Shine bright tomatoes
No call from HR
Dear friends,
Out of the blue, my dear mother asked what it meant to “mine bitcoins”.
After sitting through my 15-minute-presentation on Blockchain 101, she came to the conclusion that the process would cost almost nothing but time.
“Well, let’s see if you can afford those electricity bills first,” I told her.
My friend’s father owned a massive chicken farm in northern Vietnam several years ago.
One harsh winter, almost all chickens were dead.
The company assigned a task force to investigate the incident, just to find out the farm head mined bitcoins.
The energy-intensive process disrupted the whole farm’s electrical grid, indirectly leaving those poor chickens frozen to death.
What made mother think of the alternative way of money earning was the newly announced plan to merge her organization with another, impacted by the state apparatus streamlining masterplan.
She has worked for the organization for more than three decades which has formed a concrete idea of stability – being a public servant, gaining a permanent post, devoting to the job and (if getting lucky and having a good support system) being promoted.
Now the imprinted image was shattered into pieces.
Vietnam is stepping into its “era of national rise” with the most ambitious restructuring since 1989, beginning with plans to amalgamate ministries, public agencies, and even provinces.
Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) General Secretary Tô Lâm, in a discussion at the National Congress mid-Feburary, stressed upon the streamlining as “unable to be delayed”. His reason was that the change would be difficult if we waited until after the 14th National Congress of the CPV in January 2026 when the new top leadership would be selected.
VTC Digital Television – a network powerhouse of Việt Nam with 13 channels – was dissolved after being merged with the Vietnam Television (VTV), resulting in some 800 employees losing their jobs. VTV admitted their functions, not the people.
As much as I care about the unprecedented bureaucratic changes as a taxpayer with zero dependents, I can’t help questioning what people who have been discharged from the system would do with their lives.
The Vietnamese government is the country’s biggest employer. It is reported to have some 100,000 people impacted by the restructuring. And that is just the first step.
The bureaucratic reforms might be revolutionary from the policy-making perspective. People losing their jobs, however, might feel like a mass layoffs – chaos, anxiety and dysfunction.
Mother abandoned the idea of mining bitcoins after being shown how blockchain works.
“I still have a garden to tend to,” she said proudly.
That afternoon, she planted some tomato trees which randomly grew out of a bag of fertilizer she bought from a neighbor.
That neighbor was a guard at a forest park – sponsored by the US Government for mine risk education – where he raised a herd of cows. The funding for his organization was resumed early this week after an unprecedented funding suspension by USAID.
Till next time,
T.
This week’s top picks
Connections – a game on NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/games/connections
Finding Vivian Maier, how much do you know about a person?