Welcome 2007

I haven’t had a chance to blog in a while. I’ve had several deaths to deal with recently. One of a close friend and another is a member of the family who was battling cancer. It has been a tough holiday.

Death is inevitable, but I can’t imagine how I’m going to deal with it when it happens to my parents. They are very healthy, so I don’t expect anything to happen to them, but you never know when it’s their time. It could happen to anyone, like my friend. He went in for a triple bypass and never made it out of the hospital alive.

There are some things that have been on my mind that I want to write about, so keep checking back for an update. Over the holidays, I had a chance to watch a special about China. It was a story about how China's boom in manufacturing and the way they dispose of the chemicals that affects their rivers and agriculture. Some of the other topics I would like to explore are about the vietnamese culture: the acceptance of the "second wife", handling of different class - marriage between families with money and families without money, and last but not least, my observation of the Vietnamese's obsession with their look, the nose and eyes and all the plastic surgeries that Vietnamese women in America are having.

OK. I hope that's enough tease to bring you back. I promise to write some of these blogs within the next few days. So check back again soon.

Amazing Race 10 in Vietnam this past summer

Last week I had a chance to catch part of Amazing Race 10 in Vietnam - Hanoi, and Ha Long Bay. I just want to catch a little glimpse of the cities that I got to visit 2 years ago. I'm looking forward to another visit soon, may be within the next year or 2.
But in the meantime, I'll just watch this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6979378667063705340&q=vietnam

Tet Trung Thu

I think in America, we call it "Mid-Autumn Festival".

As a child, it was a fun holiday. We would get a lantern. The lantern frame is made in a shape of an animal using wooden stick. Popular shapes were fish or boat. The frame would be covered with this clear cellophane type of papers in specific colors, then it would be painted with designs. Inside the middle of the frame, it would have this spring-looking thing that you can put a candle on it.

On the night of Tet Trung Thu, we would light our lantern with the candle and carry it with a stick. Usually, the neighborhood would have a parade and the kids would sing the Tet Trung Thu song and parade our lanterns.

I actually have a lantern up in the attic made like this but the lantern is made out of metal wires instead of wood sticks. I'll have to pull it out tomorrow and take a picture of it and post it. Recently, I've seen many lanterns with battery operated lights on them but I love the old lantern best.

How are the Vietnam lantern of today look like? Please send me a picture and I will post it.

Medical Insurance

Recently I read a Vietnam post about going to the hospital and this blogger (http://vuth-it.blogspot.com/2006/09/national-dayfull-problem.html) mentioned medical insurance.

My half-sister, who has only been in the States for about 3 years, gave me the impression that most people in Vietnam does not carry medical insurance. It is better to pay for it yourself. This does make sense.

In America, the cost of treating a patience is high because of 'additional' insurance that the doctor has to carry. This is a vicous cycle. Doctors in America needs to carry malpractice medical insurance in case they get sue by a patient (called medical negligence claims). For example, I don't feel good. I go to a doctor. He operates on me but the surgery did not go well or it is not a surgery that I need because he misdiagnose the illness. Now my have some kind of side effect from the surgery. I can hire a lawyer to sue the doctor. May be it's a kind of lawsuit that I can ask for $600,000 and I could win in court. If the doctor has malpractice insurance, the insurance company would pay me the $600,000. If the doctor did not have malpractice insurance and he has a a $300,000 house and $300,000 in the bank, I can take the monies in his bank account and his house if I win the lawsuit. The the doctor would be left with nothing. He might have to close his practice or start all over again. That's why doctors have to have malpractice insurance in America and premiums (the amount you pay on the insurance policy each month) are high. So the doctor pass that cost to the patient.