Vietcombank: Spam or Ham

Here’s the plain message. Of course I masked my email address.

from: Vietcombank <ibanking@vietcombank.com.vn>
to: **************@*****
date: Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 4:38 PM
subject: Thông báo thay đổi giao diện VCB-iB@nking
mailed-by: vietcombank.com.vn

Vietcombank trân trọng kính chào Quý khách hàng!

Với mục tiêu mang đến khách hàng những tiện ích và sự thân thiện trong sử dụng
dịch vụ Ngân hàng trực tuyến – VCB-iB@nking, kể từ ngày 15/11/2008, Vietcombank
sẽ đưa vào sử dụng giao diện VCB-iB@nking mới cùng với một số tính năng bổ sung.
Quý khách vui lòng xem Hướng dẫn sử dụng dịch vụ <a href="http://www.vietcombank.com.vn/EBanking/IBanking/">tại đây </a> để biết thêm chi tiết.

Vietcombank rất mong nhận được ý kiến đóng góp của Quý khách hàng để dịch vụ
VCB-iB@nking ngày càng được hoàn thiện.
Cảm ơn Quý khách hàng đã quan tâm và sử dụng dịch vụ của Vietcombank!

And here’s the obligatory source code. And again, my email address is masked off.

Delivered-To: **************@*****
Received: by 10.142.48.6 with SMTP id v6cs81057wfv;
        Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:25:03 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.110.50.19 with SMTP id x19mr12266688tix.53.1226571902167;
        Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:25:02 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: <ibanking@vietcombank.com.vn>
Received: from exchange.vietcombank.com.vn (exchange.vietcombank.com.vn [210.245.5.227])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 2si377017tif.0.2008.11.13.02.25.00;
        Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:25:02 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of ibanking@vietcombank.com.vn
designates 210.245.5.227 as permitted sender) client-ip=210.245.5.227;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of
ibanking@vietcombank.com.vn designates 210.245.5.227 as permitted sender)
smtp.mail=ibanking@vietcombank.com.vn
Received: from ho.vcb.com ([10.1.2.15]) by exchange.vietcombank.com.vn with Microsoft
SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830);
	 Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:43:32 +0700
Received: from HO-DBWEB01 ([10.1.1.97]) by ho.vcb.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830);
	 Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:38:54 +0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: Vietcombank <ibanking@vietcombank.com.vn>
To: **************@*****
Date: 13 Nov 2008 16:38:55 +0700
Subject: =?utf-8?B?VGjDtG5nIGLDoW8gdGhheSDEkeG7lWkgZ2lhbyBkaeG7h24gVkNCLWlCQG5raW5n?=
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Return-Path: ibanking@vietcombank.com.vn
Message-ID: <EXFESVR01WP5RvITt7Q000079c2@ho.vcb.com>
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 13 Nov 2008 09:38:54.0970 (UTC) FILETIME=[A5114DA0:01C94573]

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CjwvYm9keT4NCjwvaHRtbD4NCg==

Okay, so, is it a spam? It pretty much fits common criteria. First of all, it doesn’t know my name. Why did I provide VCB with my full name for? Addressing emails to clients by their names is the best differentiation of genuine and fake emails. Didn’t they know that? Secondly, it has a link to an iBanking facility that doesn’t even start with “https”!

Well, the fact is, it is not a spam message. And that saddened me. Come on, you can do better than this, VCB. Please give me some hope. You are better than ACB, aren’t you?

Reminiscence of a half year past

So, it’s been half a year. It’s been half a year in turbulence.

On Jan 1st, I was so eager, excited, and hopeful on my flight home. I had a plan, a simple plan, and it was rolling well. You see, what could be easier than finding a job, working for a few years, and then taking a higher degree? I thought this’d gotta be it, that I found my future.

Then it all broke apart. It’s funny though, cuz I was afraid of exactly this from the beginning. I could tell it was too good to be true, that everything was like arranged, granted, not earned, and so something got to be missing. I mean, come on, you don’t expect to see a perfect world, do you? The problem was it happened too late! I was so into it. I bet on it with everything I had.

I lose my bet. My plan went to trash. I declined a few job offers to open my own consulting firm. I am still not sure why I did that. I might have thought the market demand was high, or it might be cool to do it, or it was just a rebelious action to satisfy my ego. Regardless, I have a firm now. And it is the reason I write this piece.

The firm is doing well according to plan. Before you ask, no, this is not the plan I talked before. This has its share of late night’s oil burning, sweats and a few grey hairs. It has ups and downs, cheers and cries. And it is not perfect. It is so much different from going to work at 09:00, coming back at 18:00, having dinner till 20:00, spending a few hours doing god-knows-what in front of the monitor, and finally lying on the floor till tomorrow. It is no longer a pleasant life for me at all.

Thinking about the firm reminds me of all the good times in the island country, where I didn’t have to think about anything. I miss the nights we hung out. I miss the trees along the road. I miss the breezy cool wind on the way home. I miss the flat. I miss late night movies/series. I miss the nights I slept on the floor. I miss the morning green bean dessert and bean curd. Life was a pleasure ride in the park. I earned a comfortable salary so I didn’t have to think twice before spending. I lived in a spacious and windy flat. I owned a motorbike. I had everything I needed. I was contended.

Now, my head is full of questions. What is the next step, how to move forward, who is the next customer, how to approach them, who to partner with, where to find money to do those stuffs… Infrastructure, marketing, human resource, finance, law, etc. all come pouring down on me. These questions don’t seem to end at all. Instead, they become more and more challenging, they push me closer and closer to the wall.

Sure I have doubts. Is the market ripe for us? Isn’t it better to do business elsewhere? Was coming back just plain wrong? These questions keep whirling wildly. My thoughts are all interwound, messed up.

Fortunately, everytime I think about them, I always come to the same answer: that I can’t change what happened, I can only fix them. So that’s exactly what I’m doing. I founded a firm, so I’ve gotta take it high. I failed a plan, so I’ve gotta work another one.

Though I’ve lost the eagerness and excitement of the flight that day, I still have hope. When the turbulence is over, we’ll have a safe landing on the long runway.