User:VietDragon

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Tommy Truong aka VietDragon of the hiphop affiliated group Guardianz of Destiny (GoDz) was born Trương Hoàng Minh Huy on the 17th of October 1989 in Saigon, South VietNam. Having a father as an army reserve officer of the old regime was very hard, it was almost impossible to progress in life. This fact was not limited to Tommy himself, but included his whole family. After the VietNam War ended in 1975, Tommy's father Trương Miên was sent to a re-education camp by the newly installed Communist Government. It should also be noted that Tommy's grandfather, Trương Kỵ (who's still alive today, albeit very weak), was an officer for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Surprisingly Tommy's father and grandfather got along fine.

As a first child, Tommy had lived in a very protected environment, given everything he needed and rarely let outside. The world as he knew it, was pretty much confined to the small 3rd level apartment at 6B3/2 Đinh Bộ Lĩnh F.24 Q.Bình Thạnh provided by his father's textile company, Thắng Lợi, where he worked as assistance to the director (?) which was equivalent to vice-manager. Although naturally bright as a child, Tommy had been too nurtured in his raising by his mother Nguyễn Thị Vân, and hence became lazy at school. However it was not hard for him to achieve 1st place in his class rankings every month, and getting top grades in all subjects was, well, more like a piece of cake to him. Tommy was at the top of the list for his graduation into primary education (grade 7 back then), the exam had comprised of at least 5 regional schools and took place as a combined entrance exam.

Arriving in Perth, Western Australia in 1992 however, Tommy had to repeat grade 7 as all the English he had previously learnt in VietNam had proven useless in this new and strange environment. He attended Sacred Heart Primary School in High Gate until he commenced grade 8 at Chisholm Catholic School, of which both campuses are located in Bedford, a suburban area not too far away from Perth's city centre.

As early as grade 7 Tommy had been interestingly drawn to hiphop as a form of music, his friends Hiếu and Quốc introducing him to such artists as Paperboy and Snow. In later years at Chisholm he was introduced to 2Pac, Notorious BIG, Nas, LL Cool J, and Wu Tang by his Polish friend Pawel Zielinski, who later became a dj in Perth's underground hiphop scene, playing regularly at the Hyde Park hotel in the early 2000's. Interestingly though, Tommy, or VietDragon's taste and his preference of artists has transformed drastically by today's standards, with favourite artists now being Big L, DITC, Juice, Paris, Immortal Technique, Cali Agents, Demigodz, Dialated Peoples, Swollen Members, Rasco, Jedi Mind Tricks, and the occasional Non Phixion tracks just to name a few. Ignoring all forms of mainstream hiphop, and usually labelling the commercial form as "hippop", VietDragon has followed the purely hobby-influenced path to writing his own hiphop lyrics, dotted by the odd freestyle sessions/cyphers/colabs with his old pals MC Noodlez (from the now defunct Perth group Wolfpak) and fellow GoDz MC Rico (who can only freestyle and has never written a track!). Taking cues from Noodlez (who samples and composes his own beats using Fruity Loops), VietDragon had tried various times to create his own beats, however in the course deciding that he's better at writing rhymes. VietDragon's Magix composed beat can be found in the track "Chrome Assassins" by GoDz, with various others no longer worked on/still in the making. With the loss of his close friend Quan Trần, a Spiderboy who was stabbed and left to bleed to death at a Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration in Hyde Park, VietDragon has leaned more towards hiphop as a way of expressing himself. He periodically blames himself for not being there, and for not knowing the incident until the next morning, when it was already too late. Trouble had already brewed earlier on in the evening when M'bros associates disputed with VietDragon over his sister, a friend of certain people in that crowd at the time, whom, in a turn of twisted fate, turned out to be the relatives of his then current girlfriend of 2 years, Samantha Nguyen. Feeling danger, he rang Quan and warned him only to be met with happy laughter and a joke "there will be more of us than them". Regardless, the incident had scarred VietDragon in many ways, including the disbelieving, unapproving views of gangs, also positively encouraging him to put his thoughts to paper, resulting in many hiphop tracks, one of which is the DestnybOi Dedication which is, until this day, dedicated to the memories of VietDragon's friend Quan Trần.

The impact of losing friends to gang-related violence, together with the loss of one, then both of his grandparents, was not made better with the additional losses of his 2 girlfriends. VietDragon was, in effect, disheartened and discouraged greatly, failing his 3rd year International Business majoring in Marketing and Management degree at Murdoch University. He had not returned to secondary education since then, instead working for various places including physical labour, ending up in working as a Vietnamese Interpreter for the government welfare agency known as Centrelink, with continued employment until today. During that time VietDragon had picked up various other languages including and not limited to, Vietnamese, English, French, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish while not giving up his music, even after the mutual break up with his 3rd girlfriend Evelyn Tam in 2005.

Up until now, after attending the Vietnamese Youth and Student Conference in Sydney in December 2005, VietDragon had been trying to put his fragmented life together, piece by piece. Given no motivation except his own, he has come a long way since that short little boy who just came to Australia and could barely speak any English in April 1992. It is now 2006, marking the 14th year of his life in Australia, and VietDragon aka Tommy Truong is preparing to conclude a very brief autobiography of his life as an article for Wikipedia.

VietDragon aka Tommy Truong's music can be found at the following links: http://www.soundclick.com/guardianzofdestiny