ok, something you might wanna read.
Source: Tran Hai Linh (a studying abroad student in Singapore)'s blog.
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-9k7SE3k9cqj0m.0QxO6qN_Q-?cq=1&p=139
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Passion for Excellence
Vietnam has travelled some long way since the article (which I posted in the bottom) was first written in 1994. Yet, we still have a long road ahead. Currently, there is a debate in Thanh Nien whether or not Vietnam is a small nation. My answer is "Yes, we are a small country, very small indeed". Some may say: "No, in terms of land, of population, or even history, we are no small country". That may be true, and I have no intention to argue with that.
But then, how does one define the greatness of a nation? If we use land as the example, than Denmark will be one of the greatest nations in the world today, it's far bigger than UK or Japan. If we use population then we must top India above Germany and South Korean. No, we define the greatness based on how important a nation is towards other nations, and how other nations respect it.
I used to play a game in a class back when I was still in NTU. We each got a paper, and try to draw the world map on it. The more significance a nation is, the bigger any student would draw it in the map, regardless of the actual sizes (well, NTU students were not all geography experts after all). So the big winners were US, China, UK, Japan, etc. Well, we have to ignore those big guys. But small guys who appeared were Singapore (of course), Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, with Vietnam rather small (which I doubted would be diminished but for my existence in the room).
Otherwise, just try to get an edition of today's newspapers around the world, and see how many times Vietnam is mentioned. I've tried. During the last 4 years, 8 out of 10 times, the name appeared for the wrong reasons. Luckily these days, we appeared a little bit more, thanks to our economic progress. At least that is something that people can not overlook. Mind you, our economic is still very modest, just that the pace is significant.
And one last question - what can our foreign friends relate Vietnam to? Ao dai? Spring rolls? Ha Long Bay? Vietnam War? Ho Chi Minh? Corruption? People can recall who Thaksin, Mahathir, Lee Kuan Yew, etc are... Can they recall our top leaders? We are just too small to matter. Hopefully, somedays we can say something like "We are the best of the world at..." or "Well, that ... MNC is from Vietnam", etc. Saying that, we still have a very long way to go, my friends.
If you have the patience to read till here, and are running out of it fast, don't bother to read the rest. Here's your take-away:
No, it won't be enough until we can beat the best of the world
Following is a very inspring article. Hope that we will always have the passion in our heart, in whatever we do, wherever we are, however tough our lives are. The article was posted 2 years ago in VnBiz.
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[Vietnam Business Forum]
Friday, Sept. 10, 1994
Dear CACC,
There is this thing that has been bothering me seriously for, well,
probably 10 years or so. Now I've thought that probably I should share
it with you all.
Very often, when we point out some weakness, some problem in our
nation or our system, I would hear a response like "We do much better
than many countries in Africa" or "There are many developing countries
doing worse than us" or "We are a poor country."
That is what I call "The Loser's Mentality."
Imagine a teacher tells a student, "You can do better than this, try
harder," and the student responds, "Teacher, my family is poor, many
poor students do worse than I do."
Why compare ourselves with the losers? Why can't we compare ourselves
with the best and the brightest instead? Instead of comparing
ourselves with other developing countries, other poor countries, why
don't we just say "We want to eventually beat the France and beat the
American in technology and business"?
"Are you crazy? These are two of the most advanced countries in the
world. You are so day dreaming and unrealistic."
"Brother, if I remember correctly, we did beat these two countries on
the military battlefield already. What's the big deal about business
and technology?"
Imagine that 70 years ago president Ho Chi Minh told the nation, "You
guys, the France is one of the most advanced nations on us. We cannot
compete with their guns and cannons. You will be crazy to think about
fighting them, not mentioning defeating them." Had he said that, where
are we now?
Unfortunately, after we won the military battles, the succeeding
generations act like wimps, no back bone, no will, no aspiration to
win, no passion for excellence.
Several years ago, when I got out of the airport in Vietnam, several
friends from Ministry of Foreign Affairs picked me up at the airport.
I was upset at seeing the custom officers asking for Vietkieu's money
at the airport, so I told my friends: "You know, these guys in there
just ask for people's money blatantly." One of my friends said: "Oh,
you guys have a lot of money. You can give some to your poor
brothers."
I was very disappointed when I heard that, so I didn't respond. That
was the loser's mentality, the mentality of accepting the third-grade
quality and coming up with rationale to support such acceptance. This
friend of mine later became ambassador to several countries, so he is
not low in ranking. You can imagine how many people in our country
have such loser's mentality.
If so many of us have such a loser's mentality, where will Vietnam go?
We, this generation, should be ashamed to our father's generation. Our
fathers did not say, "The France and the American are so powerful, we
cannot beat them." They had only one thing in mind —- win or die. That
is the passion for excellence, the passion for winning, the passion
for not accepting to be second (because second to them meant death).
If we want to win, we just have to think like a winner. And that is,
"We want to beat the best. We want to be champion. And we will work
our way, from here to championship." Such winner's mentality will
automatically forces our mind into the state of not accepting
mediocrity, not accepting low quality performance, not accepting any
thing less than the best effort, the best trial, the hardest work, the
hardest thinking.
Some may say, "But fighting for survival is different than competing
to be rich. In our culture, richness is never a big thing. In our
traditional culture, being a poor teacher is the best position of
all."
My response would be:
(1) When we fought against the French or the American, that was not
fighting for survival. We still could live under the French and the
American. It was just not a very honorable way of living. So we were
fighting for honor, not survival.
(2) Today, fighting against poverty and for wealth is also fighting for
honor, because people around the world always look down on citizens of
poor nations (chi Tran Le Thuy raised this point once in this forum).
(3) Our traditional culture of glorifying poverty is just wrong. To
use the communist terminology, it is opium. As an individual,
probably wealth is a matter of personal taste and may not matter much
to some of us. But as a nation, poverty is a sin, wealth is strength
and independence. Had Vietnam been wealthy and powerful a thousand
years ago, the Chinese, the French, the Mongolian, the Japanese, the
American would not have had the guts to attack us. Then we hadn't had
to spend a thousand years fighting. As a nation, poverty means you are
weak, you open yourself to attack by other guys, to be dominated and
stepped upon by other nations, to be looked down upon by citizen of
richer nations. Go around the world, and you will see this point
clearer than the day light. (Or ask chi Tran Le Thuy who has seen
enough).
Poverty is a disease of the nation. Poverty has to be erased.
Regardless what our personal philosophy about wealth, for the nation,
wealth is a major goal.
So we need to tell each other to be more demanding of ourselves and our
fiends, our teachers, our government, our leaders. Look at how the
best of the world, the Japanese, the British, the Australian work,
learn form them with the determination to outdo them later on. (And
they will love to hear you, the student, say this, because every good
teacher would love to see the day the student can beat him). Stop
thinking that "We are so poor, so this is good enough." No, it won't
be enough until we can beat the best of the world.
Believe in ourselves. If we think we can do it, then we will do it.
Don't settle for mediocrity. Don't settle for second.
Settle for the best.
Demand the best of ourselves and our people.
And we have our history to back us up, that we can do what other
peoples think impossible.
Have a great day!
Hoanh
--
Tran Dinh Hoanh, LLB, JD
Attorney of Law
Washington DC
