Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Guess Where Another Prototype iPhone Landed? Good Morning, Vietnam!


Either this is a huge hoax or it's another case of a new fourth generation iPhone gone a missing. And of all places, it landed in Vietnam.

The apparently brand new 14GB iPhone 4G is a cleaner design than the one purchased by Gizmodo.  After being flashed before the cameras to "How Deep is Your Love" by the Bee Gees, the iPhone was taken apart with photos to prove it.

"It's a real Apple product," Tran Manh Hiep, a dealer for a mobile phone accessory store in Saigon told global news network AFP. "I plugged it into iTunes and it recognized it as an Apple device."

He then filmed the prototype next generation iPhone and shared his review of some the gadget's new features, including a front-facing camera and round buttons on the new sleek look.

Hiep also explains that this prototype is missing two screws on the right and left sides of the dock connector. That's different than the first prototype in Gizmodo, suggesting that it's a newer model and closer to the actual retail version. 

 Vietnam's tech-loving youth first posted the video on the TaoViet or Vietnamese Apple network.

Since being posted onto YouTube, the video has burst into worldwide popularity with nearly 1.2 million views in just a few hours.



Check out more photos from Engadget of this little high-tech hideaway or ... ahem ... stole-away that landed into Vietnamese hands.
 
What do you think? Is the iPhone a fake or is another Apple engineer in deep trouble?

Saturday, May 8, 2010

A Special Tribute on Mother's Day with Lyrics to 'Lòng Mẹ' or Mother's Love

Almost every Vietnamese knows the melodic "Lòng Mẹ" or Mother's Love.

For Vietnamese worldwide, it's a song of a mother's love "boundless like the overflowing Pacific Ocean," cresting wherever her children are.

Just like Americans celebrating Mother's Day, I hold my mother -- Anh-Nguyet Nguyen -- in high esteem. It's not just because her bravery 35 years ago in 1975 was responsible for us escaping war-torn Vietnam for a better life in America.

And it's not because she sacrificed everything after my father died in 1986 so all three of her children could be college-educated.

And it's not because she taught her children the value of hard work, persistence and treating others with respect and kindness.

It's simply because she is my mother.

So to all the wonderful moms out there, Happy Mother's Day! And to my own Mom: "Con thuong ma" or I love you, Mom.

My favorite rendition of the song is from Dalena Morton, a woman from Florida who isn't Vietnamese and doesn't even speak Vietnamese. I've also included the English lyrics of the famous song by the prolific composer Y Van.



English version of Mother's Love 

Mother's love is boundless like the overflowing Pacific Ocean.
Mother's love is ceaseless like a gentle and sweet stream.
Mother's words is soft as an whispering rice field.
The lullaby (outside veranda), the declining-moon's shades, mother.

Mother's love for me is like the autumn moon.
Mother's love is like a breath of air playing on lake's surface.
Her vague lullaby is soft as a cadenced kite's flute,
rain and shine, all day long, playing with kids' singing.

Loving us, she spent many restless nights,
we had tight sleep, how happy our mum was.
Loving us, many days and many nights,
taking pains and troubles, she nursed us til grown-up age.

Through ups and downs, our thin mother doesn't mind.
All life's hardships make her sad head hoary.
All days and nights, she's glad for us wholeheartly.

Her sweet lullabies echo through years, interminably.


__________

Mother's love overflows villages everywhere.
Mother's love rises high, moon and mountains listen silently.
Her lullabies agitate mountains, streams, bamboo rows.
Pacific waves are quiescent when hearing her lullabies.
With all her heart, mum comforted us through childhood.
A great affection is soft as music and singing.
All day long, she admonishes us with ardent words,
engraved on our hearts through thousand of miles away.

Loving us, mum sang pleasant words.
To lull us to sleep, she didn't mind to have wakeful nights.
Many years, her tears flowed down like streams,
flowing in our hearts, her hair was already gray.

Whoever is on the road to somewhere far away,
despite all hardships through the whirligig of time,
though sunlights go dim but love will never fade,
always expect to be back under mother's shade.