Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

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With some short-term relief work in Asia/Africa and long stint in Telecom, Thang also earned a B.A. at Pennsylvania State University. M.A. in Communication at Wheaton Graduate School, M.A. in Cross-Cultural Communication at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Boston. In addition, he earned a CELTA – classes taken in Hanoi for cultural re-immersion.

  • Empathize and Energize

    You wish your co-workers are all into that. They know how you feel, and because of who they are, they take it up a notch.

    The virtuous cycle. Feeding into it is like fueling the fire. Passion, dedication and yes, winning.

    Don’t you miss working in teams with those qualities? Pettiness has no place there. Grumpiness? Out.

    Just win.

    Know how you feel. I felt the same way. But I found that…. FFF.

    One cannot just go out to Costco or Target and get a software package that says “Empathy” or “Energy”.

    BTW, the Cosco‘s of the world are expanding, pushing Mom and Pop stores to the outskirts.

    Meanwhile, fresh produce and Supermarket chains just can’t justify open more location in inner cities where kids have no choice but fast foods. I know the First Lady got her pulse on this issue (as opposed to Jackie O and Nancy Reagan who just wanted to remodel the White House or consult an astrologer).

    Back to Empathy and Energy.

    Energy is contagious. At the Olympic, they still do the Wave. You get caught in the spirit of the time and the place.

    Just a sea of humanity, cheering and jeering.

    You want to be energized? Hang out with high-energy people. The paradox of energy is that it needs to be burned to reproduce (just like the Phoenix rises from the ashes).

    Empathy, on the other hand, requires immersion. You step into the other’s person shoes and character. Feel the emotion: sadness, joy, triumph, and disappointment.

    Who wouldn’t go through those ups and downs at times.

    Companies don’t realize people are people i.e. there are days, they feel elated. Then, other days, they can barely show up. The leader’s job is to be cheerleader, counselor, coach and not police.

    Let’s hope your team support each other as you lead them to victory. Nothing is sweeter than to win as a team. Bravo!

  • The Routine

    Instinctively, we follow the path of least resistance (park in the shade, grab the nearest item on the shelves…).

    Marketers make it their mission to study this, the same way scientists experiment with reflexive rats in the lab.. Nike even filmed the Standford team, trained barefooted, to see the landing and movement of their feet.

    Creatures of habits. Social animal.

    Maximum connections: 120, to stay meaningful.

    Yet, we are now networked at hockey-stick growth chart.  Majority of the world, including what used to be called the Third World, got phones. Can you hear me now!

    Mobile payment, mobile banking, mobile TV.

    Nomad lifestyle all over again. I blogged about Point A to B.

    Louis L’Amour said it best ” the problem with mankind is that we can’t stay put in one place”.

    Train and now plane hobos. Air travel used to carry with it social badges: prestige and class (think Pan Am).

    The same with the automobile when it first came out. Then the assembly line (yesterdays’ Foxconn) and high-paid manufacturing jobs at Ford, changed all that.

    Everything is new, yet nothing is new.

    The rich have to (and have always) reinvent the game, find new playground and fence it off to stay exclusive (can you imagine online education for the mass, live streaming from the Ivory Tower of Ivy League schools). It is all happening.

    MIT, then Standford. My fair lady, for the world. The rain in Spain doesn’t fall mainly on the plain.

    It is common grace (rain on the field of the good and the evil).

    Brazil is hosting the next Olympic. Perhaps it is fitting and symbolic that after England, we shift focus to BRIC, with B for Brazil.

    Something about growing ethanol down there. About reinventing a country, about female leadership in a vibrant and colourful nation.

    Let’s hope that spirit and energy rub off on us, stodgy and austere nations.

    I believe our best days have yet been behind us.

    We just need to look inward, take an honest inventory and reinvent ourselves. Focus on the essentials and task ourselves with the right things. Ignore the critics. They are always there, taking shots at doers. And above all, believe. We have pulled this off before. Can and will do it again. It’s our good routine. It’s us, intrinsically and uncompromisingly, at our best. As Chris Gardner puts it, “only us can give ourselves legitimacy”.  Routine, but earned routine, not forced.

  • Machine and Man

    The Curiosity Rover landed intact. Mission Control jumped up and down. Machine and Man. One giant step. Let’s hug, even the meanest-looking of guys.

    From Moon to Mars (better known as a candy bar), machine as modern-day Columbus.

    Something in the way she moves.

    Knowledge gap will be filled in the days ahead, on-screen and online.

    Ask Not.

    We are going places after running in place.

    Some of us don’t run at all.

    Austerity and sedentary.

    Maintenance mode and screen-saver mode.

    Let’s hope it’s just a temporary condition. What if it’s a new norm?

    Industry anticipated deadlock. Companies scaled down orders, translated into non-expansion, translated into hiring freeze, translated into low consumer confidence and purchasing parity, translated into slower growth which feeds stagnation further on the downward spiral.

    Stuck in high gear and high prices.  The harder you push, the more RPM, but no progress still.

    Just revving noise.

    Distraction (London) and attraction (Mars).

    Summer breeze  for scorched Earth.

    Wild fire and gun fires.

    The State of the Union is not that good.

    But no one is here to listen.  Even when they try “they do not know why”. Starry starry night.

    From Moon to Mars.

    Machine jolting Man to jump for joy. What happened in Mars got our full attention. What happened in Maine no longer triggers our curiosity despite its obvious and deteriorating “signs of life”.

    Machine and Man.

     

  • Point A To B

    We make that trip all our lives. To and Fro. Back and Forth. Arriving and Leaving.

    The Goodbye Girl. The Run-Away Bride.

    The Mid-night Cowboy. All feels restless Gotta be somebody, going places. This time, point B happens to be Mars itself.

    Young people can muster up the courage to go to far-away wars, but dare not venture to South Side.

    When B is too close to home (the last few inches are the toughest distance to cross), it’s psychological, not geographical distance e.g.when B is your estranged relatives, your difficult siblings or your X’s.

    Somehow, it’s a long trip home if we are not in good terms.

    It just is.

    Many of us just stay put at point A whose Point B is the general store, or the post office.  For some shut-ins, B and A are the same.

    Creative folks refuse to accept that the straight line between A and  B is the shortest. They want style, twist and shout, over and back, or spiral in coils before landing (thus milking the trip out).

    We thank them for thinking out of the box. This country needs creative folks: architects, designers and coders.

    They don’t sleep much at night. In fact, that’s when they are hard at work.

    Bringing us better looking buildings and greener use of space. In-style clothes, shoes, glasses and hats.

    Slicker version of WordPress, more integrated communication and command of thoughts and ideas.

    The world is a better place thanks to them.

    The ROW (rest of world) envies them, imitates them and copies them.

    You know you hit the spot when the Chinese start churning out look-alikes.

    Let them.

    Go on to the next spark, follow the next urge.

    Turn things inside out (Madona and Jane Fonda during the 80’s wore underwear outside).

    Spell GaGa backward.

    AgAg!

    (she is going to kill me).

    From A to B, a straight line is not necessary the shortest.  Who is to say.

    Meanwhile, right after reading this, you will go from point A to point B again. Take the scenic route. Enjoy the city on the Hill. The long view. Take a leisurely Sunday Drive. Order a chili dog. Indulge. Pampering. Eat, drink and be merry. We need it. It’s been too much of point A to point B. Rest up. Until you feel restless again, Papillon.

  • Confidence

    2.5 per cent. That’s US growth figure. Enough? Confident? Could be better?

    I am glad we are growing even when it feels like we are running in place.

    Perception vs Reality. Like how they feel now at Microsoft, at Yahoo. Even at RIM and Facebook.

    Something is missing. Mojo? Passion and Pride. Exuberance and Exhilaration.

    Grown men are sleeping on Mommy’s couch. Grown women too, to make it equal.

    Crushed right out of the gate. Austerity.

    Where is that needed confidence I used to see on Seniors’ faces on their first-job interviews.

    It’s like dating back then on campus. Except it’s on weekdays, and you get to put on a suit. You could always tell they were experiencing “senior panic” : get a job, get settled down, bought into the American Dream with white-picket fence and automatic sprinklers.

    Now, it’s the couch, not sure where it was made from.

    Trickled-down economy. Wealth imbalance. Daddy brought wild animal kingdom home for Daughter’s surprised birthday. While others waiting in line at county food bank.

    1939 all over. This time, with Bernanke, not studying the phenomenon as an academic subject. He is handling it, and inadvertently, helps shape the textbook of the future.

    How are we looked at from year 2020’s vantage point? That we mishandled this “opportunity”?

    In crisis, there is always opportunity. Electric Vehicle? Wind and Solar? Software for the mass and medical world?

    C’mon. Exercise a little imagination. Muster up some courage. Be confident again.

    Build that high-speed railways. Don’t let me want to learn Korean (broadband-envy). Don’t let Friedman keep writing about Beijing and Shanghai modern airports. Build them and be proud again. Make me USA-proud and the world USA-envy.

  • Sudden Dream

    If you dropped everything and listened to all the casual remarks, you would be paralyzed.

    The current economy is like an elephant, perceived by four blind men: it’s going to get better, it’s like a wave form, a V-shape, a downward cyclical.

    They could illustrate and demonstrate. They could even persuade. But who is to hold their feet to the fire months from now.

    When the going gets rough, the tough takes a vacation. A long one. They said comes January, the electoral body will be in the same state it was at the beginning.

    Just reflective of the country as a whole, i.e. divided we stand.

    I don’t know where this is going. I have blogged mostly about technology and cultures.

    I don’t see much choices in tech trending, nor about how cultures express themselves.

    Yet I  live within the Red and Blue States, where Asian and Hispanic demographics are growing more than 150%.

    Do we have equal representation who look after our interests up on the Hill?

    Are companies putting in place a plan to capture and service this growing trend?

    Culture groups know it when you reach out to them. Localization, as they call it, nowadays.

    A banner here, a face there, in-language.

    I can never forget my first exposure to advertisement. It was the face of a African man, smiling. The product: toothpaste. Hynos. Making and keeping your smile white. My second was about a rice cooker. A 60-second spot, before the movie starts. It’s branded National. So I was introduced to white smile and white rice.

    Hynos and National. Brands that reached out to folks like me. Caring for my teeth and my taste.

    They understood a thing or two about CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). They were there early, in your face.

    They care, or at least, pretend that they do.

    If only politicians learned a thing or two from marketers. Both try to serve the public goods. One regulates the other.

    But only after the fact. Only when it’s too late (food poisoning, or automobile recall).

    We need leaders that can rally, unite and inspire.

    We need role models that can take us to new heights, to sacrifice the here and now for a better tomorrow.

    We need someone to show us the road ahead, that future generation will benefit from our today’s sacrifice.

    Yes. We need to move beyond the pragmatic, to the romantic. Again, Ask Not.

    Again, Be all you can be. One more time, Stand up. It’s mind-blogging how we have fought two wars out there, and all along, got into a quagmire here at home. The only cease-fire is when Congress take off for 5 weeks. At least there is some quiet, though not peace, on the Hill.No news is good news even at Chick–fil-A on any given Sunday.

  • Besides perspiration

    Hard work is a given, a prereq for success. But that necessary spark, the 10% inspiration, must be there.

    Two candidates, with  equal experience, the one with a great attitude wins. You must have the mojo.

    It shows up in conversation, in off-hand moments (kicking the dog on the way out or giving the finger in the driveway to the one who ends up interviewing you).

    In the Orient, job interviews often take on a new dimension. 3 finalists. Two walked by the broom that fell on the floor. The third picked it up and thereby, secured the job.

    Attitude.

    I just learned that Oprah ran the 1994 Marathon. On your way to success, you will have to walk across many “brooms”.

    Just pick them up. Get used to removing obstacles. Habits of Effective (and not Deffective) People.

    Tell me a success story, I will tell you how many obstacles he/she had to overcome:

    – Colonel Sanders almost gave up until his last-ditch effort: a bar owner asked him to toss in more salt which is now the KFC recipe.

    – Khan‘s wife offered herself to Silk Road traders to bail her husband out

    – Al Gore, accepting defeat, but not becoming a failure, went on to win the Nobel Prize

    – yesterday, at the London Olympic, Michael went on to break world swimming record.

    Life gives us those stories to instruct and illustrate the point, unveiling new heights and setting new benchmarks.

    Stay away from the Nay sayers. Prove them wrong. Or even better, think of them as never existed, for the longer we do, the more likely that this will come to pass.

    Yesterday, I blogged about The Limits. But that was just one side of the coin. Today, there is another.

    We have physical limits. But we reach out still to the stars. Feet on the ground, but eyes on the prize.

    One more try. Then one more.

    Another heart beat, then another. Breathe in and breathe out. Wax on and wax off. Karate Kid all grown up. Use all the pain and suffering and waste them not. They were there  to make us and not to break us. Each of us is different, not because of our limits, but because of how we dealt with those limits.   90 per cent inspiration, 10 per cent perspiration. Multiply that to the nth time. While perspiration is limited, inspiration is limitless.

  • The limits

    LG Sciences
    LG Sciences (Photo credit: teamstickergiant)

    If you happened to watch the Olympic men weightlifting , you would find out quickly that we have our limits. We are shaped in this body, given that much neurons and glued to the ground by gravity (tell that to the jumpers).

    This is an unpopular observation. We are more used to hearing inspirational messages, that we can defy logic, the law of gravity, social obligation and even growing our nest egg infinitely (most touted during the “irrational exuberance” 90’s). Yet, from that screen, I stared at a physical reality: Korean, Indonesia, Colombian. All got limits about how much weight they can lift and hold.

    Realizing and finding out those limits are the mark of maturity. In the end of all learning, we return to the starting point and know ourselves for the first time.  Some of us found out that our parents and spouses were right all along. Others have proved them wrong. But all got limits about how far one can push the envelope. Out of 24/7, 365 day world, we can only progress that much. Up the hierarchy of needs. Up to self-actualization  and Enlightenment.

    This Recession holds the mirror for a lot of people to see themselves, their lust and limits.

    We still want to hear inspirational messages, walk on Tony’s hot coals, and climb those fake walls at the Mall. But we also know, at least for the first time, there are limits to growth and limits to our personal wishful thinking. Great men and women know this after their term(s) in public office. They retreat to the range, some even grow hair (in Lyndon Johnson case) while most spend time with grandchildren where it matters most.

    This is when the Allures of the world are sending out marketing messages, that you can have it all, without limits. Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake your booties. I will never forget the irony of the Titanic: no one seemed to know they were in danger until it’s too late. The scene we all know too well : “I am King of the world”. Fake it until you make it. Really? Tell that to the weightlifters.

  • Lost art of typing

    The BBC has a piece on Japan Love Affair with the Fax Machine. Older population has gotten used to that technology (which allows for hand-writing). For years, I have used email except for  Thank-you notes in writing. I can reasonably predict that even typing (as we know it) will be a lost art (speech recognition will be in) I-pad, I-phone replacing IBM Selectric.

    The late Andy Rooney was seen inseparable with his typewriter. So was American literary giant, Norman Mailer.

    Something about the man and his tools. We think as we type. The neurons are hard at work, one character at a time. The sound of those banging keys is rhythm to our ears, which then reflects each thought. A feedback loop. We know you are out there in the ether. And that you are lonely. We, writers, are too. Awake at night, half-sleep during the day. We are commanded by sudden thoughts. We are mere instruments and Irises.

    Via fax, chat, text, tweet and type, we send out an SOS. That we were once here, alive and breathing, waiting for validation. Each, with love, hope and fears.

    Love unceasingly. Hope never fails and fear as basis for survival.

    We invent, reinvent and reshape this known universe in our likeness (while we are byproducts of earlier version).

    Confined, reduced and restricted, we try to liberate ourselves by any means we can. We imitate others, read their works, copy their findings and their maps.

    From Magellan to Mandela, we know they are out there, not taking injustice sitting down.

    Yes, some did not play by the rules. But most do.

    In the end, humanity benefits and makes progress as a whole.

    Rilke advises the young poet that he should dig deep inside, where it’s dark and vulnerable.

    We each carry that river of doubt. About our tomorrow, about the unknown and unfamiliar.

    We want change and continuity at the same time. We are paradoxical.

    A little progress, yes. But not too much. Because new pieces of hardware displace old ones, we end up making frequent trips to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, where their electronic section kept piling up with industrial waste. Among those, the fax machine.  Somewhere along the way, I hope to run into an IBM Selectric. CSI of the future will learn that our civilization once have a love affair with bulky stuff, fax machines made in Japan, and used in Japan.

  • Repo and Retro

    We don’t want the former, and wish to collect the latter.

    In our age of mass production, supplysiders push consumption to the  point of writing up bad loans, hence Repo.

    Then, and this happened to me once, products came out of the assembly line all look alike: I once mistakenly opened an identical rental car (Taurus) and it even started until I found out my laptop wasn’t in the back seat.  Now, we want Retro because of its obvious scarcity.

    On weekend, we see different lifestyles at play: Harley fans, sport cyclists, families on outing, baseball league and of course, retro car owners, parking their souped-up automobiles in Main Street Old Town. Onlookers must have felt a mix of envy and admiration. Nothing feels better than a waxed-up oldie.

    In contrast, miles and miles of repo cars are found next to “salvaged” cars in our industrial wasteland. Repo men branded them with chalk. Same steel. But the retros are well-kept while the repos are sold for parts.

    What a difference in attitude and emotional investment.

    This unchecked attitude can get carried over to how we treat people.

    When we love someone or think positively about that person, we treat them (even if they are old or have passed their useful phase) as “retro”.  In contrast, when we found no utility value out of them, they are essentially, in our eyes, repos.

    Their values are now up to the bean counters to decide. Fair market value for repo and increased value over time for retro.

    We need to retrain and keep that child-like innocence, to look at life anew. To see people’s value and worth. In the age of mass production, we push consumption and adoption (I-phone 5 and new markets like China). But have we developed the ability to tell the difference between people and product? (to make things worse, career coaches often recommend us to “package” ourselves and “reinvent” ourselves, just as they had once failed with the New Coke. Or that discarding habit has spilled over to the inner sanctum of our hearts? The way McNamara used to crunch the numbers during the Vietnam War (ROI means how many casualties on each side etc..).

    I will never forget the characters in “Never Let Me Go” by Ishiguro. They were “created” to serve as industrial organ donors (Repo) to preserve Retro (rich people who can afford surgery to replace their failed organs). While waiting to “donate” their body parts, the main character, Ruth, asked “Why did you collect our art works then”. “Just to see you got soul at all” replied the Principal.  There is a line to be crossed over from Retro to Repo. Then the issue looms larger than just a misspell. It’s a cancer growing undetected in our post-industrial society on steroid.