Thang Nguyen 555

“God bakes human out of an oven…first time, He took them out too soon: white folks….second time, a bit too long: black folks…then He continuously self-improves.(Kaizen)..just right: folks who are neither Black nor White sort of in-betweeners…” goes the joke.

Throughout American history, these “just-right” just-in-time folks got barred (from bringing wives over during the Chinese Exclusion Act), got interned (round up your wives and children but to the nearest intern camp – Japanese during WWII)) and now get spit-on (or “go back to where you came from”).

No one said that to Native Americans (they were from here to begin with, where else).

I will not fuel the fire of controversy, of conflict and contentiousness.

Just on Asian contribution to the melting-pot (or stew) depends on your zip-codes and voting preferences.

First, the railroad…along with the Irish-American, Chinese-American men (100%) worked like eunuchs to build the Trans-Continental Railroad (at times, over-built that later Erie canal and Panama Canal render them superfluous).

Second, where do we go for food on Thanksgiving, if we are single and uninvited to those Turkey dinners? It’s either Chinatown or the Mission’s Soup Kitchen

Third, so many Chinese restaurants (more than fast foods restaurants) that P.F. Chang’s decided to capitalize on the trend (owners are no where near being Chinese – but might get spit on during this pandemic, a case of mistaken I.D.)

In between Peking ducks and P.F. Chang’s we came up with fortune cookies, Suzie Q (CCR) and General Tso (fictional). We have Rush Hour 1,2 and 3 that made us laugh (humor as a cross-cultural bridge)and John Woo who made Tom Cruise look larger than life (dangling and hanging on for dear life on a Grand Canyon cliff).

More Buddhist temples sprung up in the NE than churches (in Philadelphia, one Temple even bought out an old church facility)…while later refugees from Vietnam open up Nail Salons (thanks to Hollywood’s Tippi’s idea).

At my last reading, more you-tubers on the Vietnamese channels debating (albeit not too civil) and splitting over Trump and Trumpism, and more Vietnamese-American and Vietnamese in VN offered lip-service support for the now-X-President in his quest for America’s re-ascendency (and triumph over China, its serious debtor).

In short, Asian-American are not just faceless, invisible or behind-the-counter folks (essentials). More brain gains for the US, just as it got a windfall right after WWII with scientists like Einstein….

We (the world) ‘re transitioning, from the Atlantic Century to the Pacific Century (China, Singapore and others).

Demographic and talent shifts, (chip) manufacturing offshoring and consumer emerging, capitalism and casinos (Sands in Macau).

It’s the West that has to adjust to the Rest. Good things we went to France (50′), Korea, Vietnam(60-70″, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan (soon to be over)….to adjust to a multi-polar world. GI’s who came home often share stories and exploits…mini-Columbus’ tales….Vietnamese women even carried Black GI’s children, hence, many of us are in-laws. Just Google it or read a brief history to prep interactions with med/tech Asian co-workers…

Use a pair of chop sticks for a start = walking in s/o else’s shoes. Let’s just say, America has this burden of Manifest Destiny…i.e. to conquer and Christianize the heathens…then at the very least show some interests in learning about others (who it thinks as subservient – to be spit on or punched at). Ditto for later arrivals who need to put in years of learning the host country’s custom and culture.

After all, what we consume have been made in the Orient (supply chain), via essential workers and under-paid jobbers. It’s time to wake up from last-century’s dream (Euro-Colonial past) instead of scapegoating to a new Other (Asian-American as Covid carriers) …

Machine won’t take abuse (most of us are learning their “language” whether we like it or not, as pro-sumers or programmers) since it’s machine and associated productivity that eliminate repetitive jobs. If memory serves me right, latest variants started in the UK, and you cannot get more “European” than that (or last year’s covid’s first wave, rampaged Italy and Rome, HQ of the Roman Catholic Church).

God made them just right, so He started to scale…hence, population explosion in the Far East….I am getting hungry….for Chinese foods. And I know where I will eat this Thanksgiving when all the fast-food joints are closed.

By circumstances and necessity, we subsist on more rice-based than wheat/barley diet. That’s all there is to it. We do our best and what’s best for our children. Like everyone else of variant skin colors; we try to make life a little better each day, on ward, in pursuit of happiness and hopefully liberty and justice for all (as of this edit, the Floyd’s pre-trial settlement offers some encouragement).

..Then on the 7th day, God looks at his Creation ( Asian-American included) and He satisfies (for having baked them just right). Time for a smoke-break, if you’re an essential worker – baker or carpenter, plumber or gravedigger, who found Asian_American died of equal if not disproportionate rate during this pandemic.

Tomorrow would be my kid’s last Zoom schooling day.

Been a year to be exact, without to-and-fro drop-off and pick-up, with school-zone speed limits and speeding tickets.

We sneak out once in a while for a donut (to-go), plugging-and-unplugging various headsets and speakers, re-arranging the home-office (home-classroom background), doing the laundry before class to avoid washer/dryer ambient noise.

After tomorrow, all is gone. Early to bed, early to rise. Back-to-school shopping (of new clothes and shoes, and perhaps school supplies for the remaining 9 weeks…all of it costs, but the President will certainly sign that Relief bill, won’t he this Friday).

A year of “white-on-rice”: I have played school janitor, after-school attendant (kids in the neighborhood just showed up), tutor, stay-at-home Dad, cook, dishwasher and driver.

In between, we had a house eviction, an unprecedented Winter Storm in Texas (today was the last day we had our burst pipes fixed).

Life goes on, albeit is still lived out dangerously (at gym, 70% of “incredible hunks” still don a mask, despite “Texas Strong” on shirts. )

The year of living dangerously, of driving like a bumper car between toll booths during the ice storm, of cooking on propane gas with windows closed (could have died from CO2).

A lot of close calls, but we’re together, white-on-rice, 365 days, 24/7, always-on like the Internet (except for this year’s storm).

During this hallucinating hibernation, I came up with “what does Al Gore have to do with Algorithm” (the answer: he championed the Information Superhighway, which paved the way for the physical layer, on top of which, resides the application layer run by multiple algorithms – hence, al-gor-ithm….Got it?)

Or “Malthus is wrong, Moore is right…..food production could not keep up with population explosion? Wrong. The speed of micro-processing keeps doubling every 18 months or so…? Right. Now, each of us can have more than 15 minutes of fame being Youtubers (sorry Warhol, your observation was made under limited electro-magnetic waves of radio/TV spectrum).

Between Spring break of 2020 and 2021, we lived dangerously, starting with UT students traveling to Cancun to Ted Cruz repeating it this year. We came close to another “uncivil war” (imagine if BLM folks actually confronted Jan 6th crowd – or, Floyd’s death that unleashed another LA’s riot – this time, not the Korean shop-keepers who protected their well-stocked stores, but the St Louis gun-toting couple, their well-manicured lawn).

I will close with a hopeful note: those “anti-Asian” sentiments will be just that: sentiments. America will get back on the road, freewheeling on four-wheelers, Spring breakers and beachgoers, stopping to order Chinese foods, Kung Pao chicken with just a faint memory of Kung flu, or who coined the term…on Fox News or Newsmax (should have been called junk news”). Vaccination=vacation. Our collective amnesia will undo past nightmares (should I mention a few here???) like Vietnam, 9/11 even Covid and 1/6/21.

1918, 1975, 2001 and 2020 were the years of living dangerously. R.I.P. to the many who did not make it.

“Loneliness, is such a sad affair….” Carpenters’ Superstar…captures our current mood, deep in the wood of an unprecedented pandemic…to the point that Japan, UK and other industrial countries have appointed “Minister of Loneliness”.

I was surprised to see young women and men in these staggering World Economic Forum stats, right along side the elderly, as otherwise expected.

Social Media addressed the extent of the problem e.g. hate crime on the rise etc… but cannot and should not be the solution.

We are.

” and I can’t hardly wait,….to be with you again….” the lyrics continue….

I saw my old sister yesterday over lunch after six months. She got her shots, and could now travel, accompanied by her son who took time off from his route in the hospital (he himself saw so many COVID-19 deaths).

“don’t you remember you told me you loved me baby..”

Older Asian people were pushed, punched or otherwise crushed under the weight of this pandemic.

Leave it on their own, they would have phased out from bustling smokestacks to library book stacks.

But the worst seems to come at the end of the pursuit of happiness for more than half a million among us.

So much for the promise of America, of the Promised Land and Land of the Free (to push people to the brink, “out of the way, it’s my right of way…”

Of all the years I have been in this country, the one thing I notice as “change” albeit gradual, is that people no longer yield when you put on your signal light to switch lanes. They instead pushed pedal to the medal to provoke a counter-reaction, a nuisance as opposed to an opportunity to be a Good Samaritan….(church signs held high at the street corner….Jesus is the answer….traffic honking….but behind them, were side-by-side homeless tents…).

“what to say, to make you come again, come back to me again, and play your sad guitar…”

Minister of Loneliness.

The longer-term consequences of this pandemic.

Survivors’ guilt, compassion fatigue, cabin fever (exacerbated by hate crime ).

All the elements are in play… pent-up demand? Go out and spend. Travel and see 100 places before you die. Reach out and touch someone….AT&T.

More demand for I-phone, eye-wear…for facebook and face-time.

More broadband and fewer connections….Friends dying off and patience runs thin.

May I change lane please……

May I take a walk without having to look over my shoulders every time (for fear of being jumped)?

Can I just be and be left alone “on golden pond”.

Long ago, there was “Suicide hotline”, “substance abuse intervention hotline”, AA meeting and AAA help line…

Today, it’s “Loneliness hotline” at the Ministerial level.

What technology gives, technology takes. More broadband, less connection.

“Loneliness, is such a sad affair…”

If I were to live until 100, I would think and behave differently than Boyz-n-the-hood (life expectancy is around 19).

I traded short-termer’s life way back, sort of jumping-track onto a longer-term journey, albeit w/ a late start, in the still-young US.

How America keeps re-inventing itself amazes me: from disco to Jimmy Carter, from McDonald’s to Macintosh, from John F Kennedy (Ask not what America can do for you…) to John Lennon (who wanted to become a US citizen). Everybody welcomes “white” immigrants to this country…but not everyone does when immigrants of color came (unless with some utilitarian purpose e.g. Filipino nurses or Indian software engineers).

Gotta to protect the “beige” tapestry i.e. US as an extension of Colonial Europe, British in particular (sorry Irish-American).

By the time data showed colored folks died of disproportionate covid death, they appointed a radiologist to be in charge (after the VP had prayed it over).

The uncoordinated response showed a gaping hole in federal and state, from the pandemic crisis to our election crisis (I don’t even want to go near Climate change crisis, which is global).

Here in Texas, we have suffered outage and water crisis that lasts 2 weeks, pouring one bottle at a time on our head (baptism by sprinkles).

All due to seditious attempt of a single state to go “lone star” in energy (gotta see the size of their 4wd’s tires in the snow).

Back to our founders and long-termers.

They envisioned a State of the Union, with Electoral votes, to ensure not geographical but electoral representation (in other words, regardless the size of your land, the importance is inclusive citizenry).

So we try to work out our system of checks and balances….of the three branches…to discourage pompous Monarchy and imposing Papacy (if the pandemic teaches us anything, it’s that, size doesn’t matter much….when it comes to virus or nanotechnology).

In short, land of the free.

But not too free, not Boyz-in-the-hood, not Proud Boyz (incidentally stirred by leadership from Canada, not the US).

Those who try to keep their Oaths….oh well, must have sworn to allegiances other than America.

I don’t want to beat the piñata to death…but we have work cut out for us, back to the drawing board, back to balancing the act (of Democracy).

On a side note: what are we gonna do with that now clear-as-day sanctioned murder by the Saudi prince? can’t go EV quick enough to condemn him? Grow some spines America. Stand up to tyranny, fight that fight once again..to ensure and secure the land of the free….innovate and re-create just as the land does after each wintry hibernation.

Burst out and spring forth like a Stallion, like a 500-meter Olympian, like Daytona 500. I have seen this time and time again in my short life (and I might live to see 100)….as short-termer as I am. …C’mon……the engine is there…turbo…..just needs stirring and revving……pedal to the medal….leave that adolescent short-term life behind….no excuses….grow up and be a country the world is waiting to see – out of the gate, 16, dancing Queen, with vigor and less vitriol, more Macintosh and less McDonald, more Mars and less mansions on the hill (those Roaring 20’s architecture whose pipes got frozen during a Texan winter storm). American don’t have to self-baptize by sprinkles,….it’s uncalled for, unbefitting of a nation was once a Reaganesque “City on the hill”….

Short-termers!

Or it’s just me? The Central Bank prints money. Keeps printing it. By the Trillions. God knows if they are backed by God or Gold.

In God We Trust, it says.

OK. I will leave it at that… Until Musk backs bitcoins. By the tune of 1.5 Billion. Enough critical mass. After all, we haven’t signed a check or handled cash in quite a while. Why not take it (digital currency) to the limits???

Meanwhile, in other news… The Evangelical Church skirts around the Trump issue, very similar to its de-facto leaders: Mike and Mitch (not the Carpenter from Nazareth). It’s the Christian Coalition, not the Christian Church, they say (Interesting side-notes: Mary Trump was against uncle Trump, and Graham’s sister was against her brother who holds the Samaritan purse strings).

Keep hedging the bets.

Just in case ( the 1,000-year reign does not come on Earth).

We need the votes. Not just any vote, but the SCOTUS votes…for life (of the unborn, not the already-born).

So the story goes…with the Moral Majority 2.0, Evangelical 2.0 and Trump Impeachment 2.0.

The End of History.

No more past. Only the future. Wars on Mars (at not yet, just traffic).

Here are some crises the Evangelical Church faces and why it backs Trump without critical self-examination and reasons:

• Demographic: the US as a whole and its most segreggated Sunday morning is shrinking (not to worry about Roe vs Wade – which now only applies mostly to Salt Lake). Pentacostalism mixes charismatic and Catholicism down Central and S America. to fuel the fire, (who cares about reasons, just contextualize it – people are emotional down there). Just feel it – low church, and the Sacrament – high church.
• Theological: ” the Word made flesh….lives among us”…. taken literally since the advent of the printing press against the “Other” i.e. the selling of indulgences. …That battle (most prounounced by the Gideons with Bible in each motel room) is no longer up to date. The Catholic Church faces its own set of problems (tossing ashes this Ash Wednesday 6-feet apart, not on the forehead).
• Technological: Once talk-radio (Rush, recently deceased) and the Electronic Church (700 Club and Crystal Cathedral) dominated the 80’s (remember those weepy evangelists who confessed then continued to raise money.e.g Jimmy Swaggart and Tammy & Jim Bakker) couldn’t keep its membership in our twitter age. Even Lynchburg and Wheaton, with nepotism re-inforcement, still couldn’t stoke the fire… Care for “contemporary” soft-rocks from Amy Grant?
• Hypocrisy: Young people are weighed down with covid, student loan, equality movement, the internet and climate change (besides school shooting and existential threat). They are bidding for time before they themselves “getting on to the other side”…( the Doors) yet social media and the Church are hurrying our young, nudging and urging (all the while, ignoring their plea: “Stop the diesel bus, I want to get off”. )

Four crises are enough to send someone to the asylum, much less to have Donald J. Trump in the mix. He promised a new “Heaven and Earth” (Bible up, protesters down) take back Eden, our Garden, whose swamp is drained, and “God will wipe away very tears in our White children’s eyes” (the SCOTUS appointees and court appointees).

Sh*t. I will join. I will donate. I will vote. Until I found out, dressed up in those flowery languages e.g. “patriots” (which his daughter deleted right after she tweeted) “faithfuls” and “loyals” are attempts to build brand and build up Trump Empire at the expenses of the huddle mass – casino or golf course. Disinformation on top of irrelevant solutions to contemporary crisis drove both flocks and pastors away

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/21/969539514/disinformation-fuels-a-white-evangelical-movement-it-led-1-virginia-pastor-to-qu

Go “blue ocean”…e.g. down S. America. speak Spanish (said he loved them in a Phoenix rally), and make (S) America great again, gather the crowd (no Kool-Aid please) to push Norman Vincent Peal-ism. Perhaps you can muster up a Trump 2.0 and Pentecostalism 2.0 (no 3.0, since your reign is expected to last a thousand years). May your children’s children prosper in whoever’s name you invoke, wars without end…against… the other – leftist S Americans and Aliens from Mars. While at it, take a play book from Hitler with lots of 3-word chants (“Hang Mike Pence!”.)

Zeal without reason, mob without leader, Coalition without a Church, muscle without a mind.

May God wipe away the tears in the children’s (425 of them) eyes.

In Gold we Trust.

Saint Valentine can take up shop somewhere else….let’s say to the streets, under the tunnel and highway, where the homeless, already miserable enough with socially distant tents, now face the coldest week of the year. Saw two of them fighting for a better spot at a street corner where the light was longer and cars were waiting to make a left turn for the highway. Scarcity.

What’s love gotta do with this??? In a hurry a seminarian passed by his fellow man in need, to take the test, whose topic was “What does it mean to be a good Samaritan”.

Life presents us with few choices, and even so, we still screw up.

He who is faithful will be given more. Hence, the cream rises to the top, and money begets more money.

Back when the country was discovered (1600), the early Dutch settlers received land grants along the Hudson river, now worth millions and billions.

The USA pyramid scheme: later comers get a smaller flag (“and the flag is still there”), early ones got a big one.

That’s how it goes, every country on Earth, as it seems, sharing a shrinking pie (population explosion and rising expectations).

Now China is joining the top rung, circling Mars after checking out the other side of the Moon.

Japanese Olympic organizers kept resigning (if not for covid, then it’s something else).

Life goes on at Super Bowl, or Supermarkets (Valentine’s chocolates), at Chinese New Year days or Presidents’ Day.

We are in love, with our screens (that we devote the majority of our time to). Time is finite. So is attention.

Yet we trade those precious commodities for ads of things we don’t even need or want.

May algorithms rule, with more power and precision. We slowly give in and give up ourselves, at the altar, of the gods of data.

Pretty soon, we won’t even know what it’s like to have free time, to have a thousand-yard stare, to sit on the rock and to have a conversation (let’s say, with those who crawl out of a different rabbit hole).

Once, we mingle, let’s say after an event, around the punch bowl and the cookie tray, pointing to our name tag and introduce ourselves. Those days now seem so far away, if ever, make a come back. In place of The real is the replacement, off- online.

Pressing the flesh will soon be a lost art; the price of the pandemic and politics of division. Sad time, even on Valentine. Sadder still, when our tech mate gets more attention than our real mate.

During the rally on Jan 6th, YMCA was heard in the background.

Typical “arousing” song by the Village People (quite an insult, actually). Young men, exploitable.

Incitable and full of zeal.

I was young once. And I was and still is fearless and exploitable.

But I no longer am young.

I think, therefore I am.

I don’t want to conquer any land, any people and “subjugate” them or bend their will.

Just want to be free, like information want to be free.

The Crusade married two strains of ideology: the Church and the State, the Cross and the Sword.

Ever since, it seeks to expand, to maintain its status quo at the expense of its original message: Love thy neighbor as yourself. Pelosi is our neighbor. So is McConnell and Romney.

We thrive and retreat by the same tidal waves.

Yet incitors wanted to hang them, put them to sleep.

Presidents Day is approaching. Just want to reflect on the path and the leaders we have had.

They had their struggles, temptations (absolute power corrupt absolutely) and failings.

Nevertheless, we project ourselves upon them, like a witchy board, in the hope that our wills will be their commands.

The US of A is blessed with a new beginning, a Monarch-less one.

It started from scratch, with a blueprint unlike any others’.

Until now. Until this year. Until I heard that knock on the door:”hey, it’s your turn”. I thought it was just a jury duty. And indeed, it was, in a way. I am to opine, whether or not, our representatives conducted themselves worthy of their office and duties.

Leadership comes with honor and responsibility.

Not just by appearance or comeuppance, and certainly it is judged by the weight of history.

Leaders employ tactics, undesirable (McCarthy and Mao).

Or benevolent (Roosevelt and Carter). And of course, in between (Nixon and Trump).

In the end, the measures of a man/woman are the sum of his/her choices, (judgment) calls and tactics.

You can’t kill people to save them. Can’t curse them in the Holy Trinity’s image they were born.

Can’t say you love them while exploiting the sweat of their eyebrows.

Slogans are great. Chants are effective. Music the best, esp. by the Village People to unify, excite and incite.

Young men….

YMCA…

“I will walk with you” til the end of days, promised by the God of the Bible…and by the President of our times.

Hurry up the ladder, only to find out, it is leaning against the wrong building.

The fountain of youth.

A good friend.

A trip to the restaurant.

A handshake.

Holding the door for someone coming from behind.

Saying “Good Morning” (w/out a mask).

Our sanity in an otherwise normal election.

Civility and unity.

Raising our arms for TSA’s metal detectors.

Browsing at a bookstore leisurely.

Just breathing in public unhindered and w/out being paranoid.

A trip to the shores.

A group picture of soon-to-be old men.

More trips to hotels, theme parks and cinemas.

Dressing up even just for a funeral.

All we have gained is weight.

Hand soap (Purell) and toilet papers rise to the top of our groceries list.

Homebound. Trying to stop morbid thoughts e.g. the last machine we interact with is the oxygen tank.

No, thank you. I will stick with my laptop, laboring on my last blog….like in Amadeus, with Mozart and his last stanza envisioning his funeral….

The thing we lost in 2020: our normalizing death.

SNL’s “What still works” cracks my imagination opened e.g. Congresswoman Green casual ice-breaking: ” would you like to have a gun”, yes, a gun, not gum…( a scene came to mind, that of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest , toward the end, when our native hero tried to be social ‘ wanna a juicy fruit?’”).

We live in a world and at a time that a Q-anon Shaman, or at least, that who he thought he was, stood where a moment earlier, the US Vice-President had been ceremonially presiding over traditional Electoral Vote Certification.

Yet, it still works. Our sense of irony, that is. Our non-stop curiosity, about how our society is functioning.

We have had the basics taken care of: food, clothing, shelter…and soon, vaccines.

So we aspire to higher causes, like Christian Nationalism, like White Supremacy, like Winning in Space.

On Earth as it is in Heaven…..but let’s start with “our daily bread”…

We are thankful. We have the internet, the computing power and medical infrastructure to mobilize vaccines.

It still works.

Soon, we’ll be able to travel again, to explore new shores and strange customs.

Perhaps the pandemic is dealing us with more than a curve ball. It shakes things up, jolts us out of our comfort zone. To once again see things in new light, see the world with new possibilities, see people with more potentials (there are half a million people to be replaced in the US when it’s all over).

More jobs, more possibilities.

I am curious. Will it still work?

Can we still laugh at the absurdity of how people react, how people read-into things and how delusional our thoughts and fantasies are.

Isolation and confinement can drive people toward insanity e.g. no more holding the door, greeting strangers or shaking hands.

This pandemic has shown the invisible and small (nano) can take over the world, digital life over our real life.

As a child, I’d rather jump, run and even fight than sitting idle.

Yet after a year of self-isolation, I marry myself to laptops and online world. It’s there where I project my thoughts, hopes and fears. I learn to self-reinvent, to leave my digital “foot” prints behind. Once it’s hard to have access to world’s information. Now, it’s the opposite. And I am over-loaded with irrelevant machine-aided ads.

Still it works, my curiosity and complaints. Of not having enough (good information) and of having too much ( bad information).

It used to be the priest, the politician or the professor who mediates knowledge and truth. Now, it’s just the machine which stands between me and the world out there (ethernet). Hello! Is there anyone out there.

I am curious if it works. As in SNL about Tom Brady. About Gamestop and Piss stop. About a pack of gums and a load of guns. About a sha-man and Congress wo-man. About God, gun and government. About truth and lies, righteousness and sin. I am curious if we can still return to normal (whatever it is, it’s now a luxury).

I need to re-activate my child-like curiosity, to jump and run, to explore and make mistakes again. If curiosity works and if experience sticks, I need “skin my head and skin my knees” like a line in “Season in the Sun”…

A return to normalcy might be possible, but our dreams of returning to Eden are forever out of reach. That’s the parting point of myth and reality, past and present, future and possibilities. Just curious, if it still works.

War end saw me re-situated at Penn State. Then, while in Grad School, after an educational film job, I read about Boat People. Their braving the odds at seas compelled me to “do” something. That something was a short detour from my Communication pursuit – “front-ending” my giving (time and energy as opposed to wealth which I had none, being on student loan).

One embarrassing incident: I had to pick up a waiter job upon returning. What section was my former film crew got seated? Mine.

Afterwards, I followed the Telecom trail for a good decade and a half (should have stayed on with AT &T as their data sales specialist during Y2K). Then I began exploring Vietnam, this time as an observer and a participant.

Post-war Vietnam moved full-speed ahead. Un-peeling layer after layer, one can find just about everything, even tacos and donuts (via expats’ import). Nation-wide, Vietnam mandated helmets and masks, measures which help reduce accident deaths and covid deaths. Post-war generation loves to “storm” whether it’s a Taiwanese company that polluted, or after a SEA game win. The bikes their new boots.

Upon returning – after being away long enough to experience reverse culture-shock – I noticed America as if for the first time e.g. material acquisition as a means to fill the void within : merchandise on Amazon Prime and fake news on facebook. And how one can go about his/her daily life, deprived of human contacts (even before covid). Having all the broadband connection yet none of the human connection, to me, is the saddest.