My Mother

To a little girl bearing my mother's name

My mother was an extremely hard working person.

She was the eldest child in her family. When her mother died very young at age 36, my mom had to quit school to help take care of her five younger brothers and sisters. She started working when she was very young and did not have her high school diploma, yet.

My Classmates (English Class III)

Different Challenge

At the beginning, I was too tensed and did not understand much to enjoy what he was saying in the class. I realized there was a hug gap in vocabulary and I found myself looking up in the dictionaries on every word in every sentence in the text he distributed to the class and then read or wrote questions about them on the blackboard. And my pronunciation was so poor I was not confident enough to say anything in the class in English.

Romantic duets

"With you on ships across seas 

that exist no more. 

With you, I will go.

I just felt today we need more... romantic songs. So here are some of the favourite duets I've listened to either from a long time ago or discovered, been introduced to by some friend recently.

First one is a song to remember someone very dear to us, who is no longer with us now. For you, it could be a very close friend, a lover, or a parent. For me I'd think of my parents.

This song is from a German group, popular among young Europeans, Unheilig. The group actually consists of a lead singer, Bernd Heinrich Graf, whose nickname is "Der Graf" and his musicians. Participating in this performance together with Unheilig is Helene Fischer.

In Love There Always Has To Be A Loser

Je sais, en amour il faut toujours un perdant
J'ai eu la chance de gagner souvent...
Je t'ai perdue, pourtant.

Time flies! It's been already a year passing. And today is the Bastille Day, again. It's time to dig out some poems and our favourite, old romantic French songs.

Before moving to the West, I did not really understand any of these songs, even I listened to them many many times. Nevertheless, I liked them so much that I would just made up some words as if I understood and sang after the music. Only after so many years, probably a decade later, I have had a chance to read some of the lyrics and then I started to understand more the meaning of these songs.

Không hỉu gì...

Đang tán phét cùng mấy thằng bạn học thời phổ thông thì một bạn gái cùng lớp xen vào: "Không hỉu gì...". Suýt nữa mình buột miệng bảo: "Để chốc nữa tớ thì thầm vào tai giải thích cho."

Mới chỉ nghĩ trong đầu như vậy chứ chưa nói ra. Và mình cũng nhớ ngay tới một câu chuyện được nghe kể cách đây cũng lâu rồi. Tuy rằng không phải thời tuổi teen nhưng đại khái cũng ở tình trạng gần giống như thế.

Mr. Dz (English Class - Part II)

At that time, in the evening school there was an English teacher named Dz*. I was leaning outside his class many times, just to listen to him speaking English. Most of the time in the class, Mr. Dz spoke English, and from time to time he would say something in Vietnamese. He would ask someone in the class to translate a portion of the text he was reading, and comment briefly on it, usually in Vietnamese. He read very fast, and his English accent, to me at that time, was flawless. It was fascinating for me to listen to him speaking English, very long sentence fluently and with seemingly correct British accent. Rumour was that he had spent a few years studying English in Great Britain.

English Class

At the Evening School ...and Drowning

I only started to learn English when I entered my sophomore year in college. I registered for an English evening class at a school near the Cathedral in the city center. The class has already began some months but I learned that all starting basic level 1 class were full so this was the only chance for me to jump in. Besides, a friend of mine was already studying in the class. If he could do it, so could I.