Tag: Beatle

10,000 hours

How many among us actually put in that many hours pursuing one thing?

Yet studies show it takes that much practice to master a skill or a trade.

That long to promote ourselves to the rank of outlier : Bill Gates coding skill, the Beatles smooth performance etc…

Today marks my first 10,000 views of this silly blog, which I started as an experiment, to see if the Recession would break or make me as in Hemingway‘s Farewell to Arms “the world breaks them all…but we remain strong in broken places”.

I started blogging when I was married, until I am single again for two years.

It remains my focal point and commitment. To fail time and time again, and stand up if not standing tall.

I am sure the Beatles learned this lesson. They put it in the lyrics of My Sweet

Guitar Gently Weeps “with every mistake, we will surely be learning”.

As adults, we  shy away from trying out new things, meeting new people and going to new places.

We take the path of least resistance. I have friends who keyed down the karaoke coding for their song list, and started to punch them in while the rest of us fumble through the dirty pages of its song book. Apparently these people just want to stay within their range and comfort zone.

I understand the fear of the unknown.  I am living it everyday: from motor-biking on the streets of Saigon, to meeting new faces.

I often found relief, culturally, when going indoor, air-conditioned and culturally conditioned (English-speaking, pipe-in music, and preferably with a menu I can order from without hesitation).

The American part in me must be the true Quiet American, seeking and embracing the Third Force.

Neither here nor there. So sometimes, I escape to my cocoon.

Expats who came here from the Philippines, Singapore and America express similar sentiments.

They are a bit homesick. Like during this time of the year. White Christmas and Oh Holy Night.

It gets cool here but not winter cold. I still put on my shorts and T-shirt, sandals and helmet.

Perhaps it will take a total of 10,000 hours of coming back and living in Vietnam for me to hone my survival skill.

People seem to go about their daily lives, not in quiet desperation, and certainly, not constituting “the lonely crowd” as David Reisman puts it. I hardly came across news of lonely people commit suicide over Christmas holidays as I had read in the States.

On Christmas Eve, in Saigon, people just pour out onto the streets, taking souvenir photos, in front of major hotels (using  their decorations as photo-shoot background) and go to the church (Notre Dame du Saigon). The sacred and profane intersect that night like an annual eclipse.

It’s known as Noel, after the French. And well-off families would gather for Reveillon mid-night dinner.

Now that part I can relate to. The feeling of in but not of it, alone in the crowd, celebrating but not belonging.

Something significant takes place in those hours, of the crowd pushing but not hurrying, dressing up but not showing off.

Just logging in another year, an hour or ten hours toward that something called life experience.

Now that I have put down my humble and jumble thoughts, being viewed for more than 10,000 times, I hope I can detect a pattern. Some of you are also lonely, but not to the point of desperation. It’s our Christmas and Holy Night.

Someone important is joining our party. Might not “tenu de soiree”, but wrapped in peasant cloth. To the trained eyes (the 3 kings), it’s a phenomenon. But to us, commoners, our instinct tells us it’s an event not to be missed. Cut through the noise and clutter, we might find the gem. No matter how you view Nativity, Christmas is here to stay. An excuse for us to affirm our humanity and to be validated. Yes, you are still here. I am still here. Mistakes and all. 10,000 hours to go. Starting now. We’ve only just begun. With baby steps. With starting point in the manger or manager office. As long as we don’t lose sight of that child-like fearlessness, of trying out new things, seeing new faces and learning a few more lines of poem, of lyrics or famous motivational quotes.

The intent of 10,000-hour grunt is not to discourage us. It is rather a reinforcement and affirmation for us to keep trying and fail, instead of fail to try. ( I know the difference between this and the definition of insanity). Persistence is fumble after fumble without losing enthusiasm, says Winston Churchill (I have just learned this quote today). Merry Christmas to you and yours. Never stop trying.

 

Content poor

Latest study pointed to Vietnam workforce skill deficiencies, particularly in critical and behavioral skills (numerical skill was a given).

This study came not as a surprise. For years, kids have adopted a rote learning, picked up from peers and adults, who in turn, had picked up from earlier generations.

We are heading toward an era when technological platforms are abundant, but content wanting.

It is an equal of having all the stages in the world, smoke machines, sound machines, lighting machines, keyboards and sound effects machines, but no singer and composer.

Take the Beatles rooftop performance of  “Don’t let me down” as an example.

It was a winter day in England. Who would have thought of going out and holding an impromptu concert on the roof top, with “social proof” crowds gathered on the street and London police kept quite busy?

According to Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, the Beatles by then had played together for nearly 10,000 hours, first in Hamburg strip clubs, then elsewhere (except Japan where they were banned) before that memorable Rooftop concert.

Michael Jackson did buy all their copyrights knowing those were treasure troves.

Now, Bill Gates and tribes have risen, with Windows and Outlook for the desktop.

In short, the nerds have taken over. And there is nothing we can do about it.

Hardware rules. Until now.

Someday we will wake up and realize, what’s happened here?

Since when do we need to turn on the machine first thing as opposed to burning the incense? Bowing at the virtual altar and not the ancestral one?

Where are our priorities? chasing after the next version of the x-box at Best Buy and whatever OEM  happen to retail at the time?

One machine that has had some staying power (because it caters to a communal need): the karaoke machine. It cuts out the band (in its original meaning) and allows the mass to pick their own content and lyrics. Voila! instant party.

Cheers.

It asks little of us: cognitive skill (knowing which song and how to encode it), behavioral skills (how to take your turn and compete) and of course, numerative skill (tabulating the scores if you compete in teams).

Back to our skill deficiency alarm. If kids are allowed to explore and exploit their multi-talents, whether it’s in sports (Vietnamese women soccer team might score big this year, World Cup material) or music, designing or drawing, let the thousand flowers bloom. Move them up the chain of values, and not the chain of command (do you want to wage war forever? or else, why do we still behave in cold-war fashion?).

With inter-connectedness, mobile platform and dropbox, kids should be set free to pursue and optimize their lot in life. A nation whose policy is to blossom its young is the nation of the future. Take Israel, Ireland and India. What do they have in common? A national strategy and focus on IT talent infra-structure.

I hope someday you’ll join us. And I don’t think I am the only one.

Music was saved

When Steve Jobs came up with his 99-cent song idea, he saved musicians from the curse of piracy.

It’s all in the ether. But musicians get paid, however long the tail. Better than nothing at all.

More people get to hear those beautifully written pieces. I walked by a coffee shop yesterday.

On its walls displayed the AKAI tape decks. A by-gone era. We used to gather around it to listen to Steely Dan‘s DO IT AGAIN,  again and again (ironically, we followed the imperative i.e. Do it again) .

Musicians like George Harrison was throwing a concert for Bangladesh, wearing white suit, with his  rendition of “My Sweet Lord“‘s I really want to see you Lo.

Something about being together, globally and ecologically.

That was before the internet. Or else, with today’s broadband, more would have joined in with near-zero latency.

We live in an exiting age, with technology at our disposal. But do we see huge crowdfunding that does humanity proud?

I know, I know. It’s all ad-hoc now.

Think global, act local.

OK. I am all for green weekend.

And Electric Vehicle conversion, one car at a time.

But in the grandeur scale, we need a hero. Be they from the entertainment or sports, politics or business.

Something is broken. Perhaps the spirit of togetherness, of committing to a cause larger than ourselves.

Like Jobs, I do hope some technologists can come up with apps or simple business proposition that saves the music and saves the day.

Simple solution. Less than a dollar. And let music sing. Not when we can still spare a dollar for the brother. DO IT AGAIN.

PLAY IT AGAIN. I really want to see you Lo.

mass innovation

We got into this mess (housing bubble and derivative fallacy) en mass.

Are we going to suffer in isolation? No way!

With crowdsourcing, virtual forum, email, cloud etc.. we got enough in our arsenal to reverse the course. Technology (the way) and the will. That’s all we need.

And a little bit of love (courtesy of the Beatles).

I know this sounds unrealistic and romantic.

But the same passion and energy people rushed into the bubble will help them backtrack. But not without help from friends.

It’s the equivalent of a jail pass. Bailing out.

Think of the GI bill, and how a generation of well-educated and well-paid workers built the American Century.

From fridge to bridge, they built with pride. It was the envy and marvel of the world.

I still remembered my brother’s stories. He got sent to Denver for one-year training.

This was back in the early 70’s. According to his description (and my imagination), America must have been 7th Heaven: lush green, snowy white, and blonde girls (who  partied their hearts out on New Year’s Eve).

I know my brother. The changes must have shown through, unequivocally.

Then it was my turn, landed in Pennsylvania: again, lush green, Indian country, vast space (Beaver Stadium now second largest in the US).

Last month, I got back to the US, but did not feel excited.

What’s happened here?

Aren’t we becoming less resourceful? No longer a land of opportunities?

In my neighborhood, when time was good, you see all sorts of signage: realtor, loan refinancing, people running for offices and people moving their offices.

Black, Hispanic , Asian and White were all at it, hustling and bustling.

Now, it was depressing even on July Fourth.

Mind you this is not Detroit in 2000 (congratulations on the city’s revival).

We got into this mess en mass. We need one another to get out of it.

Use technology and mass innovation. Crowd-source and open source.

Do whatever it takes. Be more than aggressive (Double the GI bills).

Comb through the evidence like a medical examiner for the cause and manner of death (of the vibrant economy) in a post-morterm. Then, prescribe. Stick to the action plan. One by one, we will get out.

All we need is love (Beatles). All we need is each other. All we need is time.

Play element

We seem to have lost touch with the play aspect in life and work.

I am thinking of John Lennon and Steve Jobs at the moment.

Both pursued their passion, and both were dead.

One married interracially, the other just loved all things simple (even foods).

They were famous, and still are, although they could not take that with them.

Their legacy is huge. Just listen to #9 Dream on the I-pod.

Sit back and have a siesta.

Then you’ll know what I mean.

How can someone who sang about dream but brought us so much life!

Could it be that life is all illusion? Then within an illusion we can still dream up another?

I was at my best when company’s culture encourages creativity, collaboration and tons of energy.

When it’s a chore, we lost the play element.

Conversely, when it’s play, it’s no longer a chore.

To serve with gladness.

Love those we interact with. Just love them first, as a person, then our service to their need will be an extension of that human connection.

You can tell when a singer just sings for the money. To him/her, it’s just a gig. He/she faked the emotion.

But once in a while, we feel sad or lonely, or abandoned. then a song seems to voice our feelings.

Then we  got a hit. It’s a hot night. The heart feels glad. There is vibration, that feeling of being alive and realizing it at the same time.

No Play, the world see only zombies and walking dead.

Dream on. And on and on. Jobs did not believe in the off switch.

Strange sounds, familiar shores

Instead of “I woke up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me…” like Paul McCartney,

I woke up to strange sounds these days: peddlers who use “low tech” au parleur (bull horn) mounted on bicycles or tri-cycles (selling boot-legged CD‘s). In fact, it was my first time got chased by pleasant sound from behind (most of the time, it was emergency vehicle with a sense of urgency). By music here, I mean, not Beatles‘, but Slow Rock (nhac Sen), lamenting heart ache and heart-break.

In the evening, you can hear metal belt sound for in-home massage ( I have never tried).

I miss those wood-on-wood sound of a noodle peddler.

Those were the best snacks a boy could wish for. Speaking of Vietnam childhood and music.

Steve Jobs and friends were listening to music with headsets so they could do it while laying down.

One of his signature photos was an empty room with just a lamp, with him sitting cross-legged.

Very Zen-like. Minimalist. Pure simplicity in design.

He went on to take classes in calligraphy (even Reed College curriculum was still too restrictive for his type).

The sum of all these experience gave us the I-pod with ear-plugs, and later on the I-phone and I-pad.

Studies mentioned that babies could hear before birth.

If this is true, I must have heard an early scooter, a vendor on wheels, someone trying to get the grill going, or a rooster announcing a new day.

Dawn in Vietnam and dusk in the US. (You can experience similar feel, let’s say by traveling down Mexico, but then they got the same time zone as in the US).

Sharing the same Moon.

Sharing the same hope, fear and dream:

Will my kids grow up “con nha lanh” (teachable), and not into drugs.

Will they stay or leave for strange shores?

Will they listen to our voice, those familiar sounds, or they will just “follow the money” and “hearing voices”.

In the end, especially in our flat world, the sound of jet engine and popping soda cans will bring us home from any strange shore.

For a moment there at my friend’s party, we danced and jumped to a familiar tune (sound), felt our hearts go on beating (The End of the World) and saddened “when you say, ‘goodbye'”. The day can’t go wrong when you “get up to the sound of music”, let’s say in “Beautiful Sunday” (when you said, you love me, hey, hey, it’s a beautiful day). Or at night, when soothing sound you first heard while inside Mummy’s womb was that of the noodle man’s peddling.

Time to take stock

So this is Christmas, what have you done? Year-end review and future projection.

Cloud strategy? Hiring and firing decision? Productivity squeeze and cost cutting? (female shoppers said they planned to spend 1% less as compared to last year).

Time to take stock, at individual and institutional level.

New calendar.

Hollywood is going to Detroit (greener pasture).

And the Ark finally found its home in Kentucky (Noah or Colonel Sanders, your choice).

Fund raisers are targeting public buildings and venues (Verizon stadium etc….).

There will emerge new industries (cloud system integrator , google glasses, google cars, google scanners ….).

Thanks to Social Media, I watch more of YouTube .

Meanwhile, not a day goes by without us seeing something coming out of China (reverse engineering Russian weaponry, Shanghai Math and Science champions, huge increase in its Africa’s raw materials and South-South global strategy.)

When John Lennon left us “standing here”, he couldn’t have seen the “long winding road” ahead. 30 years was a long time. Enough to turn BRIC countries to where they are today. “Imagine” the world 30 years from now.

We are so used to annual review, not decades in review:

(war is still raging on because men are still with that strand of evil –  albeit the Genome project could account for most of human DNA) “So this is Christmas, What have you done?”

Because of Lennon’s commemoration, 1980 feels like just last year.

In taking out an icon, the fame hitchhiker inadvertently immortalized his victim.

In her NYT piece , Yoko wrote “ours – our family – was one of giggling, teenager-like”. She mentioned laughter but I read it through a veil of tears.

J.L. would have been 70. Yet he still is “on the cover of the Rolling Stone“, just as a line in a song. You just never know. To musicians and artists (Lennon and Van Gogh) taking stock goes beyond the grave. In fact, it’s the long tail of a winding road.

 

the Me in a changing We

NYT columnist sums it up and I have nothing to add to it, maybe except the cross-cultural angle about change or perish.

I hear Yesterday’s lyric ” I am half a man I used to be”. ..

Technological leap forward (surround sound, anyone?). Star Wars itself has to keep up with its own 3-D version.

Google Eric Schmidt says “there is always the OFF button”, implying that we, human, are still in control (or IQ>AI).

Yet, how many of us even want to turn it off, just to again boot up.

Semantically, “friend” is a new definition for “contact”.

Acronyms are too long. We speak in short bursts “3-D”, “4-G” , “Hi-def” etc…

Stephen Cannell, Hollywood prolific screenwriter, recently passed away. The obituary shows him sitting  next to an IBM Selectric (not I-Pad).

That generation (Norman Mailer, Andy Rooney …) has passed away.

Raw meat, raw man (BTW, Bruce Willis appeared on David Letterman, wearing a raw-meat toupee. He even dared Letterman to taste it).

Talking about paradox: the more society changes and moves on to the “cloud” somewhere, the more likely we long for the real and raw stuff of “yesterday”. (as of this edit, there is an op-ed in the NYT about French’s Bonjour Tristesse).

I never understood people who collect antique, until I put on Lennon’s Dream # 9 (he might be dead, but his dream is still alive).

Yesterday, I waited for an oil change.  So I sat with my second of the Tatoo-girl trilogy (adult version of Harry Potter). Next to me was a gentleman immersed in his Sony E- reader. And here I was, still in paperback version.

Change or perish. It would be ironic to read “A La Recherche du temp perdu” by Proust, on a Kindle.

And the best book, according to Amazon’s Bezos is The Remains of the Day.

Thank you Mr Cohen of the NYT for a beautiful summation about where we are: at the crossroads of change. And the streets are now paved with conveyor. So even if we stand still,

it still carries us forward, no matter what.

The more we want to stay in place, the more we will have to change.

It is so true of what John Lennon said “life is what happens when you are planning  something else”.