All posts tagged: Vietnam

What modernity?

25 May 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

I have attended an interesting seminar about the Chinese experience in the transition to market economy with socialist characteristics. The aim of the seminar was to help Vietnamese scholars and researchers, who usually claim to be 10 years behind China in terms of social and economic development, to reflect on the challenges that the transition poses to Vietnam today. One of the conclusions of the seminar is that Vietnam is committed to modernization and market […]

Morning rituals

19 April 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

Every morning I put Olga on the back seat of my bicycle and bring her to the kindergarten which is just behind our block. I struggle with the traffic and get onto the gate of the school. Get Olga down form her seat, unfasten her helmet, unfasten mine. Get her on my lap and start to walk her to her class at the end of the corridor. Passing in front of the other classrooms we […]

Visits to Ho Chi Minh mausoleum

31 March 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

Today we went for a walk in front of the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. A huge gray stone building that the Soviet Union offered to to Vietnam. We did not enter to see “uncle Ho” as they remember him here in Vietnam, but we walk on the huge cement-paved-parade-road-square that is in front of the mausoleum. The place is quite austere. Not a piece of paper on the ground. The green area on the side […]

Time and change

27 March 2007
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

Arnaldo in Hanoi. Today I attended a workshop where I heard something that made me think. It is now two months that I started my work here in Hanoi and I am still in the process of understanding the structure, currents, streams of my working environment. A work environment which, as the whole society, is under the influence of two main forces: State and Party. All this is new to me. To be in the […]