having studied in the economics/finance faculty, my only career path could have been accounting. “Ha” to them i say, i’m much cooler than that, my hunched back and fading eyesight can attest to the fact that i am now a quasi programmer. Quasi, because well, this is my first piece of real work, i had done something for bluejuice once, which may have resulted in emailing the same person continuously for hours, until the bluejuice site got shut down, that was intentional of course.

So back to work, my initial project was to help Binhminh obtain some kind of information system to manage their operations. Easy enough, choose some software, buy some hardware, do some training, eat some noodles, drink some rice wine and i’d be outta here. Turns out that there wasn’t much microfinance software really suited to us and available in Vietnam. There is definitely a lot out there, but when you are a predominantly Vietnamese speaking organisation with little IT resources and cashola, then your choices are limited. Limited to the extent whereby you may get the likes of me suggesting it could be a good idea for the likes of me to put something together.

To my delight, things seem to have come together, it’s likely not the greatest piece of code ever written (using PHP, a little javascript and MySQL by the way), but in its initial incarnation should be able to do the job. The job being to replace the hours and hours of manual calculations and pen and paper record keeping that takes up half of the credit officer’s time, when instead they could be engaging with our clients a little more. And engaging they shall be required to do, as one of our partners is an organisation called Kiva.

Kiva allows individuals to lend money directly to a microfinance borrower (no interest returns for the lender though, just warm fuzziness), acting as a conduit/marketplace where microfinance orgs can post their clients on the Kiva website, and individuals can invest in them, instead of losing money through the current credit crisis (if only!). However, as part of our partnership with Kiva, we have to do certain things like giving updates to investors about how our client is going, taking pretty pictures, not steal all their money and be accountable which is also why my project has taken place.

You can have a peek at what i’ve done here. Username: testmanager, Password: test. It’s not our real test site, just one especially designed for the wonderful few people who come across this blog. We are just starting to pilot the software in one of our branches at the moment, so it’s a kinda exciting rubbing my palms together kinda time.

I have given away too much, i shall track you down and knee cap you, although having knee capped myself (which i’m going to have to do now) you may just get away.

Also, if anyone out there feels as if they would like to work in improving/takeover what i have done (given my impending lack of knee caps) feel free to contact me.

Last weekend was spent in the province of Ninh Binh, visiting the home of an Akubra wearing Vietnamese man. It was rice harvesting time (which conincides with kite flying), which happens twice a year. Having consumed rice almost every day for my entire life to sustain my “fine” physique, it was probably about time i found out where it came from (not a rice cooker on your kitchen bench it turns out).

Families are designated plots of land around their commune based on the number of family members registered, i.e more family more land i believe. For Mr Akubra wearer’s family, one harvest should cover enough for 8 months of rice, so two harvests should result in a surplus, given decent weather and no attack from crop circle loving aliens or creatively inclined people attached to ride on mowers looking to kill time.

When the rice crop turns yellowish and when people who know what they are talking about say it’s time to harvest, it’s time to harvest. This involves using a little scythe, it probably has a real name but to me it was a little scythe, in vietnamese it could possibly be called a liểm (i am no authority on this subject it seems). I had never understood the point of such a curved blade until harvesting. Having the curved blade allows one to simply pull through the crop in a single stroke inflicting pressure upon the stem without having to use a sawing motion, amazing.

So a cutting we went, barefoot in the mud, wearing shorts and t-shirt was probably not the best attire for such a venture. Lucky the straw hat made up for it somewhat. To my disappointment there were no harvesting songs sung, i’m sure it happens in the movies, but spending most of your time bent over and twisting probably isn’t conducive to singing i guess. So after the rice is cut about three quarters of the way down and left in piles, the men then get to work.

Traditionally it’s the women that cut the rice while the men bale it, poke the bales with a stick of bamboo sharpened at both ends (is there anything bamboo can not do?) and carry it off. We managed to partake in both activities, breaking down the traditional gender boundaries allowing men and women to bale and wield hand held scythes as they please, a momentous day indeed.

After a couple of hours of work from us, and several more hours work from the others one field was cut and baled and a well earned drink from the kettle was had. Some other beverages may also have been consumed resulting in a very relaxed state.

All the bales are then taken to the local village machine which separates the grains of rice from the grass, which is then left to dry in the family courtyard. When it rains, which it did, you have to rake it all up and move it indoors, or just cover it in plastic as we did.


After posing proudly with the harvest (which is not a mandatory step), the now sufficiently dried grains get husked at the local husking machine, and then you simply add water, heat and you have the backbone of an entire diet, hooray for rice.

(why does rice get thrown at weddings? it seems a waste, and this practice should be stopped given food shortage crises, i say.)

an old partially complete (probably never to be completed) site resurrected, my trip o’europe that took place in 2001. I happened to lose 15 kilos in 9 months, mainly through shovelling various forms of manure and the occasional herding of agile animals.

Not exactly sure why i’m compelled to post it at this hour (it’s nearly 4 am!), well i kind of do, the me of 2001 didn’t really know how to write html, hence several hours spent fixing links tonight. why won’t sleep takeover?

So, thought i should mention that in 1991 i was the world table tennis champion, on account of my strong neck muscles.

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới!

Yes, new year happens twice when you follow both the gregorian and lunar calendars, that means a second opportunity to celebrate big like an afro on an inflated head that’s about to burst. And oh, was Lunar new years big, about as big as a cumquat tree on the back of a motorcycle that may also be about to burst. Big for other people that is, i spent it going home before the fireworks, driving 50km to a pretty town called Son Tay, playing frisbee on a small hill, being served tea and corn candy by an old gentleman in the oldest village in Vietnam, clearing sinuses, sitting cross legged and trying to find warm socks.

It’s cold here, and cloudy, haven’t seen the sun for about 3 weeks, haven’t been to karaoke for even longer, actually that’s a lie, it just feels that way.

(Thanks to Cathy and Fraser whoever they may be for the cumquat picture, saves me from having to feel like a tourist).

So this is my default lunch everyday, costs around 80c and delivered to my desk! it’s always rice in the main compartment and then in the two larger sections, there will be a portion of meat (generally pork, fish or prawns) and some form of rau (vegetable) and in the smaller 2 compartments are usually tofu or egg in one and a pickled rau in the other. i tend to leave the pickled rau, mainly because my colleagues like to load me up with extra helpings as they need to maintain their tiny frames and i don’t like it. And there is always a bowl of soup too which also varies by the day. Apparently if you eat the soup first, it aids in weight loss, but eating soup second aids in weight gain, yes, we often have these scientific conversations over lunch.

Last weekend involved a weekend trip, south to Hà Tĩnh Province, home to many historical and cultural sites, all of which i may have missed, but it is also the home province of my Vietnamese tutor, who invited us down. On the 6 hour journey south we did stop at Vinh in Nghệ An Province for a 4 hour nap before breakfast, which was eel soup and bread of course! This was fittingly followed by a half day tour of Uncle Ho’s place, which involved a lot of pomello eating surprisingly. And the point of this blog entry, well eel soup i guess. It was a lot wormier looking than expected given their short thin flopsy nature. The soupy environment only added to the sense that they were wriggling, but once you get over that fact, they tasted decent, very flavoursome really, perfect for soaking bread in and the eel was less what i would imagine worm to be and more fishy. A good alternative to Sultana Bran, with the same yet amplified health effects.

I am the proud owner of a wave alpha! The pretty lady may be a little jealous, but i still take her shopping, nothing could replace her basket.

So I have done a bit of work whilst over here too. Last week involved several trips to Dong Anh district, it’s a bit over an hour to get there. It’s a rural area quickly urbanising, and is where our microcredit operations take place. Work involved following a credit officer around as she visited various communes to collect and distribute money. Top left is a collection meeting held in a borrower’s house, and top right is one of our branch offices. Right is the general landscape around the district, rice paddies littered with communes. Most of the borrowers are women who sell produce in the market, the one male borrower we met is a street barber.

The credit officer has to lug around a backpack with 5 thick books for a good part of the day, through all kinds of weather, often resulting in bruised shoulders! I guess my task is to rid the burden of heavy books, so I think a giant bonfire may be in order. Here are some pics of where I had my bowl of pho for lunch on one of the days. It just wouldn’t be a post if my stomach wasn’t involved.

This fine establishment has to legally close around 11 or 12 i think, so to visit afterwards requires a covert operation, a few nods, a couple of winks, and the old lady out front will raise the security door and rush us into the building. The motorbikes get wheeled around the corner, down an alley, a secret knock on the door will wake up the old man who clears space for the bikes in his front room. And so once again we have thwarted the cops, no-one would ever suspect that illegal singing would be taking place. Criminal activity is such a rush. The police will have to go back to fighting the heroin trade and chasing young hoons racing around the lake.

Is there something unwholesome about three guys in a dingy karaoke room? The fake plastic vines above at least add some credibility, surely.

A few weeks ago I took some days off from my stressful life to expel any patriotism I had. This resulted in a trip to Bangkok to watch some average socceroo action in the Asian cup. Thankfully the Aussies threw the game against Iraq, in what could only be described as an act of support for a country in need of a morale boost, very gracious indeed.
And then in an attempt to appease the small band of traveling Hanoians they decided to beat Thailand in a rather tense game to set up a quarter final in Hanoi.


And then to thank us for the support they decided to hang around the baggage area in Hanoi airport for ages, happily (well, as happy as you can be waiting for baggage) posing for snaps, whilst we attempted to remain cool and un-fan-like, which our big grins may have given away. But they grunted when we congratulated them, Viduka managed to string a few sentences together, we talked about the weather, it was riveting, a few minutes more and we would have been best friends. Unfortunately he had plans that weekend (some game against Japan, which has been erased from memory), so he couldn’t come around for a few drinks.