Where I am now after three and half years residing in Hawaii

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been residing in Hawaii for three and half years. Since I left the East-West Center, I’ve been working at the University of Hawaii, supporting for their international collaboration and exchange programs with the Southeast Asian countries.

Life is peaceful in Hawaii – a common saying by many peoples. However, I feel my life has been flowing with workload in the program administration associated with a lot of paper work and logistic arrangement. Moving from the business environment, my background and work experience in Vietnam, to the field of international education in Hawaii, I’ve been passionate and inspired, first by the APLP, then the UH-College of Education. This has made my major of international relations slightly switching to the international academic affairs. In fact, I have a desire to pursue a master or PhD in student affair administration. Would this be too ambitious at this mid-age? Would this help me to achieve my long-term goals for my career of international affairs? Would this allow me to have time for myself, family, kids, and social activities?  I am still struggling for a final decision.  

Suddenly and recently, I’ve had time to review my short-term and long-term goals as written in my PAPs during our time studying at APLP. Perhaps many of you may remember it J. It’s only recent I have time to think about the PAPs because of the summer break. While many professors and students were enjoying their vocation, as usual, I made a three week-trip to Vietnam to support for the UH faculty developing new partnerships in higher education. Again, I was extremely busy to organize a lot of activities such as conference, workshops, and meetings - a lot of administrative and logistic arrangement. Many times I told myself, the paid-off and reward from my work, is a free trip back to my home country so I have time to visit my family, relatives, and friends.  Well, I am kind of thinking again – is this worth for working in the administration area for 9 months to trade off with a few weeks for both work and fun in Vietnam? Now, I’ve become a dual citizen. I have my own company (www.viethawaiistrategic.com) that was established since March 2013. Haven’t been able to do anything profitable because of the UH workload. And I have quite some project ideas, for example, developing some student exchange (summer) programs between Hawaii and Vietnam. Again, I have not had time to make it happened.

Then I started to hear the opportunity for working with the Federal Government.  One of many other benefits (compared to the State job at UH) to work for the Federal Government is a better income and flexible working hours. Taking a chance, I submitted a couple of application in July.  Just received an offer for a position as a Regional Coordinator for a DOD agency, working remotely with colleagues and supervisors in DC! I have not really accepted the offer yet due to another opportunity with the Hawaii Pacific University. Had two interviews with them early this week for the position as the International Student Advisor. Both of the jobs match well with my career interest.  It would be tough for me to choose which one if I receive offer from HPU as well. Hmmm…..I would appreciate any comments and advice from my dear G-12 fellows. Mahalo! Loan

Futures and Babies!

The biggest adventure in my life so far has been the birth of my daughter, Shirin. She was born on May 24th and is named after my grandmother who recently passed away. As the APLPers with kids (Hafiz) know, children can really change your life. And Shirin certainly has. I've been on maternity leave for 10 weeks now just getting used to her routine and exploring my new neighborhood of Brooklyn. 

However, it is hard for me to stay far from my work. So when Shirin was 7 weeks old, she, Mark, and I went to San Francisco for the World Futures Society annual conference. I spoke about the future of the retail industry in the US and a project I've been working on.

I also attended a lot of interesting sessions. Three of the topics discussed would be interesting to the rest of G12. 

1. First I attended a talk on FOOD DESERTS. Food deserts refer to areas in which access to food is impossible due to logistic and economic reasons. Many Americans live in these food deserts and can't get fresh food. There is also the concept of a "food swamp", an area where there are tons of fast food restaurants but no places to get healthy food. Solving the problem of food deserts, now, and in the future, is a tricky one. The name implies a supply side problem - lack of stores selling food, but the issue is one with both supply and demand side problems. One of the highlighted solutions included grocery stores working with the communities in which they operate to create stores that will best serve them. By involving the community in decision making, and asking them what they want (cultural foods, cooking classes, etc.) great progress can be made. 

2. I then went to play the IMMORTALITY GAME, a negotiation based game on the topic of human immortality. Remember the country negotiation game that I, and other members of G12 created (Megan and Matt I think)? This was very similar. In the game, the group broke up into small groups of 5. In our small group we were presented with the following scenario:

A large US pharmaceutical company has created a drug that can stop aging. It doesn't make you immortal, it simply stops aging so you can still die from an accident, cancer, and so on. You may be 60, but every year you take the drug, you will be frozen in time. So if you take the drug every year from age 25, you will look 25 for 35 years and your body will behave like that of a 25 year old. The drug has been tested for 10 years and passed clinical trials. Should it be released to the public?

Each table had to discuss, vote yes or no, and add any stipulations. Like with many futures scenarios, the game itself was a hypothetical situation, but brought up a deeper conversation on population control, the aging population, economic inequality, and other issues. 

3. Finally, I went to workshop on the future of PRO BONO. There are a small group of companies that operate as for-profit companies but give away some of their work pro bono. The business model was a bit complicated, but the companies that use this model find that the pro bono work can make employees more passionate about the paid work. The free work also enables people to experiment, something I can attest to and feel like I took advantage of during APLP. 

All of these sessions seemed very relevant to the things we learned in APLP. It might seem odd that I'm still so involved in futures stuff while on leave, but I see the two as very related. After all, having a child is a very long term futures endeavor. I think about what the world is going to be like when she graduates from college in 2037, and I hope that it is one filled with hope and wonder.