I was forced into taking siestas when I grew up. It’s always hot at mid-day, and the whole country would “lay low” (even 9-5 folks ended up taking a nap at home, hours to be made up on Saturday morning). The song that started our 70’s soft-rock radio program was “Your Song”. I have just…

I was reading Homo Deus, when I had to pack and leave for Vietnam. Luggage too full for the half-finished book. Last Sunday, I ended up buying another copy of the same. Hate half-read books, hate half-baked ideas, and for that matter, hate lukewarm lives. Harari was getting to Humanism (leaving behind the Middle Ages…

My 70’s was conveniently sliced in half, right in the middle. First half was spent in my native country, the other, America. First half, city. Second half, on campus, in the middle of Pennsylvania. One cannot help becoming an expert in cross-cultures having lived through such a contrast. Nothing was “central” in Centre County. Just…

You can be with thousands in the stadium, or billions on the Web, yet still feel lonely. Or sit next to strangers on Trans-Continental flights yet still feel lonely. You can be the King of Pop yet still feel lonely (except to laugh with Brooke Shields, fellow child actor). Chidlikeness is a seedbed of creativity,…

Naturally, we prefer a living and working environment that is not toxic or suffocating. Yet somehow we find ourselves in exactly the opposite of what we were hoping for. Putting on soft music didn’t work. Firing a bunch of negative folks only leaves the place more hollow. Senior leadership came down to “fix” but only…

Man won’t do to machine that which he/she doesn’t want to be done unto. Vice versa. We need to cope and harness those hockey-stick rises of the Second Machine Age thanks to information technology – where muscles gave ways to machine then to mind. Machine and mind don’t need a massage, nor do they need…

Being on the Southernest tip of Vietnam, with map in hand, and Monte Cristo on the other, I imagine myself holding a local map, seeking a promised treasurse and all the justice delayed, hence denied. Dumas truly is a Master Storyteller. I read this in translation, but it still held me captive: story about a…

You learn a lot about people via how they live, love, fight, compromise and consume. You learn a lot more (without waiting for archeological digs) via how they die and say goodbyes to loved ones. In the West, where my father finally made to, after 10 years of living alone in our two-storied house, then…

Routine is routine: brush your teeth, set the alarm and off to bed. But some nights are different: a hang-over or a guest over-stayed his/her welcome. Some life never sees daylight. They call them (in Japan) the modern-day hermits, estimated about 1.5 million youngsters. Unable to wake up and to talk up a conversation. All…

Abraham had faith, Ok, go ahead and kill your son. Noah! Build the boat. Columbus? Sail it. Boat People – Get on the boat: 50-50 chance. Southern blacks had faith. OK, followed the Underground Railroad, went North. When Detroit bankrupted, Obama had to bail them out, since “what’s good for GM is good for the…