Thang Nguyen 555

Counting down. What’s in that gift box for me.

We are left with the proverbial can that has been kicked down the road too many times.

That tree of life. It’s up  to us  to leave good gifts behind.

The new Pope brokered a deal which made Havana jump. That’s a gift.

What do they do to celebrate down there? Open a cigar box.

It’s way late, but I just finally watched “12-years of Slave”. Now, that chapter I hope is behind us.

Give our children a kinder of world.

Can’t tell them to carry those heavy text books, with unworthy content inside.

Conjugate and contribute. Are we?

Christmas brings out the best in us. It should. Then the year-end inventory e.g. best of 2014 book list, New Yar resolution and Happiness Project.

People are doing sit-in, teach-in, even “die-in” at the Mall of America.

When do we adults seize an occasion to learn, to better ourselves.

Learning, for grown-ups takes a different form and takes place in a different setting: TED talks or tea time?

I wish I found kindness under that tree.

The kind of kindness I wish for my children when they become independent, serving Starbucks coffee or what not. When she “pours her heart into it”, I hope customers would respond in kind by leaving a good tip, not just because it’s Christmas.

I wish I found hope under that tree. The kind of hope which does not need anyone’s permission. Not the IRS, nor the ISIS. St Paul once said that hope never fails. It’s your last match in the dark. Hope it sparks a fire because that’s all it takes.

I wish I found love under that tree. And because it (the tree) is there – an excuse – where I want to offer myself , the whole of it, wrapped and ready. Be the very gift you wish to find under that tree.

Churchill used to start speaking in the morning, and did not end until late at night (yet his most famous and enduring: “Never ever ever give up” speech stays with us).

Wesley was known to bring down the house (or the tent) with fire and brimstone sermons.

And of course, I have a dream.

It might seem long ago, but not too distant a past. Cuba remained frozen in time, at least, when Robert Redford in Havana was still good-looking.

Those American-made automobiles, which cost twice as a house down there.

You may think the State of the Union addresses are long. Not long enough. Each important issue got barely a paragraph.

We hear a few speeches a year, often right before meals (so make it short).

Soon, it will be a lost art of orator.

Yet speeches have inspired people through the centuries. Great speeches were delivered by great leaders.

The essential hallmark of a leader is his/her ability to draft up and deliver a rousing speech, of substance and style.

Ask not.

Yes, there are all kinds of gadgets now a day to help, from teleprompter to tweeter.

But the burden still lies in the heart and vocal chords of that speaker.

A city on the hill. A thousand points of lights. Yes we can.

I have seen the voice made the man, the clothes that made the man, and now, the gadget that made the man (Facebook and Xiaomi).

People will not sit still (not from morning til night). So you will have to come to them from multiple points, the way Hollywood is now doing with cut-aways, cuts through the chase and just jump-cuts.

Email are too long and burdensome (not to mention “hackable” as in Sony’s). So, just in-mail and tweets.

These blogs have by far, our modern-day substitutes for long winding treaties. They serve their purposes: a digital marking in an era where gadgetry is king and that short attention span is further compressed to its breaking point. Never ever give up though. Ask not. Yes, you can. I still have a dream. Shoot not. Ask question first. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20141025/who-was-tuan-nguyen-friends-unravel-mystery-of-homeless-man-killed-in-la-accident

Homeless, John Doe 278, killed when an SUV plowed through a Canoga Park Donuts-Store, will be cremated and then buried in a Common Grave scheduled for Dec 2017.

A LA Police search found 623 possible matches for “Tuan Nguyen”. Decades of being homeless with no prior and no contact numbers, resulted in no “life”, in machine-speaks.

Great story by a Valley Daily News journalist, but sad ending to a human quest that spanned across the Pacific, from a busy street of former Saigon, to a quiet strip mall of Canoga Park ( whose only mention by Hollywood was in Grand Canyon, when Kevin Kline suggested that his new-found Black friend be relocated there to stay away from boyz in the hood).

I used to take my daughter to Lake Balboa near there for a bike ride. I remember the place, a lonely one without a family. During the Beat Generation, Valley Girls frequented outdoor movies and roller skating rings. Further North would be home to the porn industry.

Here was a man, obviously out of place and his element.

He moved about, and if he hadn’t been run over by the SUV , he wouldn’t have missed his Thanksgiving at Church of the Redeemer food bank. Or we can assume had Tuan, chang trai nuoc Viet – young man from Vietnam – not embarked on that Boat People journey with his parents – who used to work for the Department of Water and Power in Vietnam – he would still be riding his motorbike in the Cong Hoa roundabout near his former high school – Petrus Ky.

In Sliding Doors, Gwyneth Paltrow plays a woman who stepped into the metro just as it was closing. In another cut: she did not make the train.

Two completely different scenarios, two completely opposite outcomes.

Happenstance.

It happens to the best of us.

For instance. Let’s take the US positive reception and reputation right after WWII (and for that matter, right after 9/11). What if the US did not care for world’s oil, and instead, explored and exploited its own energy sources all the while keeping manufacturing jobs at home. We wouldn’t have words like “off-shoring” and perhaps, the US would not have garnered much resentment and ill-will. When President Carter took office, he rode on the “crisis of confidence” theme only to be co-opted and outdone by his successor.

About all that time, our homeless man lived a quiet life in the back alley of Canoga Park and other parks. History could have taken a different turn had we not missed the Sliding Doors.

That counts for all of us, FOB from the Mayflower or FOB from Vietnam. A good harvest =  Thanksgiving Feast. Safe landing and sustainability.

But then, how unsafe was it, just to sit at “your” usual table of Jolly Donuts, charge your phone and get run over. His worst fear ( buried in a Killing Fields mass grave) had finally materialized in present-day US of A common grave. Nguyen died, a man without a country (his ID unconfirmed, hence citizenship questionable), a home and a grave to his own. Once a bright student, with no prior now, dead, without a legacy. This Thanksgiving, his absence in the Church of Redeemer food bank is barely registered. After all, John Doe is John Doe, dead or alive.

It’s approaching, Black Friday that is.

Like you, I barely remember two incidents – store keeper got trampled to death, and a woman pepper-sprayed fellow shoppers.

Well, let the fact speak for itself. Here is a copy/paste straight out of Wikipedia in recent years on this infamous day of the year.

In 2006, a man shopping at Best Buy was recorded on video assaulting another shopper.^[34] Unruly Walmart shoppers at a store outside Columbus, Ohio, quickly flooded in the doors at opening, pinning several employees against stacks of merchandise.^[35] Nine shoppers in a California mall were injured, including an elderly woman who had to be taken to the hospital, when the crowd rushed to grab gift certificates that had been released from the ceiling.^[36]

In 2008, a crowd of approximately 2,000 shoppers in Valley Stream, New York, waited outside for the 5:00 am opening of the local Wal-Mart. As opening time approached, the crowd grew anxious and when the doors were opened the crowd pushed forward, breaking the door down, and trampling a 34-year old employee to death. The shoppers did not appear concerned with the victim’s fate, expressing refusal to halt their stampede when other employees attempted to intervene and help the injured employee, complaining that they had been waiting in the cold and were not willing to wait any longer. Shoppers had begun assembling as early as 9:00 PM the evening before. Even when police arrived and attempted to render aid to the injured man, shoppers continued to pour in, shoving and pushing the officers as they made their way into the store. Several other people incurred minor injuries, including a pregnant woman who had to be taken to the hospital.^[37][38][39] The incident may be the first case of a death occurring during Black Friday sales; according to the National Retail Federation, “We are not aware of any other circumstances where a retail employee has died working on the day after Thanksgiving.”^[37]

On the same day, two people were fatally shot during an altercation at a Toys ‘r Us in Palm Desert, California.^[37]

During Black Friday 2010, a Madison, Wisconsin woman was arrested outside of a Toys ‘R’ Us store after cutting in line, and threatening to shoot other shoppers who tried to object.^[40] A Toys for Tots volunteer in Georgia was stabbed by a shoplifter.^[41] An Indianapolis woman was arrested after causing a disturbance by arguing with other Wal-Mart shoppers. She had been asked to leave the store, but refused.^[42] A man was arrested at a Florida Wal-Mart on drug and weapons charges after other shoppers waiting in line for the store to open noticed that he was carrying a handgun and reported the matter to police. He was discovered to also be carrying two knives and a pepper spray grenade.^[43] A man in Buffalo, New York, was trampled when doors opened at a Target store and unruly shoppers rushed in, in an episode reminiscent of the deadly 2008 Wal-Mart stampede.^[44]

On Black Friday 2011, a woman at a Porter Ranch, California Walmart used pepper spray on fellow shoppers, causing minor injuries to at least 10 people who had been waiting hours for Black Friday savings. It was later reported that the incident caused 20 injuries. The incident started as people waited in line for the newly discounted Xbox 360. A witness said a woman with two children in tow became upset with the way people were pushing in line. The witness said she pulled out pepper spray and sprayed the other people in line. Another account stated: “The store had brought out a crate of discounted Xbox 360s, and a crowd had formed to wait for the unwrapping, when the woman began spraying people ‘in order to get an advantage,’ according to the police.^[45] In an incident outside a Walmart store in San Leandro, California, one man was wounded after being shot following Black Friday shopping at about 1:45 am.^[46]

Also stemming from Black Friday unruliness in 2011, 73-year old greeter Jan Sullivan was fired from a Tampa area Wal-Mart after she was shoved by a Black Friday shopper. Sullivan alleges that when she attempted to stop an unnamed woman from exiting through a door where exits were not being permitted, the woman pushed her. Sullivan claims that as she fell, she instinctively tried to grab onto the woman to keep from falling. Since Wal-Mart employees are not allowed to touch customers, Sullivan was then fired. The story has been a source of some controversy for Wal-Mart and garnered much community support for Sullivan, including media coverage and at least two Indiegogo fundraisers were launched to support her financially after the incident.^[47]

On Black Friday 2012, two people were shot outside a Wal-Mart in Tallahassee, Florida during a dispute over a parking space.^[48]

On Black Friday in 2013, a person in Las Vegas who was carrying a big-screen TV home from a Target store on Thanksgiving was shot in the leg as he tried to wrestle the item back from a robber who had just stolen it from him at gunpoint.^[49] In Romeoville IL, a police officer shot a suspected shoplifter driving a car that was dragging a fellow officer at a Kohl’s department store. The suspect and the dragged officer were treated for shoulder injuries. Three people were arrested.^[50]

At the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia a fight was caught on camera in which a woman was taken to the ground. The video also caught a separate possibly related fight happening simultaneously.^{[51]    TO BE CONTINUED THIS YEAR AND THE NEXT. My advice: get some  comprehension and collision coverage for your own body, not auto body protection, before Friday.} 

Have you ever wondered what it takes to make the list of Most Influential People? In the span of time, no single accomplishment will make the difference, but for the tapestry (your reputation).

The Atlantic 100 list shows a lot of “colored” folks e.g. Du Bois etc… since American History  cannot get away from its color line.

40 years ago, we got Ambassador Martin in Saigon who was adamant about not ending the war out of style. Now we got a newly appointed US Ambassador to Hanoi (just a bit North) who is openly gay.

Whole different ball of wax.

Like his 4-decade-old predecessor, this new Ambassador will preside over an era of change (very much like his boss, Jim Kerry, who once testified in front of Congress in green fatigue as an anti-war Vet).

40 years gave us a Garden Grove mayor (Bao Nguyen) and Andrew Lam (son of a General) who is also openly gay.

Whole different ball of wax.

And to top it all, we begin to run out of “bad guys” to pick on i.e. Happy Valley documentary, Last Days of Vietnam documentary. So we begin to toot their horns e.g. Jerry Garcia (upcoming documentary).

Don’t let appearance deceive you:  from Bernard to Bernie while the good guys might look like they have just walked out of a thrift shop fitting room.

All those hours spent coding and sleeping on the floor, now translated into a lot of donation to fight Ebola.

You’ll never know what the future might hold.

Whole different ball of wax.

To sum it up. The sun will also rise. We are just specters of the Universe. Follow your hearts and your instincts. We are all passing the time, some into greatness, while others, oblivion.

It’s hard to make the Most Influential List. Not by a long shot. But the least you can do is to say off the Most Shunned List. In Happy Valley, or Temple University these days, people are debating whether figures like Bill Cosby are doing more harms than good.

Whole different ball of wax.

Long ago, Decent Interval was published and it raised a few eye-brows.

It was a play on word. There was nothing “decent” about the US slow but sudden unwinding from its once escalated war.

Throughout that time, investors like Warren Buffett were able to enrich their portfolio with decent interests.

Value-investing vs demoralized warfare.

The economy and politics of America in the last century should make for good bedtime reading.

The only time Mr Buffett’s portfolio intersected the smell of napalm was when he befriended Katherine Graham of the Post, which followed the NYT in publishing the Pentagon Papers.

Aside from that, he mostly held on to his days of delivering the Post (the only time which he lived outside of Nebraska).

As a “white Knight”, Mr Buffett came to the last-minute rescue of companies in his portfolio among them Salomon Brothers. He is today’s equivalent of “good” hackers.

BTW. Men of his generation e.g. Norman Mailer, Andy Rooney et… don’t do computers. They just had everything calculated in their heads. They “read” people, not Facebook, sign ownership documents and not loan papers, and most importantly, their ability to source for value stocks, to call things as they are (not euphemism) and befriend serious people (like Katherine Graham who hired Mr Ben Bradlee to be at the helm of Newsweek-Post Empire).

Mr Buffett He doesn’t want his children to sit on too big a chunk of change, for fear they might accumulate too much power.

I am not alone in the company of people who want to try his secret sauce (not when he completely evades the ascendancy and crash of dot.com) – and how he ended up in the company of Bill Gates, whose foundation earned a large chunk of Buffett’s donation.

The two unlikely bed fellows have tried to fan the fire of Millionaire Club, worldwide. But whether or not their plan succeeded, the world nouveau riches have come to respect American Billionaires. And how these folks have earned their wealth at a decent interval, one value stock at a time, in the best or worst of times. These are the things we all wish we had known when we were in our 20’s, when China was still a one-color country, and when the US manufacturing job base still commands a decent 20%. That’s why there were names like Berkshire, IBM and Coke. Those enduring brands carry intrinsic values and made useful products like Cherry Coke and Cotton Shirts.

Let’s change it around, form a nation of Takers to a nation of Makers.

I know Black Friday is around the corner. And that we brace ourselves once again to “take” those loss-leaders at dawn, in the dark.

But per Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and Makers, all that is about to change.

With 3-D Printer and Laser Cutter, and Computer Numeric code (CNC), we can soon learn to Do It Ourselves.

With China still number one provider of manufacturing capacity, the US can foster a new movement of design and prototype-making.

Then, with Kickstarter and Quirky (not to mention Etsy), the financing closes the loop.

Voila.

No more excuses (They took all our jobs….They made it so cheap…)

France and Switzerland still churn out high-price products should raise the critical question: haute couture and high culture, do they solely belong in those castles?

or can it be conceived or copied from a garage in Montana?

May I propose a modest plan:

– re-examine the nation’s comparative advantage i.e. knowledge economy, creativity and innovation spirits

– force rank those to pick low hanging fruits

– crowd-source and crowd-fund those top candidates

– campaign to support “buy America-made products”

– make that an envy of the world, en par with French wine and Swiss bank

– assert thought leadership and act like a new sheriff in town when it comes to climate and human right violation (enemies, foreign or domestic)

With privilege comes responsibility.

For so long, America – with the exception of the Amish – has sleepwalked through modern manufacturing history: hungry? frozen meals. Bored? download pirated movies.

We don’t make things. We take them.

We even pepper-spray those who are in our way (as in Long Island Wal-Mart Black Friday incident and others).

Let’s turn all that around, starting with this new slogan: We Are, Makers (not Takers). It should deter a bunch of folks who are in immigration line, thinking they are entitled soon to be counted among the ranks and files of takers unlimited. In the beginning, God – Creator and Carpenter – made the Heaven and the Earth. We have a good role model for a nation of mini-creators, who rise out of IKEA self-assembled furniture to something bigger and more useful, like drone surveillance, traffic intelligence/re-routing, and space travel. Or else, just sit in traffic and go over the Christmas gift list in your mind to see what you can “take” from Wal-Mart this year, if you can get up early enough.

11-11

Just Singles. Anti-Valentine. Lots of “Lonely People” in China.

Alibaba knows that. It wants to help reduce some of that anxiety and loosen some of those heavy purses.

Boom! $2 Billion in sales in an hour.

Anything, from toaster to Twitter ( smart phones).

Welcome to the new consumer society (used to be Savers Society).

Now, just jump until you drop (from the Foxconn balcony) or shop until you drop.

Almost all chose the latter.

To us, it’s just an ordinary Tuesday. But to the Rolling Stones, it’s Ruby Tuesday.

To the Delta Team, their day was Bin Laden take-down one.

To Alibaba, 11-11 is the equivalent of Black Friday.

The genius of marketing.

Big grin on the face of its CEO.

Money makes handsome people.

I don’t want to look at today as just an ordinary day.

Like Rob Reiner’s mom in “Sleepless in Seattle”, “I want some of that”.

If confidence can be contagious from merely looking at the screen, I am now catching it.

Singleness used to be socially awkward in some sectors of society, and certainly in China.

Now, all this is upending. (Andrew Lam even explored on one of his pieces, on sexual body in China.)

BTW. Do read Tazaki Tsukuru, latest installment by Haruki Murukami to understand the nuances of Asian male singleness.

In short, learn to spot the opportunity in the ordinary. For me, this day is not over just yet. I still have tonight to discover the extra-ordinary in everyday life.

Virgin Galactic. Undeterred.

After all, without the likes of Branson, Kingsford Smith, Lindbergh and Earhart, where would we be today!

2014 marks two major setbacks: Malaysian Air flight and Virgin Galactic flight.

Technology wants sacrifice first, mass utility second.

Soon, we will surf the net while our unmanned cars do the driving (we are doing this now on metro line).

I haven’t produced a hand-written letter in quite a long time (using just a laptop keyboard).

Even this morning, when I had to pry open a massive grapefruit, it came so unnaturally (without the juicer).

For billion of years, we have learned and unlearned various skills to adapt to technology of the time.

No risk no reward (the Wright Brothers at the turn of last century sure had a broken rib or two).

We have re-adjusted our expectations of happiness and comfort.

Now is the time to learn how to live longer: pick up a hobby, choose a place to begin our dying process etc…

An alarming statistic shows young people (up to 60% in developed countries) with depression.

At the age of risk taking, of discovering the world, they instead, withdraw to themselves (only to blow the lid via school shooting).

You may say, we don’t know how to handle peace time, at least, in the United States.

Prosperity was somehow coupled with global conflicts. When there is no war, we feel  as if prosperity were not there.

So, as far as (false) logic goes, waging wars would “mobilize” resources, chiefly among which, CASH.

Correlation was taken for causation.

Back to technology and what it wants.

Kevin Kelly seems to think that technology (technium) evolves just as biology.

It wants to give us more choices (from space traveling to channel surfing).

We have seen unintended consequences in China with a 12-day traffic gridlock, or Foxconn dorm-jumping.

Mr Kelly cited Unabomber (individual) and Amish (community)  for being Luddite.

Samsung has recently realized it can no longer stay in the race along Apple.

So Amish or Apple, we have cast our votes.

Lighter, faster, cheaper, better looking and better feel.

What we made  has become us.

What technology wants, not what we want.

The work of our hands now takes precedence.

And one day, when we travel in space, looking back to not just the Mojave Desert, but Earth itself, we will then realize it’s a small price to pay for the view and viewpoint: living on Earth itself will have been a provincial act.

Seeing Palawan Island on top of CN Travelers list brings back fond memories of my brief humanitarian trip there years ago.

Young, idealistic and fearless, I was sent down on rotation to “boost up”  the morale of a remnant of Vietnamese refugees stuck permanently there (later, after decades of legal wrangling, the camp was finally vacated and bodies shipped back to where they belong).

Palawan then as it is now (I suppose) was yet invaded by hotel chains and casinos. You can find more detail and description about Palawan on CN Travelers.

What once thought of as “trash” can quickly become “treasure”, given enough luck and time.

Australia, after Gold was found, became a nation, not a concentration camp.

Palawan Island, once housed unwanted refugees, now the darling of global trotters. (Same with Con Dao Island in Vietnam, once a French “alcatraz”, now a getaway of choice for the likes of Angelina and Brat Pitt).

Personally, I spent one entire summer on Wake Island – pristine waters, coral reef and cleanest air around – yet was unable to appreciate a single second of it (I was in transit, with a burning desire to get to my final destination: America). I am sure the Japs and the Allied forces were fighting for every inch of that place (a refuel station for B29 which ultimately delivered those two fateful atomic bombs onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

So what is at the heart of the matter? Is it the place? or one’s expectations of the place?  Prison, as undesirable as they may first appear, has been character-builder for Nelson Mandela, Genghis Khan, Senator John McCain. In a latest Atlantic article, we find Viktor Frankl’s meaning of life as the ultimate surviving mechanism, not pursuit of happiness. And this Nobel-prize winner discovered his theory in,of all places, Nazi concentration camps.

Back then,  laying under a thatch-roof hut and on top of a straw bed, I repeated to myself “He who is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” to get through the long and ardous torrential night.

I did not know back then I was getting one of the best vacations given 2014 CN travelers rating.

Or else, I would have asked to extend my stay.

People I visited were eager for outside news, for a word of encouragement, for my takes on things (reminds me so much of The Unconsoled, a novel by Ishiguro, who was famous for The Remains of the Day).

It was neither pastoral nor papal a visit. But it served a purpose: to assure that they were not cut-off from the outside world, and that they should remain faithful (drunkenness and immorality are not uncommon).

BTW. Years later, at MCI Circle of Excellence, it’s Maui for me. But then the expectations and excitement were quite different – with helicopter trip and black-tie reception.

It must be in the awaiting that makes the heart grows stronger.

To wrap it up, I was also visiting Liberia long time ago. Knowing that the country had been formed by former American freed slaves, I set foot there with enormous respect and a sense of appreciation.

Now it’s well-known as birth place and hotbed of Ebola. Things do come in full circle if you think about it.

You may say I  have a penchant to look for trouble spots (The Last Days of Vietnam, the burning monk and Three-Mile-Island news internship).

Those were choices by which I will be remembered.

I might not look like J.K. Rowling now, in fact, more like her pre-Harry-Potter version, but I have lived a rich and rewarding life. A shared life.

All things will come to pass. He who is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose. If someone wins a free ticket to Palawan and asks me to join, I would politely decline. Once is enough.

Conversely, if someone were to offer me a Penn State Home Game pass, I would jump to the asking. You see, in Beaver Stadium, even when you lose a home game, a rare event, you still feel that camaraderie, a sense of WE ARE, PENN STATE. I wish for us to extend that esprit de corp a bit, sort of making waves, to embrace and include those who are now isolated, in the ward, Dallas and New York, because of Ebola. They are our new Unconsoled awaiting our visit.