Thang Nguyen 555

It is one of the most dreaded experiences. It left without us. From the Internet to the Space Ship, from one lover to the next. Opportunities. Missed.

I have a nephew who missed the boat. Out of compassion for his daughter who became ill overnight.

Karma rewarded him with wealth gone wildest.

Sometimes we have to avail ourselves for other opportunities:

e.g. clearing the deck for the next chopper (as on the Last Day of Vietnam), or an inevitable divorce (hell or home).

The reason we all fear “missing the boat” is because we did not have a plan B, or have never experienced setback, or always with cushion and insulation.

When 9/11 struck, a bunch of people had to rent a van and drove across the country since ALL planes were grounded except for Air Force One.

Talking about Missing the Boat.

There are three types of setbacks: self-inflicted, unavoidable and happenstance.

Life is exciting for each of us precisely because of unknown. It makes for Hollywood materials: meet girls, lose girls, get girls back etc…

Then both grow old, ugly and live out the rest of petty and lousy life.

Every once in a while, life affords us those milestones: graduation, career option and promotion, then of course, cremation.

I love to quote myself ” with minutes, we merely exist – with moments, we live”.

Why do we miss sunset while letting the torturing noon to dominate our thought life! With moments, a mix of them, we live a colorful life. Prisoners of long sentences count only the minutes and the days to release.

Self-recrimination. Those missing-the-boat moments. If I literally missed the boat today, I would stick around for the sunset on the beach. Might as well.

My nephew abandoned his planned trip, purposefully missed the prepaid boat. For his daughter’s sakes.

Karma rewarded him. Karma rewards all of us who chose to miss the boat out of compassion for others. With moments (of decision that aligns with cosmic Karma) we live as intended.

Missing the Boat. Might not be a bad thing after all. Circling back, looking at our previous life with fresh eyes, even fell in love with it as if for the first time.

Guys get girls back, together they live happily ever after.

Admire or despise and anywhere in between. There exists a whole range, since perception and opinion tend to shift as more data become available.

Like the 12 people. The jury. In the court of public opinion. We, human being, learn to distinguish the poisonous from the perfect, what is toxic and what is nutritious.

We teach our children lessons learned the hard way: don’t touch poison ivy.

Stay away from chemicals, drugs and unexploded ordinance.

Here. Read this. People worthy of our admiration and imitation.

Role models. Teacher and instructor, counselor and coach.

(I have personally found PE coaches the most helpful… they taught me how to swim, to handle stress and stay away from injury.)

We all grow up admiring Pasteur and Marie Curie, Confucius and Christ. Our predecessors. All went through similar struggles, yet emerged triumph. Our performance benchmark.

At the minimum, we are to observe the Law, obey traffic signs and stay away from shady characters.

In short, no longer we’re searchers in high school, looking for a sense of belonging and identity.

That’s puberty.

We’re in a social-media society, powered by chips and AI, motivated by forces unseen. We’re primarily wanted for our eye balls, our purses and our time. There is no need for high intellect and skill-set. Just scan. Just post. Just Like. Just buy. Perhaps you might want to “friend” this unknown person. What’s the point? Metcalfe Law (the network is stronger per each added member – exponential law).

We’re in short, part of the Web, to be manipulated and mass-marketed to.

There is no longer a society in which individual accomplishment counts – at least not as in centuries past. It’s now scaled up, spreaded out and strengthened by numbers.

Quants rule.

Once we were told to go deep, to elevate ourselves beyond mere reptilian existence.

Now, the script changes on us. Just scan, look, comment and post. On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.

Case closed. Now is not the time for the 12 to deliberate. In fact, the whole wide world is the jury.

And at our fingertips, we vote, we decide and we character-assassinate someone from the distance. Cyber-bully them. Anonymously write them off, put them down in one fell swoop.

The power is enormous. Without any responsibilities. Sue me. See me. Feel me. We’re all alone, we’re all alone. Alone again, naturally. When we turn off our devices, we return to the three-dimensional analog reality of aging, of decline and isolation.

Then we long for our selective past, when role models were still alive, nudging us to learn, to emulate persons like Marie Curie and Confucius. Somewhere in time, those people loomed large, lived selflessly and left behind irrefutable legacy.

At times, the gene pool graces us with admirable people, just as it often produces killers and robbers.

The whole Law-Order apparatus exist to sort out and shut out those deemed unwanted and despicable.

That leaves us on our own to seek out that which is honorable, admirable and sustainable. The range, at far end of that spectrum make a lot of noise and garner a lot of attention, dominate news cycle and drain tax payer’s money.

But when devices are off, silence returns. We then hear the still small voice, urging the hero in each of us to rise to the occasion. To nudge others and leave great legacy, just as previously demonstrated by past role models, teacher and instructor, counselor and coach. Love those PE ones. I owe them a bag of gratitude. My still kicking, breathing strong, all thanks to the discipline of working out and healthy habits.

It takes two to tango. An admirable role model and a dedicated follower to lift up the gene pool. Or else. Just let go, let gravity does the work – slip slide in the race to the bottom. That’s reptilian living. Dog eats dog, especially on the Internet, where nobody knows who you are. Perhaps you might want to connect with so and so…nobody knows if it’s a he/she/or it. Be it the later, we might want to skip Metcalfe Law, and jump onto Zeroth Law (robots cannot harm human being).

We Are. Extra.

Backgrounding in a comedy in the making. Just like those men of the mass who once surrounded Howard Cosell in the hope of showing our faces on “Bananas”.

Been a long time, but the script kept rehashing. Especially when writers strike.

Machine learning, writing and scripting. A new mix of formula: boy meets girl, loses girl and gets girl back in the end. Be it Count Monte Cristo, Papillon or Gatsby.

The latest did not get her back. Only regret, sorrow and tormenting: “Summer ends. How I wish I could grab it and wouldn’t let go of it”. Something in similar vein.

I finally got to finish “In Cold Blood” by Capote. What a treat (not a feast of violence and dread). I felt cold, chilled and everything in between, just to enter that world, that scenery and setting.

Extra extra.

We are. All tied up, gagged and shot. To our eternal sleep, some in pajamas, others, naked.

Extra extra. Bananas we are. Dictators are meeting up, making deals and promises.

Lots of extra standing around, getting their faces on camera: “Mom, did you see me on TV”.

Shakespeare once said the world is a stage. If so, we’re all extras, “Take two” (start walking, try to make it as normal as possible, as bystanders would, minding one’s own business and not of the world’s).

Let Moroccan die on their own. The 9/11 victims, the once Mayor of that fateful town, the semi-conductor business shift to Vietnam, away from its once-concentrated China facilities.

Let the fight and competition be then between Ohio and Hanoi (once, Silicon Valley vs Taiwan).

Extra extra. We all are. The writers strike. The world spins. And the people walk, drudgingly dragging their feet until hearing the director say “Cut”.

Let’s do it once more. This time, try to fake it until you make it.

Sylvester Stallone, go “Do we get to win this time?”.

P.S. Saw him as an extra on the Woody Allen’s Bananas (subway hooligan).

We shall rise, shall overcome….SOME day. Maybe not today, not tomorrow. Some day.

Meanwhile, just act normal. Walk like you normally would, crossing the street, minding your own business. Leave the war, the weapons and the worries to main actors on world stage. Yes, the world is a stage. But yours is so small. It doesn’t even count. As soon as you’re gone, they issue death certificate, and with birth certificate, you’re a new logged away case. Cold case. If not killed In Cold Blood.

Capote says goodbye to Kansas like this:

“Then starting home, he (Dewey, the detective) walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.”

The End. (each life killed was worth 10 dollars, per robbery gone misinformed and misguided).

Extra extra. We all are.

We are living in the age of the Megaphone: zooming out from any city, the sight might be breathtaking, but the sound dotted with white noise and all.

Lots of sound: high, low, medium, baritone, tenor, alto etc… “I heard he sang a good song…I heard he had a style”.

We need our stories to be told, our tales to be heard, and our rights to be observed. Our day in court. Both small “c” and one day, big “C”. Have you been baptized? For insurance should we face Judgement Day.

For smaller “c’s”, the worst is to be sentenced to silence. 24/7 in confinement. No one to talk to. To tell our tales to. To rant and rave. To be listened to.

In listening, we withhold our pre-judgment (without wearing a robe) until BOTH sides are heard. Every day, we play judge and jury, without being conscious of it. When there is no one around, we turn against ourselves: pulling out “cold” cases from the past e.g. that guy crossed me, that gal rejected me.

At times, I want to completely erase the past. Press reset, reboot.

Uploading ALL memories to the cloud somewhere and never have to deal with past unsolved cases. Heck. You don’t really live until you stored up a bunch of running-in’s.

People self-project. They disliked themselves, hence immediately notice imperfections in you. From there, it’s easier to pick on what’s out there, as oppose to what’s in here.

Inside, the noise gets louder and louder as outside gets quieter. Here is the progression of inner and outer communication: first, we heard voices of the nurse and doctor, our mom and closed families. Then we , at least me, heard the sound of drum beat, telling us it’s time to end recess.

Many of us growing up hearing and learning to ignore the sound of gun shots, of B-52’s rumbling, and of terrorist getting chased on rooftop. Those same roof first rain often bounced off, announcing a long overdue wet season. Rainy and dry. Half a year wet, half a year dry. No way around it. Just the way it is.

So we learn to tune out what can’t be controlled. We learn to crowd out the rain outside, playing the guitar, singing a song. “I heard he sang a good song…I heard he had a style”.

Many smoked. Others clung their beer bottles. Just to pass the time. To coast. To count to the end without making it count. Stoically. What else can you do. B-52’s can’t solve it. Kissinger kisses my *ss. Johnson, Nixon and Ford. Sounds like car dealerships in Motor City. Can’t solve it.

So we went on, putting blinders on our eyes and ear plugs in our ears. Seeing no evil, hearing no evil. Until Judgement Day. The rain on the leaves…on the tin roof…on our wet pavement.

“Hot cakes here”…the sound of peddlers and street vendors. Of those widows and orphans of war.

Echo in my mind. No pension no regrets.

Just live on. Finish up what you did not start. This wretched life whose ending no one knows.

Sentenced to a life of silence. Of grief unobserved and tales untold.

Among the living and the dead, the later are assumed to be at rest, more peaceful (R.I.P.) while the former tossed and turned even while on top of the most expensive mattress there is in Costco.

They say stress will kill you. I say, it’s silence, not stress, that does. Slowly, deliberately and mercilessly.

We’re both judge and jury. Of our own shame and guilt, buried deeply in the past, waiting for the labeled “cold” case to be re-opened in light of new evidence. Memories are selective. But never completely erased. If we are ever see real peace, it’s within ourselves when no one is watching.

We’re all sentenced to silence, eerie sound it tends to and should be….

” In restless dreams I walked alone Narrow streets of cobblestone ‘Neath the halo of a street lamp I turned my collar to the cold and damp When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light That split the night And touched the sound of silence ”

Sound of footsteps on street of cobblestone, of gavel on wood …just give it some time, coming, coming. Bam! Then zooming out of any city, lots of lights yet without noise. Sentenced to silence.

Proponents of BPO suggest cost-shaving.

Proponents of Automation remind us machine doesn’t take breaks, holidays etc…

Proponents of re-shoring boast the hiring of locals and more taxes to the public coffer.

Proponents of post-Covid era advocate not the return to 9-5 habit.

Workers themselves feel like a yo-yo: school one’s self, train one’s self only to see jobs shipped overseas, then back in different forms and regions wherever the political wind affords them tax breaks. In between, chip set and chip speed have religiously followed Moore’s Law to double every 18 months or so. Hence, devices get smaller, wages shrink and a new industrial complex reemerges on this side of the pond, unrecognizable (WeWork? Indeed).

Who is correct? Who is responsible? How could skills acquisition on Main Street keep up with shorter expectations and cycles on Wall Street?

The answer is You 3.0. Long ago, I presented “You 2.0” i.e. self-leadership, based on studies of success models of Past people, companies and countries (T-formation)…

While I might not be wrong all together, I missed a huge point: the world is changing much faster than our speed of thought. More people, younger, are joining the workforce. More willing and able. More eager to discard “old” models to adapt and adopt new ones, mercilessly. It’s as if You 2.0 finally is put to rest (Rabbit at rest) at an early retirement age. You 3.0 have to deal with foreign workers, emigrant and immigrant workers, and machine workers.

Diversity and inclusion now means working with others not of the same mindset, skillset, but also with machine, which takes no smoke breaks, no holidays and Labor Day. The job of how to make sense, and optimize productivity given the time frame and new structure at work should be cause for concern to everyone. Can’t leave it to leaders to decide the ratio of man-machine at a given work setting. Phasing in and mixing them up etc… Science, Technology and Society. Often times, technology gets adopted first at work, then home. Not to mention ESG (the new ticking point, then counterpoint).

I noticed more private airports, private boats and private security apparatus; stuff once belonged in elite domain. Imagine private golf course in our backyard. Might not be unthinkable, now that deck and swimming pool have been widely adopted. As we share work space (virtual and casual), recharging stations etc.. we might as well invest in private domain e.g. home office, home gym, home charging station, energy generator and home entertainment.

You 3.0 sees a merge of public and private sphere, made possible by faster computing power and more leisure time. It’s up to us to keep up or cash out. Remember, machine also has no work dignity. It just does, as instructed. Agnostically, automatically and for the lack of a third A, arrogantly (“I don’t need breaks, holidays, Labor Day and what not”.

In the future, at some point, we might not have and be given this Labor Day as holiday.

First, they invent the wheel. Then the steam engine, then the flight…..workers were honored once a year, often falls on a Monday, called Labor Day to rest, to shop and to spend. Good luck in the future.

In one of the Rush Hour out-takes ( scenes that didn’t make the grade only to be shown at the end when credits roll up), Jackie Chan, instead of saying “Freeze”, says “Cheese”.

We might consider the option of freezing where we are at this point in history.

That way, all of the recurring shootings, whether on or off campus, are freeze up, on pause.

Providing the tape doesn’t shut down on its own.

The deficit won’t get worse, since interests can’t tick up.

We all cannot get fatter, older and sadder.

Mitch would easily blend in, since everyone else is on pause.

The war in Ukraine albeit doesn’t cease, but at least “cease fire”.

Bullets freeze in mid-air. Labor day weekend will stretch out.

And our Presidential candidates won’t get older than they currently are.

Climate Change cannot worsen. And how the world progresses is everyone’s guess.

But at least, it’s an universal Time-Out. So we can rest, think, reflect and breathe in and hold.

Let there be Light. Let there be clarity. Let there be certainty and confidence that the affairs of this world will eventually straighten themselves out.

With or without our making it worse.

We have made it worse, by our sheer existence and consumption.

We enter the picture, taking center stage and “freeze” there. The world cannot wait for us to unfreeze.

It’s moving. People are dying. Babies are coming and crying.

May I suggest a selective Freeze! No. It won’t work. Then we’re back to concentration camps. To vetting and recalibrating who’s worthy of going on living, and who are to be exterminated.

After careful deliberating, may I propose a return to normal i.e. kids in school, old folks in nursing homes, Congress in session and prisoners locked up.

Cheese instead of freeze. Smile instead of shout. Laughter instead of hate.

Our fellow men are suffering, in or outside. In hurting others, we hurt ourselves. Hence, liberation delivers both the victims and perpetrators from the chain that bounds them.

It costs a lot to be free. Freedom is never free. Even the symbol on Staten Island, cost the French years and millions to ship and erect Her here. To engrave beautiful lines e.g. “give me the tired, poor, huddled masses” i.e. Italian, Irish, Polish, Czech, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Cuban, Korean, Iranian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Ethiopian, Ecuadorian, Iraqis, Afghan and Ukrainian.

If all freeze, then who will get the job done. There once was a movie “A day without a Mexican”, or something like it. It’s like a day without the police.

Crime and trash would be rampant. Cities inoperable. Sewage covering the streets. We all turn “huddle masses” in the elevator, only to once again, face the music, like our Falling man of 9/11.

In that instant, that moment, a freeze of moving reality would prolong his life before gravity returns. It would be interesting to view today’s freeze framing from the vantage point of 100 years from now. Archivists would certainly puzzle over so many senseless shootings. Our current obsession of court dates, campaign dates and credit card due dates.

And of course, the dark shade looming over our multi-colored multi-cultural society that supposedly offer us the benefit of having more-than-the-sum value of its diverse members.

Huddled masses. Freeze! cheese. There is the portrait of Labor day 2023, at the beginning of the age of AI, which has no need and knows not what to do with the concept of Labor participation in the workforce.

We’re very mindful of the day, when we end up on the cutting floor , appearing only in outtakes when film credits roll up. Cheese!

We’ve got hurricanes, fire and flood. We’ve got volcanic eruption, nuclear power plant meltdown, sea-water rising, record-breaking heat and freezing temperatures. We suffer, for our comfort and convenience (at other times).

The price is right.

Over consumption (supersizing of everything), overstaying our welcome on Earth and overspent.

The price is right.

We’ve picked up bad habits e.g. others are doing it, much worse, you should’ve seen so and so…We have been racing downhill, he who gets to Hell first wins.

Careful. We might get what we wish for.

The price is always right. What goes up must come down. 1+1=2

No way around it.

In “Ballade des pendus”, Francois Villon was quoted as saying (and I paraphrase) ” Brothers of the future, please do not judge us poor and wretched souls, for God will thank you for it”.

The price is always right. The wage of sin is death.

We reap what is sown. Either by us or our generation.

By today’s standard, those cars in old movies I saw were humongous: long, wide, oversized and gas guzzlers.

Your Honor, I rest my case.

Jury of the future, once you found it’s “Beyond any reasonable doubt”, then pronounce us all guilty.

Of complicity, conspiracy and consumeristic.

We view and value materialism as the ultimate. We hoard, collect and swim in stuff.

Over stuff ourselves with high-glucose, high-cholesterol and high-protein. We sip, snuff and suck.

Like grown-up babies, never want to let go the nipples.

The price is right.

ROW is living on $2 day. So what. That’s their problem. The price is always right.

If they make it over the stormy sea to get here, over the electrified fence to arrive here (then we bus them to progressive cities North and North East), if they were fully vetted and got their own flight tickets to get here, then that’s the price to pay, to be qualified for now-dwindling fast-food minimum wage jobs.

The price is always right.

BPO, FOB, SOB. Learn all the acronyms, learn English. Pass the test, for the price is right.

Work in Dollar Stores. Shop in Dollar Stores. Shot in Dollar Stores. The price is right.

El Paso Walmart. Jacksonville Dollar Store. Nobody target Target. It’s upscale. It’s out of your price range. The price is right. Always does.

The wages of sin is death.

He who sows shall reap.

Your Honor, the Defense has no more to say.

Thank you for a day in Court.

Future brothers, please don’t judge us, poor and wretched souls. For God will thank you.

You who inundated the airwaves, the screen, the internet, the crammed ads, the fake news and fake boobs.

You who pop up, pop in and out of our lives, uninvited and unannounced.

Did we ask for you? Invite you? Allow you to dominate our finite attention span?

We’re numbed, one ad, one headline at a time. And before long, we no longer care. For the right thing in a right way. We no longer feel. Compassion for the neglected, the elderly in nursing home – all locked up, institutionalized and forgotten.

Damn you who think your life matters more than others’, hence exploiting and extracting them for your own end, your self-interest.

You who blame it on “machine”, but actually programmed them to rip us off, at least the productive part of our lives. You play the numbers game and response ratio. Lure us in, and sucker us.

We bathe, feed ourselves, exercise and sleep, just to have those awake time, when we can absorb new things, discover new wonders of life (Congratulations to the nation of India, largest on Earth, who has just discovered the South Side of the Moon. With a lot of typhoon, a lot of displacement and discouragement, they have managed to show us their collective strength and wisdom – besides acquiring their Colonial Master’s Jaguar brand, just for the kick of it).

Back to “damn you”. Who think the mass – from their wretched look – are dumb. And dumber. And dumbest.

Nope. We’re not. But we remain quiet. Observing. Taking it in. Analyzing. Deciding. Voting. We’re the jury of life. We are the 12. We’re the 300. We’re the Billions who were born, have lived and died. Not just to breathe and be exploited. We think, love, hate, discriminate and destroy. But we also are thinking of better days, listening to better songs and admiring creative arts.

We’re the mass. Yes, low brow. But we also can pull together our collective brain power. To cast our collective vote for the one who doesn’t exploit us. Our leaders, our guides.

They might be incarcerated at the moment, might be in seclusion. But they will not disappear because we’re not taking it passively.

Damn you who use technology to push. Emphasizing the upload speed as value proposition. But everyday, we turn on the machine, and there you are, in small ways and creeping ways, invade our space. Our mental space and mental health. By sheer numbers and superfast download speed.

We’re addicted to your sensationalism, escapism. We need the drug you provide. In digital format.

We want happy endings. We desire better abode, our eternal home. So we bought into your very promise, your message. To nowhere. To purgatory. Then eventually, you rename it Hell.

We are no longer susceptible to your rhetoric, your slogan and your selling. Just shut up. Damn you who think by inundating us with repetition, with half-truths, we will eventually succumb.

No sir. The mass got its own brain. Collective one. Who can outthink any crooked individual. Just flip back to the pages of history. You’ll read about stories of hubris, of follies and hypes, of maniac and joker.

We just want to live out this life. Unencumbered by your every wimp and wish.

At the expense of our own. We deserve to think and live for ourselves, first and foremost.

Then if we chose to spare some attention and time for you, we might. But don’t force it on us. It creates natural resentment and counter-argument. It’s human nature. And you who are marketers and ad copy writers should know that. Treating us as intelligent human being, will always pay. End of discussion.

Don’t blame it on the machine, whose thinking all depends on yours. And yours suck!

Keep zooming out.

More, more, more.

See it?

The Greek civilization. Rome and all its glory. England, China and much later the US, CANADA and ROW as seen now. People love, hate and divorce. Kids abandoned, adopted and alienated.

Generations after generations. (personal) History repeats itself. In a cycle of self-destruction. It’s either self-inflation or self-deprecation. Nothing in between. Until one day, it ends after transferred onto the next gen. Then it’s recycled: used, abused and misused.

Give me one person who thinks “macro”, I will name ten who think “micro”.

No wonder we’re in such a mess: burned Maui, shot-and-killed schoolchildren, and week-after-week of self-litigation as a nation and people.

Keep zooming out. See? Those who see in themselves capacity and potential to rise above themselves lived on in history as great. Those who are petty, short-termers, and looters left behind “Amazon” cardboard all over.

Hint: sell those box-cutters. We’ll need them always.

Back to zooming out. See the cover-ups? I refer to the break-in at the psychiatric office of the “most dangerous man”, our “Deep Throat”. What do you think I was referring to?

Through the locks that got picked, we saw ourselves. Our debased and low life tendency to take without giving back, to loot without cleaning up after us, to loiter without wiping after the act.

So here we are. A messy mess. At global scale. Ejected and spent cases. Empty cartridges still hot and barely out of the nozzle. Rambo rage. “Do we get to win this time?”. Short and cryptic lines. All action. The revenge and rage of those who were abandoned, forgotten and turned invisible.

So help me God. I did solemnly swear…(to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic). What an ideal. By definition, hard to reach, to keep and to maintain. So help me God. Appreciate another day of living. Of wanting and seeing longer-term consequences of inaction.

In the scheme of things. We’re all short-changed. By our very selves. Who alone are our worst enemies.