Thang Nguyen 555

Not good enough!

There were a 19 and 17 years gap between my siblings and I.

At times, I wanted to scream: ” So you just want me to measure up and end up in the grave with you?”

Not a death wish or ill will, but the logic held. I could never “win”. Not with that wide a gap, different circumstances and rules of engagement..

Then arrived the spouses, who immediately and intuitively leverage their differences/strengths e.g. cooking or closer-knit family (as oppose to mine) to always have the final say. Happy wife, happy life. Never win an argument, so far.

All men live in quiet desperation. Or like Blake :” A mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, Marks of woe”.

At the Amusement Park, I noticed the “rejects” per lack of height or age – accident at birth- or had failed at inflating their age with a straight face.

Remarque, in Shadows in Paradise, had one of his German-Jew characters using forged papers (like Jason Bourne) first in France, then in NYC and finally out West (Hollywood), with anglicized names, like Theodore, Henry etc…

Most notably and ironically was when one of his friends (Jewish) ended up with a role of a Nazis. It’s just a movie. Viet Thanh Nguyen also mentioned similar irony in his “the Sympathizer” ( the likes of Apocalypse Now, using extras hired from the refugee camp, to play the other side).

Actors cannot irreversibly hide their eyes shadows and bags. First, everyone wanted to be older to get on rides, then younger to get the part ( Mr. Saturday Night).

I have lived with older family members most of my life. Hence, I associate strength with charming and charismatic role-models with a tat of machismo to beat back the bullies, or to drive a tank in war.

Christopher Plummer, Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones came to mind. (The Package or The French Connection, where that bearded cunning antagonist with an umbrella in one hand, and the other, waving to his pursuers from inside a moving subway train.)

We’re living at a time when “Not good enough” has also aged ( along with its faithful subscribers). Netflix is expanding overseas, Cinema focuses on specialty, and Spotify is raising its rates. Decades of “planned obsolescence” has come due ( over-production of goods and services e.g. cosmetic surgery and Nike’s sportswear.)

Florida used to be known for sandy beaches and a slightly older population but genteel (snowbirds from CANADA?).

Sun-bathed second-home owners now push for monolithic and homogenous community. Why not consider Amish country to go all the way? or year-round cruise-ship?

Not good enough. Never good enough. 300,000 dollars for beach sand to protect property. Then, puff! half gone.

Nature has its last say by sifting ( no pun), and extracting pearls.

Yet we live on, practicing variations of the game: I am better than you: with less cholesterol, and more cotton. The power players themselves , once on the receiving end, got a lifetime worth of abuse. Then the DNA, the script, the code and the embedded information seek formation and new expression.

You connect the dots. It could be anywhere: from spelling bee contest to Senior Beauty Contest. From clothes to car, zip code to zip loc (preferably Trader Joe’s tote bags).

This morning, appeared on the View was Stormy, who no longer associated with her former lawyer ( the only one who stepped up and charged a nominal $100 fee for a high-profile case).

We are living in a different time, when “not good enough” now applied to lawyering and higher courts. In short, the pissing contest in school yards has morphed with “gentrified” grievances. ( I suffer more than you, albeit a higher income level).

In this zero-sum contest, one might as well throw in the towel ( as oppose to stay and hope someday, the pie will expand so everyone will get a bigger piece). Ask your Uber driver, or the Airbnb homeowner.

That kind of game ( zero sum) only ends in one way: a duel in High Noon, and not everyone is a Gary Cooper.

Next life, I wish, dog plays with dog, lion lies beside the lamb, and music is in the air spotifying-ly, like another Woodstock, with Walt Disney grown-ups and measured ups (you’re in, no cover charge). Where every night is New Year’s Eve, when people are anticipating and accepting. Like a human family, with no need for a psychologist. Just musicologists and gynecologists (since it’s too positive not to have more children).

And the only game that is absent is “Not good enough” (no need for greed to grease the wheel). That’s when we wake up and shred the role of an apologist (for all the wrong done to one another). Spell check? the machine now does that. That left nuances, empathy and compassion, say, for the most recent wounded in Moscow, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Nigeria and Haiti (where Barbecue’s gun is bigger than yours)

Not having good credits? don’t worry. Some high-interests agency will lend you (btw, that’s how future pie is shrinking). There is no need to validate yourself with FICO scores, Facebook likes, or football scores. Or pay DMV for a name change, since there will be no shadows in Paradise.

You are good enough, just because you are intrinsically and inherently valuable, with eyes, ears, hands, feet, nose and mouth. Recent Massachusetts General operation ( pig’s kidney transplant) was cheered, and rightly so.

But back to us, human being, we are an occasion for cheering as well, if not just for our extractable kidneys (tell this to the families of abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria, held captive for ransom, and just now released).

Game people play. To cut the line, to zigzag through traffic, to win (at football) per Vincent Lombardo. Yew! How did we buy so easily into that spirit of warring, only to kick ourselves waking up lonelier than when first started.

He/she who dies with the most stuff and spent cases wins.

Sounds like a showroom logo. Not what you need, but always what (somebody else wants) you to want to belong. The Culture Industry and its worn-out propaganda (a season ahead of current trend) with Social Media on steroid (ironically, there were competing lessons on mediation and zen, almost out loud saying ‘the other guys lesson is not good enough”).

Hang on to your purse, your dignity and time here on Earth, before embarking with me (not to sell you the dream) someday, to where people are people, always measured up, and accepted/accepting. I know, I know. It only happens in dreams, and not in life (not since Western society attached a number to everything, like force ranking and marketing data set acquired through a series of incongruent questions.

And I am not the only one. I hope someday, you’ll join us.

I will leave you to “measuring up” to whatever has been nagging at you and demanding your devotion: spell-check, smell check, security check. No wonder how you cut it, it’s always a bit short, no slacks (btw an author, on Amanpour and Company, mentioned in his book entitled “Fluke”, that at some point in time, (the tipping point), we are to say what’s enough is enough).

That’s his book. Meanwhile, you are good enough, in my book. No games.

And you are not ” Mr. Saturday Night”, dying to get in front of an audience to rehash for the nth tie those rehearsed lines ” Oh, that man looks like New Jersey in pants?”

That man, c’est moi. C’es tu. All of us, at some point. Can’t hide our age, not with those Tommy Lee Jones’ eyes bags.

Per David Hume Kennerly, TIME White House Photographer, the high-fived high-power Cabinet were heading toward the ” Old Executive Office Building where Kissinger will give a press conference announcing the successful conclusion of the helicopter evacuation of the last Americans from Saigon. Unfortunately he was a bit hasty in his proclamation, because after his press conference it was discovered that 11Marines were left stranded on the roof of the U.S. Embassy. They were ultimately rescued less than three hours later, but the war ended as untidily as it started. Washington, D.C., April 29, 1975.”

Apparently there was a black-tie event at the Kennedy Center that evening, Washington EST, hence our “James Bond” Dr. “Strangelove” was hastily called in the situation room ( much like the take down of Bin Laden). At first he was credited to have said, in context, that if we (Nixon and staff) were to take out Thieu, just like Diem was before, then the world would say “to be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be its Ally proves fatal”. Hence covention wisdom in Washington “ if you want a friend might as well get a dog “. before the Watergate story broke , Nixon was to bomb Cambodia and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and turning “Hondaville” into Nukeville.

Asked if any regrets, our Doctor in Philosophy formerly named Heinz ( who dated Barbara Walters) ” we thought we could turn South Vietnam into another South Korea”. H-Mart to V-Mart.

But, Mark Felt of the FBI “deep-throated” and derailed this “ mission “ (of going dark behind the Paris Accord back directly) to deal directly with Moscow, Hanoi and Zhou Enlai.

Even Kurt Russel , in a fictional Ph. D. Consultant in Executive Decision , couldn’t keep up. Not without Halle Berry’s aid ( brave air stewardess).

In “When Allies cut and run”, our own Doctor of Philosophy Hung Tien Nguyen , a close confidant to President Thieu, pleads “one day, when future Viet-American get to position of power (again, per Kissinger – “ power is the ultimate aphrodisiac -“) remember NOT to put allies and high-risk entourage in similar position”. The book came out in 2005, before Kabul. Oh well.

At least, to be fair and lenient, we know that President Ford inherited a situation, a bad one, not of his own making. When Operation Baby lift crashed one of its only two planes out of Saigon, President Ford flew to San Francisco to greet and hold one of the babies (photo courtesy again of David Hume Kennerly), babies that per one Navy man’s account written home to his wife, “tossed from the air, like basketballs”. President Ford used to play ball in Michigan, then in the Navy ( the tip-off).

He tumbled often (SNL Chevy Chase) but caught one this time (been busy with Operation Eagle Pull, Talon Vise, Frequent Wind etc..).

Time to heal.

Write this when I am gone.

Been almost 49 years to be exact. As Kissinger’s extolled : “as historian, we need to acknowledge the inevitability of tragedy”.

That tragedy was also mine. It cut off oxygen of my youth, choked my aspiration and derailed my dreams.

Time to heal. But don’t hastily celebrate Mission Accomplished. It could back-bite. Whoops! There are more on the roof.

It could haunt you (Ford had two assassination attempts on him while Carter aborted his hostage rescue.)

Saigon lost its name, and downtown soldiers statue . The gate to the Independence Palace however got fixed and Dr Hung’s Palace Files printed (way after the Pentagon Papers, but nevertheless, made public those Nixon promises but never honored). To his credit, he had to borrow money for a Press Conference room rental that same fateful day.

Both Ambassador Martin, and President Ford were known to be pet lovers. The former wouldn’t leave on Saigon Last Day without his daughter’s dog, the latter took his to work (in the Oval Office photos).

I sure hope if not honor, then compassion for one species will lead to the other; Not un-eloquent as “I wish they just gone to hell, that which we want to put behind, always lingers on”.

Words wounded, and hard to heal even when it’s time to heal.

We too should get some. Per Rob Reiner’s mom:” I’ll have what she is having”.

As a gentle people, we were “herded” to pre-approved regions, an uprooted version of the Phoenix program.

Our carry on: Black/White photos and sobbing tales:” Uncle Ban took 18 bullets for the team, Cousin Khe split his salary for fellow Parisien students.”

Last month, on President Day, my sister passed away.

With her, our memory keeper, stories of struggle and sorrow were buried. Growing up in turbulent times, she was (I still am not used to past tense in her case) a busting T.V. high schooler in a country where many foreign actors wanted to have a say and foothold. from” the Ugly American” to “the Quiet American”, from Sino to Franco Empire. “Stay the course, to preserve our prestige” (100% goal of US involvement).

After our family migrated South, she on one occasion had a Filipino sent for us in a government-issued car (flapping flag and all) – she took me, her youngest brother, like a pin on the blouse – to attend front-row viewing at our National-Celebration parade.

She got her job training in the Philippines, her first trip alone out of the country. Upon return, she brought home good material for my tailored pants (first time I experienced Santa treatment).

Something about her penchant for travel: train, bus, automobile, plane, cruise ships and finally hearse.

Between her husband and she, they brought home tons of pictures: slides, prints, original 36 shots, polaroids, postcards and travelogs. None the more cherished than Hanoi’s. Something about home that had never left and served as bond between them.

That city that makes and breaks their hearts. Its scenery and smell, music and memories.

Once, I spent a month there, taking in the ambience and atmosphere (before Obama and Bourdain) to understand the adult: field, buffalo (one of the 12 signs), geese and sticky rice ” Ngay tro ve, anh buoc le….ra dung dau ao…co con trau xanh het long giup do”. (the village, the pond, the buffalo and bamboo).

It tore to them having to head South, after an agonizing 300-days deliberation. Worse off, they did not have the support of Northern Vietnamese Catholics who were among the one million intra-national displaced at that time.

Collective and communal, they kept up tradition: “gio chap” (ancestral commemoration with extended families etc..) and traditional card game (which I was glad to refill their tea). Until ideologue and culture shock did them in: “individualism reigns” in America (where one can just pick up and leave in two minutes), she once said.

In the South (of Vietnam) I arrived. Trophy child, I trailed behind four working adults (parents and 2 siblings) while they their life 2.0. They took turn on me like summer lifeguards: here are the guardrails, respect the elders, relatives and elected authorities. Residual message: if you forgot everything, just remember where you come from. Don’t pay attention to other people, no matter how screwed up they might be (or how many Bibles they swore on).

A coup d’etat here, a failed attempt at assassination there; a ceased-fire violation here and a lost honor there. My brother often recounted how devastating horror the bombing at a club was – matinee show – that took his talented friend. Or my brother-in-law saw a Japanese soldier beheaded a child petty thief (whose blood spattered on him, like the biographer in Unforgiven).

It’s we survivors of horror, hanging onto self-respect for the arduous journey. Old timers’ values!

Giay rach phai giu lay le (self-respect first and foremost).

On we live peppered with music (nostalgia) and meals (humble). Some culture we got!

Barely feeling out of the wood when another round of uprooting came due. To our collective shame, we picked up our carry-on and hopped on life 3.0 (my 2.0).

Car keys tossed. Empty handed (as dramatic and showman-like a Vegas card dealer at shift-change) for surveillance and world press cameras.

Re-start and rebuild like an automobile engine whose parts scattered all over. Driving on empty while engine light was on. Tons of steel (helicopter’s) and later, tons of skeleton (Boat People) sunk to the bottom of the Sea.

To re-assemble multiple lives without an INS manual was challenging. We couldn’t have done it, not without muscle memory i.e. once survived North-South, one could rehash East-West.

Education is a must. The brains and the hands. Work and chew (something like sticky rice) at the same time. Then, more potatoes and less beef. Soupy stuff and diluted OJ. In Reagan’s quote “oatmeal meat”.

“Good Will from one end to the other!” (the opposite of Colonial England whose Sun never set on its Empire).

I wish I had kept those tailored pants my sister had brought home. My first “foreign” and Santa exposure, which magically, a premonition of my own: the Subic Bay (Philippines) – only to return years later (Bataan, Philippines) to “pay back and forward”.

Of late, seeing the adult passed was painful. At her funeral, some cried, others prayed. People tossed flowers or gently laid them down, depends on one’s personal perception or self-projection of the End. Like Mandela says, “I am because of you”. The adult’s trek my trajectory. Their breadcrumb now mine.

With my own eyes, I saw the end albeit through a thin veil.

Why should other emigrants e.g. Jews from Germany, Polish from Warsaw etc… get all the good memories (Hollywood and the Holocaust). Ours are also worth noting, if not spicier (unless we prefer “let sleeping dog lie” like Captain Kurt’s line: “Horror Horror”). OK, OK, I got it. Pirates at sea don’t sell popcorn. Tattered outfit (subdue even at the start of the journey) don’t come across cinematically.

Homo sapiens stories (Hamas or Hmong) are lessons in disasters and determination. Stories of struggling women in a warring world, who on occasion claim their rightful front-row seats in a military parade or grateful back-row seat on an Intercontinental UNHCR flight.

All the while, for a few brief moments in between, shined (Or, as a title from one of our very own “half-breeds” …briefly gorgeous). P.S. “I’ll have what she is having”.

We too should get some. As that one-liner by Rob Reiner’s mom:” I’ll have what she is having”.

Since 80 % of communication are non-verbal, we are better off “listen” with our eyes (Ailes’ “it’s a visual medium. Turn around”).

In films, establishing shots set the context (where), music (when), and close-ups reveal emotions (who) more (when a couple gets intimate over candle-lit dinner – two shot – we know they are going to kiss, or when they introduce a gun, or gasoline someone will use it e.g. Broken Mirrors and Path to War.

In the court of law, prosecutors place people on the stand to get at the “truth”.

In life, we also “place people on the stand” to get a feel for what’s unsaid and left out.

Filmmakers show fidgeting hands, clammed up knees or giggling ones as well played by the late Philip Seymour to move the plot along (heightening the suspense with mock-up assumptions, conflicting argument vs contradictory clues …). Fake left moves right.

Ad Age used BOLD typefaces and unconventional paper size. With more gadgets and competing apps, every ad is now a mini billboard (grab you by the throat e.g. dog licking baby’s cheek plastered on the side of a bus making a left turn).

The internet favors hyper extraverts and loudmouth hecklers. It’s “citizen” communication age of unhinged amateurism. Every Spring an Arab Spring. Messaging that flashed fast wins. The screen is now Times Square, appeals and assaults our senses, with quick disclaimer for compliance to the FCC.

Like anything in life, after scratching the surface of the Internet, the elite (like Liquid Death does to water) will cordon and colonize, monetize and expand their digital brand. So far, it’s just a foreplay i.e. lost leaders to beta test to bait/switch; then moving up the food chain to high-brow exclusivity: membership fees, subscription and pre-paid firewalls, advanced booking, and selective Ivy-League e.g. LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram (not controversial TikTok). In London, you can board a train to go around the world (impoverish world) in 100 days. It would be weird to look out from the likes of Oriental Express to see natives sitting on top of crowded buses next to live chicken.

Netflix now goes overseas for markets. Eyes balls are eyes balls as long as could be translated to dollars. After all, they (next gen) will become purchasers of excess and surplus products, produced en mass via conveyor belts and better consumer research.

An Internet that divides, not democratized; publicly exposed vs privacy guarded. We keep seeing more FTC and FCC “fines”, which only be a dent to Big Tech.

Imagine the Internet as a high school where students at lunch form cliques, clubs, even “gangs” (Barbeque).

Can’t handle the truth.

Can’t get the whole world in his hand!

Stop the spin, the TED. I want to get off.

Facebook-a holism follows the law of diminishing return (one selfie, two selfies, naked selfie … all dull and duller). This planned obsolescence happened to TV, cable TV, DVDs, Roku and Tiktok.

My name is…. and I am a face a-holic.

(the FBA held “church” in a digital cathedral, reinforced and reassured its members he/she was on the way to recovery i.e. rediscovering nature (Walden 2.0), of one’s right to be left alone, of stoicism and sabbath, back to the land and organics living (Bob Dylan in Woodstock), engaging with people who invest time in mutual caring and issues that matter e.g. memory creation.

We are nearing the end of Web 2.0 i.e. one to many (Web 1.0), many-to-many (Web 2.0) where “free” sharing = free ranting (lowest common denominator, racing to the bottom of civility). 3.0 would be the age of a few-to-a-few selectively. Tribalizing and homogeneity. Enough “selfies” and millions of “impressions”.

Anthropologists have a treasure trove of data to extrapolate about human behavior, and how not much has changed since the days of old (cigarette ads to vapor ones).

The hard part for marketers is how to deal with skip-ad. Permission ads. Messaging must grab one’s throat, be in your face to get throughput. When Biden “gets it” we’ll all get it. (Turn around, it’s a visual medium). Even a robust State of the Union (a relic from Wesley Tent rally) could not bump his ratings.

BOLD headlines, sprinkled with intermittent and recurring machine-like encoding. Communication is repetition and redundancy (Chinese water-dripping torture). The crowd and the chant, the color and the caricature, herding and de-individualizing. Blood sweat and tears. Rinse and repeat.

Our current age of short attention span “hey, It’s Joe!”

See me. Feel me. (Roger Daltrey w/ his swinging microphone like a rodeo reeling in the Woodstock chanting crowd). On Dan Rather interview, Roger mentioned the need for immobility, for reflection and letting creativity find its foothold.

We’re back to where we started, with Morse codes and Maritime SOS. Listen with our eyes, using binoculars to scan the horizon. The revenge of analog (and the return of vinyl and lighthouse). Flash! Flash! Sending out an SOS, sending out an SOS. Message in the bottle.

80% of communication are non-verbal.

Whenever possible, zoom in for a close-up. The body and all its parts, fake or real, tend to give themselves away e.g. fidgeting and wiggling (unintended message sent).

Lighting sets the mood, music the tone and the stage context. The unseen is more impactful, the unsaid speaks louder.

Life, the internet and our own existence hover in drone-like speed, over the surface; hopping from one tip of the iceberg to the next, forming patterns and eventually to make sense of reality. Itself, reality, unfortunately is ever shifting and alluding, so we have to make it up as we go along, as if we alone can “fix” the coherent narrative, whose middle often is most ballooning (we can’t control our beginning and ending, unless you subscribed to C.S. Lewis’s conviction that one can control the ending).

The best we can do is secretly and silently put people in a “box”, zoom in for a close-up, a snapshot so authentic that even the best of actors can’t hide (in Oscar-winning Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood’s vengeful eyes after succumbing to a drink on the cause of his partner (Morgan Freeman) was bludgeoned to death by town sheriff (Gene Hackman). Again, close-up.

No one ever cries with their ears. Hence, the eyes are two-way mirrors, to the soul.

At some point, we will cut through the noise (ignoring audio signals) to solely trust our eyes, piercing through all attention-diversion, smokes and mirrors. We’ve been cheated and grifted. Isn’t it time to learn? Suckers in Chief.

Since the invention of light, then the internet: we adapt. Down to nano secs.

Communication today has to make allowances for SKIP AD and Ad sense (search).

Too bad you can’t read my mind. I only have good intentions and just want good company in readers, being old, straight, Asian and all.

What an insulting caricature once portrayed in Breakfast at Tiffany, the photographer guy from upstairs (Mickey Rourke in Kimono) who can’t sleep through all the decadent parties. Those parties lasted until sunrise, with blood-shot eyes covered by the pair of sunglasses Audrey Hepburn wore while munching “breakfast” croissant and window-shopping at Tiffany? (poor man’s version of Breakfast at Tiffany).

Can’t turn around in my kimono for a close-up even with plenty of Roger-Ailes’ insight (that’s it’s a visual medium).

Sorry.

Summer of 1982, she came with my Mom to my graduation. My father had been without a trace for 7 years.

But I was happy as I had ever been. And it was not the first time she filled in a parental role.

Fall of 1960, she dropped me off on my first day at school.

Guardian, mentor, moral leader and career woman, she pushed herself : traversing the East-West pole, just as my Mom and she earlier in North-South migration.

April 29, 75 ” People are roaming the curfewed streets…we must brave the curfew”.

Wherever she was, there was my home, albeit in statelessness or with naturalized citizenship.

The smell of cooked xoi (sticky rice) with thin slices of Chinese sausage on top, from Shirlington to Braddock, from Khai Xuan to Ban Co long stays with me.

The food (sweet potato) the gathering (gio) the memories (free ice cream for being her petit chaperon on dates) – all the same and resided in her DNA ( she even cleaned house for my step mom).

On my first trip back to VN in 2000, she wrote “make sure you don’t trip over, since the sidewalks there are not even as over here” ( Indeed I saw a Western tourist so busy looking at traffic that he tripped up). Advanced warning and frequent watching over for my welfare since the day she had me as her baby brother to practice her motherhood (turns out pretty good seeing the fruits of her bosom. She often got her first son’s name mixed up with mine).

In war or peace. Asia or America, she stayed steadfast, relentless and resilient.

A fall here (front teeth) a fall there (left eye), yet she dusted off then pulled ahead, like a stubborn buffalo sign she was born into: pulling the plow in merciless field, ploughing though life with not a trace of decadence and indulgence.

I owed a big part of my life to her who had more faith in me than I myself. from my first day of school till graduation as shown.

Her ubiquitous and observing glance ever present, because she was adamant and would not accept or allow someone in her circle to even fall short .

Snippets of my standard bearer and the only sister one could ever wish to have.

East and West the twain shall never meet. As the saying goes. From war to peace, it’s a asymmetrical competition for supremacy and survival. Only time can tell.

From Nixon’s China card to Mexico import (to the US) that outweighs China’s; East and West are still at odds (TikTok open to US bidders) and arm’s length cooperation.

Both cultures however celebrate and retain what deemed intrinsically precious.

Born in a high-context culture (extended family bonding and shared ancestry via thousands- year history), I was shocked when first arrived in low-context campus (planning, precision and high-structured) e.g. students wouldn’t stand up when their lecturer arrived. Conversely, upon returning to Vietnam first time in 25 years, the sound of moped’s honking all night and all day came as a reverse culture shock.

In high-context culture, most things are sous-entendu (insinuation, gossip and third-party arbitration – hardly there was a need for lawyers).

Here, in the US, things need to be overtly and succinctly communicated “Why don’t you spell it out for me, as President Bush tilts:” we don’t do nuances”. Yet even with transparency as S.O.P., we still find S.O.B. self-conflicting street signs, multi- tiered speeding tickets and yes, software-download Terms of Agreement in real fine print that kept updating (apparently, programmers themselves could not figure it all out).

The only time non-verbal (sign language) were used in low-context environment perhaps was when SEALs took down Bin Laden (after divulged thick training manuals) and multiple viewing of Spielberg’s Munich.

Artificial Intelligence barely grasps these non-verbal nuances (Google CEO had quite a rage with Gemini). Its architect was based on 1 and 0, straightforward Yes-No combo.

Meanwhile, women universally are endowed with sensitive, intuitive and relational skills, with one side more “Tiger Mom” than the other, both “re-raise
their slacking husbands.

American women, per WWII, were desperately needed outside of home: We Can Do It (showed n propaganda poster).

Vietnamese women, via the Diary of Dang Thuy Tram, are under-acknowledged and appreciated (not to the extent of living under the Taliban Ministry of Vice and Virtue). Incidentally, Thuy Tram was a medically trained doctor, who out of romantic love, volunteered to enlist and endure hardships during her “American War” to stay close to her pledged lover.

That is not to say men in my families are to be discounted. My uncle was a martyr while a cousin of mine, although married to a French woman, shared half of his earnings to native students found living under the Seine bridge (Paris by Night college days).

Women of both cultures generate more in social values besides obvious biological ones.

Juggling many balls in the air, high-context women had to appease and please the in-laws, their own parents and siblings (hush hush spending money), keeping the wheel well-greased, while fulfilling professional KPIs. Just ask who are represented the most at PTA meetings or on the Asian American bookshelves: from Amy Tan to Amy Chua (with Iris Chang and Usha Vance in between).

And how well their children turned out (a direct product of high-context society). Of the 130,000 or so first-wave Vietnamese refugees, with Guam or Wake Island stop over, one finds pharmacists, doctors, dentists, real estate and insurance brokers, pod casters, poets, teachers, writers, historians, a unique Yalie (to teach our Vietnamese language and again, a very high-context Tales of Kieu), architects, filmmakers and financial planners albeit skewed by STEM.

Out of the bad comes good, ash phoenix.

Still, the mystique is there. Tiger Mom?

Ao Dai’s at Tet festival: socially well-integrated yet domestically traditional (Asian American women are more socially adaptable and accepted than male counterparts – whose legacy was ingrained Yellow Peril (coolie) evidenced in interstate railway. Hollywood picked up on that thematic undercurrent (slanted-eyes depicting Madame Butterfly – heavy make-ups in dimly lit stage…Far East and near West ..the twain shall never meet).

Diary of a high-context woman would see fewer self-inflated and superficial half-truths. Au contraire, its acknowledgement (rightly so) often references others in her network – teachers, priests and parents. Gratitude as virtue, not “yuhuh” in V shape showing unshaved underarms.

Low-context culture ignores or discount non-verbal (pink phone message slips at work). Time is money. What empathy or bonding (the emotional reserve that makes forgiveness possible)? How else could it be – given its shorter history, from the Civil War on – still lingered with paranoid (they took advantage of us, let’s circle the wagons) and high-strung knee-jerk reaction (9/11 long payback) every time the US starts to relax. Again, asymmetrical warfare.

This explains the rise of superficiality and sensationalism on social media where hype and sensational “breaking news” grab our attention (female shooter at Lakewood Church in Houston). Quantity trumps quality. Bombastic bluffing. In a numbers game, per in-house quants, every bit counts (advancing the ball).

In high-context culture, candidates on campaign trail avoid overtly tooting their own horns, for fear of backlash i.e. perceived as arrogant and braggy (harmony is key). They do, however, through paid or unpaid help e.g. large extended families and clans. In today’s environment, it’s top yelp comments (to outsmart Page rank and bury negative or attack ads at the bottom (watch the Candidate, played by Robert Redford).

With more money spent on asking for donation (the Law of the Average), the quant’s algorithms double down on extremist base to stoke and troll. High-context culture, low budget and long history, taps into existing and extended network i.e. cigars dealing and tribal relationships (tit for tat).

Did I say something wrong? Let me apologize in advance (at wedding and funeral, the canned opening remark: “Due to unforeseeable circumstances …please forgive us in advance “.) Fake lest go right.

By contrast, in the age of A.I. and assumed anonymity, we feel less inhibited and more confident to “share”, knowing accountability and blame are diffused in wider digital global village, with “wisdom of crowd”, its Likes and impressions.

Meanwhile, quietly, face-covered women just go about raising children, teaching them in-language and keeping them in line in lane, with strict monitoring of guardrails and common sense. BTW, multi-lingual folks, per studies, tend to be more tolerant, excel at various skillset and more optimized brain power.

American women hardly teach their children a foreign language they themselves don’t know, except for first wave immigrants (in that case, it’s English that is a second language). Low-context mothers neglect physical bonding in abundance of hospital nurses, strollers, walkie/talkies placed in separate rooms, I phone, camera and child seats in minivan…resulting in unwanted de facto abandonment. ‘

They can’t be blamed since they themselves had started out with Barbie and Ken, not real siblings (nuclear family) in private rooms.

The East exists, the West lives. Shame vs guilt culture. Inductive learning vs deductive reasoning. A go-between/translator vs direct confrontation. People vs Purse.

I have tried and tested both, pushing the envelope and rigging the alarm e.g. going against the grain (burning the candle from both ends) till I maxed out my social credits (West) at the same time, falling far from the tree (East) and safety in groups – the deposits needed in case it’s rain e.g. identity, significance and reciprocity.

I once even thought I was “White” (Incarnational Theology) practicing “white” missionary work in Asia/Africa. The East-West tension and incongruence drove me mad (how could I stand by and let my mom go “unsaved” and not baptized? by immersion).

Luckily, my aspiration and ambition come home to roost albeit short of my mom’s trait and truth (she stayed mono-cultural; all set in her ways even after having resettled in snowy America).

In years past, I would be yelled at by now, for not attending to the altar, cleaning the dining table (one was for the dead, the other the living) and whatever trash on the floor in anticipation of Tet.

Continents and cultures away, the sound of tribal drumbeats, of firecrackers (to drive out evil spirits) and music in waltz. “Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah….muon nguoi hanh phuc chan hoa” still echo.

On rare occasions we of high context culture switch to low context, verbalizing and self-revealing at the risk of embarrassing ourselves at the same time ostracized by the group (similar to X-evangelicals or “Here I am” by Jonathan Capehart).

Traditional Asia hardly shows affection in public. Perhaps in the dark and at deserted riverbank. But at New Year’s countdown East meets West or during Tet in exile when firecrackers join fireworks in competition. Push them back (the Devil) way back.

The twain shall once in a while meet (half-way), just for high-context women to press reset, having been in America, land of Apple pie, to find out that last year’s Ao Dai no longer fits. Let the music start, and the graceful dance begin, but body language? Only using the fans and the risks, the swaying of ao dai and scarfs to reinforce Oriental Mystique.

Time evolves from bound-feet to bound-waist.

We can do (diet) it.