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64-year-old Sabedin Ejupi at Ramstore Mall. I asked him why he named his art studio "Saigon." When Sabedin was 11-years-old, a chocolate company had a promotion. Each piece of chocolate came with a picture of a national capital, and if you collected the entire set, you would win a prize. Sabedin and his friends bought way too many pieces of chocolate. After a while, nearly everyone had all the needed capitals but Saigon, which never turned up. Someone told Sabedin about a place that sold these pictures, so he went there and, sure enough, they had the extremely rare Saigon one! Winning the prize, Sabedin was the envy of all his friends, and "Saigon" became his nickname.

I thought Sabedin would be more surprised to finally run into someone from Saigon, but he wasn't, really. His English was pretty good, though a couple times, he used Italian when he couldn't think of the English words.



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