Nha Bui
English 1001
Ms. Lei Lani Michel
“Ay, can you ask your mom if I can interview her, so I can write my essay for my English 1001 class at LSU”, I commented on MySpace to a friend of mines. She was Laura, the daughter of my ex-boss, and soon after she replied, “oh, haha, ok.” As a desperate attempt to make sure that she will ask her mom, I texted her, “This is a really important student interview and I need it to do my freshman writing, ask her please!” “I will, but she is sleeping now,” she texted back. “Oh tell me tomorrow,” I replied. The next day she texted me and my face put on a smirk. She said to me that her mom was willing to do the interview and asked me when, where and how? I took the phone and read the text joyfully. I started to reply and did not even know what I was writing, but managed to set up a date on Sunday when I come back down to New Orleans.
My interviewee is a business owner in New Orleans, Louisiana. She owns multiple businesses around the New Orleans area; Capt’s Sal and Crystal Palace just to name two. Her name is Nga Thi Vu. I kind of knew her as my ex-boss, but I wanted to know more about her and her life. I wanted to interview her because I wanted to know how she managed to become so successful. I wanted to see what obstacles she had to go through to become what and where she is now. As an entrepreneur, business owner, mother, and wife, she is someone interesting I would like to interview.
I went to one of her business, she owns, which was actually the same place I worked at when I was living down in New Orleans. Crystal Palace, a reception hall, was the name of it and where I interviewed her. I walked through the extravagant doors and looked around. I was in a phase of remembering the moments when I worked here. The place is still beautiful and decorative as I can remember it. The bright chandeliers and the blue sky painting on the wall are still there. I looked around in amazement and there she was standing there waiting for me to interview her. It’s been a while since I saw her, but she still looks the same as I remember. She stands at 5’4, with straight black hair, and peach skin. She is a little overweight I can say, but managed to still look good. Her hair was tied and in a style of a pony tail. She was comfortably dress in a regular shirt and some jeans.
We both smiled and quickly greeted each other. We sat down, talked a little about me, and started the interview. Looking at the questions I wrote on the paper, I started to ask her the basic questions about her life. “Where and when were you born?” I started the interview. “Vietnam, hmmm 1968,” she replied after a moment. “I’m the youngest of six children,” she included. She immigrated to the United States roughly around the age of six or seven in 1975 due to the fall of Saigon, which was when the communist took over the capital city. She fled in a crowded both and soon arrived to Louisiana where many others Vietnamese refugees would start over with their lives.
“What kind of education did you received?” I asked her. “Well I was young. I started kinder garden and finished high school,” she replied after a moment of pause. She mentioned how she moved around a lot in the Louisiana and Mississippi communities. She moved from New Orleans to Harvey to Biloxi, back and forth, and at the end managed to finish high school back at Harvey. “College?” I muttered in a low tone. “Well yeah. I went to a Tech school for court reporting,” she answered back. “Well, you aren’t a court reporter now, what happened?” I reasoned. She explained to me in a story of what happened between her and her day one morning. She didn’t like court reporting and it was too easy for her. It wasn’t the job for her and six months of schooling, she quit.
“So, how did she manage own a business like crystal palace?” I thought to myself and then asked her. “Well, I just didn’t thought up of Crystal Palace and built it just like that,” she snapped her fingers. She built her way up and it all started in the French Quarter when she went into the Flea Market. She saw people bargaining and selling items and she liked the idea of how sales worked. She wanted to open her own business but explained to me why she couldn’t. “You need capital to start a big business, if you don’t have capital than you can’t,’ she said.
She started out as a vendor selling novelty items and making money slowly. “It’s not good in the beginning, but gets better as it goes on,” she expressed happily. Soon after she saved enough money, she bought a grocery store. Growing up, her parents owned a grocery store and she worked there as a young kid. She learned through them and her family business In order to run her own grocery store successfully. She wakes up at six a.m. in the morning just to go to work and it paid off. After a while, she saved enough again to buy another grocery store and success start piling up. “So, where are the groceries stores now?” I asked confusingly. “I didn’t like the stealing and people getting drunk around the stores, so I sold them,” she replied.
As an entrepreneur she took her next big step. She decided to open a restaurant not knowing anything about the restaurant business. With little help from her friends and families and observations through other restaurant businesses, she managed to run a successful one. Her business, We Never Closed, opened twenty four hours a day and soon became one of New Orleans Favorite fast food restaurant. They sold New Orleans style food like Po-boys, gumbo, seafood plates, and fried chicken. The place became so successful and well known that it even catered the St. Louis Rams when they played in the Super Bowl down in New Orleans and many games after that. “Here is an advice and you can trust me on it. Opening a restaurant is the hardest business in the industry to be successful in. It might seem easy, but it is not,” she said.
From there on she grew and opened another restaurant just across the street, called Capt’s Sals. It also became a success and soon after following a couple of years, the business expanded and there are now currently six Capt’s Sals in the New Orleans area. She then decided to take another big step and invested her money to build a reception hall. Just across the street from Capt’s Sal, her new business Crystal Palace was built, but soon after her grand opening and her first wedding function there, the unthinkable happened. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and her all businesses were ruin. Her restaurant businesses and her newly required hall were damaged, but that did not stop her. Her love for the Louisiana community quickly made her return and rebuild. Without power, water or any utilities, she still managed to clean and restored her businesses. Just after two months, she reopened Capt’s Sals, without even knowing after her business would be successful. Nobody was back yet, but there were the construction workers which they made money from and got back on their feet. “Sometimes businesses do good or sometimes bad. That is why you always have money a side for Rainy Days,” she said. I was unclear and what she meant by Rainy Day, so I asked her. “It is a bad day, where the unexpected can happened. For example like if they store burn down or get total damage somehow,” she explained. I guess this was how she was able to get back so quickly on her feet and rebuild.
We got into the end of the interview and I decided to ask her about her feelings toward her job. “Do you like you job?” I asked. A quick movement from her, nodding her head down and up, she replied loudly, “Oh, yes. I love it!” Besides being a mom, wife, entrepreneur, business owner, and caterer, she loves doing her job and what she does. “It is important to get to like what you do in order to be happy and successful, if you are not happy than you are going to be unsuccessful,” she said. “You can quote me on that!” she laughed and giggled.
She further explained to me how she feels about her success and her accomplishments. She said, “You do not have to be smart to be successful.” She then explained to me how you can make money by doing what you like to do and what you good at. If you know you are not smart, do not try so hard becoming what you can not become. You just waste your time on something you do not like doing. Try to maximize on what your good at and what you can make a lot of money from. We finished talking and soon, I said a goodbye and left. I took in her words on what she told me that day about being successful. I need to find something that I like doing and I can make money from. If I maximize my potential on it, then I also can become very successful.
English 1001
Ms. Lei Lani Michel
“Ay, can you ask your mom if I can interview her, so I can write my essay for my English 1001 class at LSU”, I commented on MySpace to a friend of mines. She was Laura, the daughter of my ex-boss, and soon after she replied, “oh, haha, ok.” As a desperate attempt to make sure that she will ask her mom, I texted her, “This is a really important student interview and I need it to do my freshman writing, ask her please!” “I will, but she is sleeping now,” she texted back. “Oh tell me tomorrow,” I replied. The next day she texted me and my face put on a smirk. She said to me that her mom was willing to do the interview and asked me when, where and how? I took the phone and read the text joyfully. I started to reply and did not even know what I was writing, but managed to set up a date on Sunday when I come back down to New Orleans.
My interviewee is a business owner in New Orleans, Louisiana. She owns multiple businesses around the New Orleans area; Capt’s Sal and Crystal Palace just to name two. Her name is Nga Thi Vu. I kind of knew her as my ex-boss, but I wanted to know more about her and her life. I wanted to interview her because I wanted to know how she managed to become so successful. I wanted to see what obstacles she had to go through to become what and where she is now. As an entrepreneur, business owner, mother, and wife, she is someone interesting I would like to interview.
I went to one of her business, she owns, which was actually the same place I worked at when I was living down in New Orleans. Crystal Palace, a reception hall, was the name of it and where I interviewed her. I walked through the extravagant doors and looked around. I was in a phase of remembering the moments when I worked here. The place is still beautiful and decorative as I can remember it. The bright chandeliers and the blue sky painting on the wall are still there. I looked around in amazement and there she was standing there waiting for me to interview her. It’s been a while since I saw her, but she still looks the same as I remember. She stands at 5’4, with straight black hair, and peach skin. She is a little overweight I can say, but managed to still look good. Her hair was tied and in a style of a pony tail. She was comfortably dress in a regular shirt and some jeans.
We both smiled and quickly greeted each other. We sat down, talked a little about me, and started the interview. Looking at the questions I wrote on the paper, I started to ask her the basic questions about her life. “Where and when were you born?” I started the interview. “Vietnam, hmmm 1968,” she replied after a moment. “I’m the youngest of six children,” she included. She immigrated to the United States roughly around the age of six or seven in 1975 due to the fall of Saigon, which was when the communist took over the capital city. She fled in a crowded both and soon arrived to Louisiana where many others Vietnamese refugees would start over with their lives.
“What kind of education did you received?” I asked her. “Well I was young. I started kinder garden and finished high school,” she replied after a moment of pause. She mentioned how she moved around a lot in the Louisiana and Mississippi communities. She moved from New Orleans to Harvey to Biloxi, back and forth, and at the end managed to finish high school back at Harvey. “College?” I muttered in a low tone. “Well yeah. I went to a Tech school for court reporting,” she answered back. “Well, you aren’t a court reporter now, what happened?” I reasoned. She explained to me in a story of what happened between her and her day one morning. She didn’t like court reporting and it was too easy for her. It wasn’t the job for her and six months of schooling, she quit.
“So, how did she manage own a business like crystal palace?” I thought to myself and then asked her. “Well, I just didn’t thought up of Crystal Palace and built it just like that,” she snapped her fingers. She built her way up and it all started in the French Quarter when she went into the Flea Market. She saw people bargaining and selling items and she liked the idea of how sales worked. She wanted to open her own business but explained to me why she couldn’t. “You need capital to start a big business, if you don’t have capital than you can’t,’ she said.
She started out as a vendor selling novelty items and making money slowly. “It’s not good in the beginning, but gets better as it goes on,” she expressed happily. Soon after she saved enough money, she bought a grocery store. Growing up, her parents owned a grocery store and she worked there as a young kid. She learned through them and her family business In order to run her own grocery store successfully. She wakes up at six a.m. in the morning just to go to work and it paid off. After a while, she saved enough again to buy another grocery store and success start piling up. “So, where are the groceries stores now?” I asked confusingly. “I didn’t like the stealing and people getting drunk around the stores, so I sold them,” she replied.
As an entrepreneur she took her next big step. She decided to open a restaurant not knowing anything about the restaurant business. With little help from her friends and families and observations through other restaurant businesses, she managed to run a successful one. Her business, We Never Closed, opened twenty four hours a day and soon became one of New Orleans Favorite fast food restaurant. They sold New Orleans style food like Po-boys, gumbo, seafood plates, and fried chicken. The place became so successful and well known that it even catered the St. Louis Rams when they played in the Super Bowl down in New Orleans and many games after that. “Here is an advice and you can trust me on it. Opening a restaurant is the hardest business in the industry to be successful in. It might seem easy, but it is not,” she said.
From there on she grew and opened another restaurant just across the street, called Capt’s Sals. It also became a success and soon after following a couple of years, the business expanded and there are now currently six Capt’s Sals in the New Orleans area. She then decided to take another big step and invested her money to build a reception hall. Just across the street from Capt’s Sal, her new business Crystal Palace was built, but soon after her grand opening and her first wedding function there, the unthinkable happened. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and her all businesses were ruin. Her restaurant businesses and her newly required hall were damaged, but that did not stop her. Her love for the Louisiana community quickly made her return and rebuild. Without power, water or any utilities, she still managed to clean and restored her businesses. Just after two months, she reopened Capt’s Sals, without even knowing after her business would be successful. Nobody was back yet, but there were the construction workers which they made money from and got back on their feet. “Sometimes businesses do good or sometimes bad. That is why you always have money a side for Rainy Days,” she said. I was unclear and what she meant by Rainy Day, so I asked her. “It is a bad day, where the unexpected can happened. For example like if they store burn down or get total damage somehow,” she explained. I guess this was how she was able to get back so quickly on her feet and rebuild.
We got into the end of the interview and I decided to ask her about her feelings toward her job. “Do you like you job?” I asked. A quick movement from her, nodding her head down and up, she replied loudly, “Oh, yes. I love it!” Besides being a mom, wife, entrepreneur, business owner, and caterer, she loves doing her job and what she does. “It is important to get to like what you do in order to be happy and successful, if you are not happy than you are going to be unsuccessful,” she said. “You can quote me on that!” she laughed and giggled.
She further explained to me how she feels about her success and her accomplishments. She said, “You do not have to be smart to be successful.” She then explained to me how you can make money by doing what you like to do and what you good at. If you know you are not smart, do not try so hard becoming what you can not become. You just waste your time on something you do not like doing. Try to maximize on what your good at and what you can make a lot of money from. We finished talking and soon, I said a goodbye and left. I took in her words on what she told me that day about being successful. I need to find something that I like doing and I can make money from. If I maximize my potential on it, then I also can become very successful.
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