Sakura Café, gateway for disabled children

At a bustling corner in Ho Chi Minh City lies a humble coffee shop where mentally-challenged children are pushed to integrate into broader society under the guidance of a Japanese philanthropist.

The five-year-old Hoa Anh Dao (Sakura) Café is the brain child of Chisato Esaki, a Japanese woman who has devoted more than a decade to Vietnam’s underprivileged children.

After graduating from Doshisha University in 1998, the 25-year-old Esaki arrived in Vietnam for the first time to start her four-year Master’s thesis on relief activities for Vietnamese disabled children and their families.

The young graduate soon became a regular visitor to a local charity center where she learnt the language and developed an attachment to local disadvantaged and disabled kids.

After three years in the trenches in Vietnam, Esaki realized that all mentally-impaired people here are unemployed.

It led her to the idea of creating a workplace where disabled children interact with people, learn work skills and help change the public’s misconceptions of the mentally-challenged.

To fund her project, Esaki, who is called Sato by the children, moved back to Japan for a couple of years.

With the support from Japanese and Vietnamese philanthropists, the Sakura Café was opened in April 2004 with 14 staff comprising of children suffering from Down Syndrome and several hearing-impaired kids who work as bartenders.

Different from other local coffee shops which are punctuated with flashy design and trendy music, Sakura Café is an open-spaced café with soft music, simple design and highlighted by a number of pottery pieces made by the cafes staff.

The seemingly simple tasks of training the staff became an entirely different animal, proving to be hard work for both Esaki and the kids.

She said it took her an entire month to teach them how to “Thank you” and “Goodbye” to the customers before the opening of the café.

Esaki also thought up a few different approaches to make the job easier for the children.

Customers to the venue, at 4, Ton Duc Thang Street, District 1, can call over waiters by ringing a small bell on their table.

Also, each table is not numbered but a small ornament in the shape of a type of fruit or animal is placed on each table to help the kids remember where they have to drop off the orders.

Customers don’t tell waiters their order. Instead they fill out what they want from a pre-prepared form.

Working at Sakura Café has helped the kids, who were often seen as awkward, an opportunity to be more open to the outside world.

A grandfather, whose grandson has been working at the café, said the 18-year-old boy often refused to sleep at night through sheer excitement at the prospect of going back to work the next day.

Sakura Café last week moved to a new, more spacious home at 153, Xo Viet Nghe Tinh Street, Binh Thanh District thanks to the support of a local company, The Saigon Times Daily reported.

The café, whose name has been changed into the Hoa Anh Dao Club, maintains its original design, an open-aired venue surrounded by a natural landscape.

The club members currently include nine mentally-challenged children, one hearing-impaired and three volunteers. The children do shift work for no more than five hours a day.

‘A little bit more’ of Air Supply

Rain didn’t stop fans from coming out last weekend to see Air Supply, one of the first western acts to slip through embargoes against Vietnam in the 80s.

When Aussie-UK soft rock duo Air Supply were in their prime, Vietnam had been cut off from the rest of the world by US-imposed sanctions.

In the 1980s, listening to western music in general was rare and youngsters like me valued every chance we got to hear it.

To get western albums, you had to go to the flea market in Ho Chi Minh City. We called it Cho Cu (old market, or second-hand market). The tapes were smuggled from Thailand or brought back by local sailors who had docked at foreign ports. Nearly all copies were illegal bootlegs.

If you lived in the provinces and had no means to visit HCMC, there was no way for you to find cassettes of Air Supply.

Selling the albums was illegal in Vietnam as well. Flea market vendors had to run whenever they saw police.

In those days, the most popular foreign bands were ABBA, Boney M, Modern Talking and of course, Air Supply. Rock fans could also find some albums by AC&DC and the Scorpions. Europe was also a popular band at that time.

I got my first Air Supply album when I was in 11th grade. My friend’s elder brother was a sailor and he brought home the cassette from Singapore.

Our group passed the tape around for weeks from person to person, each anxious to hear it soon and none of us anxious to let it out of our hands. We had no photocopy machines, so we had to rewrite the lyrics by hand. The Air Supply tape was possibly the most valuable thing we owned. We never thought that one day we would enjoy a live Air Supply show in our home city.

But 20 years later, that dream came true.

Nearly 2,000 fans crowded the Hoa Binh Theater last weekend, many of them seeing their favorite band in person for the first time.

Three generations of Vietnamese were: the war generation, the postwar generation and even youngsters born in the 80s – we call them Generation 8X.

Air Supply appeared on a simple stage and in simple dress. Of course, they looked older and less glamorous than the pictures we had seen as kids, but Russell Hitchcock’s voice still soared and Graham Russell’s guitar still charmed...

They thrilled the audience with raw talent, and nothing else.

The performance reached its peak when they played “Goodbye.” They asked their throngs of excited fans to leave their seats and gather near the stage to sing with them.

They played all our old favorites: ”Every Woman in the World,” “Lost in Love,” “Here I Am,” “Making Love Out of Nothing at All”... but there was one song we ‘d never heard before: “Just A Little Bit More.”

With a guitar in his hand, Russell told the audience the story behind the new song.

He said he was deeply moved and touched at the wedding of two 19-year-old friends of his. He said he could see the depth of their love and knew nothing would ever split them apart.

At the wedding, the groom had asked Russell to write a song about the couple. After the marriage, the groom left the country to serve in the military. And he never came back.

After the groom’s death, Russell met the wife and she asked him to sing the song. He said he didn’t want to because he thought it would cause her more pain.

“Just a little bit more,” she said. Hence, the song’s title.

We in Vietnam were also happy to get just a little bit more Air Supply.

Russell said the tune would be on their next album, their 35^th in as many years.

I thought about that: one album every year for 35 years… quite an achievement.

I’m now looking forward to buying their next album, and I know I won’t have to go to the flea market to find it.

Reported by Le Huynh Le

Dustin Nguyen favorite actor at Chinese film fest

Dustin Nguyen on Friday was named as the favorite international actor at the biannual Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival in China on Friday.

Winning the poll of juries and audience at seven theaters in Nanchang capital of Jiangxi province, the Vietnamese American actor was praised for his role as a young man who wants to bring his mother’s ashes back to America to bury her next to his late father’s tomb in Huyen thoai bat tu (Legend is alive) directed by Luu Huynh.

However, no representative from Vietnam’s only entry at the 18^th edition of the festival attended the award ceremony.

Singaporean actor Jack Neo shared the award with Nguyen for his role in Money Not Enough 2 that he directred himself.

The festival also sorted through 25 films from 15 foreign countries, including the US and Japan, for choosing other awards: two favorite actresses, two best directors and two best films.

One of China’s most influential film festivals that opened in 1992 closed Saturday with awards granted to local films.

Source: Tuoi Tre

Organizer plans to change Miss World venue

The organizer of the 2010 Miss World pageant in Vietnam plans to shift the event from the resort town of Nha Trang to Tien Giang Province in the Mekong Delta.

The move, supposedly based on cost factors, has sparked concerns the new venue will not be able to prepare adequately for the event. The central government and authorities of Khanh Hoa Province last year granted Rare Antibody Antigen Supply, Inc. (RAAS) the right to hold the international competition in Nha Trang, which had already hosted the Miss Universe contest in August 2008. But now RAAS wanted to move the pageant to Tien Giang as it would cost much less to organize the event there, according to an official of the Mekong Delta Province, who also confirmed that they were seeking approval from the central government to become the official host. Nguyen Hong Minh, deputy director of the Department of Planning and Investment, said RAAS Chairman Hoang Kieu plans to build a five-star ecotourism resort in Thoi Son Commune for the event at the end of next year. Officials in the province said the pageant would be a great opportunity to promote tourism. However, there were also worries that the province would not be able to prepare for the event in short time remaining. An official, who wished to be unnamed, said the Miss World pageant was a big event while “the province’s capabilities are limited and there is so little time left to prepare.” My Tho Town, the capital of the province, only has one three-star hotel. There is a four-star hotel project under construction but it will not be completed next year. Luu Van Phi, a resident in My Tho, said he was surprised on hearing that his province, which “doesn’t hold any special position on the country’s map,” may host the 2010 Miss World pageant. “I really don’t know if the province can pull it off,” he said. An official of Khanh Hoa Province said moving the pageant away from Nha Trang would cause many difficulties to the organizer. He said the provincial government has already started a campaign to support the event and it would write to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to express its stance on the issue. Nha Trang has been promoted heavily as the host of the 2010 Miss World pageant overr the past year. RAAS Chairman Hoang Kieu unveiled a plan in October last year to build a 1,530-hectare resort at Nha Trang Bay which would become the venue of the pageant in 2010. The project was criticized by many scientists and environmentalists, who said it would damage the environment at the bay. In November, Kieu canceled the plan, as well as another road project in Nha Trang. As of June this year, however, Kieu had still confirmed that Nha Trang would host the event. Source: Thanh Nien, Tuoi Tre

Huong Giang to vie for Miss World title

Model Tran Thi Huong Giang will represent Vietnam at the Miss World 2009 Beauty Pageant to be held in South Africa from November 11 to December 12.

The Performing Arts Department said Friday that Giang will leave on November 6 for charity events in the UK before heading to South Africa’s Johannesburg city along with beauty queens from other countries.

Giang told Thanh Nien that she would “talk about the 1,000th year anniversary of Hanoi at the contest. I think this is a unique event as not many countries have a capital with such historical and cultural background.”

Standing 180 centimeters tall and measuring 86-61-92, the 22-year-old model won the Miss Hai Duong crown 2006 and was the second runner-up at the Miss Vietnam Global 2009.

Reported by Do Tuan

Thanh Nien’s gala to pay homage to late stage director

Thanh Nien’s signature annual gala this year will open as a tribute to the late Huynh Phuc Dien, nationally renowned show and stage director.

Director Dinh Anh Dung of the event Tro ve (Return), said in a recent interview that Thanh Nien wants to include the Tro ve (return) part in the script to express gratitude to Dien, who significantly contributed to the prominent place that Duyen Dang Viet Nam (Charming Vietnam) gala occupies today in the national calendar.

Dien, who passed away in late June, directed nine editions of the gala since it debuted in 1994 and was a legend in the local entertainment industry, proving himself repeatedly as a director, designer and scriptwriter over nearly two decades.

Dung said Tro ve part will reproduce a Vietnamese village on stage with the participation of all artists who have attended the festival over the years, an idea taken from a script nurtured by Dien.

The other part, named Bonjour Vietnam, “will introduce a new and lively Vietnam,” as this year’s gala also marks its 15^th celebration, the director said.

“For Bonjour Vietnam, I want to introduce young artists who will inherit and help develop Vietnam’s music industry.”

Vietnamese Belgian singer Pham Quynh Anh, whose hit song Bonjour Vietnam caused quite a stir in chat rooms and forums in the Vietnamese community around the world because of the nostalgic feeling it evoked in 2006, will also join the show, Dung said.

Scheduled to kick off this December 12, the four-day music and variety entertainment festival will be held at Ho Chi Minh City’s Hoa Binh Theater with the participation of 40 local and overseas singers, more than 50 models and hundreds of dancers.

Held to raise money for the Thanh Nien-initiated Vietnam Talent Fund and Nguyen Thai Binh Scholarship Fund, which grants scholarships to both deserving poor and outstanding students, the gala was taken to Canberra and Sydney in Australia in 2005, Singapore in 2007 and London in 2008.

Reported by Do Tuan