The woman in a green dress stepped into the car about half-way through the trip. She was tall, powerful, with a body so striking and sharp, she looked as if she were carved from wrought wood. The slightly wet sheer fabric of her dress clung to her. The barely dry dark blonde curls hung close to her neck. It’s easy to imagine that she just barely left a swimming practice, and is now on her way to a formal engagement in the city, balancing an existence of a a committed athlete and a sophisticated socialite. She stepped off the train a few stations later.

I arrived at my destination, climbed the escalator to street level. A massive downpour was coming down on the city.

Credit Card & Scoring Implication.

The Vietnamese commercial banking industry is at a critical stage and the need for a major reformation has never been higher since the country adopting the free-market philosophy of economy – “Doi moi” – in 1986. Vietnam as a country is now having more than 60 banking institutions; many of them are in dire situation and could lead into a potential domino-like effect wrecking serious damages to the whole banking system and to the whole country economy.

In a small discussion, according to ACB, the credit card business in Viet Nam is now among the major focuses of Commercial bank. Even smaller banks without card experience are looking credit cards to be their next target. The main reason being secured lending nowadays is being heavy regulated by the State Bank with a controlled margin of approximately 3%. A really traditional bank in their best effort can only maintain a status-quo balance without making premium profit – while undertaking the same risk of default, high delinquency ratio due to economy downturn. On the contrary, unsecured business is having an rising profit (on average 8-10%) even to a point where bank will just simply write-off the special delinquency cases. Logically, they are trying to move and develop their portfolio on the credit card instrument, mounting the unsecured pre-approved credit line (in cash) alongside with the usual rolling credit on a credit card. This way, they can slowly develop their unsecured portfolio on a preselected (and verified) customer and enjoying the premium margin coming from typical credit card policy. At a certain point in the future, they may shift their entire individual customers loan portfolio (secured or not) into the credit card instrument. ACB has point out a Standard Charter Bank (SCB) CashCard product in Malaysia as an example.

The second idea we have discussed is about how a behavior scorecard is much easier to sell than an application scorecard.

-          First, It is more feasible now to build a behavior scorecard since transaction data are quite available in the Viet Nam landscape (with all the core banking system around) while application data are not (LOS is still being implemented here and there).

-          Second, Banks might understand about Application Scorecard concept but their regulator counterparts (State Bank) might not be there yet. This will create certain hesitations from the bank side in using the scorecard to make decision.  They will have to prove/explain the logic, bases and validity of the scorecard to the regulators of whom knowledge of the subject are rather limited. Behavior scorecard which is based on transaction data is more acceptable to the regulators.

Finally, ACB have shared their opinion in such that they believe a corporate scorecard (AS and BS) is unnecessary. In explanation, they divided “corporate” into 2 categories: SME and Enterprise Corporate. For the SME market segment which we included in our retail banking concept according to Basel II, ACB claim that they have the following characteristics:

-          The SME population is too small. Given the country lack of an effective private sector with competition expertise, this is understandable. With the credit cost of the last few years remain high, surviving SME entities have adjusted themselves into running business with their own capita since or minimal loan.

-          The SME population is not a homogenous population. They are greatly different with each other.

-          In many typical cases, a SME customer of a bank is often tied into a certain branch and/or a branch manager. The manager may or may not cooperate with the quantitative decision making method. ACB believe this to be an issue that won’t go away easily and it will take some time.

-          It seems that they have tried to build a SME model earlier with the help of SCB before coming to such conclusion. It’s quite contradicted to what we have heard from other banks where they want to build a SME-like scorecard.

ACB will only look at developing a SME scorecard (AS/BS) only if there’s a real demand for the automation of SME loan processing. They suggest that will happen only when the Vietnamese government shift their strategy and build a strong private sector.

(This version is slightly different than the version posted on LSU Website due to self-censorship)

First and foremost, it’s important for readers to know about the writer upon reading this. I am a 28 years old male professional who has been working in Information System Industry for 10 years. I went straight to professional work after finishing my Le Hong Phong high school in 2002 without going to any higher educational institution in between. In February 2012, with all the conditions getting ripe, I enrolled in RMIT Vietnam, Saigon South Campus for a Bachelor of Information System (BIS) Degree. It was a logical choice of mine as the combination of RMIT Vietnam SSCC and the BIS degree is a suitable solution for my both goal and problem: Getting a bachelor degree in order to be ready for graduate study while still allowing me time and opportunity to maintain my professional career and income. My real passion which I have discovered through my 10 years of work, ironically, lies in sociopolitical science research and the RMIT environment turns out to be a gold mine of raw material for such practicing. So instead of seeing through the completion of the degree quietly as my initial intention, I’ve decided to go all-in. So far I’ve become VP of BIS Group and joined SSCC with the hope to enrich my fellow students experience with my rich background while trying to maintain meaningful conversation with lecturers in my program department.

Such deep involvements combined with my personal background have given me some insights so far in term of a SWOT analysis. There are both issues and potentials and while the potentials are easy to acknowledge, the issues are sometime delicately imperceptible. A common and frequent complaint is about the quality of students. Student quality control is a huge subject and therefore has numerous causalities and expectation management between students and school is one of them. There won’t be a universal solution or state of balance for this issue, as the relationship between student’s expectation and school’s expectation has an endogeneity nature. However, is it possible to have a dominant equilibrium solution for this matter? Should the school uphold the integrity and quality standard defined by Melbourne or an acceptable compromise to be made? And at what magnitude could it be? As any professional would do, I speculate joining RMIT Vietnam as an investment decision especially with a large amount of money and 4 years life, thus find myself in a strong urge to step up and defend my investment by ensuring the quality and recognition of the reward which I will earn is upheld with integrity.

This empirically written article will be my first attempt identify (or demystify in some extend) a conventional RMIT Vietnam student identity – finding the answer for a simple yet important question: Who are they?

The RMIT International University Viet Nam (RMIT), being the only foreign higher educational institution in Viet Nam, is in a unique position with many distinctive characteristics. It is no doubt that RMIT possesses the best of breed academic facilities with campus environment on par with international institutions. The tuition fee is considered to be extremely high compared to other local institutions. Given the facts that student-loans are not very common in Vietnam and the orthodox Vietnamese practice of parents covering the college tuition fees, it is safe to say that the majority of students who enroll into a 3 or 4 years program in RMIT are from families of wealthy nature although the magnitude of which could be a debatable subject. There are some exceptions such as professional workers who support the university tuition fees by themselves, which, however, are heterogeneities.

So one might wonder what the characteristics of a typical RMIT student are. Although it’s impossible to build a homogeneous RMIT student profile but through observation and derivation, certain assumptions can be made and in some cases, how conjecturally wrong and prejudiced they could have been. Since we did talk about wealth just earlier, it is essential to reevaluate the wealthness of the students’ families to gain a throughout understanding.

The Vietnamese K-12 education system – with its plain focus in theories and a stressful examination system – has created a subconscious distrust among students and families who have been participating in it for a very long time. The lack of confidence, the fact that Vietnam is a developing country and students’ personal interests and curiosities of the outside world have converged and resulted in a strong professional and sentimental preference upon studying abroad by both students and families. RMIT is also affected by this bias despites its status as an international university. So what are the reasons that keep them from proceeding? As there could be many but apparently financial capability, or wealthness, reigns as the top. While some foreign institutions in developed countries are able to offer University programs with approximately the same cost as RMIT, students and families will have to spend a huge amounts for accommodation annually. With RMIT, the combined amount is lower by leveraging the local status, hence emerges an affordable solution. There are always exceptions such as students who don’t want to live away from families or families that don’t want to send their kids abroad but in general, the myth of RMIT students coming from wealthy families are partially lifted – at least we know it’s not entirely true.

Another common speculation of which RMIT students are often associated with is that because they are not able to compete with other Vietnamese for the 4-years Universities in the annual national University Entrance Examination (UEE) – which are regulated by the government – they join RMIT instead. Therefore, there is a generalization of RMIT students being “Rich kids with low academic skills” and the true admission requirements into RMIT are solely financial-based. What is more surprise is that such belief is shared consensually among a part of RMIT academic community.  The speculation is indeed true in its nature: Not all RMIT students (new and current) are able to score high enough in the UEE to gain entrance to popular (or at all) Vietnamese Universities. But, is passing the UEE a correct blueprint for success? It’s often not. K-12 students had stuffed themselves with theoretical memory in multiple unrelated subjects in a short and stressful period of time for the UEE and then threw them away upon completion. The philosophy of K-12 education system in Viet Nam has a resembling nature of its political ideology: all students are the same, therefore, in true dialectical materialism emphasizes the selection of the better through results manifested by many stringent rating systems and subconsciously treats the learning process as a tool for the examination purpose. Many students simply fall out of this line. I’ve witnessed countless of people who failed UEE but became success in life and are extremely academically knowledgeable: Businessmen/women, Researcher, Start-up Owners, Writers, Artists… etc. On the contrary, many traditional universities’ students are failing their classes and not able to meet the workforce requirements upon graduation. Hence, making judgments and drawing conclusions from this fact alone is anything but a prematurely misinformed speculation. The raw materials are basically the same.

In a further comparison, the western education system which RMIT is a part of is fundamentally different: The belief of every student (or individual) is unique and such philosophy is reflected in RMIT admission requirements. The wealth factor is still in place however gaining direct entrance into RMIT directly is not by any mean unchallenging especially with the high English requirement.

The fact that majority of higher education students in RMIT have undergone the English courses speaks for itself. These are the tremendous dedications, patience and commitments of which students have shown. Another strong manifestation of commitment is the financial requirement of which as mentioned above is excessively higher than any of its peers in Viet Nam. Hence the agreeable conclusion, a typical RMIT student is often aware of his/her being educated and is ready to commit efforts and resources in the academic development progress. This thwarts the above speculation and provides a bird’s eyes overview of a conventional RMIT student identity.

The girl is beautiful to match the boy, lithe, topped with ferocious blond curls. She also pays little attention to her companion, mostly talking to her girlfriends, one bench behind. (In a very high school arrangement, the girls sitting in the back are not as attractive as the couple in the front.)

In a brief glimpse, I catch her staring out the dark window of the train car. Her eyes have wandered off a thousand miles, and the teenage exuberance has drained from her face. She looks drab and old. She bears the expression of someone resigned to the fact that the best years are now a distant and dusty memory. The stark change is a picture of how deep loneliness can find you anywhere, even in the midst of popularity and a pressing crowd.

###

A little girl is asleep, propped up against her mother’s shoulder. I cannot actually see them directly because of the crowd. Somehow, I can see their reflection in the tilted glass of the car’s windows. The mother bears the child’s slight weight with all the heroism and power of Atlas casually holding up the globe. She is relaxed and exuberant. Her daughter wholly up on the bench, curled and tucked into her the ball of her spindly arms and legs.

The mother smiled all the way to the last stop.

The man in crouch end
He walked proudly, using a smooth branch as a walking stick, purely for show. A navy blue beret sat jauntily on his head, and round black lensed Lennon glasses shielded his eyes. Slim, with shoulder length salt-and-pepper hair, he eyed the young bohemian girl at the bus stop with what seemed to be hungry approval. His swagger seemed to emphasise the tight jeans about his legs, and his chest thrust forward behind his striped shirt and soft leather jacket. Eccentric artist? Perhaps. Homeless? Possibly. Awesome? In the truest sense of the word.

The heartbreak swelled up in her in an instant, came back with biting tears and choked her breath. She had been trying to drown out the sorrow with the music and the voices of her friends, tried to leave it at the bottom of a glass, but there was no use. The sorrow stayed until it was ready to leave on its own time. For now, it stayed right here. The sorrow sat down next to her and gently held her hand, stroked her hair as she sobbed. Sunk in the circle of shadows, she seemed a mile away from the people who were mere inches from her.

He is an aging manchild with a poorly maintained businessman haircut. Slightly overweight, dressed in a polo shirt, ill-fitting jeans, and tennis shoes with obnoxiously loud orange laces. She is his perfect contrast – smartly dressed and well presented, aside from the usual wear of long work hours. They are adorably awkward with each other. It is easy to imagine them working on different floors, meeting at an after-hours work function, carelessly flirting assuming they will never see each other, and now collecting the prize of living on the same metro line.

They sit about as far apart as two people could on the decidedly unspacious bench. She has pressed herself into the corner between the window and the back of the bench. He is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. The conversation is sparse. Not just the same metro line. The same stop.

Two

He is beautiful. Like other truly beautiful people, it is not merely his appearance – perfect musculature, noble features, smooth dark skin that slightly shimmers in the sunlight, made of subtle half-tones that make him look like an oil painting – but the way he carries himself. He is not cocky. He is not overbearing. His beauty is tastefully unadorned, calm, and centered. One arm is extended across the back of a bench and he gazes into the sunny city outside, taking in every relaxed, gorgeous moment naturally and casually.

Instead, let’s ask why the burden of ‘funeral cover’ is now being promoted as a personal expense to be planned for.  Let’s be critical and ask why it’s suddenly being promoted as the personally responsible, ‘right thing’ for a parent to do?  Why are parents being targeted in this fashion and told to plan for the expense of their own death instead of trusting that their adult children will have the good sense to provide for them at the end of their days? What message is this sending out to young people? What about people who have no children? What rationale are they being given to plan for their own funeral expenses or don’t they count?

Since when did we start blindly accepting such nonsense? Isn’t it enough already that we work and pay taxes and provide for our own families over the years?  Why should a funeral be promoted as a personal expense when it should be being seen as an opportunity for family and loved ones to say goodbye? Why are we allowing this reframing of death to go unquestioned?

Call me a fool but I’d like to think that my children won’t view my death as burden to be accounted for with their cheque books. I’m hoping that when the time comes my children will be more concerned with priorities other than money. Things like saying goodbye to me in ways that are meaningful to them.  Not dictated to by the conventions of a capitalist society.

I don’t want or need a fancy coffin. I don’t want or need my family to spend ridiculous amounts of money on me when I’m gone. I’d rather they spend ridiculous amounts of money on me while I’m alive if the truth be known.  In short I’d rather they honour my wishes for a low cost send off and instead of spending their money I’d rather they spend their emotions. Isn’t that the way it used to be? Back in the good old days when death didn’t have a commercialised monetary value and the funeral industry consisted of a few dedicated people serving their fellow citizens and their communities?

Maybe we need to take a good long look at the messages that are being sent with such advertising instead of allowing this rationalisation of the commercialisation of death to go unquestioned.

You know what, screw the numbers.

Kachunk, kachunk

A young couple going out for the evening. The guy is wearing a tweed sports coat. It is trim and fits him very well. The girl is wearing a camel-colored pea coat that’s too large for her and looks bulky. They spend most of their time holding hands, kissing, and giggling at inaudible jokes.

Hold on. The guy’s hair is cut short and his beard is neatly trimmed. Her hair is an opinionated mass. His nails are long, like a guitar player’s, and accurately groomed. Hers are short, with a hasty and superficial attempt to cover up a nail-grazing habit. The turquoise polish is about half-way gone through attrition of time, and no attempts have been made to revitalize its appearance.

He sits up straight, with his hands clasped in his lap, while she is curled up on her seat next to him, and her hands are either wrapped around his neck or plunging into his hair. His hair, of course, is properly mannered and refuses to appear to be disturbed by this assault.

Not actually sure of the number. Three sounds like a good one.

​First

​Two men, separated by a few decades of the same job. Both get at the same station in downtown DC. Both are wearing nice suits, and both are obviously comfortable wearing suits. Both are carrying business briefcases and listening to something on earbud headphones. Yet for all their similarities, the two men are in stark contrast.

The younger one is an athletic, perfectly groomed black man. When he goes to the gym, it is because he enjoys staying in great shape. His counterpart is an over-the-hill humpty white guy. If he goes to the gym, it is probably because his doctor ordered him to do so and in any case, it is an excuse to get away from his annoying wife. The former stands with youthful, assured confidence. The latter slouches in a seat in resignation.

The younger man wears a fitted suit in excellent condition. The older man wears a suit that, though perhaps it came off a rack in a good store, is well-traveled and lived-in. One’s earbuds are fashionably white, straight from an Apple commercial. Not a mere accessory, they compliment the man’s chic look. The other’s are a generic black kind that comes with flying coach that adequately perform the function of delivering sound.

Second

A mismatched middle-aged couple. It is very late – may be the last train on a weekend night – and most passengers are in the state of cozy comfort from being tired and slightly drunk. These two are no exception. In fact, the husband has fallen asleep, head on his wife’s shoulder. He is dressed simply, and you get the sense that perhaps his wife had tried to make him look nice, but it’s a lost battle. Whatever you put on him, it will still look like his tradesman work clothes but he will be perfectly comfortable at all times. He is pretty much as he was in his teenage years, just with a bushier mustache and more of a gut.

The woman is quite awake, sitting up, with a look of either loss or disappointment. She is quite attractive, you can tell, though the years have not been kind to her looks. She is a stately mansion in disrepair. You can see where the architect really put his heart into the work, but you can also see where time and reality have taken their toll and chipped the paint. Her outfit is quite nice, but dated and worn. The train rocks and jostles on the tracks, and she holds on to her sleeping husband until it is time to raise him and put him to bed.

People see beauty in these trees. The icon of beautiful, sunny Southern California; silhouettes painted atop a backdrop of periwinkle perfection.

But I don’t see it.

I see popular skinny whores with frisky, lice-infested heads of hair. Except, instead of the lice, they’re rats.

Rats with their nests of yarn and pigeon feathers and pubic hair.

It’s on these days, these windy days, in which I don’t mind the palm trees.

If all works out, and I have my way, the wind renders those damn rats homeless.

And dead.

I envision disease-riddled feet reaching for the fronds that were once its home.

The wind does the rest.

Flying through the air, the rat says goodbye to the world, as the gust propels its body into the car’s windshield below.

Splat.

Grin. Smile.

Rats Call These Skinny Whores Home

As a Practitioner of Natural Medicine who has helped many a people get their lives back on track from chronic issues, (and as a somewhat normal mid-40-ish person) I have learned that we all like a degree of routine, predictability and ease in our lives.  Some, of course, are more the thrill-seekers and in another article, we can analyze them, but for now, let’s focus on “everyman.”  The point here is that most of us like a path without too many bumps in it.

The problem with this is that we can grow stagnant…or simply, stop growing.  We can become addicted to doing nothing, seeking comfort and we stop exploring boundaries, asking questions and frankly, we stop getting better.  Thankfully, there are messages or callings from the Universe (put your favorite Noun in her people…no reason to get uppity with me) to help get us moving.  These messages may “come from within” or may be delivered by friends, class announcements, co-workers or by most any other means.  Interestingly, the messages are sometimes subtle but get louder when we don’t listen or see them.  The scary thing is when the messages stop coming because we have refused to “get” them.  You know these people (or you have experienced this first hand…and you’d only know if you had help getting beyond it), they’re the ones who have life figured out, even though their life is, by far, not one you’d want to trade yours for!

This stagnancy, whether short-lived or extreme stasis in the form of the latter person who stops getting the messages, is “treatable.”  It  helps to spend some time alone.  Silencing the mind is good.  Get rid of mindless distractions such as TV, the computer (as I type away on mine), the phone and so on, for a while, anyways.  Let thoughts come and pass right on through…practice holding on to nothing.  You can’t stop thinking, but you can let the thoughts move right on by.  Just observe…how you think…what you think, but observe like they’re someone else’s thoughts.  Once you can slow things down in your head, you are ready to ask questions.  Keep them simple; ask one to begin with and keep asking it until you get an answer.  Ask at night before you go to bed and/or when you meditate or have your quiet time.

The next thing you do is pay attention.  I promise that an answer will come.  It may be in a time-frame that is longer  than you’d like, but it will come when the time is right for you.  The important thing is that you receive it and that you ACT on it.  What is happening here is placing intention or creation.  It is your God-self or YOU as part of the WHOLE, acting as creator.  We create our suffering and we can create our “Heaven.”  Positive thoughts (listen to what you say and if you’ve observed your thoughts, you know how easy it is to judge, have negative thoughts, etc) and speaking as if you are where you want to be are keys to success.

My recent example of this is the Universe telling me to move to Boston.  I finally acted on it and am making the move.  Will it be permanent?  Who knows?  Seeking permanence, whether in a locale, a relationship, a career, it doesn’t matter, it is us seeking security, comfort and the known.  We define stability in this way and crave it.  It makes us feel like we’re in control or that we are the Master and not lead around by fate.  It is this mindset that can prevent us from fully engaging with life and becoming the best people we can become.

I am NOT saying that “no pain is no gain,” although sometimes this may be true, but that some discomfort or facing fear is necessary for us to bring positive change to our life.  We have the ability to evolve faster than any other species on the planet, in a mindful sense, anyways.  We have the largest control centers (brains) on the planet, much of which remains to be used or developed.  This suggests that there is so much more in store for us.  We must think expansively.  This does not mean consumptively, it means we have to tap into mental, emotional and spiritual avenues that truly make us and our fellow man better.  We must be open to any possibility.

What may interfere with our shaking things up?  What leads to further stagnation and lack of growth?  MY belief is that it IS beliefs…more specifically, structured and archaic beliefs that bring hypocrisy, judgment and arcane and limiting guidelines for us to follow.  Blind following or faith is a convenient way for those back in the day to control the masses.  What it did was set us back millenia in our spiritual development and evolution.  There will be many who read this who will immediately feel defensive, criticized, threatened and it is ok to let yourself feel that…it is ok to be angry with me (draw the line there folks), but self-examination is where you will give yourself  the chance to grow.  Grow beyond what has always been.  I am not saying to “come over to my side of things.”  That would be just as wrong as what I am pointing out.

What I AM saying is that we are all microcosms of the whole.  We are all creators, aspects of the Universe or God.  We all bring gifts to the table that most if not all of us have not begun to fully realize.  As  I’ve said in another article, LOVE is part of the path to this realization.  It is an easy word but complex and sometimes complicated meaning.  Follow your own path to this realization.  There are great messages from Spiritual leaders from all sides, as well as from books, agnostics, and yes, even atheists.  We  ALL have part of the truth in us.  Stop picking a side and trying to convert people to that sect or side.  It is all EGO that makes us do this…as well as fighting wars and moving us away from love instead of towards it.

Shake your life up…inside and out.  Start slow, listen, observe, and be ready to move, in-spite of any fear you  may have.  Trust yourself and your higher consciousness or connection to the whole (God, Universe, etc).  You will be lead in the way that is meant for you to receive the lessons you need to receive.  The ride may be scary at times, but you will feel alive and you’ll learn your purpose, you’ll learn to love and be loved.  You will learn to set-down the baggage (health issues) that has been weighing you down and preventing you from being the best that you can be and living your life to the fullest.

My best to you, always.  May love fill your hearts and flow through you.

Paul Gerst L.Ac.

I know I have written about using all five senses when you write before, but I recently realized I am not REALLY doing that myself.  Yes I write describing things that can be heard, seen and smelled, but as I spent time outside today, it occurred to me that the common, obvious, and nearest things should not be the sense descriptions that I fall back upon. 

For example, as I listen to my surroundings, everyone notices the traffic noise, the birds, or a dog barking in the distance.  It is the things not often heard, or taken for granted that can add depth to a story or character. Even a light breeze has a sound, the swish of a jacket sleeve as you move your arms to walk; the click of a dog’s nails on the pavement, or the light rustle of the tall grass as you pass through.  

I also noted I was thinking of the sense of touch only in regards to my hands.  Touch can be felt through my feet; hot and tired in the same shoes I have had on for hours, or the way I feel inside as I think of the love I have for someone.  There are many ways one can feel the sense of touch.  

The sense of smell and taste are also thought of as limited.  Yes, if you had onions on your sandwich, you might still taste them long after lunch, but what about the air?  Does it have a taste or smell also?  

Are you truly seeing all that surrounds you?  Look beyond the obvious.  If you are not sure, ask someone near to describe what he or she sees and make sure you see at least five other things than were mentioned.  I challenge the writer in you to come up with a list of five different labels for each of our senses the next time you are out and write them down.  Do they appear common, or have you struck upon some new terms that could liven up your descriptions?      

Wake up your sense and your brain and see how detailed you can be.  You never know, it may not only improve your observational skills, but also your writing- maybe even your life.  There is much to be happy and look forward to when you open up all your senses and really pay attention to what’s around us.  

© May 26, 2008 Marie Boyum