And you might be wondering why we’re not in the regular setting.

But we are in the studio you know I need to get out of this box.

And if you have already guessed,

this topic today is OUT OF THE BOX.

It’s on the creativity and living life differently.

And you know I really have a special guest today.

And we’re at the different section of the studio because we’re also wanna live out of the box and we wanna think of out of the box.

And we’re doing the show in different way.

This is our guess, she is an example of living out of the box and be creative at learning constantly.

So we’re gonna talk to her. Let’s go.

Hey, as you can see, we no longer have the regular chairs and tables as we normally do.

Right now, we’re sitting on top of a match, in Vietnamese they call chiếu.

And we’re going to talk today in a very unconventional style, in a Vietnamese style because we have a special guess today.

We have Mago, who’re in the studio with us and Mago travelled here already from the U.K.

And the reason why we have her here is because she is continuously learning.

And she’s always trying out new things and you know, she’s gonna have some really good stories to share with us.

Alright, before that I’m going to invite you to drink a cup of tea.

I’m gonna pour you a cup of Vietnamese tea.

So in Vietnam, we also love to have tea set in small real tiny cup like this.

Thank you. - Yeah.

In Vietnam, we always pour tea to invite people into our house.

Yes.

And whenever we make new friends, tea is also. We call it “Trà tâm giao” meaning with tea, we can speak from the heart.

I see. It’s so good custom.

Cheers.

How does that taste?

Very strong. A little bit better but after the bitterness, you can taste the sweetness

Yes. It’s different.

It’s very different from English tea.

Tell us a little bit about why you came to Vietnam to stay.

I came to Vietnam because I was curious about Asian countries.

And I had talked with Asian people as I calles…

I met a lot of interesting people from Vietnam and other Asian places.

And I wanted to see if Asia was so very different from Europe

and my particular friend that I came to see as well.

And I know who that particular friend is. Yes. He’s the producer of this show.

That’s it. Yes.

That’s how we got you to be on the show. So thank you for coming.

And I do know that you’re a big learner

You learn every day and you used to teach people as well.

So how is it different now compared to you and your 20 years old?

It’s different because I’m not working to …particular goals now,

but I’m having fulfilment in finding out different things.

When I was 20 years old, I was busy in having it finally.

We had family problems when I was a teenager.

And it mean my education was stopped.

I had to leave school and work for my living.

So it wasn’t until I got married and in my twenties did I feel it’s time to finish my education that wasn’t finished before.

And that’s when I looked around to possibilities

did sufficient examinations that I hadn’t done it at the school in order to get into a college for teachers.

That’s what I did in my twenties

and I was able to that and bring up the family at the same time thanks for some help from my husband.

So why you still continue to learn and explore new things?

Because I think it’s never a time to say that’s enough, you’ve learned enough because there’s always something new.

Quite often you might here an interesting program on the television and think why I didn’t know anything about that, how do I find out?

And you have time for hobbies when you haven’t got a family ….anymore.

You have time to develop your hobbies and learn more about the things that you like to do.

And how young are you this year?

I’m 77 at the moment. I should be 78 in the autumn.

Ah, you’re 77 at the moment and you started learning because, joining the late learning because.

Because I had more time and there were things that I thought that I hadn’t developed within myself.

I still have more potential.

So I know that at IBC, you did a very interesting course.

You jump right into a group of youngsters.

How was that? It’s brilliant for you.

They were brilliant.

What is difficult for you to mingle with all these young people?

Not really, no. because we’re all new to the subject and all discussing things in our lecture time.

I feel equal and the young people maybe feel …to sit with one of them.

So now that your other IBC in public are going back in the summer. I heard that your schedule is pat nowadays.

What did your schedule look like on the daily basis?

On the daily basis, what do I do?

I have different things which I do each day.

For instance, on Tuesdays I take a disabled friend to our art group and I’ve been teaching her how to do a painting because she lost the use of her right arm.

So she had to learn everything form the scratch with her left hand.

So I’ve gone to the stages of her building up from colouring and drawing and painting.

And she’s getting on well and she loves to go to that ….. And I go to the rock…. Where I learn to sing.

And then what else do you do?

I had been learning Spanish on Wednesday and it finishes for a year.

At the moment, I didn’t want to go back with, I just wanted to learn basic Spanish mainly.

So that I could read messages that I have on Facebook from some of my South American friends from IBC.

Some of them are posting in Spanish so now I’m able to read what they’re saying.

No I love that you’re source of learning. Yes you learn for yourself.

But it’s also because you wanna communicate better, you wanna understand better the people around you.

I think it’s very very lovely.

So I do know that, I can see you guys make rain together.

Yeah, do you mind showing us a little bit of how you do that.

I think we could do that.

Later on we can ask them to come up and perform something.

OK, so how do we make rain?

We make rain in several ways.

We can start a rainy day by making a simple noise with our hands.

We can go on to some clicking.

Yes, maybe we can have a few

And that the rain is getting harder, we can come in with slapping noises.

The rain is beating against the leaves.

We hear the leaves rustle….the thunderstorm’s coming.

And finally it’s the, really it’s the height of the storm, we want some…..

Standing we could do that with our feet and we have some heavy shoes on, otherwise better with hands.

Yes we have clouds and then trigger less.

And then the rain looses down and we go reverse the movements.

We go to the clicking and then the.

Now the leaves rustle back and we have to drop couple of remaining drops.

Splashing on the sidewalk. Splashing on the rooftop.

I wonder what would it be like to have the whole big group, the big crew to do all of this together.

I think it’s gonna sound really good.

It sounds better with a lot of people, yes.

Should we have a crew come up and try to do perform something together?

Yes, let’s do that.

Alright, that was a lot of rain.

We did make it rain with all of our hands, our legs, our feet.

But of course the rain will need to go because we’re gonna go back into the house.

And we’re going to enter back into a Vietnamese household.

Let’s see what’s the Vietnamese household offers.

Ok, we’re back to the Vietnamese household and we gonna have a little bit of dinner, it’s a traditional Vietnamese dinner.

Shall we have the hot dinner traditional style?

Thank you.

My goodness.

Ok, I’ve got it.

A feast.

It does look like a feast, doesn’t it?

Well, let me introduce a little bit.

In Vietnam, most people eat on the mat and most people eat with a little tray here.

And the tray serves the whole family.

For Vietnamese tradition, normally we have at least three dishes: a vegetable dish, a meat dish, a soup dish.

At least three dishes, rice is not included.

We have condiments. This is the condiment.

It’s salty vegetable.

And then we have our dipping sauce.

Over here we have the soup. This is made from mud crabs, mud crab soup and Vietnamese spinach.

We have our long beans, which you’re probably familiar with.

This is our boiled pork and our braised fish.

This is quite an exuberant dinner, because we have two meats, normally just one meat.

Perhaps I could try something.

Alright.

How it works in Vietnamese culture is that the host of the house will always serve the guests.

The guests don’t serve themselves. The host always gives them food.

When the plates are finished, we will top up the food.

This is your chopstick if you need it.

You can just drink the soup from the bowl.

And then the chopsticks are for the vegetables.

This might be tricky drinking soup with chopsticks.

I manage to pick things up.

In Vietnam we just drink it with the bowl, so we just sip it as sip it from a cup.

Absolutely nice. Thank you.

Would you like to try another one, something else?

What sort of fish is this?

This is the river fish.

This one has both the role and the meat.

So let see what that tastes real.

Thank you.

Careful, there might be some bones.

I don’t think there’re any but just in case.

I hope there’s no bones in there.

Yeah, that was lovely. Thank you.

That’s the fish and the rest.

In Vietnam, this is something that is quite interesting as well.

It’s quite adventurous.

It looks a little bit like chestnut.

They are not chestnuts.

They are in the same family as the eggplant.

But they are round, they are green.

They’ve been salted.

It’s quite an acquired taste, so I don’t know if you want to try.