An Agent Orange victim in Hanoi has proved that with strong will disabled people can rise above circumstances and gain great achievement, Tien Phong newspaper reported.
Nguyen Chien Thang was born a normal child 31 years ago but began to show symptoms of myasthenia, a chronic condition of muscle weakness, two months after his birth.
Doctors then found out that Agent Orange, passed from his father who fought in the Vietnam War, had damaged part of his brain and rendered him unable to speak or control his limbs properly.
At age 10, Thang was taken to Hoa Binh peace village where he was given therapy and taught to read and write together with other disabled children, victims of Agent Orange like himself.
After finishing the third grade, he had to transfer to a regular school and studied with normal kids since there was no special education program for disabled children beyond the level of grade three.
Not being able to keep pace with his normal classmates due to his physical conditions, he had to quit school but continued his education at home with his father. With enormous effort, Thang managed to master knowledge of math at both the elementary and advanced levels.
In 1999 he was first introduced to a computer and was fascinated by it. He could spend the whole day in front of the computer trying to learn to use it.
With Vietnamese IT books being very scarce at the time, Thang devoted himself to learning English full-time so he could read computer books in English that his father had collected for his self-study.
With Vietnamese IT books being very scarce at the time, Thang devoted himself to learning English full-time so he could read computer books in English that his father had collected for his self-study.
Two years later, Thang passed with flying colors a course in basic Microsoft office software administered by a Computer and Vocational Training Center in Hanoi.
He then went on to obtain an international certificate in programming with the prestigious IT training school Aptech-FPT, a partnership program between Indian IT education company Aptech and Vietnamese leading counterpart FPT.
The school had earlier rejected his application, citing its policy of accepting university graduates only. Thang had to ask the school to give him a one-month trial period to prove himself.
And proving himself he did, becoming the second student in the school history to score 91 out of 100 in its graduation exam.
A man who stunned Microsoft experts
Thang once accepted a ‘challenge’ from a hacker online who claimed he could destroy his computer in ten minutes. Three hours later his computer remained intact while Thang succeeded in turning the hacker’s two laptops into two useless pieces of metal scrap.
Impressed, the hacker advised him to enrol in an online programming course offered by a Microsoft training center in France whose students are often the best and brightest in the IT fields in their own countries.
Thang was the only disabled student among the ten finalists who made it through the admission exam, beating 200 other candidates. His exceptional performance on the exam also earned him a full scholarship from the center.
But before the celebratory mood could quiet down in his family, doctors informed them he should not follow the intensive course, since this could put his life at risk due to a new discovery of some strange substance in his brain.
Thang handed in a letter of commitment to the center, pledging his family would take full responsibility if anything happened to him during the course.
Once the center gave him its approval, he devoted all his time and energy to the study, allowing himself no distraction or entertainment. Due to the time zone difference, Thang often had to study online from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. every day.
“At one point the pressure of the course took its toll on him and he could not recognize anyone after too many days of intense learning. He only recovered after a few weeks of rest but threw himself back into his studies again,” Thang’s father recalled.
For three years, he always maintained the top position in his class and stunned his professors with an all-time high graduation score: 99 out of 100.
His diploma was the only in the course to be signed by Bill Gates, the famed founder of Microsoft.
Thang also earned five other certificates in network security, all awarded to him with high distinction.
| Nguyen Chien Thang won a Nghi Luc (Perseverance) Award at the “Vietnamese Intellectuals 2004” national IT contest in 2004. It was an acknowledgment of his remarkable efforts to mightily struggle to rise above his destiny. |
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