Don’t burst the bubble

I’m always miserable in front of a public servant

Dear friends, 

Recently, I was put at a moral moment. 

I was at my hometown’s Vietnam Social Security (VSS) office, trying to retrieve the password for the VSSiD account. 

For those who are not familiar with how social welfare in Vietnam works, we have a governmental agency in charge of collecting social, health and unemployment insurances. More than 14.7 million Vietnamese citizens are joining the scheme, contributing over VND728,000 billion (US$29.5 million). 

The fund is invested in government bonds as well as loaned and registered at commercial banks. 

There have been increasing concerns on the fund management along with circulating rumors of the system burst since the retirement age was adjusted several times in recent years. Vuong Dinh Hue – chairman of the Vietnam National Assembly aka the country’s parliament – in 2023, had to step up to reassure the public that it was put under several protective acts, hence, would never collapse. 

VSS is one of the most important systems to Vietnamese workers which is expected to be a safety net covering them in case of illness, unemployment and retirement. 

And that was also the reason why on that day, at that very moment, I was standing in front of the counter, stuttering in fright with the lackluster public servant, trying to explain to her my situation. 

When I left Vietnam three years ago, it was just a laminated paper card stating my social insurance code and basic information. Now, it is an app that requests account numbers and credentials to log in. 

And I didn’t have the password. 

I googled and asked around for a solution in vain before ending up miserably in front of the lady with a bored face: “Dial this number,” she said, citing the hotline. 

Answering me was an automated attendant, as expected, who asked me to speak out loud my social security code. 

I was hesitant, not because it was a moment of data breach – Vietnamese people send scans of their IDs via Zalo on a daily basis – but because, in an instant, I couldn’t make up my mind which dialect I should have used. 

A decade of living in Hanoi has built up my northern accent and lexicon and enabled me to switch to giọng Bắc whenever someone is talking to me not in the Quảng Trị dialect. Unsurprisingly, VSS chooses to have a northerner chatbot. 

I was about to raise my tongue, slightly close my lips and suck a bit more air into my throat to pitch the voice higher before realizing the official had been looking at me. 

Taking a deep breath, I read the code in the deep, heavy and infamously inaudible accent – just like a Quảng Trị person who never leaves that land. 

And the system got it. 

And it gave me back a new password. 

And the password was compatible with my security code which allowed me to, for the first time, see how much I had contributed to the fund. 

I was amazed. Are state-developed apps always this inclusive? I wonder how the experiences of people of Mekong Delta, of Northwestern region, of the central coastal strip with their diverse dialect may look like if one day they lose their VSSiD credentials. 

It reminds me of a story a Filipino fisherman told me many years ago in one of the country’s most disaster-prone localities. Their public weather forecasting system broadcasts warnings in different dialects whenever a storm or abnormal development is formed over the sea. That ensures every single crew member, regardless which community they come from, receive information to mitigate the situation. 

My Pinoy friend burst into laughter, explaining to me how his car navigation system had just automatically changed to another accent when we entered a new city within Metro Manila on our way from Quezon to Pasay to catch a flight back to Vietnam. 

I told him I appreciated that, coming from a person who struggled a couple first months in Hanoi before finally being able to unlock the accent. 

We have heard about how algorithms and large language models and AI in general would forever keep us within our own bubbles. 

However, that afternoon in my hometown, I genuinely felt included. 

Till next time, 

T. 

P/S: Please write me some words. I’ve been so bored lately. Oh you can even send me (anonymous) questions, too.

This week’s top picks 

A Radiolab episode on the user experience of a public service and its impact on (literally) lives 

“I love rumors! Facts can be so misleading, where rumors, true or false, are often revealing.”

For a week of overhearing second-handed info. The movie.

Susan Sontag’s Trip to Hanoi in Vietnamese. 850 copies only. Published by the National Politic Publishing House. 

“Yet how difficult it is, once words have been betrayed, to take them seriously again.”

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