Talk and Donation at HCMC University of Law

It was a privilege to share my experience about the magazine infringement case with students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law. The panel of speakers included Doanh Nguyen, who is their alumni and legal specialist who helped me in the infringement case. You can recap what happened here.

The "talk show" was supposed to start at 8am, which is damn early by Singapore standard. Doanh told us that a typical Vietnamese working hour was from 7.30-4.30am, very different from our 9-6pm here. They even start formal meetings with a performance such as singing, which certainly woke me up XD

There were maybe 150-200 undergraduate students who showed up. I presented in English and it was translated into Vietnamese by 3 students. I must say they did a pretty good job :)

Doanh shared with us his difficulties working on my case, such as collecting evidence (buying many back issues), identifying the boss of the magazine and coming out with a plan. The magazine had good relationship with major newspapers so although journalists interviewed him, the articles were not published eventually. However after the incident, one of their lecturers became an advisor for the magazine to help them with legal issues and follow the law, so we were all happy in the end.

They prepared a big "cheque" for photo-taking purpose. This bulk of money was from the compensation that I received from Muc Tim and I donated it to the school to help students with financial difficulty. However I did not know that Vietnamese prefer USD and already converted the donation to 32,000,000 Dong ^^;;;

We noticed that many tourist shops and airport accepts USD readily and prices were indicated in USD instead of Dong. We suspect that it is because of the unstable currency so people rather keep USD than Dong. One of our notes, a 20,000 Dong note, was found to be obsolete and cannot be used anymore. It looked like the 5,000 Dong so it was rather confusing. In Singapore, you can still use old notes, but not in Vietnam!

I hardly talked during their panel discussion because everything was in Vietnamese. Luckily the 3 student translators behind me were very good in keeping me updated. I was sleepy because I had to sign 200 copies of my book the night before zzz~

They gave us each a bouquet of flowers, plaque and cert.

My translators, all wearing glasses! HAHA~

My friend who helped out with the photo-taking and Doanh!

Donated so much money for the first time! (Now I'm broke again, lol)

Doanh and his beautiful wife sent us off at the airport on our last day with a Vietnamese traditional scarf called "Khan Ran". It was made by people living along Mekong river and given during farewell to wish us good fortune.

We had a lovely time at HCMC and I will be posting about our travels soon! You can currently find the Vietnamese version of my book at bookstores in Hanoi and it will eventually be available throughout Vietnam. It's also on TIKI.VN :3

With that, I would like to thank Doanh and the faculty and students from HCMC University of Law for making this talk possible. Cảm ơn bạn!