Thẻ: Life Diary

2014 is definitely one of the most memorable years in my life. Words cannot describe how grateful I am to the things that happened to me and the people that I have met throughout this year.

This year, I shared an amazing term with my best friends at UBC, and I won’t forget the days I spent at this beautiful campus.

This year, my wish 6 years ago came true. I visited London, again and on my own. It’s funny that after so many changes in my summer plan, I still ended up in London – the city in my dream.

This year, I made friends with some random people in the most unexpected ways, and I’m truly thankful for the things they taught me.

This year, I ended up at a job in an industry that I have never thought of before. Yes, I’m talking about being a sales person in a real estate company. But that’s a necessary step I need to take to achieve a goal far more ambitious.

This year, I returned to my hometown, and I stick to my decision. Saigon is a lovely place, and I still don’t understand why people would ever want to leave this city. I love being surrounded by my family and friends. I love speaking in my mother tongue language. I love riding my motorbike at night and see glimmering street lights. I love eating Vietnamese food. I love helping Vietnamese people. I love the weather of Saigon. It’s true that not everything about Saigon is great, but I have been a child of Saigon for 22 years, and I can say for sure that the city has improved a lot. Everything takes time, and I want share the burden with the people in my country.

Still, there are many things I haven’t accomplished this year. As of now, I can say that my reading goal totally failed. In 2015, I will make sure that I finish my reading list and take time to read newspaper everyday.

2015 comes with many challenges, and may God give me strength, courage and patience to overcome those challenges.

Happy New Year everyone, and may the odds be ever in your favor 🙂

So I’m back, trying to record all those crazy things that happened to me in the last three and a half months. This semester gave me so many up and down, so many excitement as wells as disappointment. But I’m thankful for all experiences, even the bad ones, as they did help me become more aware of who I am and my limitations. Đọc tiếp “[Note] The last term at UBC”

I post these clips to remind myself why I’m doing what I do. It has been a difficult journey for me for the last 4 years because I started losing my self confidence. Despite all the good grades and feedbacks I got, deep down I couldn’t convince myself I am good at Marketing. I chose Marketing because that’s what I love and because I want to train my communication skills, even though my strengths aligned more with accounting or finance. I am really good with number, logic and research, but not so much with creativity. Anyway, I always choose to follow my passion, but it’s painful sometimes to see that I am not able to excel Marketing the way I did with other things related to Math and pure logic. But to keep going with what I chose, I know that I need to rebuild my self-confidence as fast as possible, and to learn to appreciate who I am.

Talking about the matter of introversion, I really love Susan’s speech – “The power of introverts” – because it really resonates with me. I would recommend it to anyone who is struggling with society’s favouritism of extrovert. I am myself a loner at heart and always enjoy solitude. I took philosophy courses partly because I wanted to have time to think for myself, to get what life is, rather than just solely focus on doing things to earn money. That’s why sometimes I don’t feel like I belong to my college community because as you know, most business schools are fond of people who can talk smoothly and do a lot of activities. I know some people are great at public speaking and have great brains at the same time. But most often I encounter people who just talk, even though what they say makes no sense whatsoever. Those people are admirable in some sense too because I can never bullshit while looking so confident like them. Listening to Susan’s speech definitely helped me to re-appreciate the introvert in me.

Gần đây trong khi chuẩn bị cho phỏng vấn xin việc, tôi bắt gặp một câu hỏi: “Thành công lớn nhất trong đời bạn là gì?” Một câu hỏi khá hay vì nó cho phép tôi nhìn lại bản thân trong suốt những năm quá. Thú thật tới giờ tôi vẫn không biết cách trả lời câu hỏi này sao cho hợp ý nhà tuyển dụng. Họ muốn tôi kể ra một thành tích mà tôi đã đạt được và những khó khăn mà tôi đã vượt qua sao? Hay họ muốn biết tôi coi trọng những giá trị sống nào? Tuy nhiên, nếu cho tôi trả lời một cách thành thực, có lẽ thành công lớn nhất mà tôi có được, chính là việc tôi luôn dám đương đầu với những nỗi sợ của bản thân, cốt để theo đuổi thứ mà tôi thích.

Đọc tiếp “[Tâm sự] Đối diện nỗi sợ”

Time flies so fast. It’s already coming to the end of summer, and I’m starting my fourth and final year at UBC soon. I think I have becoming a little bit more mature this year. The insecurities buried in my heart are still there, but I start to become more confident, more opening, and more forgiving to myself. Damn, I even know how to treat myself well with some luxury now.

This past year, I truly experienced what people call marketing, networking and “working” for the first time in my life. I had the opportunity to hear and learn from industry experts, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and consumers. Somehow I learned how to fake my anti-social side to meet and work with a variety of people. I learned to step out of my comfort zone. Although I’m still not as outgoing as I want, I know that I improved quite a lot, and it made me really happy. I wouldn’t dare to talk that much with other people when I was in high school.

I guess I found my passion. Marketing, that is it. I love the sweet combination between creativity, psychology, and analytics in marketing. Marketing deals with everything in a business – product, place, price and promotion. Marketing is an art, as you have to use both your instincts and critical thinking when making decisions. There is no formula for marketing, and that’s what makes it so charming and sexy. In marketing, creativity is pushed beyond limit. I’m amazed at how people using technology and visuals to deliver their messages. Check out the Art,Copy and Code project by Google to see the new movement in marketing in case you are interested. I don’t think I’m a very creative person, but I believe that if I learn hard enough then maybe someday I can also produce awesome ideas like those people. Sometimes I’m torn about what direction in marketing I should pursue. I know I’m way better at technical stuff, such as doing market research and analyzing, but I aspire to work with marketing plans in an agency environment as well. Well, hopefully I will find out soon. I’m looking forward to my two marketing classes in fourth year. One is about integrated communications, and one is marketing applications. For those two classes, I will be able to work with real companies, real clients. So excited, I can’t wait for the class to start.

A little update about what I’m doing recently. I just watched the Sea of Monsters movie. This movie is way better than The Lightning Thief movie. However, it still ruined the book and was so damn boring, just like the first movie did. I’m just so mad that I don’t want to talk about it any more. What else? Well, I’m doing some research on the cosmetics industry recently to see if there is any opportunity to launch a business. I learned so much about cosmetics in these two weeks, despite the fact that I don’t wear cosmetics myself. The more I learned about it, the more I realized how people are ignorant of dangerous ingredients and products. And I hate misleading labelling so much. I cannot stand those companies who lied to consumers about the ingredients in their products. “All natural”, “organic”,… all bullshit. And I wish Vietnamese people would stop being so foreign-oriented. Support Vietnamese business please!!! Some Vietnamese products are just as wonderful, don’t let commercials fool you. 

Vậy là một năm nữa lại trôi qua. 2012 có thể nói là một năm thuận lợi và may mắn với mình, mặc dù vẫn còn đó những ước mong không đạt được. 2012, mình cảm thấy trưởng thành hơn, mạnh dạn hơn, cuộc sống xã hội có màu sắc hơn. 2012, mình lo lắng nhiều hơn và cũng bất an hơn. Rốt cuộc thì, mình vẫn chưa tìm ra con đường của mình, đam mê của mình. 2013, mình tiếp tục đi tìm, và hy vọng may mắn sẽ tới.

Ngoài lề: Tính sẽ viết review cho The Hobbit trong dịp nghỉ đông, cuối cùng lại bị cuốn vào bộ phim truyền hình Numb3rs. Phim rất hay, đề nghị ai cũng nên coi 😀