Noise canceling

Girl, so confusing*

Jul 21, 2025

Dear friends,

My first ever exposure to Bang & Olufsen was when Andy tossed the BeoCom 2 cordless phone to Nate at a dimming East Village Irish saloon.

It was a defining moment in The Devil Wears Prada – signified by the shift in friends’ attitude towards Andy’s transformation and initial hints of how toxic and selfish a boyfriend that Nate could be.

My second exposure to Bang & Olufsen was when I escorted my friend to their showroom on Hà Nội’s Tràng Tiền Street last fall. She was on a hunt for her family’s new home cinema setup and decided to swing by Bang & Olufsen to take a look.

We walked into the luxurious showroom unprepared and unimpressive – me in the sloppy “SG uniform” and my friend in a cotton shirt she proudly bought on sale plus a pair of UNIQLO baggy jeans.

The salesman let us browse unattendedly at first then switched on an enthusiastic pitching mode after learning about the friend’s mansion project in an exclusive gated community.

By no means an audiophile, I was caught off guard by how expensive home speakers could be.

“Is this for display only?” I asked the salesman, who probably had formed a delusion of me being a “quietly luxurious” nepo baby, pointing at a pair of BeoLab 90 speakers which retailed around VND5.7 billion (US$217,000).

“We see a rising demand for those, actually,” he proudly shared. “Here, look at this. This client bought two pairs and a sound bar from us. Can you guess whose son he is?” he zoomed into a photo on his phone.

I admitted that I didn’t know just for him to whisper the name of a politician too big to not care.

Ah, name dropping – there are no other games we play better.

“Is he the baller who went to Kim Liên High School?” I asked the friend non-chalantly.

“Nah, that’s his younger brother’s son. This one is much more secretive,” she replied, gazing at another elaborative audio device.

The salesman was obviously impressed. We both bursted into laughter in our heads.

Who could verify whether what the salesman said was true, anyway? At the end of the day, it is still one of many dubious tactics that they use to hit the revenue goal.

The impact of that brief conversation on me is long lasting, however, as it visualizes how big the social gap in Việt Nam can be – while many young people have given up on their plan to buy a home as the supply of apartments under VND3 billion ($115,000) is now drained, a handful of others can daily enjoy music played out of a sound set that can provide shelter for at least four families.

On a Grab bike, I rode pass that Bang & Olufsen showroom this week, couple days after the plan to ban fossil-fueled motorbikes within Hà Nội’s Belt Road No. 1 from July 2026 was announced. The store is located right in the heart of the belt road which covers the city’s core, densely populated area.

The abrupt plan is reasoned as one of “urgent measures to tackle environmental pollution” against the fact that public transportation can only serve 19% of people’s daily travel needs.

VNExpress cited a 2023 research sponsored by Hà Nội National University saying fossil-fueled motorbikes contributed 87% of CO and 66% of fine dust emissions – the primary source of traffic-related pollution in Hà Nội.

Meanwhile, there are discrepancies between data published by Hà Nội’s government and Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MAE), pointed out by a ministry’s official at a conference on Jul 21. According to the city’s report, traffic accounts for 60% of air pollution, the percentage announced by the ministry is only 15%.

Additionally, according to International Energy Agency’s data, the transportation sector is ranked third after electricity & heat producers and the industry sector in terms of CO2 emission by sectors. At the same time, the portion of CO2 emissions by coal – mostly for thermal energy plants – has been on a constantly dramatic rise since 2010.

Most of the country’s operating coal-fired plants are located in Hà Nội’s neighboring localities of Hải Dương, Quảng Ninh and Ninh Bình. Cross-border air pollution is inevitable.

There are nearly 7 million motorbikes in Hà Nội. To many Vietnamese people, these scooters are not as simple as vehicles but their livelihoods. Any policy aimed at motorbikes will either further marginalize them or take a step closer to an inclusive society, especially while it is still unsure whether the environmental goal will be met if Hà Nội dismisses gas-powered vehicles altogether.

In 1890, Jacob Riis laid the cornerstone for muckraking journalism by publishing a photobook titled How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. The book exposed dangerous living conditions in poor immigrants’ slums to members of middle- and upper-class society, leading to immediate and later housing reforms for the city’s working class.

Only when even the smallest voices begin to be heard do we know we’re truly on the right path.

Till next time,

(*) Charli xcx ft. lorde