Hai Anh, Single and Available!

Hai Anh, twenty-nine and still single, is from Hanoi and has completed his high school studies at Complementary of Military university of Culture and Arts in Hanoi. He is one of two children.

His father, a retired military officer, is one of six children and his mother is also a retired member of the military. Hai Anh had planned to pursue music studies in piano at the military music academy, but switched to academic studies, which he pursued until 2014.

He is still considering going back to school to study the piano though he has no prior training—just a keen interest in music, most especially the piano and the guitar. Hai Anh explains that one of his inspirations for pursuing musical studies further is his love of American Idol. Another interest of his is Western chess.

Hai An says that he, himself, doesn’t feel mistreated by others around him and in the community. He tells of friends, though, and even colleagues at Omamori Spa, who sometimes say they feel mistreated. Asked to give a specific example of this mistreatment he tells of one of his fellow therapists having had his slippers hidden by a colleague whose vision was better than his own. (Somehow it seems very likely that there are far more disturbing incidents that he’s not sharing with us.)

Regie Williams is a volunteer who has worked closely with Blind Link and Omamori on a number of projects. At one point he asked to be blindfolded for a long period of time in order to gain a better understanding of what it means to live as a person with no vision. After “watching” Vietnam win the Southeast Asia football championship with a group of Omamori therapists, Hai Anh and Cuong, another blind therapist at Omamori, offered to take Regie out for a walk, still blindfolded. Hai Anh says he remembers a feeling of pride and confidence at being able to serve as guide and caretaker for another person. He was amused by the hesitating, fearful, baby steps taken by Regie, an otherwise confident, sighted person and was strengthened by his own confidence in being able to walk without hesitation.

Even so, his greatest frustration as a visually impaired person has been his lack of mobility. As such, he participated with pride in the recent White Cane Initiative promoted by the Vietnamese Ministry of Trade and Industry. He sometimes uses a friend’s white cane to practice as he doesn’t have one of his own. In a recent training session where he was asked to walk a course marked off by ropes on both sides, he found that he couldn’t do it without touching the ropes, as instructed. His goal is to improve on this performance and learn to better use the white cane to improve his mobility.

Like many of our therapists he dreams of one day running a business of his own. In his case, he’d simply like to try to run a business to see if he can do it. To this end he is reading books about the subject and hopes to one day figure out what business that might be and give it a try. In the meantime he continues to focus on improving his massage skills. Ironically, where many of our therapists have indicated that they believe their inability to see actually heightens their sensitivity to their clients through their sense of touch, Hai Anh says that when he closes his eyes he feels that he loses focus and cannot perform as well.

Regardless, this probably simply illustrates that each of us, blind or otherwise are truly unique individuals and each of us must find our own solutions to life’s challenges. We’re sure you’ll feel the warmth of Hai Anh’s personality through his hands and delight in the kind of naiveté that allows him to proclaim, with seeming total disregard for what others might think or say, that his dream girlfriend will be someone like Oanh or Thuong, two of our charming, valued reception staff!