Thang Nguyen 555

et les filles, de mon age…..

Before going to the Re-union of my all-boys school, I made sure everything was set for the long weekend: foods in fritz and floor vacuumed.

Whatever happened at Re-union stayed at Re-union, I thought.

I just gonna press Reset and back to my routine: kid off to school, bills paid and floor vacuumed. Again???? Then it hit me. This time it’s different.

This time, I vacuumed AFTER I had seen many long lost friends, and for a mysterious reason, I missed them (perhaps because I had said I loved them – which should carry with it a load of responsibilities.)

Not to take it lightly. The humanities teacher reminded us he was there when us young eagles needed a push, to be initiated and introduced to Vietnamese writers and poets e.g. Thanh Tinh, Vu Hoang Chuong etc…

I myself received ( today’s equivalent of stickers) books on cities in Vietnam e.g. Vinh Long, which opened my mind beyond my northern refugee slum of Saigon.

Now, it’s like going back for a software update.

A few observations: people with jobs attended it, people with great jobs organized it and people with no jobs played spectators along with wives. The later is yet another story (Tour les filles).

I was reluctant to show up to the day. Then I found out my friend Hung “con” showed up even later. That’s when it struck the chord, figuratively speaking. Hung went on to jazz and software testing, both not seemingly are in conflict at all, ” but not because …chang phai vi em”.

I am just a populist crowd-pleaser while Hung forges his own path and discovers his own style, musically and socially.

He reminds me of George Harrison with his double hit “Something” and “Here comes the Sun” in that he rises above himself and circumstances.

Hung seemed pre-occupied (lots of chips on his shoulders???). Back to the rest. We’ve got a taste of a variety of talent from photography to journalism, from theater to speech.

None impresses me more about our wholistic school experience than the teacher’s sharp and focused mind. He stressed “Ton Su Trong Dao”….i.e. we’re in for a make-over, having been contaminated with “wtf”, “fy” and other twittering acronyms in the age of Trump.

In all, I am glad I got nudged into it without which I wouldn’t otherwise have met a bunch of new friends : same age, same school, and many of same class. They were with spouses, some even went “footloose” that night.

When I turned left at the Hwy 290 fork to head back, it hit me that although I have felt in love with many books, “I read so I won’t be alone”, yet someone somewhere and somehow had introduced me to the love of literature, of belonging to an extended family stretching through time and geography (Northern and Southern VN), whose decency and magnanimity rose above difficult and depressing circumstances.

We were all-boys once, on our first day of school, all locked up (Bit Tat) after the drum beats…for hours, restless and rumble.

Today we are free and floating like balloons tied together at the bottom by the trembling hand of our teachers. But we chose to come back, to be a bunch of colors, converged, to make one single light, a (Fire) which illuminates and shines on one and only truth: those who are educated and enlightened should at least live a different life than others, even in darkest hours. I am mindful that not “tous les garçons”are alright. Many are battered but not broken, hard-hearing but not hard to please.

That hurried walk to first day of school was a journey of a thousand miles. It began with that single step across from the Jeanne d’Arc Church, with a reading of that 1st single line each of us had copied from the blackboard: “Tien Hoc Le, Hau Hoc Van”.

And I wasn’t alone in that self-effacing and stripping process. I wish I could learn to trust and love again as I did there at Chu Van An 1.0. That passion for life-long learning is still here, burning and unput-out-able.

The Beatles once gave an impromptu concert on a London roof-top: Don’t Let Me Down. If it were today, they would have drones deliver lunches.

Katrina could have used some too ( GeorgeW. Bush “observed” ‘Help Us’ signs from his Air Force One Heli, but Presidentially distant himself).

De Palma could now extend his 360-degree Blow-Out shot to be the longest on Guinness Records.

Our lives will never be the same. We will play games all-day except breaking for lunch and dinner.

GPS, Edge-Computing, un-manned air-craft & automobile converge. What an orgy made in Heaven.

Utopian sex with augmented babes feel more than real.

I am painting a not-too-far-from-reality picture here.

And I don’t like it either. Time with friends ( who is your friend, that’s another matter) with nature and with your kids/grand-kids; will be compromised by cramming posts and pics.

The wework laid-offs are joining the weplay folks, while the Uber and Lift sub-contractors have their cars repossed.

So much for the “sharing-economy”. We all bid for time till the next version of softwares and hardwares come out, incrementally, exponentially and hockey-stickedly.

I am no dummy mummy, which is what the Kurzweils of Google are thinking and working on (augmented immortality or De Palma would say, living in a perpetual split-screen existence).

Reflections of my virtual life.

First are the engineers (today’s high-priests), then venture capitalists, then the worker-bees, us. As long as the stock markets are humming and the Feds are at the lever to affectf the Dows, then business as usual.

Truckers are suckers!!!! esp. UPS ones as of two days ago.

Meanwhile the Buffetts and Waltons still live in insulate Omahas, not Oakland, with plenty of time to play Monopoly with their Emperor’s grandkids.

Tech, finance and Climate Change lip-service of the one of one hundredth percenters, in their new Halloween and Harvard ( Cap & Gown) costume.

Except for a huge donation to an University to fight Climate Chang, it’s all your fault: for not saving, for not salvaging and for not being born in the right zip code ( preferably in proper skin tone and fine English accent).

We, King of the Hill, will always be standing on top of the hill ( not New Orleans Dome). We are the resurrected ones, naked and bony. Don’t take our contra-soleil selfies. Not yet, not until the music starts and the trumpet sounds…. for we shall give a concert, on high, on the roof-top of London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, Sydney, Vancouver, San Francisco, Rome, Warsaw etc… Wherever there is money, there is music. Don’t Let Me Down.

Our night sky is no longer the same i.e. a constellation of stars and planets from afar and air traffic, LEO’s, UPS drones near below

I stopped by a Frys Electronics and was amazed at how hollow the sight was: it were as if invaded and looted by aliens on a Black Friday. There were only a few toys left near the perfume and DVDs aisles ( same merchandise on display in Los Angeles’ Alley – except for the large lease building).

Bricks-n-mortars are dying while Amazon Prime is gearing up for this Holiday Seasons.

Tech once again is fast-moving leaving behind the un-Tech.

Blacks used to protest at diner’s counter inside Department Stores in the South. At Frys (for instance), the Cafe is now closed. No one serves no one else, hence, no protest nor discrimination. Everything and everyone is moving online, and we will soon live in virtual world the majority of the time.

Here comes everybody, and nobody.

The machine and me, collaborating and cursing at each other.

South Korea, according to Fiber (the book), is to the US, what the US is to Sub-Sahara (in terms of Broadband).

Singapore GDP per capita is now 56,000 dollars. I wonder if Singaporean are happy with their new-found wealth???

Will they want drone-delivery at night as well, so their wives can try on those pre-ordered shoes. Santa used to drop ship through the chimney. Today’s Alibaba and Amazon can make last- minute magic on your solar roof on Christmas Eve.

While at it, please make one of my wishes come true: that this Holiday Season be a peaceful one on Earth, and that some among our 7 Billion get to try on new and donated shoes. Tech gets too ahead of us. While it can help deliver anything (55 pounds limits) at night in the US, it is not required nor is it asked the hard question: can you deliver happiness by drones.

Long ago, Jeeps and tanks were delivered to Normandy. Technology and humanity together against tyranny. We can do it yet again in smaller scales with smaller software-enabled steel. Only if we steady our nerves and strengthen our resolve in spite of this toxic environment. How about just a small act of kindness for a start, with or without drones.

What if AI could barely get there but Climate Change beat them to it? What if we are doomed before the Machine can save us? Moore’s Law and Computational Speed can only regulate and reduce power inefficiency somewhat, but not when Homo sapiens keep finding creative ways to increase electric consumption e.g. checking how many Likes on their last Facebook postings – BTW, I applaud fb Unlikes its Likes.

We are our worst enemies. We think upward mobility is the “Stairways to Heaven” e.g. other kinds of mobility in space and time – foresight: a gentleman from Kenya fathered our US X-President, an Israeli gay Ph.D. meditated through 3 bestsellers. People ignited and followed through with their aspiration and ambition from one generation to the next, from Karamazov to Kennedy, Murakami to Harari, with or without machine-aided feature. We trumpet and hail the machine in our machine age (because it is sexy and rides the latest wave and delivers high ROI) at the expense of human initiatives (air-traffic controller asleep at the wheel? what about air cargo went haywire?).

In just two decades, the big Fives: Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook have risen above and amazed the likes of Exxon, Mobil, BP, Ford and GE. What’s in the water? Meanwhile, a generation of Opioid addicts, many talented and brainy, got sidelined. I cry for Argentina! All the massive torts won’t make up for the Medicare abuse just as MAGA won’t bring back and undo all past mistakes and mismanagement from FEMA (Katrina) to ACA (Seniors still drive up North for more affordable prescription drugs).

Upheavals in climate, politics, economic inequality (too big to fail) and decrease in empathy (too big a gap between Zuckerberg and those SF homeless folks) create a perfect storm for 2020.

Silos and herd (peer) mentality prevent people from even pretend to zoom out for a more cosmic view (heck, you go to the bathroom and take off your tie when the rest had already ditched theirs). I am getting to a phase of my life when what used to be my future shock now becomes my present reality; I grieve for the state of affairs we find ourselves in i.e. pretending that empathy is abound. I beg to differ that technological change will only be incremental (it is for a fact , exponential) to give us time to adjust.

No, we cannot, because ROW cannot keep pace, still cannot afford their contraceptives (not when Pornhub is widely available wherever broadband is – Canada should make condoms as available as its websites). We will share our space with 7 Billion then 9 Billion, each person uses up to 228,000 calories per day. Who will deliver clean water when it is in short supply ( for ex. Mekong River) and clean up when it is risen and flooding, who will build affordable schools and provide health care to the huddled mass. Before euthanasia comes back in style and by necessity, I argue for a return to thrift, to the land, of neighborliness (global), kindness and respect (for both nature and man). Malthus was wrong once, but what if he is right this time around.

After all, let’s say, we all evolved animals, at least, don’t kill one another. Let’s pretend we are all made in the image of God, baptized in water and fire. Wouldn’t that make Phoenix out of us all – bone-crushed then rise again.

When 9 Billion phoenixes all rise like drones, that’s quite a force to be reckoned with, even in an inter-Galactic battle of any imagination. But first, sustainable after putting the (future) shock behind.

Birds flock in formation, wolves hunt in pack yet human want to go alone, cause “greed is good”. I was just out of college, with a few thousand bucks in student loan to start my first job at Children’s TV (Sesame Street – CPBS/ITV).

Out of the Penn State bubble, I was confused and dazzled: Rock Hudson biography was out ( AIDS ) and Bonfire of Vanities in ( Greed is good…the suspenders and the stairs master) and of course, the counter-Counter-culture ( 60’s out, Nancy said “No to Drugs”).

I was standing at the cross-roads, not knowing which way to turn, like Crocodile Dundee in NYC i.e. just to greet people would take me all day.

Penn State was both good and bad: it had shielded me from the real harsh world (there hardly were any Black students on campus at the time – or any girls from my homeland).

So much for being well-equipped for a changing world. Today’s landscape changes even faster: average student loan is around 33,000 dollars and ballooning. Greed is out, Greta is in, Opioid replaces AIDS. And nobody is going to read anyone’s biography because we are into gaming and sci-fi.

I respect Al Gore and his playing number 2. Like Avis “we work harder”. If we had all voted for Al, we wouldn’t have to consider Huawei peace offering (5G technology) and we wouldn’t have to witness today’s historic joint force of the Dalai Lama & Greta. Frankly, I believe Greta is our modern-day reincarnation in the great Lama’s tradition: ” out of the mouth of children, God speaks”.

Given our current rising-sea level, we got two choices: party to death for tomorrow we will all die, or stop everything and start doing all the things on the list – flood-prevention and coastal build-up — to push climate change to the outer edge ( it is akin to the fire-department breaking and entering a garage while a suicide-by-CO2 was in progress).

Let’s look in the mirror for one second: have we been better off since “the Graduate”? has plastic enriched a few or the many?

Fossil fuel moved the camel riders from outdoor traveling to indoor plumbing ( and gold-engraved toilets), but their women barely got the driver’s licenses – quite a step-up from being beheaded for sleeping in the wrong bed ( even when you are a Saudi Princess back in late 70’s). It propelled China ( Walmart plastic toys ) to world’s numero 2 (watch PBS Newshour series).

So have you looked hard in the mirror? Found any defects or are you perfect?

I made my point. Case closed. For the truth is not too far from it. Greed is not good when there won’t be any one around for you to brag, boast and broadcast your version of truth.

Today, the suspenders and stair masters (at work) are out, just like those yuppies and “low-emission” German cars of the 80’s. Rock Hudson would wake up like Rip Van Winkle to an AI and Big Data world, not knowing how to use the phone, how to text/tweet and/or access from a highly-secure and classified server.

Google has just announced a much faster Quantum Computer. By the time you finished reading this, it has already finished downloading John Wick 1,2 and 3 and while at it, recommended the Matrix after having pulled your profile and FICO scores (right, as if I am a high-tech guy who can trace my readership) to place its ads followed by relevant emails to your respective mail boxes.

Happy Friday, buy some pop corns and watch the unfolding UkraineGate.

The poor comedian-turned-President looks so young and “prey-able”. He is in for a tragedy-comedy made in Heaven, more than what he thought he had signed up for (anti-corruption endeavor). See, we are all distracted by politics and publicity e.g. Nobel talks of Greta vs Trump, rather than all the plastics floating in the ocean and entering sea creatures’ stomach.

Save a whale and save the world. For my daughters and their daughters, thank you. I want them to watch Frozen or A Wrinkle in Time and perhaps by a very small chance, seeing my name in the fast-rolling credits as Camera Assistant. (BTW, I always paid off my student loan – even after all the overseas volunteering works – or else, how can I look at the man in the mirror). Now do your part, pay your share and join the human race to “flock in formation, and hunt in pack”.

I hope “the System” doesn’t destroy Greta.

(with slogans like “Make America Greta Again” etc…).

Or, for this edit, TIME person of the year.

Don’t kill the messenger, since we’re all Gretas. Can’t kill us all.

The message is: we’re at the tipping point (of “abusing what surround us”, including people) in Bolivia (forest fire), in Beijing and in Baltimore.

Like the saying “charity begins at home”, conservation begins at home.

The oil field, the wind farm and the solar roof can only get us that far. Since the day Ford put together two bikes to make four-wheels, and the Vagabonds toured the country roads before going home ( to discover it – Detroit- for the first time), we have mistaken the means (transportation) and the end (to pursue happiness).

Why don’t we start again with Yoga and meditation ( and save many trips to the gym).

We should hold a brainstorm session, worldwide – UN Headquarter or ShutdownDC – to start with actionable lifestyle alterations to our exploitive and toxic living/working habits.

Debates about behavior – attitude chicken/egg aside, let’s curtail the habitual carelessness and false assumptions about our self-healing Earth.

Maybe the Earth will heal itself in millions of years. But by then there won’t be any Gretas, the new dinosaurs.

I grew up with one lousy ball. I threw it up in the air, then jumped from the table to catch it. Rinse and repeat. The repeated action etched in memories. I did not contribute to the waste dump (there weren’t any Toys R Us).

My first bike was a recycled one. Hence, I did not contribute to the waste dump. My first guitar is now kept and re-cycled by my rhythm guitarist. I did not contribute to the waste dump.

Repeat after me: recycle, recycle, recycle.

In Vietnam, every school has a signage ” Tien hoc Le, Hau hoc Van” ( first and foremost, learn respect, then the Rest ). Although the original and intended meaning was to teach young students their places in the scheme of things, the slogan should now include ” First, respect Mother Earth” (now, who has been ahead of the game? Us or the Native American?).

I hope you recycle your plastic. Don’t listen to the advice in “The Graduate”. Plastic is on the way out. Focusing on it as a career ain’t gonna make you a yuppie.

At Penn State or Paris, people are sending out “S.O.S.’s” on behalf of their future, ours.

We move from point A to point B , cradle to the grave, thinking of distance and traveling (space). But we forget that the Gretas of the world barely grow from decade A to decade B (time).

Give them a chance. A chance that Lewis & Clark took for granted (seeing it across the vast expanse). A chance Columbus took for granted (home is where you will run into if you travel long enough). A chance the 9 of us, war refugees, took for granted ( the 7th fleet awaiting in International Waters), a chance I’ve got when the FEMA guy came and measured the rising flood level in my Baton Rouge Apartment ( 100-year flood). A hope that life awaits us each day, with blue sky always.

Hope is alive today as it has always been, and somehow, it resides in a 16- years-old Swedish. The message has finally chosen its messenger, out of 7 Billion, one ( and I hope the System – PR, endorsement, political extremism riding on her coat tail etc… doesn’t do her in). Attitude change or behavior change? which one comes first? who cares. Just conserve.

In a flash ( while recovering from a bruise on my head in a bathtub – like Archimedes), I recalled incidents of picking up scattered pieces of broken plates – often in the midst of my parents’ fights-and thoughts that went through my head (without the help of any bio-metric devices) that I shouldn’t have been born (those fights often ran: “why didn’t you help your son with homework, as opposed to the other woman’s girl..).

Those buried thoughts ( per Jung) combined to make me who I am and how I often “eject” myself from group conflicts, take myself out of the equation, numb myself as an observer rather than a participant for fear of meddling with an already muddled situation (or refuse to let myself be the topic of discussion).

Fast track to today, the approaching age of Algorithm and AI, with the help of bio-metrics and info tech. Will we remain relevant? Has it been a privilege for you and I to exercise volunteering withdrawal from any conflicts (warfare, finance and health care). Doctors, generals and bankers make decisions ( or advise us to make them) based on Data generated by AI. Even the music, chess and arts ( 21 lessons….) Since when do we reach to the dashboard to change the channel while driving?

BTW, the “cave” I hid wasn’t at the bottom of the staircase as in “Taken I, II and III”. The “cave” I was under happened to be at the shadow of the Cross, of faith in family and other support systems. These “caves” are paved with thorns, hence, ain’t no resting places. Caves that send you back out, stronger and re-newed, to be relevant and of values to others (hence, somehow, putting my personal problems in perspectives having self-inflicted with suffering not of my own, or having taken a more cosmic view).

For instance, in any given night, there are 36,000 homeless folks roaming the streets of LA, waiting for the sun to come up in Santa Monica Boulevard.

Now, that’s warm LA. In the Combat Zone of Boston, homeless folks suffered from freezing cold temperatures on top of hunger and delusion (what time is it? where am I? (it was dark all the time in the tunnel). I went every Fri night for two years to bring out hot soup and sandwiches to those folks.

So, no matter what circumstances you may have found yourself (under the dinner table picking up the pieces – or discharged from an emergency room or a refugee camp here in the US – you were not a curse the day you were born. To exist is a blessing in itself. You exist to bear witness to the consistency of nature (4 seasons), to the beauty of many sunsets (or even sunrises on Santa Monica Boulevard) and the decay of old age ( autumn leaves after on the ground can still have one last say when a car drives by – in their tossing and tumbling then falling again, their brief beginning – even for a few seconds, like the falling man of 9/11).

Life is relevant. Very relevant. And because you are, it is.

You and life are one and the same. Just as my life and I cannot be separated. When I cease to exist, to me, life ceases to exist.

Hence, I-m-relevant, even in the year of 2050, purportedly, when AI and Algorithms start rendering people ( you and I) irrelevant by the billions.

Of course, today’s Big Data is Orwell’s Big Brother (let’s see how hard Google’s hands get slapped for being a monopoly on page-ranking). And whether human instinct to “hunt and gather” can out-survive the speed of search.

It’s so ironic that Data give (detect and prevent early onset of disease) and Data take away ( our rights to make wrong decisions due to information mismatch).

We are all Luddites and we are all Googlers . No way around the tendency to peek (into the future) and the counter-tendency (to withdraw into our cocooning past).

What matters is to stay relevant and engaged to the here-and-now.

I-m-relevant to me, to my kids, to my families and to my fellow human family. When they are homeless, we are all homeless. In Vietnamese, “Du-Ma” means cursing. In French, Dumas happened to be its national treasure, contributing to its heritage such volumes as Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers … It could have been our loss had Dumas listened to others’ “Du-Ma’s” and willed himself to die early, to render himself useless, unknown and irrelevant. Hence, fear comes in two forms: real and imagined.

The latter, I fear, is more threatening to our well-being than the former. Let’s face both, to eliminate half of the load. We-r-relevant and we will get past one or both of those fears. “Du-ma” fear. We are Dumas’ Musketeers, not Mummies.

This is not a copy-cat of “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen, nor a co-branding attempt (authors with the same last name but no relations) with a similar-sounding title.

Seriously, we are entering the Empathic Civilization, whether we like it or not. Artificial Intelligence or Robotic technology can accelerate and eliminate guess-work i.e. Japanese robotic care-takers can bring the medicine, remind old folks of time for bed…and can even nod their heads in agreement or ask clarifying questions…but….The Centennial Man can neither cry nor can he die. High-tech, high-touch.

Empathizers are a whole different breed from the Centennial Man.

You have to be wired better than even the best of actors Hollywood can buy. Humanity has taken its time, sifting through thousands of versions to get here ( fake news and fake hair aside), that is, for us to cry, to feel ( for the hundreds missing in the Bahamas, for the low-income N Carolinians who lost their mobile homes because of Dorian) and to hate (righteously) the haters.

The Sympathizers are NATO’s ( No Action, Talk Only) while Empathizers are the pigs that provide your ham-and-eggs breakfasts.

Empathizers went through the grinders barely escaped the fate of sausages (perhaps the machine jammed up).

Empathizers listen often with misty-eyed (not those fake and reflexive nods paid therapists or pastors often do, while stealing a glance at the clock behind you).

It pains the empathizer as much as it pained you.

You feel lightened after you have met the empathizer.

Empathizers don’t steal your turn ( in a hurry to offer canned advice) when you are in the middle of an outpour. Empathizers meet and greet each person unassumingly.

Empathizers are hard to find. You might be lucky to meet one or two in your life-time. They even thanked you for unloading your burden on them.

Empathizers are those who don’t blink in the face of threat or taunt.

Empathizers? been there, done that since they are schooled in risk-taking and risk management.

Empathizers anticipate what’s next, yet don’t act surprised (sympathizers do).

Empathizers offer non-verbal acceptance in response.

A civilization reaches its apex when the majority of its population possess empathy and the machine does what’s it does best: repetitive and remote responses (to stimuli and instructions).

Work on being an empathizer (BTW it is contagious and spreads like a pebble gets dropped in a lake). It’s not the biblical ” wipe away tears from their eyes”. It’s empathic ( there will be a lot of crying together). Not solving but sharing a problem. Empathy is a sub-set of common grace.

An empathic civilization witnesses a lot of people sharing a rainbow, very much like the scene in “Close encounter of the 3rd kind” w/out a need for 3-D glasses.

You don’t get that kind of ending in Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer”. He packed too much in one volume as if trying to make up for all the lost times or opportunities Viet-Am writers don’t often get to have (a substantial readership – historically Asian-American tend to “act up” by packing all their argument into one hurried sentence not only because of English as a second language – see Rush Hour – but also because of scarcity – of exposure- mentality). In “The Empathizer”, time is aplenty ( there exist no clocks in the room, because we are situated at the eclipse of kairos – eternity – and chronos – the here and now- hence making allowance for shared humanity and divinity.

We shall shed skin to take on a new identity, god-like one, without fear, humiliation, shame or constant nagging of the wife and peeping of the Jones. See, when society has empathy, it needs not forced-ranking and ridding off its deviants and undesirables. In this non-zero-sum society, we are all “winners” without the need for competition and elimination. More ham fewer eggs. Empathy, not for the faint of heart.

I have lots of childhood memories, but none came close to my getting free ice-cream from the guy my sister dumped. Let me backtrack.

My sister, 19 yr my senior, a law-school graduate, took a management position at Vietnam Agri-Development Bank. Naturally those matchmakers circled with lists of suitors among them MD’s etc…

She instead chose a discharged Veteran with a Law background. He courted her, taught her how to stay confident and competent behind the wheels (always with me in tow as de facto chaperon).

Then, one Sunday, in the heat of an exchange and in the middle of Saigon traffic, she jumped out and slammed the passenger door, forgetting her youngest brother in the back seat. I froze, not knowing how to react. Moments later, I sat opposite my sister’s date, working on my ice-cream, while he was deep in thoughts (letting the good Bach-Dang ice-cream melt). What a date!

Long story short. They ended up marrying each other with coke cans dragging along the street and me running after their “Just Married” car, crying my heart out ( in Chinese movies, they took away the Last Emperor’s nanny, and he ran after her, hence, the scene directed by, of all directors, an Italian one).

Next day, he took her to visit us just to see me, an embarrassed young boy ( who cried on their happiest day). I have witnessed their many more happy days evidenced in 4 successful kids, who in turn, have kids of their own. Two of those grandchildren are now in college.

I should have ordered more ice-cream that day since they could have broken up (bad decision), since many evenings, I tried to get them order noodles for me as bribes for their privacy – the Atonement comes to mind. In life, there are always decisions that affect generations to come.

BTW, their youngest is now a successful MD and his college-bound oldest daughter is in pre-med. My sister made a good decision, not to go for societal obvious choices at the time (or even now): other suitors, MD or not.

From her womb she can make a bunch of MD’s. Just give her some time.

My all-boys-school-Rock-band experience gave me a glimpse of what my fateful life was going to be: “some will come, and some will go… “: my bass guitar player has been dead 8 years, my rhythm player, Hung Quach, went hard-rock (“Black Sabbath”) and turned out to be a prick ( looting my guitar). Only Son, the drummer, the nicest friend as it turned out, yet his whereabout unknown.

Later in the Spring of 1975, when the IBM tabulating machine, which supposedly replaced human examiner, jammed up, forcing our SAT-equivalent graders to go back to the old way of manual grading. Rest of the gangs passed except me. Son was the first to discover the Addendum list a few days later. And you should have seen the joy in his face and the speed of his announcement: ” Thang, you passed with honors”. (Earlier that day, other classmates came to my house for my wake, since the papers – fake news – had a small Luddite column about technology went haywire, resulting in a death of a bright student via suicide, mine).

Friends like these are hard to find. Not on facebook nor any social media.

Only when you were in the band together, rehearsed together and jammed together late into the night. It’s a metaphor for real life: ups and downs, fright and frustration, confidence and camaraderie.

We also spent time outside of the studio: listening to music of the 70’s, commenting and rating them e.g. Lobo wasn’t hot in the US, but he was cult figure in war-time Saigon, Christophe played at the cafe next door was cool (Nuit come la mer).

The bonding of the band and coming of age.

We united against the “authorities” (in this case, the Head Master, Canh “hu”, with his dreadful walk around – I am sure he ear-dropped and listened in our start-and-stop quarrels inside a non-sound-proof room).

I was popular in school and lonely at home. Even in Elementary School, I was in a school-play taking the role of an old lady just for attention and a laugh. From stage to stage, I solicited shock (my Middle-School Principle, Mr Que, bounced back out of his VIP seating at the conclude of my “Don’t Let Me Down”). This Emperor-Club institution where my brother-in-law and brother went had academic standards so high that it took me 2 years to pass its entrance exam (I had finished at a French Elementary, not Vietnamese one, hence fumbled the essay in my native language).

In case you were curious: bandmates quarreled and bonded, like any couple, except it’s two couples. We smoked, drank a lot of coffee and were too young for alcohol at the time. We played from Hit Parade, which was the musicians’s bible at the time: The Shadows, The Beatles and CCR’s.

More up-to-dates were Fire-and-Rain and the Carpenters’ Super Star.

The war kept raging on outside, the music jammed on inside. It was hot, crowded in and fun ( a bunch of people just wanted to ditch classes found a perfect excuse to hideaway).

Memories of war inter-mingled with memories of childhood. Friendship somehow lasts beyond war and the grave. “Long bass” was talented and took care of his second wife/kids before cancer took him. He was a very decent human being and a first-class musician.

Son drummer has been the best friend one could ever find and I hope some day running into him. Hung Quach, son of the gun and of a dance instructor, hung out with me off-on since he was a year my senior ( We appeared on Vietnam TV9 on a school dance – Tran Thu Luu Don. This art experience stuck with me years later and helped me relate empathetically with soldiers guarding the lonely outposts over the holidays). Hung Quach still “kept” my guitar in case I ever returned.

Band as metaphor for life: those hours of rehearsal were life itself if not life at its best: you jammed, laughed, hoped and compromised. You melded and mashed the sound and egos until there are none but one speed, talent and temperament.

We were 4 kids but actually we were one band like Dumas’ musketeers, all for the Queen of Hearts. We ‘re Jr Band, “we come to your town” we’re American Band “we just want to celebrate another day of living” and despite the rain in Southern Can-Tho, we went on with “It never rains in Southern California”.

We were the ultimate dreamers at a time and in a place of “horror”, Apocalypse Now? since “fell in love… before the second show’…hence, ‘Don’t Let Me Down’…and even so ‘ I pretend to pray’… California Dreaming’”.

We did not know better then. We were young, all hopes and dreams…. and no fear or doubt. Four but only one. We were a band and not any band: poor but hopeful and blissful in our own ignorance yet charming nevertheless. That necessary innocence, was not too different from the one portrayed in The Deer Hunter – friendship at work and at play, finding themselves in extremely difficult circumstances (Russian Roullete). Same time frame, same place. Alright, alright, let its theme (Cavatina) fade in, since this blog is about music and memories of a jr high-school band CVA 68-75.