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Next week, we welcome Earth’s 7 Billionth baby into our human family. When I was born, relatives came to the hospital to visit (as commonly observed even today, in Vietnam). B/W photos were taken and sent up North for our extended families to “take notes”. The more the merrier. Nobody cared who Malthus was. If you…
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Via camera phone, satellite uplink and YouTube upload, we got pictures and sound of the upheaval in Libya up to the minute. The golden gun (its now-deceased owner must have watched James Bond’s Gold Finger), the Club Car and female bodyguards. When I was growing up, we were cooped up inside the house (curfew) while news of…
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A Thai monk needs to lay more sandbags to stem the flow of water, while Libyan fighters can now lay down their guns since the Colonel was finally in the bag, body bag. One country exports rice, the other oil. Back in 1997, Thailand’s rising real estate bubble nearly took down neighboring Asian Tigers with it. This time, its rising waters will surely drive…
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In “Imagined in America“, Friedman reminded us that 30 years ago, Hong Kong used to be a manufacturing colony. Today its economy consists of 97-percent service, with a booming tourism industry (mostly visited by Mainland Chinese). The second point was, America too can become a tourist Mecca that lures 300 million cash-hording middle-class Chinese. Already we saw the influx…
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Long ago, we lived in the oral culture. Orators would speak for hours on end. Now we communicate in short bursts and sound bites (injected with acronyms, see OPP blog). In between, we had enjoyed the print culture, the Morse code, radio, film and TV , before we got to the Internet with SMS, touch-screen and voice-activation. I was…
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We live in a world full of acronyms e.g. PPO, OPM (Other People’s Money), SOP, CDO, COD etc.. In big companies, Customer Service reps just get through their day, throwing around acronyms to feel they are on the inside, without thinking about “touchpoints” (problems as opportunities to upsell). My cable acted up two days ago. The…
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Just about now, we start thinking Halloween costumes. We have tried on cotton, polyester, paper, fur, animal skin (leather) and raw meat. At work, the dress code has changed as well since IBM went “soft” (ware). Gone are the blue suit, white shirt and red tie. Who wants to upstage their CEO’s at Facebook, Google, and…
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When we face a critical juncture on the road, we need to be decisive. A liberal arts training doesn’t hurt either. Even when two people arrived at the same conclusion, liberal art thinkers insist that between A and B, a straight line might not be the best alternative. Just the shortest. As nature would agree, it favors…
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When Facebook profile (soon to be called Timeline) needs me to complete my favorite movie section, I put down Cinema Paradiso. It’s in Blu-ray now (Oscar-winning, well-preserved quality). It’s about growing up in an Italian village, with the cinema , Cinema Paradiso, as central theme. It was later demolished to make room for a parking lot.…
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Among Dylan’s many memorable lines is “you don’t need the weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blow-in”. Even without the weatherman, we can feel that things are at a boiling point. Like in the movie “the Network”, people start to open their windows and bell out “I am mad like Hell, and…
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Thang Nguyen 555 