Tag: Andy Rooney

With a smile

Long ago, when we still used snail mail, the lyrics went like this ” and seal with a kiss” (w/ lipstick marks).

That’s analog. Now it’s digital. How are  we going to add that something special? smiley for non-verbal?

Communication has been intrusive and impersonal if not dehumanizing.

No way around this. We sign off with “Best Regards” etc… but it’s there BEFORE we compose the  e mail.

So, respectfully speaking, I don’t think we meant “Best Regards” to the recipient (s) at all.

Comes in-mail, designed to cut through the chase.

No heading, no closing. Voila. Chat without waiting for a reply.

No feedback. Just telegram format. Period.

We have traversed a long way since Marconi e.g. telegraph, telegram, telephone, television, beeper, skypager, voicemail,  dictaphone, email, text, chat, in-mail, instagram and Likes.

None of the above allows for “seal with a kiss”.

Lovers send each other chocolate, flowers and letters.

Business people, gifts and hopefully, Thank-You cards (Go Hallmarks).

But lately, we are at a loss. Etiquette in the time of E-mail.

Best business communication is brief, to the point and respectful (of recipient’s time and intelligence).

So, while I rail like  Andy Rooney about “two-prong plugs in a three-prong society”, I challenge you to still “seal with a smile”. That unseen smile is for you as much as it is for them. It’s a joy to think of someone and spend time sending a short note, albeit in-mail. Might as well “pour your heart into it” like they say at Starbucks. (Smile:))

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.

Machine run

When I logged in, it’s auto-filled.

The Machine says, “if it’s routine, let me handle it”.

It’s permeating: embedded in the chip, in the code and in the company.

This morning, I saw a group of photographers with long-lense cameras, shooting what appeared to be a lotus (Vietnamese Buddhist Temple in Orange County, CA).  At least, they appear to be taking practice shoots.

I have seen people holding up the I-pad, I-phone for every day shoots. Now Amazon is entering that hardware space as well. And of course, Facebook.

Watch out Samsung!

After all, one of the Japanese companies started out making toasters.

Then it diversified.

What does it mean to us? We would have less chores to work longer hours to be able to afford those convenience.

It has been like that always. The loop.

We don’t want to get caught using a typewriter these days (unless we hang out with Norman Mailer and Andy Rooney).

Wait until Foxconn completes its assembly line with full automation!

It will be just a private-label exercise.  Intelligent device and manufacturing.

This time, the invasion of machine will be second to none.

Back in the 50’s, machine barely got into the home (bulky but they lasted a long time).

Now, we can take it in the car, into the office and back home. Even the machine got climate-controlled by other machines (A/C).

When it gets plugged-in, it talks to the cloud, updating its latest version of open-source. Machine gets smarter by the day, while man gets complacent.

Little by little, we are pushed to the edge (the edge of decline), joining the rank of the expired and expandable.

Machine will generate an auto-filled, auto response to our job inquiries. If any consolation, machines (fax, typewriter, film camera) also get displaced by other machines. No man or machine are indispensable.

Something in the way.. of Vietnam

I just viewed a clip about Vietnam during the 40-50’s (French lady riding and reading the papers on a moving cyclo, newspaper boy wearing beret…).

Something in the way, she moves… attract me like no other lover…

A North Carolinian I picked up yesterday from the airport (for TESOL course) said “there is something about Vietnam I can’t get a finger on” ( I ventured to guess: adrenaline?).

He said yes, that’s it.

This morning, they withdrew a quarter of a syringe of my blood. Cholesterol level was pronounced good. Two eggs please.

But my jogging days are soon over (with the right knee needed extra oil – the doc suggested swimming. She did not say, dancing).

I was feeling down, when I saw a full amputee (lost both legs) hop down from a bus. Not only that, he then hopped up behind the xe-om (scooter taxi) for the last leg , no punt intended, of his trip.

Something in the way Vietnam moves…..attract me like no other country..

You have to be bold, to be wise and to be on your best to survive here.

The determination ensures the destiny of Vietnam.

Young students are aware that they have to start lessons in Mandarin among other things.

They know who is number 2 in world economy, and number 1 in proximity.

Same choice my family made when switching me from French school to English school.

Follow the money. Use all your resources.

Adapt. Two-prong plugs in a three-prong society (courtesy of Andy Rooney).

Or in this case, four-wheels are impeded in a two-wheel city (parking, fuel costs, security risks etc..).

Tonight, I have to go to the airport again to  pick up the last student of our upcoming TESOL class. Another American, in from Bangkok.

He will be in for a surprise. He will be at a loss finding the right word to describe Vietnam. Culture shock!

He would say, “Vietnamese women try to make it work”. Adrenaline all the way baby.

This guy wanted to know if there were a coffee shop or food stalls etc…

He will spend his nights toss and turn after a few cafe sua da. Then he will get hooked.

Something in the way she moves…..

If you are fence-sitting, Vietnam is not for you. There is the method to the madness (traffic non-pattern).

But then, the sweetest and the smartest are found here, mathematics genius, for one.

Then the sorriest of the bunch, as in the amputee I saw, is also here, hopping  on buses, trains and scooters.

Making it work!

If that man is mobile despite his apparent loss of mobility, nobody should be complaining about a knee-joint.

So I will shut up now.

Something in the way, he moves…..

Beyond Hero

On Easter, the networks dutifully searched their archives for larger-than-life movies like Ben-Hur to fill their air time. From the Beat Generation to the Beatles, anti-hero started to emerge, like in “Rebel without a cause” (the knife-fight at the Observatory between leader of the black leather gang and James Dean in white T-shirt). Since then, anti-heroes, like at My Lai Village, Vietnam, or Nixon, after Watergate, got choppered out of the White House (premonition of the last chopper out of Saigon two years later).

Fast forward to recent James Bond character. He had to be reigned in by his female boss ( the trend with female CEO now prevails at HP, IBM, Xerox, Yahoo).

Riding that trend, in Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise is also portrayed with more psychological depth. In short, more human, as opposed  to  super hero in Ben-Hur (whose showing was at outdoor theater, with viewers “parked” in Chevy convertibles).

Today’s gen Y have their own version of villains and heroes: their Lab-created Avatars, in 3-D, descendants of  comic heroes like Batman, Spider man and Iron man.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan, drones are the new heroes (while pilots who remote-control them can go home in Nevada unharmed; all in a day’s work).

Welcome to the digital age, where commerce, coupon and combat are all conducted online.

We use Search before Select. Parent used to be consulted on almost everything large and small. Now, it’s the screen.

Most of us grew up observing and imitating our dads: shiny shoes and the must-have watch. I used to shine my Dad’s shoes while he groomed.

From that vantage point, he was a towering figure in L-size clothing. He was never afraid to defend our home against robbers (or in my case, bully). He had only low tech (no surveillance camera or motion-detector flood lamps) to rely on. One night when I was about three-year-old, I woke up with a start, just to see a thief sticking his long pole, with hook  on end, trying to fish my mom’s purse.

Before I realized what had happened, I heard footsteps running, pole dropping and my Dad charging out after having thrown his kitchen knife with all he had. Quite low tech defense!

His world was simple, and his concept of security unambiguous.

Unlike the world I now live in.

Unlike the movies I now see .

Unlike the Bond characters which have come and gone. Remember Q?  Bond’s in-house gadget expert ? His expertise is needed to gear 007 up for mission.

It might be a self-driven BMW, or a self-destruct briefcase.

No heroes today can hold up just a staff and look to the sky, waiting for water to part. Yesterday’s low-tech movies,  even with larger-than-life  heroes, couldn’t hold the water in today’s split screen and split attention.

I need a hero, like Bonnie Tyler sings, but more than that. In today’s machine-driven world, we need to go beyond Hero.

Heroes who use high-tech and are hyper alert. Heroes among us. TIME magazine featured YOU as Man of the Year a few years back.

It’s only fitting that YOU who invented Social Network, surveillance and surgical instruments are to be cheered.

My Dad, who died roughly at the same age as Andy Rooney (92), who couldn’t stand those two-prong plugs in a three-prong society,  remains forever my low-tech hero in today’s high-tech society.

P.S. I wrote this a week before the Sexual Abuse Scandal broke at Penn State, my beloved alma mater. In this vein, I now have to move beyond “JoePa” image of a hero.

It’s not enough for good men to stand still and do nothing. We have laughed at the YouTube viral video showing two vehicles ran over a child in China with no bystanders’ intervention. Now we found out it could happen anywhere, and ironically, in Happy Valley. Still memories are always soothing, whether when we were 3 years old or 30 years old. Towering figures that have served as guideposts for us are now gone by attrition, while automation, esp. in Japan, is filling in the gap. Where man failed (inconsistency) becomes an opportunity for machine to rise. The net result: children don’t know what they are missing, for instance, the tears and agony many of my classmates were experiencing while the scandal unfolded in State College. We, Penn State alums all of a sudden, share that sense of solidarity and determination to make a better tomorrow , and the school a better place to learn . I admire the tenacity of some emerging writers there at the Collegian. David Brooks calls them “the Emperical Kids” i.e. validated before venturing.

Go Penn State, Go. Beyond Hero, beyond ourselves. Let not complacency win again this time.

In the mirror

Among Dylan’s many memorable lines is “you don’t need the weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blow-in”.

Even without the weatherman, we can feel that things are at a boiling point.

Like in the movie “the Network”, people start to open their windows and bell out “I am mad like Hell, and I won’t take it anymore”.

Except this time, instead of opening their windows, they opened Windows and Adbuster, which called for Occupy Wall Street (and McToilet on Wall Street).

A leaderless protest against figure-less forces that have worked against them e.g. commoditization, globalization, or automation.

Their 60’s counterparts wanted to rage against the status quo.

Conversely, “occupiers of Wall Street” just want to have an occupation that pays a little more than “nickel-and-dime”.

The wind is blowin but not in their favor (Andy Rooney has just retired leaving one vacancy for roughly 2 Billion people who recently joined the rank of the Middle Class).

Instead of “Hell No, We won’t go”, they are now yelling “Hell No, PLace To Go”.

India? China? Brazil?

To land a job in  BRIC‘s countries, one needs a crash course in language and culture.

(I resent the author of a recent Economist’s article, ridiculing “poor English” in Vietnam. Cheap shot at best, and colonialistic at worst.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/09/english-vietnam?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/iamenglishteach

Go ahead and try to learn Mandarin).

Employers look for those with soft-skills that couldn’t be outsourced such as critical thinking, communicative and collaborative skill set across the cultures, but also to pay them at blue collar wages (high skill/low cost) since employers themselves are caught in a competitive race to the bottom due to outsourcing, offshoring and now re-shoring. Damn if you do, damn if you don’t.

Currently a jobs bill which runs at $200,000 per job is on the table.

Foreign students said “No thanks” (even when their HB1 visas were extended) and went home after graduation (BlueSeed is trying to dock a ship out in Seattle Waters to go around this rule).

At first, I thought it was because of the wives (who couldn’t find spices in groceries stores) who pressured their expat husbands to return (let’s stay to India and Singapore) – Japanese executives wouldn’t choose to work here in the US for fear of derailing their career tracks – But, I found it’s more of a pull than push force that they chose not to stay around (follow the money i.e. emerging domestic markets).

In “It used to be us”, the author of “The World is Flat” himself is baffled by his own themes (globalization and IT revolution).

Now, even call centers got automated (outsourcing next level, to automation), so high-value representatives can proactively chat with callers.

We are all caught off- guard: a job loss here, a dead-end career there.

Before we know it, we blame it on Wall Street (partly true, but not the whole picture – the same way India’s service industries and China’s manufacturing industries got the blame for our Lost Decade, or the Japanese lean -semiconductor- manufacturing in the 80’s or the Vietnam War for taking the Johnson’s administration’s eyes of the-Great Society).

But the story is more complicated than that. The solution seems to be multi-pronged because the problem is multi-faced.

Jack Ellul already touched on the idolization of “technique” back in the 60’s. Now, techno-fundamentalism is pervasive in every faced of life (what could be digitized, must be digitized – Larry Page was quoted to say : “let’s have a million engineers” to outrank or outPagerank Microsoft’s 25,000 strong army), forcing “human” to reflect and re-think about what it is that makes them marketable (the human touch, emotional intelligence etc….) in the 21st century.

No wonder we feel short-changed (too many of us chasing too few opportunities at the bottom – even high-paying construction jobs are no longer there on this side of the housing bubble). At the top, one will take a CEO job, like at HP, but for only $1.00.

It reminds me of Newsweek which was acquired also for $1.00).

This Halloween we will be in default costumes, that of homeless men and jobless women (carrying huge luggage, or brief case).

It’s time to revisit Native Americans on the occasion of Columbus Day (to press restart).

It’s time to reinvent  the American Dream. We don’t have to look too far, since the cause and the cure for today’s malaise and misery are right there, in the mirror.

I hope they keep the mirror squeaky-clean there at the McDonald on Wall Street for our protestors’ comfort and convenience.