Interview #1. Pho Seller

Interview. #1.

Our goal this week was to interview a pho seller and a shoe repairer. It was difficult trying to ask someone who are willing to let us interview them. After two days of trying, we were fortunate that a young pho soller accepted our request. His pho place is a family traditional pho nam dinh. Couple of things that I found were interesting during the interview was his interest in cars. He wants to work with cars in the future but due to the family business and financial circumstance, he cannot pursuit is interest. He works from 5am in the morning until 11pm at night everyday, seven days a week. He has been doing this for about six years already. As we talked to him about how’s the business and since prices for housing kept increasing, they barely made enough to pay for the rent. The pricing for their house changed from 6 million dong to 12 million dong in about 6 years. His family came from Nam Dinh and it was not as developed as Hanoi. They moved to Hanoi to start up the pho business and hoping to make a living. He dropped out of school after high school because “he couldn’t keep up with the workload.” The interview flowed very well and it wasn’t as difficult trying to keep up the conversation since he was very kind and open-minded to our questions. He was my first interview and it gave me courage to go on and pursuit the rest since I think some of the ones we picked might be harder than we thought. I learned it will be easier just talk to them and make sure it is interesting for myself as for them since I don’t want to make it too formal. As we said thank to him, he gave us free tra da! It was very refreshing since the electricity ran out and we had to do the interview indoor without fan.  This was a good start for our group because how we are more eager to talk to more people and learn what is their life and job like in Vietnam.