Dear friends,

Another year has come upon us – Mai, Nam and Thư, this time flooded with your responses to our survey! We want to thank you and let you know that we really enjoyed reading your ideas and insights. Your words have been great inspiration for us to move forward to the next step of our plan: expanding our team.

Many of you have showed great interest and enthusiasm in the Kite Runners Project. You asked us how you could contribute, and it’s time we get back to you – not only with the opportunity to partner up, but also a chance to be a vital part of our team. We are offering you an opportunity to shape the Kite Runners the way you want it to be.

You may wonder whether you really want to do this, or whether it is the right decision for you. While we cannot tell you a plain “yes” or “no”, we can help you make an informed decision by providing more information. Yes, it will be time-consuming. Yes, it will require a high level of teamwork. Yes, we will be very demanding of you. And yes, it will be rewarding.

As a team, the three of us – Mai, Nam and Thư – have learned a lot from each other and from the process of putting things together. There has been up and down time. We got really excited about our ideas, we talked in great length about what we want to achieve, we spammed our own discussion board with details and how-tos, we shared our knowledge and network of friends. We also encountered many seemingly-impossible difficulties, we disagreed on many details, we had intervals of time without any progress or communication. But in the end, we are proud of our work so far and we think the experience is indeed worthwhile. So, if you are enthusiastic about our mission, are open to learning and working with various people from different backgrounds, and are willing to invest your time and effort, we encourage you to apply for us.

We are sure you already know this, but the development of a newspaper is not just about journalism. In fact, the development of a newspaper has very little to do with journalism; instead it’s about organizing, fund-raising, legalizing, advertising, and PR-ing. A large number of personnel and a wide range of skills are needed to take care of every aspect of this process; and therefore, no matter what your strengths and weaknesses are, there is always something you can do and be good at. Not good at writing? You don’t have to be. Don’t think you are good or experienced enough? While it is real work with real result, it is also a learning process; and we are interested in giving this learning opportunity to those most benefited by it. We are willing to help you, as we are certain we will need help from you too.

Apply to the Kite Runners! Information and application form here.

Best Regards,

The Kite Runners

So, what is love?

Cliche question, yes, but still no satisfying answer. My boyfriend never says he loves me - not because he doesn't know what his feelings are, but because he doesn't know what love is. And yet we're in an exclusive relationship and happily so. On the other hand, in Vietnamese you express the idea that two people are in a relationship by saying that "they're in love," consequently implying the cultural paradigm that love and relationship are equivalent. I have seen many different attitudes: hopeful, dreamy, realistic, pragmatic, cynical. I have seen people trashing love and relationship and the belief in thereof as childish, naive and immature. I have seen people talking down on fairy tales and Prince Charming, thinking doing so is the evidence of their growing up - which somehow can't be achieved without being cynical. You probably have also seen a lot of these things too, and that's why I'm writing to differ.

Let's start with what I don't believe in. I don't believe in romance. I don't believe in casual dating, date after date, partner after partner. My first boyfriend had been my friend for 4 years before we got together; and our relationship afterward was mostly long distance. My current boyfriend lives in the same dorm as I do; and we just got closer without any dates or all that formalities. I'm happy with my relationship as it is - none of us remembers what date we started going out, no anniversaries, no roses and candlelight dinner, no "What would he/she think about me if I do this?" Once I went out on what I thought was just a hanging out but the other person took it as a date, and all his compliments, kind gestures, and "You're such a beautiful lady"'s made me extremely uncomfortable. But what is it that I don't believe in? I do believe that romance exists, and that for some people it's enjoyable. I, however, don't believe that it has any value. It's like when you casually go to a party and dance - the dancing was fun and enjoyable while it lasts, but to you it doesn't mean anything more than that. Most people know it well; some even confuse romance with love and thus disbelieve in love.

But I do believe in love. Right, a young naive girl and her fairy-tale dreams, you might start to think. But my belief are rational, and soon I'll show you the rationale of it. What is it that I believe in? I believe in love itself as a non-romantic feeling. I have feelings of love for many people: my parents, my sister, my relatives. I also love a lot of people not related to me by blood: my high school best friends in Vietnam, Toronto and Costa Rica, a lot of my friends in Random - including my boyfriend, or sometimes even people I don't know. So, I love a lot of people and my love is not exclusive. What's exclusive for me is romantic love.

As suggested, romantic love is love, which has a non-romantic nature, made romantic. Of course, romance is just a game, and there's nothing wrong with developing romantic love for more than one person. Right, by now it should be all clear that I believe in polyamory. I believe that there's nothing wrong with it. Even before I learned about the concept, I had been wondering: if love is such a great feeling, why not love multiple people? If loving other people make your loved one happy, why should you be sad? Yet, I still found the idea repulsive - although not anymore.

But no, I'm still monogamous by choice. If anything, relationships are time and energy consuming, and I simply can't afford more than one. But more importantly, I like my life whole. I often find it unsatisfying and frustrating every time I'm doing something I enjoy, and then ponder with regret and hesitation that maybe I should do that other thing that I also enjoy greatly instead. So, I know that I wouldn't like the feeling of being with one person and suddenly think dearly of someone else and wishing that I could also be with them. I don't see the point of that; I'd rather have all of my affection invested in one person to whom I can feel it greatly - and if it didn't work out, I'd also rather feel the pain of losing "everything" than "just an important little part." Maybe it's just me - most people would prefer to have other significant others to rely on and help them through, but for me, life is hardly lived without the extremes.

And then, there's the question: are relationships worth it? This was from a blog sent to me by a friend with whom I discussed about relationship.

I’m not a relationship person. I like it logical, rational, black and white. I don’t even like surprises because the unknowns scare me. I’m somewhat of a control freak. Okay so that’s an understatement. I am a control freak. I want to know exactly what I’m doing and how I’m going to achieve my goals. Yet, I’m also fickle and about as unpredictable as the Cantabrigian weather. And “relationship”, with all the messy notions of feelings and emotions, just doesn’t go well with who I am. I can't commit. Not to any one clothing store or any one flavor of ice cream, and definitely not to any one guy. I'm not an emotional person. I don't ask people five times a day how they're feeling. I can't even remember the last time I cried. I'm positive it wasn't this year. All these "feelings" talks make me squirmy and uncomfortable. I’m also a cynic who doesn’t believe in love. I don’t like fairytales, nor have I read or watched much of it at all since I was a little kid. All these images of the happy couples riding off into the sunset are pretty much deceptive bullshit as far as I’m concerned. “Everlasting love?” Please, doesn’t exist. And if relationships won’t last, why should I bother at all? The heartaches, the pain, the hours lost moping over a failed relationship just seem too high a price to pay for something that is based on misleading euphoria, false promises and delusion, and hence destined to be short-lived.

Ultimately, though, I wonder if it’s all because I don’t want to set myself up to get hurt. If you’re not someone’s girlfriend, then you can never be someone’s ex-girlfriend. Of all the relationships you put yourself through in a lifetime, you’re lucky if one works out. And even if it does, who can guarantee that it will still do a couple years, or even months, down the road. Love, like marriage, is but a social construct. Society places pressure on you, especially if you’re a girl, to “settle down!”, “get married!”, and as you feel the clock ticking away, you force yourself on some guy you’re “possibly” in love with and hope for the best. I’m not sure I ever want to subject myself to all that. Why hang on to some false promises when you can be fabulous and fabulously single?

My first reaction was: sounds like me a long while ago. So I used to be the innocent little girl with dreamy eyes. Then I became the cynical teenager. And then I got over it.

Like a certain type of typical teenager, there was a time when I trashed emotions as weak and unnecessary, and took pride in telling people how long it had been since the last time I cried. Then came a day when I realized that the world had had enough cynics and emotionally deficient people - most pretended that they were not, some thought it was cool and pretended that they were, a few really were and didn't care to hide it - but in any case, they were still too great in number. How many times had you been tricked and used by someone who you thought were your friend, or classmate, or co-worker? How many times had you gone out on the street, seen an accident and then witnessed people gathering around gossiping, taking videos or pictures on their cell phone but none cared to call an ambulance? How many times had your mother told you to be cautious of your friends because they might just be using you? And you still think that indifference is rare and the emotionally deficient are the minority? No. This is the way to go if you want to be different, to be the minority: have feelings, and sincerely so.

People tell you that feelings can't be rational. Really? Feelings are as rational as you want them to be, and if anything, feelings are reasons. People tell you that feelings are not black and white. Really? It's just people whose these feelings belong to that are in capable of making sense of their feelings, just like how people can't see some logic clearly - and that doesn't defy the logic's black-and-white-ness. People tell you that relationships are fallacies, nothing but a joke. Really? Relationships are what you make out of them - sure, it's a social construct, but that also implies that you have the ability to shape it the way you want. Look down on your relationship, and it will look down on you. Appreciate it, and it will appreciate you. Think that relationship is faulty and a waste of time, and your relationship will just be wasting your time. Think that relationship is worth treasuring, and so it will be. People tell you that love doesn't exist. Really? If they were really as rational as they claimed to be, they would know that they could never make the claim that love doesn't exist - and this is why: you can prove that something exists by observing its existence, however the lack of such observation doesn't prove otherwise. People tell you that fairy tales are wrong and bullshit. Really? Sure, it's full of politically incorrectness, but they overlook the fact that it provides standard, vision, and hope. More generally, it encourages enjoyment and imagination. I liked several fairy tales as a kid, and now, after almost 20 years and extensive studies on writing for children (since I've wanted to write a book for children), I still enjoy fairy tales and all it has to offer. My point? I'm not condemning cynicism; but cynicism alone is not the solution. It's good to be able to point out the problems, but then what's the point if you will just turn your back against it because it's not what you want? Where's the initiative, the desire to be different, the desire for change? After all, if it's a social construct then you, too, can construct it, and the fact that it's not what it should be is exactly the reason why you should treat it the way it should be. If you had dreams and belief about love and relationship and are now made doubtful, then you should believe in them even more than before.

And if relationships won't last, why should you bother at all? This, I think, is the most ironic argument coming from relationship-non-believers. They claim that relationships are nothing, but the previous statement strongly suggest that they actually think relationship should last and be something. So it turns out that I'm even less concerned about relationships than people who claimed to not be concerned about them, because while I do think that relationships should be something, I don't think that they have to last. But people tell you that they should be. People tell you that break-ups are painful, relationships that don't lead to marriage are failure and mistakes, and the purpose of starting any relationship is the happy ending where you two are a family.

Really?

So, it seems like, they imply to you that we live in a world where the future is the only thing that matters. Somehow you should conform yourself to seeking for the security in settling for a family, while avoiding any other risk - the risk of having a happy time of your life with someone who would not become your husband or wife, the risk of feeling appreciated by someone who would not father your kids, the risk of developing and maintaining a meaningful relationship with someone who later would not share your taxes. Somehow getting into a relationship is directly translated as "trying to find a partner and settle down." Somehow getting into a relationship even means anything more than you appreciate the other person and their company and attractiveness. Somehow you just can't start a relationship without any thoughts about marriage, or on the sole basis that it will make you happy. And then, somehow the inability to get a relationship work is a sin, and a "failure" means that the process of failing is meaningless and just shouldn't have happened. Somehow, no matter how better you have become with the help of your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, or how happy and loved that person have made you felt in your most depressing times, that relationship is a failure and just shouldn't have happened. Somehow it not working in the future means that it won't work now.

I'm good friends with my ex. My boyfriend, his ex, her boyfriend, and I live in the same dorm (almost) and hang out with each other on a daily basis, in any combination possible. I don't feel the need to get awkward with my ex or anyone else's ex, or to feel jealous or painful. I love my boyfriend, and it's just that - affection, attraction, sincerity, on the basis of trust and communication, without any need for formalities or romance. I don't feel the need to play it any differently.

I think people think too much about the future and just abandon the present - and then at some point they find themselves wondering "What if...?", regretting not taking chances and opportunities to get to know another human being.

Manhattan had this particular feeling much similar to that in Sai Gon. My first morning there, in a friend's rented apartment, started abruptly by noisy swearing and banging on the door by someone whose possession and money had been stolen during the night. My first meal in the city was Japanese, my second was Mexican, and among the next ones were Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Sandwiches, Chinese, Japanese/Korean. Like a typical tourist, I visited museums, schools, parks, churches, or just wandered around the streets and got interested in things I happened to stumble upon. Binh, a sophomore in Architecture at SCAD, and Evan, my boyfriend, kept me accompanied.

Evan said he would have arranged something with his uncle had he known how strict and limited Columbia dorms would be; but if given an option I would still choose to stay at Columbia the way I did. Otherwise I wouldn't have known anything about Columbia; and that would be sad. For example, I wouldn't have known how this other girl in the dorm came to the kitchen (where I slept) every early morning, turned on the light, made an omelet with six eggs, and just had to do everything really noisily, or how two girls on the third floor came home after midnight on New Year Eve, threw up and passed out drunk in the hallway, or how the chandelier in the big lounge, the lights in the hallways, and the bathroom lights were usually left on all the time. I wouldn't have been able to appreciate Random, its sense of community and security.

We spent too many minutes waiting for the subway trains, which came and went even more sporadically and less reliably than the trains in Boston. I have yet to see any city in North America with a subway system as reliable as that of Toronto - that said, I haven't been to that many cities in North America. Nevertheless, I liked NYC. Uptown Manhattan is a grid system with numbered streets and avenues, which contributes in aggravating the cold whether with its long and unobstructed wind tunnels. Downtown is more unpredictable and, as Binh said, allow further organic growth of households and neighborhoods. Downtown has more of a personality - as you casually walk along the street, you don't know what to expect and what the place will have to offer. And that was what I did. I came to NYC without any plan in mind, but left the city wishing that I had more time.

I met interesting people on this trip. Binh was an enthusiastic sophomore in Architecture who I had known for a while, but had not had a chance to meet until now. On my first night at NYC, staying at his apartment, I also spent some time around his roommate Karna (or at least that's how I think it's spelled), who was a chemical engineering major at Cooper Union, a humorous/fun/well-rounded person, and a Boston resident. I spent 4 hours with another friend whom I knew during ACCESS in HCMC two years ago but never since then. I had lunch with my cousin and her family - someone I had heard about since last year in Houston.

I also saw interesting things. For example, I ran into a snowman - the first snowman I'd seen - during a random walk in Central Park. I had heard and read about Cooper Union's new engineering building and its sustainable design, and now I had a chance to take a look at it (although just from the outside). It was my second time to the Museum of Natural History - this time at the animal and people section - and while the animals were furry and cute, I'd prefer to have seen them at a zoo. The Museum of Sex was fun and a bit confusing. I never got pass the gate to (and the store of) Guggenheim Museum, due to a really long line and the late hour of the afternoon at which we arrived. I spent my last morning in the Cooper-Hewitt's Museum of Design - and loved it! Binh would love it too - such a pity he couldn't come. This design museum reminded me again of that quote at the end of a 12.00 guest lecture: "Never lose your sense of wonder." It was just creative and motivating - I really wish I had more time exploring it.

I loved the look of the Guggenheim Museum. Jesse once told me that he wanted to make the world a stranger place - and this just reminded me of him. During my few days there, Binh had been trying to convince me to study Architecture or Urban Studies - and suddenly I found myself thinking: I, too, want to make the world a stranger place. Motivation, creativity, imagination and inspiration were what NYC gave me. I wanted to read, to study, to draw, to think, to design, to innovate. And although on second thoughts I'd like to make the world a more livable place before making it any stranger, these two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

This is for a project I'm working on.

Kite Runners là một trang tin sắp ra mắt bạn đọc. Kite Runners được thành lập và phát triển bởi các bạn du học sinh, sinh viên hiện đang ở Mỹ, với mong muốn trở thành một nguồn tin bổ ích cho các bạn trẻ ở Việt Nam về việc hướng nghiệp, học hành, xã hội, và sự đa dạng của các nền văn hóa trên thế giới. Kite Runners dành cho các bạn trẻ trong độ tuổi 13-25, và sẽ có ba phần chính là:

- Học tập

- Ngoại khóa, cuộc sống

- Nghề nghiệp

Hãy trở thành chủ nhân tờ báo bạn ưa thích bằng việc chia sẽ với chúng tôi những gì bạn kỳ vọng!

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He's a little corner of myself that I've been keeping.

I've watched him since his first day of life, when I was 8 years old and his mother lived alone in the house behind us, deeper in the alley. He's certainly not the most healthy child I know. More times than I can count in a year, his mother would appear in my parents' clinic's doorsteps - worried and weary - with him lying faintly in her tanned, skinny arms. "Again?" She nodded.

He survived all that illness somehow.

He grew up, not the liveliest boy I've ever known either. Although I was never fond of babies, my sister loved to play with him; and it often - unofficially - became our responsibility to look after the one-year-old when his mother was out there doing everything she could for a few crinkled bills, and his visiting grandmother had to deal with her own health problems. "Really?" Many people asked. Yeah, really. For some people, usually the best solution available to a situation is not even a wise one. Not that I understood it back then.

He survived us too, somehow.

In the later years, on really humid and overheated afternoons, he followed other children in the area, picking up litters on the street and selling them to some mysterious middleman. And, oh gosh, yes he changed. Or should I say, he grew up. There was this one guy, one year older than me, who wandered the streets selling lottery tickets everyday. I knew his name and his age because I attempted to start a conversation with him once (and now whenever I'm back in town, I still see him - with the same hat, the same tattered bag and lottery tickets in his hand, walking on the same streets). He too had changed since our first and last words. They both became canny as hell, they resembled so much these people that my mother angrily talked about every dinner: that seller at the market who had tricked her into buying rotten food, that colleague who attempted to do this and that bad thing,.... Occasionally I had a fight with him - the boy living deeper in the alley - and he once called me "slut". "Slut' in Vietnamese is a common insulting term (think of "bitch"), and it's not that I wasn't used to hearing that. Nonetheless, it got on my nerve and I slapped him. "Who taught you to call names like that? Do you even know what it means?" I asked. I did not really "know" what the term meant. This was before I started going out with my ex-boyfriend.

I saw him less and less in the next years, as I wasn't in town often. Nevertheless, there's always been some kind of special bond between he and me that I can't really explain or make sense of. He's been always the first person I visited when back there - well of course, he's nearby, but it's more than that. It's usually summer when I was back, and I'd just come up to him, usually in the evening. Blank gaps of memories gave things a new importance, I guess, because in times like that I could always see the shy lottery-ticket boy of my age that I first talked to the other day long ago. How are you? Are you going to school? Why not anymore? How's your mother? You know, things like that. The answers were always honest and carefree, and - once in a while - interrupted because of his mother telling him to bring me a glass of water, as said the usual etiquette. I did this, and did that - I told him. "Are you happy there?" he often asked. That's the Vietnamese way of asking how things have been - they ask if you feel happy with them. I always said yes.

The latest time that I saw him was the recent summer, before coming to Boston. "Find a random guy, get married, and stay and enjoy a happy life in America," he told me. That, is a common path that many people went - or thought that they would go through. Americans have the American Dream. Well, other people also have their dreams of that sort, you bet.

Well, not me, even if that should be taken as a joke I wasn't in the mood to enjoy it. My ex-boyfriend and I broke up a while ago to become something intimate but unnamed to each other. People asked me why, I told them I didn't know - but I in fact knew that that didn't matter. At all. Ever since the very first time that I ever left this town (and even now), my mother has been calling me to say two same things again and again:

- Do not have sex or involve in any sexual activities. If your future husband knows, he will disrespect you for that.

- Do no trust people. When a friend say that your hairstyle is nice, they're just jealous with you and don't want you to look good, and are probably laughing at how ugly you look. Listen to your family, only they will tell you the truth.

And, you know what, my mother wasn't born with a single parent, wasn't deprived of the privilege of education, didn't spend all her childhood finding her way to survive among all sorts of people on the streets. She just grew up while interacting with people who did.

And when I talked to this boy after an interval of separation and he was so shy, I'd been always at a loss of what to really say. No matter what questions I asked or what I told him, I felt like there was always something more meaningful to be told. You know, something that isn't cynical, isn't cliche, isn't trivial, isn't what he has witnessed everyday. Something like I loved him and he should have known that there were indeed people who loved other people.

Much to my disappointment, I never told him something like that. But I do love him, I care about who he would become, and he's one of the very few people that bind me to this land. I've always wanted that he would fall asleep when I was talking to his mother, so I could just look at him and sing the lullaby that my father had sung to me every night when I was small... you know, a lullaby about how a child is meant to be loved, a human is meant to be loved - and when it's not the case? Something is wrong.