The friend who made me write a CV

In December 2006, I was sharing a room with a friend named Trần Hoàng Phong. I'd gotten to know him through another close friend of mine at the time, and since he'd also studied at Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm gifted school, we ended up rooming together when we moved up to Saigon, right in the neighborhood in front of the Chí Hòa detention center. He'd been working a few months, found it fun, said he was learning a lot, and kept nudging me to apply at his place — a tech startup called Tìm Nhanh or Kiếm Việc, something like that. Every single night he'd open up to me; some nights at 3 or 4 in the morning the two of us would be lying in the dark unable to see each other, just talking on and on.

He kept at it until I finally went "fine" just to please him: I promised him that in January I'd submit an application.

January hadn't even arrived and he was already hounding me. In my whole self-supporting life I'd never written a single CV; I strained and strained and came up with half a page of A4. Showed it to him, he cursed a few exasperated lines at me and then just rewrote the thing himself. He submitted it straight to Tìm Nhanh too. On December 8th, 2006, I went to meet the founder and CEO to ask for a job. First interview of my life, and my whole brain was overloaded — all I remember is he switched to the English of an overseas-Vietnamese after I mentioned I knew a bit of English. Then he quickly offered me a salary less than half of what I was spending every two weeks: every two weeks a girl friend of mine would withdraw $200 from my Paypal, money I'd earned, and send it home from the US — about three million VND to live on, so six million a month. He offered: two and a half million. It felt like an insult, but because of that old promise to my dear friend, I took the job.

On December 11th, 2006, I reported for work. I was told I'd be reporting to someone who would later earn the nickname Huỳnh the Terrifying, and would be set up to work on some things I didn't really understand, so I pulled up a pirated book I'd just downloaded and started learning Regular Expressions to kill time while waiting. My friend took care of me every single day, pulling me out to lunch so I'd get to know the colleagues, both my team and his systems team. We went to a spot on Võ Thị Sáu street across from Lê Văn Tám park — full of hostess bars. On my fourth day there, his boss Phạm Quốc Dũng told us some of his guys had moved to a new company called Viva something-or-other, and over there the pay was higher and there were free instant coffee packets and instant noodles you could eat all you wanted. He said, go over there, why are you wasting yourself here. And he asked me to send him the CV I'd submitted here, and got one of his guys over there to refer me.

Friday, December 15th, 2006, I met Lê Thành Trung for an interview for a software engineer position on a social network project for Vietnamese people. He said I only knew the surface, but still offered me a salary of four and a half million — almost double what I was supposed to make at Tìm Nhanh (where I hadn't yet taken a single đồng). I didn't hesitate for a moment — even that offer was still less than what I was spending every month.

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006, I started at Vinagame. I thought I was getting a shot at saving Yobanbe from failing, but instead I was told I'd be replacing some guy in the technical support group for a game. Fine, I'll do it — what did I know about what was what? And I hadn't yet taken a single đồng from the other company even though they'd insisted on paying me, so what was I supposed to do with that money anyway?

Being new at the company was strange, but I noticed everyone here seemed happier than over there. Every week we got free fruit or fried fish balls; thanks to that, in twelve months I climbed back from 68 to 80 kilos. While I was getting used to the office tools, I saw an email from a guy named Đinh Bá Trực. The name sounded awfully familiar. I asked around to confirm — yes, the real name of the GameVN super admin — it was him. I pinged him right away on Microsoft Communication (the chat tool at the time) to reconnect. I'd been chatting up late with BM ever since I joined GameVN back in 2002, and with SweetKitty, HungLong, and the rest. A few days later he came over for meetings about website issues, card-topup, community stuff, and I grabbed the chance to say hello in person. He said there were also Bunnyforever, newfriend, Lucifer over at Vinagame — guys I'd been fighting alongside for years (mostly in the virtual world).

So there it is. You sit still trying to make a living, and your closest friend just hauls you straight into his own heaven. He's the proof of what my father used to say while he was still alive, in the voice of a Confucian fortune-teller reading the stars for his youngest son: you just have to sit there by yourself, and someone will bring the money to you.