From: Robert Mellis
Subject: Vietnam Follies

The big guys from New York descended upon our fair city. We sat with
the American Ambassador, listened to the U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights, and heard the Rector of the Royal University of Phnom
Penh. We took them up the Mekong to visit the silk-weaving ladies in
their houses without electricity. We wined them and dined them. Then we
brought them to the Center to meet the Cambodian graduates. Old Jimmy
Greenfield, the president, was overwhelmed to see those bright shining
faces - 35 of them - at lunch.
We then sat down privately and he told me he wanted to close down the
Southeast Asia Media Center because it cost too much. How soon could I
shut it down? Well, well, well. This was a little out of the blue. He
told me he has decided Cambodia is not ready for us. He wants to focus
on Vietnam.
Okay. There is no question that Vietnam is the country with all the
economic energy, intellectual energy, and best education in the region.
But it also is the country with the greatest need to control thoughts
and actions.
So we boarded the big bird and flew to Ho Chi Minh City and we wined
and dined again - this time with the Vietnamese graduates, as well as
top editors from Saigon Times, The Labourer Newspaper, the new computer
magazine that's about to begin. HCM is an incredible place. Six million
- maybe seven million - people live there. It's noisy, raucous, the
economic engine that drive the country. There's money being made and
being spent here.
The women are breath-takingly beautiful in their silk ao-dai pant
dresses. This spectacular dress, I decided after making a laborious
study of the subject, simply makes plain women more beautiful. The top
is form-fitting, but it floats freely from the waist down. It covers
silk-satin long pants. The ladies climb aboard their motorbikes (four
million in the city) and tuck their silks under and around them and
head out into the street. They are just everywhere; it's the dress code
of HCM City. Nice dress code.

We then moved up-country to Hanoi. The top brass were booked into the
Metropole, a 5-star hotel. Jo and I and the two instructors for a
course we held were ensconced at the Army Guest House. We awoke each
morning to reveille; I never could discover if it was a tape recording
or if we had a genuine bugler. The help seemed to be Army personnel...
a little morose, not too interested in serving their public. But the
price was right.
I had arranged a dinner with Tran Ve, the editor in chief of Vietnam
Economic News. I'd provided a workshop in December to his HCM City
staff of reporters and editors and he was most appreciative. I had
helped his managing editor fill out an application for a Knight Fellow
to come and provide him with two or three months of fulltime mentoring
and assistance. When Jimmy Greenfield, the president of our foundation,
discovered I had done this, he became quite petulant. He recently had
been asked to resign from the Knight Fellowship board because of the
conflict of interest that occurred when he would decide who would make
a good Knight Fellow for his different centers. In a shocking display
of bad manners he announced in a loud voice, with Tran Ve sitting
immediately to his right, "Let's get out of here. I don't want to waste
time duplicating assistance if these people are getting a Knight
Fellow."
I almost fell out of my seat. It was hard to even understand what
brought on this embarrassing incident. I signaled him that the magazine
had heard nothing about whether or not they were getting a trainer.
Besides, we could work alongside another trainer. He settled down.
The next day, however, just as we were about to have lunch with the
Hanoi graduates, Jimmy Greenfield, 80 years old and maybe just on the
far side of rational thinking, called me over and told me he had
decided he wanted nothing to do with Knight Fellows.
Since we are currently supporting a Knight Fellow at the Center I told
him I just didn't get it. "Well, you'd better get it," he said in a
threatening voice. I don't do well when I'm faced with a bully.
I looked him in the eye and said I thought his comment made no sense.
But that only made him angrier. "You either get it or you rethink why
you are working for me," he said.
Since I feel I am putting a fair amount of psychic and emotional energy
into running the center I told him I was rethinking my role as we stood
there. I couldn't imagine why I would want to work with such a person.
But this old warhorse from the New York Times (he'd been the foreign
editor, the editor of the Times magazine, assistant managing editor) is
used to having things done his way.
I stepped away and sat with the students and tried to enjoy their
company. But I felt a line had been crossed.

Jo and I discussed the unfolding situation. She is having a difficult
time with the rug being pulled out with the impending closure of the
center. This new development left us wondering if there was even much
point in continuing.
The whole American team met with Madame Binh to discuss ways to
cooperate and develop our training in Hanoi. She was cautious and
polite, as expected. She wants me back in the country to discuss her
needs and ways we can work together. I find I have great respect for
this careful, bright woman. The New Yorkers wanted to push her into a
one-year commitment and she was having none of it. "I understand this
would be more efficient," she said through a translator. "But I must
have time to think about the process."

A night's sleep resulted in a new equilibrium and we pressed on. A
visit with Phnom Penh friends to Hanoi helped ease our tension. We had
a fabulous dinner at a restaurant named Le Tonkin. We took another deep
breath and met with the powers that be the next morning. The petulance
and egocentric decision-making had subsided. We talked about tactics.
Then they flew off to Myanmar.

I did a workshop at Vietnam Investment Review on Monday and Tuesday
morning. Twenty eager faces greeted me. With a bust of Ho Chi Minh for
my backdrop, we discussed, point by point, the weaknesses in their
stories. I was told how some things are too sensitive to explain. I
spent much time pushing them to expand their boundaries, to reduce
their self-censorship. I found when I provided them with specific
wording for ways to push that envelope they eagerly embraced the idea.
In the evening (Monday), we taxied over to Le Rendezvous cafe where you
slip into a
cocoon of classical music and enjoy the show of having an Irish coffee
prepared at our table with such showmanship that the restaurant stops
and applauds the waiter.

The wrap-up day found me back at Vietnam News Agency, the
party-controlled news-gathering apparatus. I found Mme. Binh had
clearly checked with the powers that be and she handed me everything I
sought: four workshops during 2004, a visit by me in June so I can work
with selected editors who wish to redesign their publications, a
workshop by Michelle Foster in late May and early June on business
management techniques. Not a bad day's work.


There's a new picture folder, April in Vietnam in the Jorob2004 site.
Also, pictures of Jo at her opening. Enjoy


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Cambodia pictures are at:

http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jorob2004/my_photos

http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/margaretjmellis

Sailing and other travel pictures are at:

http://photos.yahoo.com/robertsmellis