Bolsavik.com

Two Vietnamese-American educators are among the 75 winners of the prestigious Milken Family Foundation for 2007. The awards were given out at a banquet in L.A. yesterday.

Social studies teacher John B. Nguyen (photo right), of James Hillhouse High School in New Haven, Connecticut, used innovative methods that are data-driven and helped students raise their scores on the state’s academic performance test (CAPT).

Nearer to the Bolsavik, math teacher Aaron Chung (photo left), a Vietnamese-American of Chinese descent, of Temple Intermediate School in Rosemead, California, established an Algebra Academy and helped his students, many of whom are Asian and Hispanic immigrants classified as English language learners (ELL) achieve proficiency on California’s math test. The Algebra Academy and other innovations by Chung helped Temple jump from being the district’s lowest-achieving school five years ago to the district’s top campus academically.

Each received a cash prize of $25,000.

When asked what he would do with the money, Chung said he already established several scholarships for college students in Vietnam. He also asked a friend to take him around Saigon on a motorbike, and just randomly stop and give poor people money, 100,000 Vietnamese dong each (about $7).

Read more about Nguyen here, and about Chung here.

 Monday. Time to get back to business. Money money money. Other people’s money.

You can download the campaign finance disclosures of the three Vietnamese-American candidates for OC supervisor, Janet Nguyen here, Dina Nguyen here, and Hoa Van Tran here.

Some tidbits the Bolsavik found somewhat interesting:

* David Tran, the co-owner of Saigon City Market, maxed out on both Dina and Hoa.

* Former candidate and current Garden Grove school district member Trung Nguyen, who himself supposedly is in financial trouble, chipped in $500 for Dina.

* Van Thai Tran has not contributed to Dina’s campaign, but many of his allies have: Truong Diep, Lan Quoc Nguyen (oh, and his brother’s restaurant too), Michael Schroeder, and of course Andy Quach whom many believe is dating Dina.

* Media in Dina’s financial corner: Little Saigon TV ($1,000), Viet Hai Ngoai TV ($500).

* Contributions to Janet consist of many rank-and-file donors who gave small amounts. There also appears to be quite a bit of nominal donations, such as lawyers and doctors who gave $100 or $250.

* Hoa Van Tran, who has not even held his campaign kickoff yet (it’s scheduled for this Saturday April 5) has $44,915.90 on hand, including a $20,000 loan from himself.

* OC Democratic Party wise man Frank Barbaro contributed $500 to Hoa.

* The mother of Hoa’s campaign treasurer gave $100.

* Hoa’s campaign office costs $2,000 a month; Janet’s rent is $700.

The Bolsavik really ought to get a Tivo. He went to the Trinh Cong Son concert, so he missed out on the MMA middleweight title fight between Vietnamese-American martial artist Cung Le and Frank Shamrock. The MMA battle for dominance of Silicon Valley was taking place at the same time on Saturday night.

As you probably know, Cung kicked Shamrock’s butt (or rather, as in picture right, the man’s belly).

And broke Shamrock’s arm. See picture left, below.

According to Yahoo! Sports’ Dave Metzel here, Shamrock ended up going to the same hospital as his pregnant wife, who had left during the match to go into labor. Turns out it wasn’t labor, false alarm. But the broken arm - that was for real.

Cung Le was for years the hero in the Viet martial arts fandom. His studio on McKee Road in San Jose is extremely popular. It is, however, not located in the Saigon Business District, ahem, sorry, the “other” Little Saigon.

(Photos by the AP’s Jeff Chiu)