Designer Life

Last week I began a new journey without leaving the city.  I started an internship at an architectural firm.  Pentago, a Malaysian based company, specializes in hotels, villas, and other luxury tourism designs throughout Asia.



While I am still teaching at ILA, I've long decided that teaching English is not going to be a career path for me.  I've considered going back to school, but I don't want to waste money on another degree that isn't even going to pay for itself [sorry, Arts].  While thinking of work that I would enjoy and would pay well, Architecture was the first [and at the moment only] thing that popped to mind.  When I mentioned this to my friend, Hao, who's in charge of Pentago's office in HCMC, he offered me an internship so that I may see architecture from the inside before choosing to go back to school.  Let's see where this goes!

Also, last week we had two visitors from out of town.  The first was Daphne's Singaporean friend, Saleemah, who was taking a break from her UN related work in Cambodia to learn how to make Massala Chai from me in Saigon.  And the second was Bob Dylan.

Ok, so Dylan wasn't OUR visitor, but we did go see him play his first ever concert in Vietnam on Sunday night.  At first, when three old men came on stage wearing fancy top hats from the 20's, I wasn't sure which one was him, until of course he began to sing.  Reviews that night were mixed.  His voice sounded better than I had been told to expect, a bit like Tom Waits which I find a plus.  Sadly, not much harmonica was used.  Some people complained that he didn't play enough of his classics, but with the change in his voice, I think people would have just been disappointed if he had.  Although I felt the concert was a bit short, I realized that he had played for two hours.  A perfectly reasonable concert length, but nothing is long enough for the concert starved citizens of Saigon!