Thang Nguyen 555

I have always known about the book, but I dared not opening it for fear that it would change me.

Today, my fear has just caught up with me: I could not finish my bread without thinking, what if I had been in that concentration camp, with other prisoners around me. Would they let me finish my breakfast unharmed? How did we turn to be that way? Who allowed it to happen? Why did it take that long for good men to come to the rescue? Will humanity be able to look at itself in the mirror? Every act that we now consider indecent is pale in comparison.

It’s not that I was naive about our human condition. I saw it first hand when volunteering as a relief worker in the South China Sea. I sat next to victims of piracy. Cannibalism not by choice but by default. Rape victim. Ship captain turned captive.

In short, an upside-down social order, all co-located in a very tight quarter of then heavily populated Hong Kong Peninsula.

This was 6 years after I had lived through similar condition, sleeping in barracks, “last night in Subic Bay”, “last night in Wake Island”, “last night in Indiantown Gap” etc… Like Elie, I understood and looked at Darkness via my innocent eyes.

He was 15 then. I was 19.

Don’t tell me kids look so “angelic”, “adorable” etc… Keep dreaming.

Don’t tell me some priests, the Pope, and the President are saints. Keep on dreaming.

Don’t tell me football coach – defensive that was – tried to do good to juveniles he took into the Beaver Stadium lockers.

And don’t tell me the banks are safe, that flights are a sure thing. That Ivy League schools open the heavenly gate.

That mortgage debts are Triple A’s rated. That Richard Nixon did not curse, or Howard Hughes did not screw call girls.

Don’t tell me TIME magazine reporter during war-time was working for just one side.

And that the American Dream is more real than the Chinese Dream.

We might have evolved to a higher state over the last 200,000 years, inventing the wheel and the watch (Swiss to Apple), but we are still the same dormant and dual nature.

Yes. I am capable of both. So are you.

From morning til “Night”, we are forced to put on those make-ups and masks.

We tolerate one another. We collaborate and compete, strengthen our alliances and weaken our enemies (by slitting their spies’ throats) etc…

We kidnapped school girls, forcing them to be our concubines.

We invented the A  bomb and the beta semiconductor.

We distract ourselves with the things of our own making, among them, our own images.

We have stepped into that self-invented role, with new twists to the script.

Had that script been set in Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, are we sure we can live to tell the truth about ourselves, are we sure we can still look at ourselves in the mirror?

I know quite a few South Vietnamese who fled at the end of the war with their unsubstantiated claims of heroism (while the SS perpetrators went underground in Venezuela shores somewhere in complete anonymity).

We look at our shadow in the cave, and become content with our own edited version.

Then, when “night” came, our last night at such and such place, we no longer recognize where we are, or who we are, for that matter.

I have always been afraid of touching that book, for fear of what I would find out about myself. Now it’s your turn. Your night!

Watching the Dragon dancers go about their Moon Festival celebration, I can’t help remember my Moon Festival with lantern and moon cakes. You just put a candle in the middle of that lantern, and the heat would turn those cardboard merry-go-round to your amusement.

My Moon Festival pre-dated television and internet. In fact, all of my childhood games were self-invented before the arrival of those Chinese plastic toys. We made our own kites ( from old newspaper), telephones (tin cans), soccer ball (coke can) and facebook chat (tossing my love lines scribbling on a piece of crumbling paper).

Moon cakes were wicked sweet: they must be shared to spread the sugary ration evenly (quite a few Vietnamese now get Diabetes). When Neil Armstrong and his crew got to and came back from the Moon, it did not demystify those Moon tales for me. We Children just wanted to have fun. And Moon Festival Celebration was ours, forever.

Nowadays, people have co-opted it and made it into a socially gifted occasion in and outside of work.

But in its pure and true forms, Mid-Autumn Festival was for children and the feminine Moon figure (as opposed to the harsh Sun).

The Eastern calendar is still based on Moon cycles.

I would join kids in the neighborhood in a lantern parade (quite a few got burned down).

I even got lost in the moving crowd once (my sister and her search party eventually found me swept away in a march).

Later, when I ran some events for MCI, I even put on costume and make-ups to become a clown for Moon Festival (even my daughter couldn’t recognize me then).

Moon Festival is here to stay, despite warp attempts by confectionery companies to push sugar and flour.

The festival is not just about the cakes. It is the spirit of innocence, of appreciation for the unknown or unknowable out there.

It represents cycles (crescent then full then crescent again). It advocates harmony, not chaos, peace not war.

I thought of John Lennon and his Christmas song (with the backup singing voice of children).

Or the Halloween festival with pumpkin pie and silly costumes. We were once children. Let’s not forget how we once thought of our neighbors and our neighborhood. We don’t go about slitting people’s throats for visual and terror effects. We don’t promise outrageous returns on investment to eat new comers alive (in a Ponzi scheme). We don’t throw children into the gas chamber. Yet in the real versions of our adult world, all this has happened. And good men just stood by, immobile while holding his mobile phones.

Don’t Dream It’s Over (there are tales of war and of waste, but we turned right over to the TV page) by Crowded House.

I couldn’t tell you when exactly did I lose my innocence. I can only recall fragments of the past, which Moon Festival played a big part. I knew then as I know now, I was part of a big community who shares the same view of the world, or the Moon, at least. That it is there at night, every night, watching and witnessing humanity and all its frailty.

Let the Dragon dance team do its kung-fu moves. They deserve those tips. After all, it takes a lot of practice to master the art and skills of climbing on top of one another in those silly and hot costumes. My Moon Festival. Too bad I can’t pass them on to my children via facebook. Or light those candles in the dark once again. Thank Goodness, we got our sister Moon to brighten up our nights, twice a month, on the dot.

When I first heard that Vietnamese touring Thailand and Singapore had come across signs like “Beware of Vietnamese pickpockets!”, my initial reaction was that of denial “you must be kidding me!”.

Then it dawns on me: we must have done it to ourselves,somehow.

There have been a steady few (among the 200,000 who arrived as the first wave in 1975 to the US) who has vaulted to the upper echelon e.g. NASA, Silicon Valley and even Congress.

The majority, however, exported themselves ( riding on Singapore and Thailand’s economic miracles) to neighboring ASEAN countries, either as mail-order brides or unwanted elements in foreign environment (where nobody knows your name, unlike in Cheers).

To Vietnam young, tt’s been a pressure cooker since the early 90’s (incidentally about the same time as the rise of the Internet).

GDP per capita is reaching $1,900 where the Philippines was back in 2,010.

Vietnam is reaping its first fruit i.e. the state of  a frog-in-slow-boiled-water. It has yet recognized the trap, middle-income that is. More than half  – roughly 50 millions were born after the war, full of aspiration and frustration.

This tension between break out and instant gratification spills over across the borders.

In one-on-one comparison, a high-school kid can match a googler in math test.

But everything else, except for beer consumption, is to be desired.

Other emerging and frontier nations know their comparative advantage. Vietnam, however,  albeit with natural resources, strategic location etc.. has not found its focus (Swiss chocolate, French wine). A few years back, it placed an ad on CNN, touting itself as a great tourist destination. After tourism comes IT. Now, it’s playing catch-up with urban sprawl. The flow of FDI has been steady, but not without strings attached (metro rail, pork-barrel highway projects). Post-surgical patients were seen exposed to torrential rain, waiting their turns at Viet Duc Hospital, Hanoi (incidentally, China has realized its need to open up its medical sector to foreign experts and entrepreneurs).

To see the slow-boiled effect consuming the post-war generation without raising an alarm, is to silently agree with those signage in Thai and Singaporean touring districts. Those signs should have said “Beware, Vietnamese are catching up from behind”. Objects in those rear-view mirrors often appear larger than they actually are. So are the fear and put down on a nation of young people whose potential and pride will distinguish themselves in the 9.6-billion- world in 2050. The 2 billion folks who have yet joined us (India and Africa) will need food, clothing, shelters, education, technology and sustainability… stuffs that the Vietnamese now know as intimately as the back of their hands. “Beware of reluctant heroes – not pickpockets – right behind you”.

I grew up, unfortunately, not seeing a lot of love, in any language. Instead, a lot of fighting: in-fighting within my family,

(whose consequences are still working themselves out) and in-fighting within my country.

With one exception. My sister, strong in personality, has pursued the love of her life all the way til the end.

Her husband of many years have just passed away. I was there from the start (w/ a matchmaker), and again, toward the end, as of three months ago.

I am sure her head is spinning and her world upside down. Who wouldn’t! They happened to be empty-nesters, living in a huge house. Soon there will be a Sale sign out front after a lot of cleaning. But there was love in that house, until the end.

I remember other stories too, from Orhan Pamuk’s Turkish protagonist who fell in love with his cousin, so much that he collected her hair brush and other personal things to make the Museum of Innocence, to Lolita, an aged professor running away with an under-age girl, to Norwegian Wood, whose unforgettable character Watanabe tries to console his roommate’s girl, helping her work through her grief.

Love in other languages.

In war and in peace, in poverty and in prosperity. I have seen one story with my own eyes, from the beginning til the end.

When my brother-in-law passed away yesterday, he took with him the old world. An era. For even if he could manage to drag himself out of bed, and fly back, he wouldn’t find the old streets of Saigon. They are currently cordoned off, for the big Metro dig.

Change is here. The future is now. Long ago, my bro-in-law, once cool, listened to songs like Never on Sunday.

I guess everyone is entitled to his/her definition of  “cool”, from the Beats to the Beatles, from the Hippies to the Yuppies. But is there love in any age group, in any language? Or should I keep searching for it in foreign novels and movies?

I will have to see Norwegian Wood. Or the Museum of Innocence (if there is a movie version). Or see Lolita once again, with Jeremy Irons playing the vulnerable professor on the run. We all play catch up with love, since we all are products of love. Without it, we wouldn’t be around in the first place, Love in other languages, but my own. R.I.P. Mr Tuynh. Maybe someday, I can tell your love story in our own language. But then, your grandchildren will look at it as love in other languages. On second thought, maybe I, memory keeper, should spare them those in-fighting details in and out of the family.

Troubles are everywhere these days:from Ferguson to the Far East, from Western Africa to Western of the US ( from Ebola to earthquake).

So are ideas, actionable or academic. What we need is a good problem, one that is challenging, and must be solved together.

The kind of problem that defines our purpose in life.

A while back, we saw “cause-related marketing” (incidentally, non-profit and charity sectors grew in double digits during recent Recession). Don’t be evil!

Amazon found its problem: how can packages still be delivered on Sundays.

Bill Gates and Melinda Foundation: children vaccination on a global scale.

We need to cut through those distracting noise and voices,  to find those problems.

From then, problems are synonymous with opportunities.

Bring it on! I am a problem-looker, coming to the neighborhood near you.

For what’s it worth, at least you can make use of its nostalgic theme music. Boy coming of age. Coming back to his village. to find its town Cinema, now destroyed for a parking lot.

Same thing is happening downtown Saigon. With the demolition of old buildings for new, memory lane for metro lane.

Prominently displayed in my sister’s living room in Virginia is a B/W picture of her, then young mother, holding hands with her four kids, all laughing and smiling on the side walk of Saigon, where the Tax center is about to come down.

Time has changed and people have moved on.

The old making place for the new.

E-commerce replacing Traditional one.

Convenient stores replacing “inconvenient” ones (where you bargain for a deal).

We are living in a time that even its best comic (Robin Williams) found himself unfit.

His exit says a lot.

Of course, he did not want to make any statement that was so costly about our society.

But. was there any smoke? Stigma against depression and disconnectedness (see Huffington Post piece). 

We anticipate and rush into the future. As if the unseen is  always better than the seen, the virtual better than the real. 

Then we turn around, take stock and find ourselves wanting.

The old neighborhood is a shambles. New comers don’t give a damn. Just loot it.

Flatten it. Make it a parking lot, a bike lot, an empty lot. No more neighborhood cinema (Cao Thang).

No more growing up with memory, history or identity. Feel the ache and feel the pain. Of finding not the things you were once familiar with. Was it here, or over there? Google Map couldn’t even help. Lucy found herself in Times Square.

Of the 21st century then, of the 20th century. But, for us, time moves from left to right in an ever eternal present. No regress and no rest for the weary.

My Cinema Paradiso.

If there were a Dislike button, it would be for Ebola. Give me some Dislikes.

Another Doctor Sans Frontieres has just died, setting back the fight a bit.

People shun you, run away from you and “Like” you not if you got Ebola.

There is no love in and around Western Africa these days, certainly not for the victims.

As to Western Europe and Western US? There hasn’t been love in quite a while.

Our Bi-Centennial Man committed suicide a few days ago. Un-plug me!

Love and laughter, life and lust.

All gone! When you don’t feel connected, you just drift. A social form of suicide.

The allure of success and recognition is not strong enough to sustain R Williams.

Emptiness! How one feels is terribly important. Societies and scientists have studied and discussed about free will. How desperate we need to believe this to keep up social order.

Yes. There was free will in Robin Williams case. Or was there?

Gooooooood Bye Vietnam!

From childhood loneliness to robotic loneliness, a hundred years of solitude.

Tie me up and tie me down. Under a tree and under the sun.

Abandon me not, especially in the time of Ebola.

It’s just an overt excuse. In West Africa or in Western Europe.

No cure for the disease and no cure for the response.

More doctors and more patients will have died by the time we found the vaccine.

But then, will there be love in the time of post-Ebola?

Hundred years of pain. The suffering and superficiality have gone on long enough.

Ebola and Ebony. Cholera and L’Oreal. We move on, smiling for the selfies. And like Narcissus, we press our own Like button, before anyone else gets a chance.

Love in the time of Ebola. Love in the time of virtuality. Still better than its absence .

August is muggy. Full blast indoor A/C or a vacation near the beach.

On the East coast, it’s time for snow birds to arrive back in to town (NY).

For the French to bare it all on the beach.

It got so hot, we even had an earthquake in China.

Disasters spare no one: Haitian or Hawaiian, California Chinese or China Chinese.

Sadness piling up on top of sadness, Malaysian flight on top of another Malaysian flight.

I am an August child whose birthday is often celebrated indoors.

Even when it’s my birthday month, August often ushers in this existential loneliness.

Of summer end. Of separation and sadness.

Might as well get used to it, sadness that is. Bonjour Tristesse!

If one continues in this line of thinking, one would eventually is right i.e. everything shall pass, Summer or Spring, Seasons in the Sun or in the Shade.

A friend is taking up surfing, to make up for lost times.

Bravo!

Meanwhile, I can barely take up reading, to make up for my lost times.

All those lost times of reading the wrong books, meeting the wrong folks (whose life could be read like a book) and doing the wrong things.

You can call it, learning the hard way.

Summer time.

1942. 1968. 1975. First one is about a movie, coming of age. Second, counter-culture movement in SF. And the last one, my first August birthday in Pennsylvania.

All bear significance. All are resonating. Of a time passing. Never to be regained, except for some warm memories they registered in my deepest recess.

Pleasant or unpleasant, these time posts are to be looked back in awe and even anxiety. Will this muggy August make sense when looked back from a future date? Summer sense.

Naively, for my high-school English-speech contest, I submitted “I want to grow up becoming a lawyer”.

My residual statement at the time was “I want to give voice to those who are voiceless…”. In short,  becoming an advocate.

A lot of waters under the bridge since .  Even when God doesn’t smile on my speech theme, I have managed to carry out some of that: helping others to speak up (in refugee transit camps), to learn a second language or how to sell something.

This past week, I noticed how other people practice law:

– Congress is suing the President

– The final verdict was in for the Kim Pham case in Santa Ana.

We have the rule of law written all over our faces, representatives’ or refugees’.

Actually, Kim Pham was a second generation Vietnamese American, born of a refugee family.

She got kicked in the head and died. Her two assailants each gets multi-year Orange County jail sentence.

Lawyers on both sides did give “voices to the voiceless”, or to be more correct, “voice to the dead”.

Since it was a high-profile case, everyone tried hard to stir clear of the race-class mine fields.

As if it had been possible to just have a women-inhuman-to-woman case.

Meanwhile, we have a higher profile case in which the President himself is being sued.

Yes I can.

It is to show that no one is above the law (and as former Harvard Law Review Editor,  President Obama would be the first to know this).

The Three Branches of the Government , constitutionally speaking, in checks and balances.

Bring it on! Politics and Constitutional Law, Pennsylvania Avenue and K Street.

We go through life, oblivious to law and its enforcement (except for the airport security lines).

Until everything all of a sudden looks as if covered with law (not chocolate), from constitutional to civic, court room to board room. We exploit corporate tax loop holes, putting our HQs somewhere else outside of the country, outsourcing work somewhere else outside of the country,yet calling ourselves a Made-in-the- USA company.

It’s August. And Congress will take its summer vacation. Lawyers and paper pushers will be shoring up somewhere in the Hampton or Long Island beaches.

And a lot of “off the cuff” remarks on the summer days, will perhaps be “let’s stick it up to him” instead of “we had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun”.

A grown-up version of  law, justice and equality for all, turns out so different, with shades of grey. than my high-school one.  “Goodbye to you my trusted friends”.

This summer, the worst part for me, is to have already grown up. “When I as a child, I thought like a child…” e.g. “I want to give voice to the voiceless”. Yes, I still can. But …not as a lawyer.

Where is that song now? With 3 avionics accidents (ML17, Taiwanese and Algerian)  in one week.

Glad to have such thing called selective memory. We will soon forget, out of necessity and convenience.

(Last week, people still rushed to the front to board my return flight, completely unaffected by those bad news).

It’s been a long way, century-long, to have experienced experimental crashes (Wright brothers) to accidental crashes (Malaysian and Algerian).

Vital and fatal statistics.

It’s only a matter of when your numbers are up.

Like anything else in life e.g. train, plane or automobile.

Failure teaches us more than victory.

It forces us to re-examine the cause of why we failed.

Mechanical or procedural? Human errors or weather-related?

I remembered those first VoIp calls. Lots of noise, drop calls, fade in and out.

Now we take for granted those voice calls over the internet and its “free of charge” feature.

Google translation is going through those betas. And a host of other apps, games in particular.

Now, that’s an area where a kid can once again sing “I believe I can fly”.

I also notice a large chunk of summer blockbusters, all special-effects.

Ninja Turtles, Transformers. Perhaps the only man who can’t fly this summer is, “The Most Wanted Man” ( main actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman died last year).

We are to let our imagination take us, high up. Above and beyond the three screens: TV, computer and phone .

(in one of the sci-fi movies this summer, I saw a helicopter in the background, carrying large-screen banner, not unlike beach airplane ad banners).

That will be our fourth screen.

Innovation, imagination and insights. Let’s go forward in face of set-backs.

Fight or flight? Let’s stay and fight. May our last battle and battalion advance human cause along the evolutionary chain.