Facebook Dilemma

Hi there, friends!  These past several days, I've been trying my best to catch up with a schedule that I had set up for myself to manage all five of my blogsites that are currently running and hosted by Blogger.  Just by glancing at the schedule at times, the amount of work with so many articles I had assigned for myself to write seems quite overwhelming.  But I can't really complain or place the blame on anyone but myself.  Afterall, it was I who had created this schedule.  I am the culprit, as well as the willing, participating victim.

On Tuesday, my schedule would come across a screeching halt, as I was forced to be held back from posting my list of articles I had planned for my blogsites when I came across a disturbing dilemma with my Facebook account.  I first learned of this dilemma sometime early in the morning that day.  As I would usually do with all my other articles once posted on any of my websites, I would read them over and then share them on my accounts and pages set up on other social media network websites such as Pinterest, Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook.  After posting an article I had just written on Amerasian/ Eurasian Forum about Hollywood actress Olivia Munn, I then realized that I had been blocked from such activities on Facebook like posting, sharing and sending private messages due to some inappropriate activities that had recently taken place on my account.  Right then, I knew that my account had been hacked.  It had been about a two or three days since I had last logged onto my Facebook account, so really, how could any inappropriate activities have taken place?

It took a while for me to finally get into my Facebook account, since this time whoever that had hacked my account really went to extremes to take over my identity and and seal me off from ever accessing my account on Facebook again. This has happened before, but never quite as frustrating as this time around.  Everything had been changed and modified with my personal information on Facebook except my name, it seemed.  Where I lived was now in Hanoi, Vietnam, where I worked was for some organization based out of Hanoi, my password, my email address, just about everything I had originally entered as my personal information had been changed which made it nearly impossible for Facebook to contact me given how the two email addresses that I have been using for years had been wiped out.  Even the language was changed from English to Vietnamese on my Facebook account.  That probably was what presented my biggest obstacle when trying to regain access.  English is my primary language and what I consider to be my native language as well, despite how it technically isn't my first language.  I had learned both Vietnamese and French years before I began speaking English, and even though I am still able to speak these two languages today, in comparison to my level of command in the English language I can only say that I'm now on a communicative level of proficiency in Vietnamese and French, whereas English would be by far the language I'm most comfortable with.   One can only imagine just how challenging it was for me to follow the step by step instructions all in Vietnamese in order to regain access on Facebook, as I didn't even know what the Vietnamese term for the word "password" is.  It took me hours before I was finally granted access back into my Facebook account.  But even then, my problems on Facebook with this hacker were far from over.  I thought that once I was able to reset successfully a new password that my Facebook account would be secured and the hacker would then be blocked from any further activities.  But that wasn't the case.  Each of the three times I would change my password, within seconds I'd see more and more private messages and/ or postings sent out by this hacker to my list of friends on Facebook that contained pornographic material and the most offensive language.  What made it even worse was that Facebook still had my account frozen.  I was blocked from using any such features like posting, sharing and even commenting.  All I could do was just watch how this monster that had hacked my account continue with his quest to sabotage my image, as my Facebook friends would send me messages after messages expressing their disgust and outrage with me.  Most of them were shocked thinking just how could I dare send them such filthy messsages. Thank goodness, there were a few that knew better and acknowledged how they knew that my account must have been hacked.  That was really encouraging.  But I couldn't even reply to those few friends with a simple thank you.  Most of my other Facebook friends weren't as understanding and had sent me rather feisty messages expressing to me his or her anger.  Some even notified me that I would be deleted on his or her list of Facebook friends because of this matter.  I must have lost about 50 or so Facebook friends that day.  The whole experience was really a complete nightmare.

You're probably thinking, so how would this affect my postings on Blogger?  Well, Facebook, just like Blogger, is a social media network website.  Like a lot of bloggers, all of my accounts on such social media network websites are linked together.  When something goes wrong with one of them, the rest are affected.  Even though it is not one of those website where I am able to make money from directly, as I do on YouTube, Tumblr, HubPages, and now with Blogger since some of my blogsites have recently been monetized, what Facebook does for my articles that I post on my blogsites hosted by Blogger is that it serves as a major traffic source.  In addition to my personal account that has a total of 5,000 friends, I also have created three Facebook pages that are directly linked to my blogsites hosted by Blogger, which means whenever I post an article, by sharing them on Facebook, these articles are given an exposure to a potential audience of roughly 10,000.  For a newbie blogger such as myself, that's rather a huge chunk taken away from my current total viewership potential.  With that said, I'm sure, one can understand just how frustrating it was not to be able to share any of articles posted on my blogsites.  I mean, really, what good would it be to even publish these articles if nobody is going to read them?  That's just like if a singer had to perform on stage to an empty audience.

During these past several days, without the ability of sharing any articles on Facebook, rather than posting them on my blogsites I have worked on writing them without the usage of my computer.  I've since compled writing about a dozen of these rough drafts.  All I have to do now is post them.  Now that everything has been cleared up with my Facebook account and I've been granted with full access to post and share articles, I'll be typing them up and posting them on my blogsites for everyone to read soon.  My next three upcoming articles to be published on ThienPhuViet-Singer.Blogspot.com are entitled as How I Lost 100 Pounds, What's Next? and My Teacher Known as the Timeless Voice, which is an article I have written in honor of my voice teacher, the legendary Thai Thanh.  These should be posted soon, so check them out.  I think you'll find these articles to be rather enjoyable to read.  As for my activities on my other blogsites, on NgocLanRemembered.BlogSpot.com look forward to reading the next scheduled posting which will be entitled as Did You Know Ngoc Lan Could Also Sing in Chinese?  On VietCeleb.Blogspot.com, the next featured Viet celebrities with full bios and tributes to be posted are as follows:  La Thoai Tan, Tang Thanh Ha, Vu Linh, Elvis Phuong, Hong Nhung, Manh Quynh, My Tam, Bebe Hong Suong, Cuong Vu, Minh Tuyet, Duc Huy, Thanh Tuyen, Shayla and Leyna Nguyen.  This site has just gone off.  Thanks, by the way, to everyone for your viewership on VietCeleb.  On ClubLai.BlogSpot.com, check out my tributes to singers Marie Louise, Van Anh and Tuan Kiet.  And last but not least, how could I leave out my blogsite, MrKoolKat.BlogSpot.com?  I'll be posting several adorable photos of my feisty mother cat, Sheba.  Trust me, you'll end up loving her as much as I do.  

Thien Phu Sets Record Straight for Colleague

Ever since I started singing, I've been asked repeatedly about one particular colleague of mine on whether or not she is Vietnamese.  I'm talking about Dalena, of course.

I'm sure many of you out there had similar reactions the first time you heard Dalena sing in Vietnamese.  For me, it was actually during her first live performance here in Orange County at the Ritz in Anaheim.  I was actually in the audience that night.  I was about 19 at the time.  Somehow I was able to sneak into the Ritz nightclub that night.  When the emcee introduced her name on stage along with a brief description of her being this Anglo-American gal who could sing in Vietnamese, I was a bit skeptical at first.  Prior to that I had already seen the likes of Rick Murphy whose performances were pretty much parodies of a White man trying to sing in butchered Vietnamese. There had been one other act known as Cong Thanh & Lynn, the Vietnamese-Australian married couple.  Lynn was this beautiful blonde Australian who was able to sing in Vietnamese, and although she had rightfully earned the respect from Vietnamese audiences as a serious singer, one could easily tell when listening to her sing in Vietnamese that she was not a native speaker.  Dalena, on the other hand, really took me by surprise that night.  Her performance of Nguoi Yeu Co Don was nothing short of flawless.  She sounded completely like a native Vietnamese speaker when she sang that song.  I couldn't get over it.  I even had doubts that she was not Vietnamese, despite how she had blonde hair, looked all-American and sounded every bit like a native when she spoke in English.  Well, of course, she should.  Why shouldn't she?

The following week, Dalena's performance at the Ritz which had blown everyone in the audience away, aired on Vietnam Performing Arts Television on channel 18.  For everyone who hadn't been in the audience that night at the Ritz, they would be in for quite a shock once they saw the live coverage aired on television the following week.  It wouldn't be long from the television airing date of that performance of Dalena at the Ritz before she would become a major star among Vietnamese communities worldwide.  The more famous she got, it seemed the more her Vietnamese fans would be buzzing about raising quite a bit of controversy which had everyone asking a certain question about Dalena:  Is she or isn't she really Vietnamese?  Even after an interview she had done on Little Saigon Television where Quynh Trang flat out asked her the question, "Dalena, are you Amerasian?" and she answered with a no explaining how both her parents are Anglo-American, the general public was still not satisfied.  Some people went as far as to the extremes of claiming that Dalena looked Amerasian, and even had more Vietnamese features than Thanh Ha, who is Amerasian and for a number of years, also had blonde hair.  I never saw that in Dalena.  To me, she looked all-American. But as these rumors persisted, it even got me to wonder if there was any truth behind them at all.

Sometime in the late 1990s, I finally got a chance to meet Dalena through a couple of shows where we worked together.  I must say, I found her to be quite delightful as a co-worker.  She was always very polite and always smiled at everyone.  During an engagement on New Year's Eve back in 2000 at the San Pablo Casino right outside of San Jose, California, I had the pleasure of working once again with Dalena along with Henry Chuc, Thanh Tuyen, Ha Vy, Thanh Truc and Margaret Yang of the Tranz band.  During this booking, I got the chance to spend some time with Dalena.  We talked about our lives, shared information about our upbringings and a mutual friendship we had both had with makeup artist/ fellow performer, the late Perry Zeild.  During the midst of our conversation, I couldn't help but ask her what she thought about the rumors from some of her fans about her actually being Amerasian.  She laughed, and so did I.  Dalena even told me of how her mother who had managed her career for many years had also been the target of rumors, as some fans had believed her to be Dalena's lover rather than mother.  Rumors, at times, can be quite ridiculous and even downright vicious.  Although I had never doubted that Dalena was all-American, something happened during that San Pablo Casino engagement clearly proved to me that Dalena was indeed who she said she was and not in any way a phony.  During the middle of the show, an audience member had come up to me and requested that I do a song called Paroles, Paroles which had originally been recorded by the late Dalida as a duet with Alain Delon.  Since no other singer booked on that show had the capability of singing in French, I turned to Dalena to see if she could help.  I was aware of Dalena's extraordinary talent of singing verbatim in foreign languages, as she had done so quite well in the Vietnamese language.  Therefor, I decided to take a gamble and asked if she would be willing to try singing this song with me as a duet in the French language.  To my delight, she readily agreed.  As I wrote out the French lyrics, Dalena asked me to sing them aloud so that she could watch carefully the movements of my mouth and hear how each word would be pronounced. After just a few minutes, she sang back the French lyrics to me perfectly.  I was beyond amazed just how accurate her pronunciation of each word in French was.  I was so impressed, I had to ask her if she did indeed speak French.  Unfortunately, the band informed us later on in the show that there simply hadn't been enough time for us to add that duet number onto the program.  I was rather bummed, since I'm sure that Dalena and I would have knocked them dead with our duet performance of Paroles, Paroles that night if there was enough time.  Dalena's ability to catch on so quickly singing the lyrics of Paroles, Paroles in French just goes to show that she indeed has this unique talent of listening, and copying verbatim perfectly in foreign languages.  If she could do that in French, why is it so hard for Vietnamese audiences to accept the fact that that was how she had become able to sing in Vietnamese so well?  One other event took place from this particular show gave further proof that Dalena really is who she says she is and that she is not Vietnamese, like how certain rumors had claimed her to be.  And that was when I got to briefly meet her mother when we arrived at John Wayne Airport in Orange County flying back from San Jose.  Based on what I saw, Dalena's mother is definitely Anglo-American.  So there you have it, folks.  I can certainly vouch that Dalena is not Vietnamese.