My introduction to Vietnamese people and language...

My first contract to Vietnamese people was in mid-1990s when I was studying in business college. There was a Vietnamese boy who was causing trouble even though he wasn't studying in the college. Later I found out the boy became a professional sprinter and his real name was Tran Vinh Nghi.

Fast forward to 2006 when I was working for Malaysian-British media company. We had core team that had a Malaysian Chinese as leader, me and a Vietnamese man who was called Doanh Dinh. As we were setting up chat forums, I thought we should create one for each Asian language. At that time we already had Chinese and Korean forums, so the next obvious choice was Vietnamese because one of the team members was Vietnamese. Shortly after that another Vietnamese person joined the core team, this time a younger girl from Hai Phong. She was big fan of Kristine Sa, so I thought I use my contacts if I could introduce her to Kristine Sa. It didn't take long to find Kristine Sa and her sister Tam Doan.

After that I tried to find Luong Bich Huu, because I had read an article about her family. After searching through different sources I found twin girls, who were prominent members in fan club of Luong Bich Huu... I asked them if they could teach me Vietnamese language because I wanted to write to Luong Bich Huu... Luckily they understood English and were really helpful. After learning basics of Vietnamese language, they also taught me some Chinese because Luong Bich Huu is Vietnamese Chinese, or Han. After a while I was given phone number of Luong Bich Huu, so I could talk directly with him. I have since talked many times with her and two of her sisters, Quan (also known as Ariel) and Thi (also known as Katie).