Category: Michael

Throughout my internship, I feel that I have done a good job of doing what I have been told to do. I have turned unintelligible English into cohesive sentences, edited our websites, done research, and edited PowerPoints all as I was directed to. I think one way I can improve my performance in the future is to look for more work when I run out. It is easy to plan weekend trips, talk to friends, or otherwise goof off at work when you run out of work. If I had went and found more work, I could have gotten even more out of my already enriching experience. Another aspect I need to work on is my communication. There were multiple times that I thought I knew what needed to be done but had to redo it because of a lack of communication. I need to take it upon myself to clarify and ask more questions, so I know what I am supposed to do and how I am supposed to do it. In conjunction with this, I think my communication with my coworkers just as friends need to improve as well. Since I had a group of people that I came with, I tended to stick with them instead of trying to make plans with the people at my work. In the future, I need to be better about this and expand my friend network more, not just my professional network.

I would say my experience in Vietnam has greatly changed my outlook on life, as well as helping me to grow as a person tremendously. In relation to my professional development, I believe that this experience has increased my understanding of a different type of office culture, as well as a different country’s business culture in general. Learning the nuances of Vietnamese business culture makes me a more marketable candidate for a job. In relation to my career aspirations, I would say this experience has made me completely unsure as to what I want to do anymore. I don’t mean this as a bad thing really, but I now feel uncertain as to what I want to do out of college. I am probably just going to wing it and hope I enjoy the first job I end up doing. As a person, I think my time here has made me into someone who isn’t afraid to do something at the drop of a hat anymore. I used to really like to stick to a plan when doing something (I blame my mother for this since she was too organized), but I am content with going with the flow more now.

Overall, I think my main takeaways are: new friends, newfound appreciation for the place I live, a newfound appreciation of Vietnam and Asia in general, a knowledge of business culture in Vietnam, and many unforgettable memories. Vietnam will always hold a special place in my heart, and I am glad that I am able to say, “back in ‘Nam” now too.

As it stands now, I only have 1 more full week of work ahead of me, and then I am done. As I reflect on my time at Pulse Active, I would say that my best moment here would have to be the Color Me Run. Although it was on a Saturday, it was an absolutely awesome experience, and it gave me a whole new perspective on festivals, since I have now worked one. Getting to be a part of marketing this event, which sold out very quickly, and being able to make the experience even more enjoyable for those who attended was extremely rewarding. Part of my duties at the event was to throw food coloring powder at people, turning the white shirts everyone wore into a puke yellow. I myself even got completely covered in it; I have attached a picture below of the aftermath. Being able to experience my first Color Me Run as an organizer was a great experience, one that I will never forget.

Throughout my previous journals, I have spoken about what my priorities at work are. I am in charge of writing and editing all of the English for the company, but I also have been tasked with updating our website and using WordPress from time to time. I would say that my best accomplishments were that I maintained and updated 3 websites, I edited and proofread countless articles, press releases, and marketing efforts, and probably the most important is that I lived and worked in a foreign country for over 2 months. I think that my WordPress experience will be especially beneficial in the future since so much of marketing, my intended career path, is focused online.

Living and working in a country where you do not speak the language is not easy. The biggest way that I will live after this experience is that I will have a much greater appreciation for my situation, what I have, and I will be able to see from the perspective of others easier. I also will never take air conditioning for granted again, nor free water at restaurants. I will take away an appreciation for Vietnam, Vietnamese culture, and especially Vietnamese food when I leave this place. As cliché as it sounds, a piece of my heart will remain in Vietnam forever, and I will look fondly upon the times I had here. I hope to one day return to Asia to work, maybe even here. I will be back for travel, no doubt; I will hopefully be able to afford nicer accommodations than the budget hostels I sleep in on weekend trips now.

During my internship, I have learned a lot about the sports and event industries in Vietnam. Sports, especially running events as well as events like triathlons, are relatively new to Vietnamese people. A lot of manpower goes into educating and informing the public about these events, and it is a rapidly growing industry. Pulse Active sold 12000 tickets for our annual Color Me Run with in 1 week. We completely sold out their event in a week, which I was told set a record of some sort. In the entertainment event industry, the competition is definitely heating up faster than in sports. More and more artists are looking to expand overseas, and Vietnam as a growing country is becoming the center of attention. At our Color Me Run a couple of weeks ago we hosted Maggie Lindemann, who is apparently an American who is very popular in Europe. Entertainers are looking to Vietnam to expand their brands, and brands are being created to host these people.

 If I were to perform a SWOT analysis on our company, I would say that our biggest strength would be that we are leading the industry, because it is so new at this point. We must continue to maintain market share. The industry continues to grow, and I believe that this presents a threat to us. We must constantly adapt to the environment and to the people in order to stay one step ahead. A weakness that we have would be that we do not have enough community engagement as a company. Our different events all get good participation, and they are constantly growing; however, I don’t believe that we capitalize on our position as organizers enough. We need to connect more with the community as a company, because no one knows us. They may know of our events, but they still don’t know who we are. An opportunity that we have is that we can easily expand into other types of events if we want to, simply because we have the experience and the pedigree to convince others to work with us over another newer company.

A wild moment in my HCMC life would have to be last week, when a bunch of us went to the Heineken tour. It was Sunday, and I had worked on Saturday for the Color Me Run. I was ready to relax, so some friends and I headed down to District 1 to a rooftop bar to sit and have a drink. We went, had a great time, and then decided to take a quick grab over to the Heineken Tower for a tour. We had a great time on the tour, got to see an absolutely stunning view, and had a great time with friends all at the same time. It was definitely a Sunday funday!

I think the most challenging aspect is the artistic freedom I am given. This is also probably the biggest opportunity for me to grow. I am given a topic and told to write an article on it. In the beginning, I was only tasked with adapting articles that had been translated from Vietnamese. Now, I have written my own articles for our website and written articles for other websites as well. I have performed my own research, written articles and made presentations from said research, and then have posted them to our website or sent them off to other websites. I have been able to improve my writing skills simply by practicing. Unfortunately, I am the only native English speaker in the marketing department, so my work largely goes unchecked, but I know that practice will be beneficial in the long run.

I think the best features of my internship have been the freedom I have, and the environment I am in. The freedom I have explained above, but I also enjoy the atmosphere of my work a lot. We sit at open tables, no assigned seats, and everyone puts headphones in while they do their work. This doesn’t mean the office is quiet, however. Between departments collaborating with each other and the construction going on downstairs, there is always a buzz. This was not really what I expected it to be like. In my previous 3 office jobs, none of them have had a seating arrangement like this. 2 of my jobs had cubicles filling a big room; at the third job I had my own office. I wouldn’t say my current seating arrangement is better than having my own office, but it is far and away better than cubicles.

The best food I have eaten so far in HCMC is around a 4-minute walk from my work. When I realized that my time in Vietnam was getting shorter and shorter, I decided to scour TripAdivsor for the best Vietnamese food around me. I found a super delicious place called cycloresto, and had one of if not the best Vietnamese meal I have had here. There was pork with pumpkin batter, bok choy soup, vegetables with a Mekong Delta sauce, and fish, which was beautifully cooked, with some mystery sauce. Overall, it was a great meal, and I have attached a picture below.

At work, I have smaller projects I work on when they need me to, and one long tail project. The smaller projects have been editing and creating powerpoints, writing my own articles, adapting articles translated into English from Vietnamese, and proofreading existing articles. Before I showed up, there were no native English speakers in my department, so most of the articles read as if they were translated by google translate. Since they were trying to market internationally, I am sure there are plenty of people that didn’t want to come to our events because they were unsure if this was a legitimate event, or if they wouldn’t be able to understand what was going on. Now, they can be sure that this company is real, and that they are very professional. In the last 4 weeks, I want to be able complete updating and editing our websites, I want to present a few more powerpoints, and I want to leave on good terms with my coworkers.

My fellow marketing interns are in charge more of creating social media posts, while I have been assigned to the websites we have in our domain. Whenever they create a post in English, I am always the one to adapt it and make sure that it is proper English, so our relationship works well. My direct supervisor works closely with the design team to create graphics and other things that we use in our marketing efforts. She delegates certain tasks in relation to PR with English speaking sites to me, and I write articles, blog posts, etc. when I am assigned them. I think we work well as a team, and I think I help the company a lot. One thing I have learned while living and working in HCMC is that everyone seems to never get angry/ keep a straight face even when they may be upset. We learned in our cultural week in Gainesville that the Vietnamese are very concerned with the concept of keeping face, and this is most evident in driving. Riding in a Grab (same thing as Lyft and Uber), your driver will get cut off maybe 100 times before you reach your destination. In America, I think the driver would be cussing and yelling if it happened once, but here they just accept it and move on. They are much more likely to not get upset than Americans and I am admire the Vietnamese for it. They seem much happier than people in the US. Below is a man who just wanted to take a picture with us, not really sure why.

In the marketing department, I am one of 6 interns. All 5 of the others are Vietnamese. This may seem daunting, but they all speak English very well, so it makes it easy to communicate with them. Our supervisor sits one space behind me and to the left, and she oversees our continual marketing efforts as the head of the marketing department. On a daily basis, she will communicate with sponsors via email, communicate with the interns via our Skype group chat, and make sure our social media and our websites are up to snuff. She is rather quiet at work; she is not one to walk over to you and talk; she will send a quick Skype message and continue with her business. I have been semi-adopted by the group of about 6 or so ex-pats that work in my office and my supervisor, although a native Vietnamese, is a part of this group. The group goes to lunch together a few times a week, and my supervisor opens up a lot more around them. I have included a picture of the Storm Trooper stationed in my office.

My daily tasks include a lot of proofreading and editing. I make sure that when we have a press release the English makes sense, which takes more time than you would think. I think it is harder than being told what to right about, because I have to change someone else’s writing into proper English, instead of being able to make it up myself. I have been updating our websites for the Danang Marathon, Color Me Run, and Challenge Vietnam Triathlon. Since I am the only native English speaker in the marketing department, I often find grammatical mistakes or odd diction that a foreign English speaker may not see.

An experience in HCMC that surprised me I think would be riding in the car on the very first day of arrival. When we first got on the road, I realized I had never seen so many scooters in my life, not even in Gainesville. The constant honking and whirring of engines still hasn’t stopped, even after 3 weeks. But what was most surprising was the way people drove. Standstill traffic isn’t a thing here if you are on a scooter. Scooters matriculate any way they can, be it on the sidewalk, between cars, even in the lane going the wrong way. Vietnamese do not seem to be bound by traffic laws, but it definitely makes traffic flow faster.

I am currently working for Pulse Active, an event hosting company which specializes in runs and concerts. They have hosted some big names, like The Chainsmokers and Zedd, and they are also the host of the annual Ho Chi Minh City Marathon.

My first few days have gone pretty well. I have a general directive and I am left to myself for the whole day. I do sometimes feel a little lost, but I know that I will start to get more of a feel for what I am supposed to be doing all day. On Friday, I gave a presentation on SEO (search engine optimization) and how I think we can improve ours on the many websites we have. It was well received, and I was given the task of helping to write a description to be placed in all of our YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram posts from now on. It is short and utilizes words from our own home website, and it links all the events which we organize.  I am currently waiting on permissions to edit our websites so I can add the links to our websites as well. This week has been a little undirected, as I figured, but when I get the website permission, I know I will have plenty of work to be done. I was tasked with fixing the English mistakes on their websites, and there were a lot; these errors have not yet been fixed because the people with the ability to change them have been busy. When I get the permission, I will be able to tweak and edit as I see fit.

Pulse is a young company with about 30 people working in a very open space office. There are tables set up with unassigned seating, so people generally plop down and work where they want to. The tables are almost all the way full, but everyone seems to get along. We are currently gearing up for the Color Me Run, so the office seems busier than normal. Overall, I am happy to be working here, and I am excited to see what I learn!

Over the first week here in Vietnam, we have experienced a lot of awesome things. I feel that when we went to the Cao Dai Temple, we got to experience something unique to Vietnam. Cao Dai is a religion started in Vietnam that fuses the philosophies of Christianity, Buddhism, and Taoism all into one. Our tour guide for the week, Long, took us there and we were able to experience a Cao Dai service in their temple firsthand. It was a surreal experience and one that made me feel as if I was truly learning of the culture. (Picture attached below)

Vietnam has more than surpassed my expectations, and I am grateful and happy that I decided to join. Ho Chi Minh City is a lot more modern than I had previously believed, and the only real difference between a large American city and this one is the traffic. Here, lights are suggestions, scooters drive wherever there is enough space to maneuver, and crossing the street is an eye-opening experience. The street food here is also very delicious, and I will probably need to withdraw some more money from my bank because I am trying everything I can. It is hot, hotter than Gainesville for sure, and water doesn’t come free with your meal most of the time unfortunately.  Staying hydrated has been a struggle because of the combination of these things, but convenience stores are aplenty, especially in District 1 (the downtown area). District 2 (the area we are staying in) has a lot of foreigners, and with the foreigners also comes the foreign restaurants. I may or may not have had Buffalo Wild Wings, and I may or may not go back soon to visit. Overall, the food is great, the people are great, but the weather sucks.

For my next seven weeks, I hope to improve upon my cultural knowledge, especially the business culture here. Some questions I would like to have answered are:

Why is saying no and being brutally honest disrespectful here?

What is the correct way to introduce yourself in a business setting as compared to a social setting?

Why is the Vietnamese language so difficult? If I learn these things while I am here, I would consider it a great success

This week in class, we got a feel for the cultural, political, and historical backgrounds of Vietnam, which was all new information to me. To be honest, most of what I learned was surprising to me, as all the knowledge I had of Vietnam prior to this week dealt with the US’s war with them. The most illuminating information, and probably the most helpful for our trip, was the concept of ‘face’. Vietnamese are very concerned with their public appearance, and will do anything it takes to keep their reputation in good standing. For this reason, we were taught to expect the word “no” to be used rarely if ever. Also, yes can mean yes, but in many cases it just means “I hear you”. They are an easygoing people, as everyone has their own reputations to uphold, so angry outbursts do not happen. It is quite unlike the US, where emotions are shared a lot more directly than they are there.

I think the biggest cultural difference I learned about, however, was the Vietnamese’s future-oriented society. Americans tend to look to the past to model how they will act in the future, but Vietnamese aren’t bogged down by things that have already happened. We learned that the war of American imperialism, as they called it, has little to no effect on how the populace views the US now. A similarity between cultures I found interesting was their love of American media. The number one song in Vietnam right now is Taylor Swift’s new single, the biggest movie is Avengers: End Game, etc. Maybe it was my own ignorance, but I had the impression that they held a strong sense of nationalism and would try to preserve their own culture. I believe the reason I felt this way is because the only time I have interacted with Vietnamese culture has been eating the food here in the US, which try to play up the atmosphere with traditional music and decorations (I have attached 2 picture of the meals my girlfriend and I got at Simply Pho in Tampa). I was apprehensive at first, because I wasn’t sure how I would be received as a foreigner and American. I see now that I don’t have to worry about being viewed differently because I may not follow the customs correctly, and that they are very accepting of other cultures, including Americans. I am excited to get over there and indulge in the culture, and the food!