Thang Nguyen 555

The A isn’t in CAPS for a reason. It’s just my own, small “a” America which I know, being late in the game while still “Hail Mary” to get a decent final scores.

I have no idea how it changes so quickly, right before my eyes (or in between my trips overseas).

I first met America through American Army men, who moonlighted (still in uniforms) at a local English school.

Then via State-run newsreels featuring West-Point Westmoreland e.g. how many weapons were rounded up, next to squatting, blind-folded Black-Pajamas. America sent us some Moon Rocks so we can see for ourselves that its Moonshot was bearing fruit i.e. world leadership, “on Earth as it is in Heaven”.

Results, results and results. Always quantifying and tabulated with charts and graphs (one can easily lie via charts and graphs – on an easel and with a long stick – at Five O’Clock Follies).

Army-issued canned foods started to arrive, and get recycled on black market. Rock and roll music played over the air – the tape (Ten Years After’s “I am going home”). Helicopters and C-130’s flown above head, while Jeeps and Army olive-green convoys left a trail of red smoke.

Vietnamese localities started getting mis-pronounced, but recognizable: “Long…..Ben….” (for Long Binh), Dja Neng (for Da Nang) and of course, Hue (sounds just like a Huey which subsequently ferried many casualties).

My first initiation to America was via the war it conducted with boots on the ground, and B-52’s sorties in the air. Later, at its conclusion, I was confronted with walls, from Airport wall to Embassy wall, from sandbag wall (of a river barge) to battle ship gangplank.

Then of course, Army-based Island, and Army barracks.

Any college dorm after that would be an upgrade.

My America was tall, decent and willing to admit its mistakes. It carefully observed the STOP sign (my first impressions) even when no one was in sight, in the rain. The America I first got to know lent a hand, greeted strangers and was quite light-hearted. Its music and sense of humor won me over.

All those late-night debates over bottomless coffee or occasionally beer (Rolling Rocks – small bottles) sealed our bond.

The America of late 70’s was quite innocent. So trusting that guys like Jim Jones could manipulate 900 followers into mass suicide.

The country had just come to terms with Watergate and War. So we re-invented ourselves, with silly pranks….”Rocky Horror Picture Show” to “Rocky, Balboa”, from Rambo to Chuck Norris. A face-saving revisionist transformation – from men in uniforms to imprisoned pajamas to shirtless/bandanas hero rescuer.

My America had OPEC crisis and crisis of confidence (in Carter’s words). Iran could just take Americans hostage, for days on end. AIDS killed Rock Hudson. Still killing people disproportionately. Very much like today’s covid.

Wall Street emerged as a force to be reckoned with, despite stagflation of the late 70’s.

Network news got their thrones, those of High Priests’.

Presidents did look “presidential” in the person of Reagan, then Bush.

The Cold War gave us scares, but that which did not kill us, made us strong.

Technology started to ramp up, outside of Defense-driven contracts, in the apple orchards of Silicon Valley.

Voila. Can’t talk about America without talking about the rise of Tech and the staying power of its campuses.

Ideas and entrepreneurs have been its staples: hungry and eager for a challenge. Failure was a badge of honor.

West-Coast Garages were replacing East-Coast Bell Labs (ATT) and Route 128.

Meanwhile, music commanded our devotion (Just look at the Rolling Stones and remnants of the Beatles).

The America I know took people in for the Big Meal, sharing turkey and table seats. People got in line, first in first out. DMV, Post Office and Social Security Office – consistent and conscientious. The norms.

America was into efficiency, so much into it, that off-shoring and automation got traction at the expenses of labor union. The floor started to crack….from one decade to the next, with NAFTA then WTO. Both benefited Mexico and China, more than the US.

Foreign students still arrived in droves, but fewer stayed. In AI Superpowers, we learned that Chinese engineers were recruited and returned for the country’s Belt & Road initiatives (not Belt Way of Washington D.C.). America has tried to keep up with Science and Technology, while neglecting Society.

Tech gets ahead of public policies (IT merged with Communication to make ICT), while readership migrated to digital format. Broadcasting turns narrow casting. Audience could now “spell” with help from auto-complete. There is no need for lengthy “Letters to the Editor” as in years past. Fan loyalty? What (myspace) fan loyalty?

Computing and communication powers are now in the hands of common folks, even citizens of overseas.

Just upload. A clip here and a comment there.

Book titles are ample to reflect diversity ( a good thing). Youtube videos uploaded by the millions. Micro audience helped foot the bills for home chefs and other outlets. Tech companies, giants in their own right, diversify to gain influence (Apple News, Yahoo News, Facebook and Twitter).

The old guards (NYT, Post) go by subscription to fight of competition. Splintered news, and of course, fake news. Traditional print media began to fade, just like their predecessors e.g. shipping news and telegrams.

Mad max world. Post-truth era.

The conversation moves away from Central Casting to the Cult of amateurs, from Network News to Nightly News, from Cronkite to Colbert (to use a journalist book title).

Rip van Winkle can hardly locate his TV dinner (people already knew the gist of the Evening News). Mobile platform and dis-intermediation sideline subject matter experts.

Marketers scratch their heads. Advertisers go bald.

The machine does it all. It could even synthesize and write a decent piece (after all, it won at the game of Go).

Where does this leave me and my small “a” America?

I have to cope, to change (after heavy lamenting). I don’t seek to assign blame. Just the way it is, like Cronkite used to end his newscast. I need to join “the conversation”, learn to connect – 2nd and 3rd degree etc..and to “comment”…..(What do I know about technology, coding, cloud and conveyor of half-truths).

American are out for him/herself. Self-protection from the outside (covid) and self-protection from the inside (count the votes). Monroe doctrine (America for Americans) has a dust-off. So is McCarthyism (just label them).

All of a sudden, it feels like we are living in a foreign country (Hungary or Belarus, your choice).

Future Shock! (A few of us still live in Agricultural past, much less Industrial past & coal mining).

Kids are moving back home. Adults are moving back home. And foreign students are moving back home.

If my movie could be rewound, I would find myself back to 2008, 2001, 1975 and 1968. Then I would dream of a “California Dreaming” again, of innocence and unlocked gates, orchards and organs, of allowing strangers the benefit of the doubt. Of trusting teachers, preachers and politicians. Of living simply and seeing the glass as half-full.

Not a nation, once capitalized “A”, now AME-RICA.

(someone even put a band-aid over it, where the hyphen is, just to keep it together, however loosely and temporarily.)

I miss my small “a” America. It affords me time to develop my immunity and immersion. It’s where I could make mistakes and adapt. Nowadays, I am not so sure of that. I might get shot, not get help. The only good thing comes out of covid is that school-shooting has been way down (there ain’t much to risk prison term).

Gretchen Rubin of Yale Law took a year off for her project. Turns out, she named her book, a bestseller, ” The Happiness Project”.

Habit of Happiness seems untimely, given what we have put up with so far this year (10 straight months). According to some studies, a new habit can be acquired in 66 straight days, uninterrupted. Bruce Lee was known for his quote “I am not afraid of some opponents who hit hard out of the ball park. I am worried about those who kick the same way a thousand times.”

Happiness curve shapes like a hyperbole: steadily inch up, peak, then decline. That explains why we need to jump the curve, to get new toys for Christmas and rinse/repeat.

If Bruce Lee and Gretchen Rubin were both correct, we can “kick the sh*t” out of happiness. Wifully and relentlessly. When something “unhappy” get in the mix, just tune it out. When something resembles happiness, walks like one, quacks like one, let it in. Build no wall around ourselves. Nothing hindered. Nothing to hide. Be transparent with yourself and happiness will find you. Happiness and habit. Two horsemen. Both inside us.

Build for ourselves that habit not just one year, not just during the pandemic year. But year round and repeat it next Year. No resolution. Just rinse and repeat.

66 days straight. Just start living with happines; start small. A Good Morning smile to yourself (after shave, for me). Check in with yourself: How am I doing?

Step on the scale, watch your weight and diet. Drink moderately and surround yourself with happiness coaches. The kindness conspiracy.

Just like a gang who plot bad things, we can gang up for good things.

That’s how benevolent society came into being. People found happiness in investing in others’. Part of the Golden Rule.

Happiness can be willed into being. After all, it’s not the absence of sorrow or sadness. It stands on its own and grows to overshadow sorrow. Happiness is a curve, but you can jump to the next curve near peak. One can get a black belt in Happiness just as in Hapkido.

Just have to practice and make it an ingrained habit. Born into sorrow, but die in happiness. Our choice. And it doesn’t require a Yale Law degree to “get” this.

My grandma used to look forward to her monthly pension. More than often, she asked me to accompany her. An old dame and her grandson, boarding a bus in busy and bustling Saigon streets. We held each other’s hand and secured each of our step – Bus Central across from Central Market – while watching the driver watching us.

When her money belt was full with cash and change, we went home. That was after a stop at street vendor foods. Happiness and that monthly routine. We did not have much money, but my memory was flushed with happy times. With connection to previous generation, and how they viewed material things. My grandma sent me across the street often. For her pint of rice wine. Then she laughed afterwards when the alcohol kicked in.

Wash, rinse, repeat. Next month, out of habit, she asked “would you go with me to the Pension Office”? Habit of happiness.

You might have guessed, “Software will eat your lunch”. The unseen are important. Since before time. When I saw Poinsettia (seen), I miss my Mom (unseen).

We have counted the votes, some places twice or thrice, looking for the Unseen while the Seen is staring at our faces. Decency and honor are important – Seen or unseen , up to us.

Science and Math are unseen, covid seen (recently).

Arts and music are unseen (we see their expressions and mouth muscles moving), yet last beyond our short time on Earth.

I went to the village of Ba-Chi. Saw a bunch of skeletons – relics of the Killing Fields. I saw Moon Rocks on display, and the charred heart of the burning monk. Those were “Seen”, but their “Unseen” live on, hit me like a hammer.

The other day, I helped my wife transfer data from her old I phone to a newer version. Apple told us to lay one over the other, and Lord and behold, the data look just like virus infecting one from the other piece of hardware. Apple did some magic there: making the Unseen visible.

Lately, we Skype each other or Zoom each other. No one saw no one. Yet we were all there, the Unseen yet seen, via virtual toast.

The Unseen are important: first child, first date. For me, my first toy, first bike and first dictionary. I remember them as if it were yesterday.

That ball is no where to be located. That bike perhaps rusty. and the dictionary – on my 19th birthday – has been updated many versions over; to include digital and more timely entries (covid??). I sent a hard copy to my daughter, just to reiterate the importance of holding something in your hands. The weight of words.

We live in a time and a society where we are confused between TO BE and TO HAVE, the unseen and the seen. Possession has become us, displacing and replacing what’s inside. My 81-year-old brother did not buy anything on Black Friday – both because of Covid (the Seen) and because he said he had made enough (purchasing) mistakes (buying more than what’s needed). Contentment.

Tony Hsieh has just died. He used to “deliver Happiness” to online shoes buyers. “Return and exchange, for free”. Try them on (turning the Unseen into the Seen). You might become First Lady (Imelda Maros famous for her 3,000 pair shoes collection).

Tony today is the Unseen, yet remains “Seen” in his loved ones’ memory.

When holidays come around, when I see Poinsettia, I remember my Mom. So real, so kind and decent. I hope this world picks up a page or two from her. Starting today, start with me; I want to help make her Unseen Seen.

Emperors of the past wouldn’t secure their title and the land without being ruthless. Luckily we have since evolved i.e. less poverty and scarcity, more computing power.

Yet, despite all those extra accessories from FWD to AWD, Skype to Zoom, we still have the same O/S: win-lose, 1% vs the 99%, US vs ROW.

Why are we duped into caring more about “from zero to 60 mph” torque than our slow response to human touch!

“What does that profit a man/woman, to gain the whole world…”.

In “Never Let Me Go”, Ishiguro took us on a futuristic fast ride, whose robots could even develop capacity for empathy. Quite a commentary on the human condition.

People are dying left and right (the dead are stacked up in outdoor freezers), while the living wish to be in other times and places – certainly not America and certainly not 2020.

We spend a large part of our days looking for foods – money to buy, to store, to cook, to eat and to clean. More of us than last year stand in food bank lines. Others in covid testing lines. The brave/irresponsible ones in TSA lines (to travel).

The rest, I included, just stay put. While uncorking the wine, breaking the bread, I get to think of Empires and Emperors. Of Pompeii excavated bodies, some still in “never let me go” hug, instantly frozen in time.

How are we doing as a human race. From 1-5 with 5 as most satisfactory.

Right now, I would give it a 3.5 (Ethiopia just produced 40,000 refugees, while Musk climbed past Gates to be Numero Dos) despite Dow at 30,000.

I am glad the US can get on with pandemic and priorities.

With Climate Change and Global Change. With China and Russia, with Regional Pact and Inter-Continental Pact.

It’s Thanksgiving week. In years past, while in position to recruit new hires, I used this time to ramp up additional head-counts, of budgeting and pro-acing (even “sandbagging”).

I wish the President Elect well. His cabinet and First Lady. His first year and subsequent years.

I know he will do us right.

We deserve no less and vice versa, he deserves our devotion and dedication.

Already he “gets” the wisdom of team, of empathy (all-female Communication team) and diversity.

Our world needs more than fast foods and fast cars. We need the care of the soul which past Emperors neglected to their detriment.

When the chips are down, what’s our “eulogy CV?” That he/she cares a lot about external things at the expense of his/her own soul? There is a time for everything: a time to die and a time to live. Now is the time to live well; to take care of our selves and our souls. We need vaccines for both body and soul.

Never let go of your own self. Gotta to have it first, before giving it away.

If there were another me, my lost twin, living in the US in parallel to the time I was growing up in Vietnam; wouldn’t it be interesting? (to show I was growing up quiet a lonely boy!?!) Like a childhood fantasy, perhaps I was adopted (hence all the mistreatment)? Every kid at one time thought that.

In the mid-50’s, the US had just introduced and implemented the G.I. Bill to re-integrate its huge WWII Industrial Military Complex back into civilian life. Two things occurred in tandem: the Cold War (with its flares up in Indochina) and the Flower Power with the British-Invasion.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, I couldn’t make the switch fast enough from French to English (as a second language) in the wake of US boots hitting Danang (China beach) and the US dollars changing hands. Our isolated society turned the corner, not for the better. Outwardly, it’s very much like “Good Morning Vietnam”, but inwardly, we were in denial – that the war would go on forever as long as foreign aid kept pouring in e.g. Lucky Strikes, Zippo, and C-rations.

In the US, opposition to the US involvement in Vietnam grew steadily, with sit-ins and teach-ins in Berkeley, Kent State and Columbia University.

It’s the youth (high-school grads) who got drafted and died in Vietnam while the other youth (college students) stood up against the war (if they had not fled to Canada, as recounted in “The things they carried”).

In Vietnam, I was transfixed by the split screen of Woodstock, the movie. Wow! those hairs, those bare chests and free-wheeling (in such contrast to those moonlighting English teachers who taught us – still in uniforms).

Couldn’t make heads from tails, I humped along : an English lesson here, a rock song there, ” What’s that sound every body look, what’s going down. .” Feeling topsy turvy as those torrents swept through our land and our life. Both WWs bombs combined, dropped there – with many still unexploded.

When it was all over, more than 130,000 of us joined then pre-existed 1,000 Vietnamese in the US; and opened a new chapter in Asian-American life.

With first migration (scattered to the four winds) and then second migration (re-clusterized in CA, TX, FL and VA). We thrived and self-taught self-paced civic lessons as we participated in campus life, work life, and political life. There weren’t any in-language materials for the late 70’s (when the US itself was struggling with stagnation).

Later on, in the span of four decades, subsequent waves of Vietnamese arrived. First wave: the Boat People (those who made it). Second wave: Orderly Departure Program – veterans and families of former ARVN, and finally, family-chain migration and foreign students.

The first 130,000 saw themselves as “naturalized” citizens of this country i.e. crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s. Later waves have chosen to stay in hybrid mode: neither here nor there, double-dipping and cherry picking.

On Bolsa (CA) and Bellaire Avenue (TX), people could be spotted at outdoor cafes, ghettoizing and cocooning – just a fiber-glass away (from mainstream America.) Then came the I-phone and Boeing 747 i.e. connection and commute.

Voila. We situate ourselves in our own filtered world, of confirmation bias inside one echo chamber, looking for a fight or in-fighting, mostly. Can’t get out of it. Don’t want to. It’s comfortable to be culturally insulated: both talking a big game and riding the entitlement wave, the best of both worlds.

Facebook and Youtube took hold, and worker bees get to work! A match made in heaven: busy bees and ghost work (Adsense and Artificial Intelligence Ads crammed in regardless of video content ). Cultic and fake news ran rampant: Moon’s and Murdoch’s media, Washington Times and Epoch Times. Bit by bit, we succumb to gaslighting and (Pavlovian) salivating.

We don’t need to learn or practice English. DMV, Census and INS had to translate their instructions into Vietnamese to accommodate our growing population. This has done more harm than good since osmosis is no substitute for formal training. (Think of it as our self-imposed – Native American- reservation!)

First-generation immigrants’ reluctance to be fluent in host country’s language leads to their demise: limited access to primary sources. Instead, sheer reliance on short-cut and second-hand analysis of opinion leaders and in-language influencers proves corrosive. The fog thickens and permeates a community hooked on media opioid. Crowd just love side-shows, like “Hail to the King” on (Palm) Sunday, then “Crucify him” on (Good) Friday. The more “Like” the better, even after fb took those” Like” alerts down.

Our bodies are here, yet our heads elsewhere, remote-controlled, abused and enslaved like a bunch of “export” coolies who leverage high currency rates in exchange for the sweat of our eyebrows (this time, to build Digital Railroad). We have sold ourselves short unknowingly and unwittingly. In any conflict, just ask “who benefits in all of this?”. (Matt Dillon played a security guard who came up with a scheme to rob a Brink, AFTER it has finished its cash-collecting round). Have you ever wondered how the big Four get rich?

Or from what financial sources sons and daughters of “Communist Party” officials rely on when they populate N. America campuses?

With “free” face time, we interact with friends and families back home, trading tips and trading prejudices (that Black president etc..). For the sake of manufactured harmony, Saigon and Little Saigon unite under a common cause, against a common enemy: China. ( I wonder if Little Havana has the same pre-disposition. But the evolution is strikingly familiar).

Back in 1972, Nixon and Kissinger already played the China card, thinking it would nicely re-configure global politics (isolating the USSR). Its sell-out of Vietnam was an undesirable way to an “honorable exit” in “decent intervals”.

One stone, two birds – resulting in one ( Nobel Peace) prize two winners: Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger.

Containing China (by letting it be our producer and consumer) while bringing the troops (minus 58,000) home. Save lives and money. Brilliant!

(President Johnson couldn’t have done it, torn between two lovers – the Great Society and the bitch of a war – in his famous quote “I don’t want to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away to do what Asian boys ought to do for themselves.”) On BBC, Frank Snepp, author of two books on Vietnam, did not “get it” (re. Vietnamese for Trumps).

Back to my “Siamese” twin. He and I have merged and co-existed for 45 years. We reunited in College – in Sliding Door, Gwyneth Paltrow missed that train by half a second; hence, two scenarios unfold before her eyes.

Both of us share the love for music, for our motherland even when our future were not without setbacks and sorrow: the sorrow of war, of PTSD, of failure to communicate cross-culturally and to respond to our fellow men.

We wanted to be like those who had abandoned us while, at the same time, despising ourselves for doing so. That dissonance, like a tale of Kieu, drove us to the brink. We are mirrors that reflect America’s loss and loss of face. And vice versa.

It took a while to put the pieces back together e.g. MIA’s and Amerasian repatriation, ODP and Diplomatic re-linking (Obama later did the same with Cuba).

Our two societies – connected loosely on a shared and painful past – just like the Vietnam Wall and the Soldiers statues. This time, it’s us, the Viet Kieu (Vietnamese American) who set boots in Danang, 50 years later (ironically, one of the Navy Commanders happened to be of Vietnam descent). And John McCain, a national hero after late check-out of Hanoi Hilton.

When the hippies handed their reign to yuppies (Gordon Gekko – in an updated version, released from jail for fraud, yet still tried his modified version of “Greed is good” on the Street – his daughter not onboard. His name should have been changed to Rip Van Winkle since junk bond had been replaced by junk food, Beamers by Lexuses.)

Current cultic tragicomedy has been decades in the making. Recent Vietnamese arrivals are reluctant or refuse to get with the program i.e. pay the (admission) price for a seat at the table. Outwardly, it’s easier to drive a Lexus and to put on a pair of designer’s jeans. But (material) acquisition is no substitute for acculturation, just as acoustic is not cul-de-sac. The former makes us consumers, the latter citizens/class.

This latest election brings home that truth: we’ve got baggage to un-load.

Our path toward a civic life has been quite bumpy.

The burden is on us to acquire a new mindset (as oppose to being willful ignorant). The louder we shout, the clearer this Election is a referendum about ourselves, Viet-American, Asian-American or plain old American.

After our little short history of Vietnamese in America (parallel to US’), I bet we want to be taken seriously and not sidelined ( from US cultural, societal and political life). Mainstream America deserves our contribution, not exploitation. In our long history of overthrowing conquerors, it’s us who had to own our struggle for independence. The last skirmish was 79. No way around “the things we carry”.

Though survived the journey from hell to Hell Kitchen (buffet in the times of Covid?) cash- only workers might end up trekking to Canada (as foreign students have inadvertently started with their college admission applications – following the footsteps of their 60’s conscientious-objectors counterparts).

Illusion and misperception lead to mass hysteria. Remember those mass dash to secure toilet papers? Get off that chair and turn off those fake news. Hear the kids out; they have been begging daddy and mommy not to vote for so and so. Preserve those family values and a Republic that still can use our contribution, our self examination and soul searching.

Do it on behalf of those who did not make it to Disney Land (died at sea) or Promised Land (died of covid).

Meanwhile, the Rolling Stones (part of previous waves of British Invasion) keeps on with “You don’t always get what you want”. You can’t drive a Lexus down Bolsa Avenue, and dream of liberating Catina Boulevard. Ask any Cuban in Miami, and you’ll hear the same refrain:

“You can’t always get what you want.”

I think I might have found my twin, living in America – from Little Tokyo to Little Hanava – all along. When our parallel paths converge, it takes on a double-helix shape, once we made through the closing door from opposite side of the world. Just like a Murakami 1Q84 epiphany.

Long time ago, but it seems like yesterday. I landed at Fort Indiantown Gap, PA with two sets of clothes, and an uncertain future. I saw an ad looking for a bi-lingual interpreter, only that it was a volunteer position.

Oh well, those unaccompanied refugee children needed help. So I signed up and signed on to work for free until the day I left camp for campus.

Those non A/C summer months went by so quickly. What do you expect from an almost abandoned Army barrack? I rotated among the 5 child- welfare workers in the office. When it’s their turn and their case (conducting a foster care placement interview) I was right in the middle.

The case workers chipped in for my birthday ( my first cake and college dictionary at the age of 19).

Here are excerpt from Steve Roth, Counselor III, Childlike and Abuse Registry of Bureau of Child Welfare, Annville, PA 17003

” his (mine) hours to say the least, were long. His command of the English language, both written and oral, never failed even in situations, which proved confusing, fatiguing and frustrating (the usual tempo). Most importantly, is his ability to culturally interface. ”

Little did I know, the experience led me deeper into the jungle of cross-cultures and how to convey the essential message of peace to hostiles.

Many years later, while walking with a (white) seminary student in the thick of West Africa, I realized he was shaking. “I am so scared?” he confessed. No street lights, no paved streets. Just a dark village full of pot holes and smiling faces. One cannot get more “cross-cultural” (from M1-M3) than that.

I wish the best for those foster kids as much as I do for mine.

I wish the same for currently caged kids. 545 of them (latest report arrived at 666). They need help with language and culture. More so with human connection and the assurance that out in the cold, someone still cares.

Kids need parents, not politicizing, postering and policies. Amidst all the class and cast division. Amidst all the barriers without bridges and steel walls without warm embraces.

Kids need to be released.

They are not ones to find their way to “flow the Cuckoo’s nest” all on their own.

You can’t do that! Yes, I can.

How many times have we heard that over the past four years?

America is an ensemble of people from all walks of life.

Because of its heterogeneous make-up, the US of A doesn’t and couldn’t see itself under monarchy or tyranny without checks and balance. It allows for a 4 or 8 year-term, max.

Meanwhile, we’ve got the media, once top-down (broadcasting) now bottom up (narrow casting).

With technology at our fingertips, bits rule. No longer huge steam engines, or huge corporations like GM and Ford to lord over a respective industry or nation (What’s good for GM is good for America, “You can buy a model T in any color you want, as long as it’s black”).

People power emboldened by technological empowerment. A 3-year old kid has a phone. An 8-year old is politically informed (Who won?)

From far flung, people were anxious for the AP call. The Philadelphia of Benjamin (Franklin) is now Philadelphia of Bermuda and Belarus.

Computing power keeps accelerating exponentially, as chip-makers making huge bets when buying rival firms.

World trade grows, deficit grows, and virus spread.

We are living on borrowed time and borrowed money.

Individually and globally.

What happened yesterday was phenomenal: a perfect storm, a collision of ideals and ideologies, so much that places like China and Israel all stayed up, woke up to facebook fireworks.

Delaware by comparison is small state in the Union. Yet from there, last night, history was in the making.

A Harris opened the night, then a Biden to top it up.

Then we saw the First Family Elect surround Biden with local supporters. Infact, he even went back in time to mention his grandpa who used to call him “Joey”. The imagery and iconic evening can’t be far more different than previously portrayed and paraded (come to think of it, the Inauguration crowd 4 years ago was doctored suitable for ego inflation on Pennsylvania Avenue.)

America will always seek to modify itself after its best imagination. Last night, America was calling out its better angels to secure the land of the free where it would not be free if no one come out and say “No, you can’t do that” or “Put on your adult pants, and make that concession speech”.

What’s good for Biden is now good for America, an America of all and for all.

First, Harrisburg Airport. Then Indian Town Gap. Then State College. Then Mt Poconos. Then Scranton. Finally Philadelphia. My PA. Still on my mind and in my heart.

Pennsylvania was my second home. My incubator. It carried me forward, one yard at a time (Push them back, push them back, way..back ) through those hills and mountains, the golf course and the swimming pool.

Most importantly, the people and friends I made. Sunday afternoons saw us sing in various nursing homes (Couldn’t visit my father, stuck in Vietnam for 10 years – might as well visiting others’, to keep the world go round).

Every day saw me jogging the golf-course loop – 4-miles or 8. Your choice.

I signed on for work-study program, sitting in a tight sports equipment booth, handing out basketballs and handballs etc… or at the Journalism school library, reading Adversing Age before locking it up on dateless weekend.

My last three months of college was spent in Scranton, where I interned for ABC-TV 56. Not all news were glamorous e.g. garbage-workers’ strike etc… with one exception: we scooped the Three-Mile Island, our news break.

I feel the energy and adrenaline of today’s Philadelphia. Of plots thwarted and votes counted. Of anxiety and anticipation in Little Italy. Of apathy in the Amish area (what do you expect? one landline phone for the whole village) and lividness in Scranton, King Maker’s neighborhood (same as Hope near Little Rock, AK).

There are always railroad tracks and fences going through those poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

People spent money on fences and fancy drugs. People whose hope had dissipated.

Above all, they talk, whether or not the spotlight comes around for them: “how do you feel?” “did you shake his hands?”

Biden grew up in Scranton. I am sure WNEP-TV 56 will have an exclusive, the same as Kenya with Obama.

Scranton. Stuttering. Yet sees himself schooled and surged over the top.

This day, I feel proud, as if I still am a student intern. Living in the same set of clothes, for a few days, camping outside the State Capital Building, waiting for news break.

After withdrawing daily maximum allowance of cash, people fled. Middletown turned ghost town yet the media, marched in harm’s way (possible melt-down?) to cover the nuclear power plant mishap.

God knows, “we are leaving Thang behind to cover it live>???”. Yeah, right!

I was single at the time, with no insurance and no wage. An intern is expandable, remember!

But I felt the excitement and connection to world events. Like this night, via twitter and facebook.

No longer do we care where we are, geographically speaking. We are one. Humanity and decency in the balance and on the ballot.

Can’t let years of toilet-train be flushed down. We will resist and rise, as one. And let Christmas lights be turned back on, illuminating a sign that says ” under new management” at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Just as soon as the President is taking his rightful place in the arc of history.

Make it worth our while, son of Scranton.

Pennsylvania on my mind.

My name is Boat People, actually the other half.

The no-shows who didn’t make it.

Hence, I am not here, to witness my dream flushed down the toilet.

I am not here to thrive, to contribute, to compete and to make a life for myself and my children.

I am not here to witness the land of the free disintegrated and divided.

I am not here to cast my vote and to wave the flag.

I am not here to die of Covid, since I was already dead at sea.

The other half who did not die off-shore should refuse to die on-shore (of covid – a fault not of their own). Not after they have already reached America, whose statue, a gift from France, still says “give me your tired, your poor”…

I am not here to walk my dog, to “trick or treat” with my kids, to feed squirrels in urban wild or to toss a coin into a fountain while making a wish,,, that America remains the beacon of the world, that a drive down 101 in glistening sun is still capable of melting any doubter’s heart.

I am not here. Out of sight, out of mind. No one remembers me. No one speaks of or for me.

I have neither commemoration nor coverage by the press, not as much as the way a team of soccer players had in Alive (after surviving their plane crash in the Andes.)

I am just a nameless faceless Boat People – shit, who would want to be remembered by a mode of transport. Will the hard-working Amish be remembered as carriage-people? Or American students, under Johnson, as Bus People?

Or after Elon Musk as Electric-Vehicle people.

I am a descendant of a proud race (Anamit) having beaten back the Chinese invaders by sheer wit and will. I am a descendant of a people who refused to give in to the French Colonialists, who left behind many half-breeds during their hasty extraction, after having shipped damn Michelin rubber back to Mother’s country, just like the English with their spice and tea from India & China, or oak from New England.

We , the dead and alive, are not that different in the way we both love to live free from tyranny and taxation (without re-habilitation).

I am a descendant of Mandarins and Merchants, of Factory and Farm workers.

I am the other half, who did not survive the 50/50 odds at sea, paid all (gold bars and chocolate bars) for nothing, having neither a say nor a seat at the table. Never got a facebook comment, a blog on WordPress or a Tweet out to my “followers”.

I am voiceless but not without conviction. My head held high, my flag waved. White flag. Yes, but not for surrender, more for passer-by boats to feel non-threatening. After all, those Thai pirates have robbed us, raped us many times over leaving us with a tattered shirt on our backs – which then served a makeshift bandana or a flag ( no Tom Hanks to play Cast-Away on our behalf), same way you would cut your 100%-cotton T-shirt for a mask in covid early months.

I have hopes and dreams e.g. freedom of expressions, freedom of becoming and realizing my God-given potential.

I wish you would learn, love and live to the fullest. That includes exercising your free and fair election. That includes to choose and to make mistakes while choosing (as opposed to having no choice – as in tyranny and dictatorship). I know you are experiencing “Buyer’s Remorse” i.e. voting for the wrong candidate with no Force Majeure clause or lemon law.

I hope you won’t have to cry when the camera pans past you as people in North Korea who were told who and when to mourn ( those supposed mourners stopped being theatrical immediately when the camera panned away from them).

Re-cycled beneath the Ocean as food for fish, we hope America’s descendants, of all races and colors, thrive as a proud people who at moments’ notice, can stand up to tyranny and terrorism, the way you did on 9/12/2001.

United we (the dead and the survived) stand. Like on United flight 93. Give your whole self away. Do not hold back. I wish I could join you. But I can’t. So you would have to do it on my behalf and in my memory.

Don’t cry for me America. Just fight for me.

SIgned. The other half of BOAT PEOPLE . .. who never made to strange shores.

Scarlett Johansson gets married…again.

Why not. Love in the times of covid. It should be encouraged, urged and nudged.

How many chances do we get in life…before they get taken away… by tiny rebellious pathogens and virus.

Let love go viral, not the virus.

By now, we have learned to live with it: neither at peace nor at war. Just a truce (Halloween 2020).

Turn back the clock. Turn back the tide of disease and death.

Turn back the dial on love. Love is the answer, said the Beatles. All we need is love.

I want to hold your hands…I want to hold your hands….

People try to go about their daily lives: Ohio vs Penn State, bills paid online, and the work done at home.

How many more deaths before this is over? 450,000? Taxes lost, hope dims.

Money spent on services (travel), now on essential.

Scarlett can get married again, but her reception will be virtual, I hope.

She will wake up next to “the love of her life”, host SNL, and welcome both covid and co-habitation into her next chapter.

All the power to a beautiful and talented couple.

She exhibits vulnerability in “Lost in translation”. Hope she stays that way.

Vulnerability allows one to be transformed, to change and be maneuverable. In short, to grow, to compromise, to entertain the possibility that this is not it. We demand more. We risk it all for more.

By being weak, we are strong.

I can’t wait to see more “product” out of this new coupling.

I wish Red/Blue not-United States of America would take a lesson from this.

The country needs to change, structurally and sensibly. It needs to self-transform on the road to redemption.

May God be with us all, Scarlett Ohara or Scarlett Johansson, through this Winter and beyond.