Winter of discontent

I have just flown back from Vietnam. A short trip. Un-productive but not wasted. Then I am back to this bubble, with an elephant in the room: “do you hate him?”.

Vietnam has its own elephant. But its winter of discontent is milder than the one I am about to experience here in the US.

Here, there are barren branches everywhere, symbolically and literally.

Look at the BoA/Meryl Lynch predictions for the upcoming decade: more grandparents than grandchildren (we know that), China>US in AI (we know that), the rise of IoT and automation (Amazon knew that), Fed will be ineffective in regulating financial health (we knew that back in 2009).

I must give it to the Founding Fathers, and the contract (Constitution) they wrote, to ensure the Republic be preserved for years to come.

A few weeks away helps me see that:

• we are too materialistic still, albeit all the movement in the opposite direction
• Cyber Monday>Giving Tuesday, the former got Amazon backing
• world leadership now doesn’t seem to “include” the US as its center
• China is a different world into itself, with satellite and proxy actors
• China is neither revered nor respected on world’s stage = Russia
• So the big Three seem to have problems of their own; France is up?

While everyone is working on digital transition, Vietnam itself has barely caught up with books and reading. You may say they can leapfrog onto Kindle and the likes. But I doubt it. Once you are in front of the screen, and not used to reading anything besides the Sports section, you are more likely to cut through the chase right to the juicy part.

While time seemed to be frozen there across the pond, morality is standing still on this side. If I have to choose one versus the other, I will have to pick where I can contribute the most, where I can be of greatest values to. I have seen the faces of need, of wants, of envy. All because I represent a dream not a diaspora. All because the basics of life are not met there, or at a slow pace, while the pursuit of happiness is raging on on this side, from Black Friday to January 1st (designated shopping dates).

In Costco, we stocked up our toilet supplies. On the street of Saigon, peddlers and homeless folks used leaves from city trees for the same purpose.

Perhaps we have chased the dream in the wrong direction, in the direction of the Mall and material things. Even our 80’s Material Girl is now having second thought while the Art of the Deal needs new revisions, especially when the Elephant is in the room, staring at everyone throughout this long Winter of Discontent.