Vietnam Plus 3 Thursday May 9

Thursday (May 9) overview points

• Mekong Delta lecture
• Vietnamese numbers
• Glass Egg Media
• Street Food

Pictures

Journal

Today we first went to UEF for a special lecture. Our guest lecturer was Le Quang Minh. He has held many titles including president of a university. The lecture was about the history, culture, and economics of the Mekong Delta, or low-lying wet lands at the southern tip of Vietnam. Some interesting points: the area includes 50% of Vietnam’s rice production, it was the birthplace of the spring roll, the shrimp and rice industries compete because shrimp production uses salt water while rice production uses fresh water, shrimp farming has been devastating to mangrove forests as well as farmers, the shrimp industry has collapsed twice, the elevation of most of the Mekong Delta is less than 1 meter and could eventually drop underwater from flooding, and there is a temple which contains many gods from religions around the world. In Vietnamese language class, we learned the numbers one to a million. When writing numbers, Vietnamese people use a dot to indicate where Americans would put a comma. After lunch, we visited Glass Egg Media. The company is located near the top of a skyscraper. The office windows provided amazing views of the city. Glass Egg Media outsources 3D animations of cars and video game characters. While walking around the workplace, I could see that employees used 2D pictures as reference points for the 3D models. The company also owns a dating website for people in Vietnam but hopes to expand it globally. We listened to Phil Tran and CEO Steve Reid in the company conference room. Phil Tran and Steve Reid met in Ho Chi Minh City after Phil quit his old job. Later that evening, I ate street food for the first time. I got to try alligator and pig’s tongue!