Youth dance for HIV cause

Enthusiasm reigns: Young people attend the dance4life programme at the American Club on Saturday. — VNS Photos Doan Tung Winner: Pham Quynh Anh from Ha Noi's Le Quy Don High School receives first prize for her painting There's No Difference Between You and Me.

HA NOI — Up to 1,000 young people gathered here on Saturday night to dance as part of a worldwide event aimed at drawing the attention of world leaders to the issue of HIV/AIDS.

Local participants in the dance4life programme gathered at the American Club on Ha Noi's Hai Ba Trung Street, and were linked by satellite to similar parties around the world, as young people used their voices and their feet to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS and challenge the stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV.

Pop singers My Dung and Minh Quan, comedians Xuan Bac and Tu Long, and the Big Toe Dance Crew, together with model and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Vu Nguyen Ha Anh appeared at the event.

Xuan Bac, a well-known television celebrity, has been a supporter of the annual dance4life programme since 2006.

"HIV and AIDS don't discriminate," he said. "Anyone – me, you, everyone – can suffer from it. So I realise that I myself need to live a healthy lifestyle and so do you.... We will dance for better health, better moves, and a better life without HIV and AIDS."

Dance4life Viet Nam is a project of the World Population Foundation (WPF) with an estimated 9,000 students now involved.

"Without a doubt, this is the greatest HIV prevention event that I have ever taken part in," said student Hoai Anh, a member of a dance team performing at the event. "It's exciting and very innovative. I always feel so happy when I join the team to perform somewhere."

A dance4life art contest, with the theme this year of Living Together, also concluded on Saturday, with first prize going to the painting There's No Difference Between You and Me by Pham Quynh Anh from Ha Noi's Le Quy Don High School. Anh beat out over 600 entrants from schools around the country.

Saturday's event received support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Durex and Akzo Nobel Paints Viet Nam, in addition to the WPF. The international programme was founded in the Netherlands in 2003. — VNS

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Distinguished Ngo Bao Chau shares his feelings about books

Ngo Bao Chau

Photo: Tuoi Tre

Ngo Bao Chau, the winner of the world’s top mathematics prize Fields Medal two months ago, talks about his special friends -- books.

Because of my work, I move a lot. Each time, it takes a few months before the new house becomes familiar. And I’ve noticed, time and time again, the special moment when a new house suddenly becomes a home: it’s when I unpack my books from the boxes and I arrange them on the shelves. As the books are being lifted out of the boxes to fill the shelves, I feel my past also leaping out and filling up the present.

I have quite a lot of books. Some I’ve read once, some many times, and some only a few pages. But I always know when a book goes missing. And it bothers me when someone borrows my books and forgets to return them, even though I must admit that I myself sometimes commit the same offense.

Among my books, the ones that I hold closest to my heart are the old books that have been bent out of shape by time. Like the one that I carried with me to India. Its pages were soaked and curled up by moisture, and forever lost their original shape. Or the one I left for a month atop the wooden desk on the fourth floor of my parents’ house in Hanoi (that house is always filled with sunshine). The color on the cover of that book has faded. Watching books fade with the passing of time gives me the same feeling as watching my parents, relatives, and friends growing older with each passing day.

I never write or highlight the pages of my books, just as I never want to paint my friends’ faces with dirt.
Time and space put limits on our life in the sense that each of us can only live one life and be in one place at a particular time.

But pages of books serve as windows that open us to new lives and outer worlds. And just like windows, they also let the sun shine through and into our own lives.

Thus, we read not only to satisfy our desire to know about the universe and life but we also read to nurture our desire for knowledge. When we find the answer to a question through a book, it will naturally generate two other questions and such questions will lead us to new books.

Of course, we can’t find all answers in books because real life is so much larger than books. There are things that books can’t teach us because there are things we can’t fully understand until we’ve crashed and burnt with them. And there are also things that are better communicated through speaking than writing.

But on the other hand, we can learn from books more than we think because there is so much that we cannot express in spoken words. Human relationships hinge on certain rules: we should not make life harder for others by imposing on them our own torments as our daily life is already tiring.

When we speak, we are imposing because the act of speaking demands immediate attention of the listener at that very moment. When we write, however, we let our readers choose their own time to communicate with us. Expressed at wrong times, the most heartfelt message can become inappropriate and lost. Books, however, give us the great advantage of being always stable over time.

Books are special friends who always come to us with an open heart. When we move, these friends accompany us. Forever they wait for us, on the shelves.

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Vietnamese films entered at Korean festival

A scene from "Floating Life"

Photo: Tuoi Tre

Vietnamese movies “Floating life” (Canh Dong Bat Tan) and “Bi, Don’t be afraid!” (Bi, dung so!) will be screened at the 15th Pusan International Film Festival in Korea next month.

Listed among 12 movies from 10 countries competing for the US$30,000 New Currents Award is “Floating life,” adapted from a short story by ASEAN Literature Award winner Nguyen Ngoc Tu and directed by Nguyen Phan Quang Binh, a winner of the 2006 Pusan Promotion Plan award.

It depicts the tragic life of farmers in southern Vietnam trying to earn a livelihood. The movie opens in Vietnamese cinemas October 22.

“Bi, don’t be afraid,” directed by Phan Dang Di, will compete in “A window for Asian cinema” category. It is about the life of a family living in Hanoi’s Old Quarter through the eye of a six-year-old boy, Bi.

The movie won the best screenplay prize and a critics’ award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

This year’s Pusan festival has attracted 308 entries from 67 countries, with more than half of them premiering at the event.

The jury will have leading lights from around the world like Sean Farnet (Canada), Murali Nair (India), Remi Bonhomme (France), and John Cooper (America).

French actress Juliette Binoche, English actress Jane March, Japanese actresses Yoshitaka Yuriko and Miyazaki Aoi, and American director Oliver Stone will attend the festival to be held from October 7 to 15.

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Insurer donates school in Phu Yen Province

ACE Insurance Limited Company (ACE Life) on Monday cut the ribbon on Xuan Lam Primary school in the central province of Phu Yen after six months of construction.

The insurance company said it donated VND1.2 billion to develop the primary school in a mountainous area of Xuan Lam hamlet in Song Cau town in Phu Yen Province.

The original school had been completely destroyed during a hurricane last year so ACE Life decided to rebuild it.

The new building has six rooms, of which five are classrooms and one office. It has two floors, offering local pupils a safe facility for learning.

The insurance company, at the opening ceremony, presented the school with extra equipment such as drums, book shelves and concrete benches.

“Primary schools are very important since they provide the first education foundation for children, and we are happy to take part in the social cause to enable more children in disadvantaged localities to go to school,”  Lam Hai Tuan, chief executive officer of ACE Life Vietnam said.

He said there was a demand for good schools for young children at many places around the country as many had fallen into disrepair or been destroyed by floods or storms.

The money to build the school came from a special “Crossing Wave Fund”, part of which was contributed by staff and agents of ACE Life nationwide. Under the framework of the fund, the company has offered a total of 1,144 scholarships to needy students in many universities of Vietnam.

From 2010 onwards, besides the scholarships, ACE Life plans to use a large part of the fund to support the building or renovation of schools in poor provinces.

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