Tag: Beatles

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.

 

Next-Gen Leader

With the passing of Mandela, the world raises a legit question: will there be another one in the horizon of equal moral stature!

Yes and No.

This is why. Gen Next grows up digitally.

Search at their fingertips.

Conversation has long tail.

Everyone is well-informed by those tweets (Welcome Pres George H.W. Bush to Twitter). Tweet not Twist!

They invent services, fix things and carry none of the analog legacy. Instead, they identify more with sports and entertainment figures than WW II heroes like Churchill.

Attention is their new currency (Ashton and the hash tag). Wardrobe malfunction is the norm. Instead of avoiding disruption, they build it into the planning and implementing process.

Everyone thinks different including rival Samsung who opens factories in Vietnam instead of China. The older generation is looked at as having dementia (shut down the government?)

Morgan, Madoff and not Mandela? Rather, their hero is one who cooks his own meal and takes the bus to work. The new Pope (who just spoke up against CEO salaries which used to double-digit higher than workers, now triple-digit).

Next-gen leader is currently backpacking in Nepal and Napoly. picking up on the nuances of a globalized and inter-connected world while building and rebuilding homes torn by tornadoes. They play by the rules, but not rewarded for points just yet.

Burden with school debt, they decide to get our of the box altogether, postponing their parent’s white-shoe

career for a chance to experience the many shades of grey.

I hope they connect the dots, and not just cross the t’s.

My daughter dances with the number one hip-hop team in the US. Her group is composed of multi-ethnic LA (she was a few years old when the LA Riot broke).

To her, the conversation about race is just as passe as AOL ‘s “you’ve got mail”.

Kids in the Ukraine and Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt are all aspiring for real change, and not just a phone upgrade

To them, bigger is not better.

And the Beatles are still cool.

If a seventeen-year-old whose cancer death “Clouds”  can rally 5,000 people at the Mall of America for a choir, than we still have hope.

This time, it’s not going to be a towering figure as we had hoped for. It will be multi-tasking multi-racial and multi-platform leaders.

Every kid knows how to self-invent, self-promote and seek self-correction (at least the spell check). The Internet with its power growing by the minute will raise the bar.

Tech language will bind everyone together better than the Queen’s language.

And the new frontier is out there, in space and under the ocean. New leader looks for role models in influencers and thought leaders whom they trust, digitally.

You cannot hide but be the truth, the transparency  and the trust they are looking for.

Their votes will be crowd-sourced and cross-checked, not a replay of Florida in 2000

Next-Gen leader has emerged on this side of the digital screen. We just don’t know it, or refuse to recognize him, or more likely, her.

It’s that fast and furious, or common like our Inaugural poet. It’s staring in our faces, from the screen. Next-gen leader has to play both sides of digital divide, virtuality and reality, not both sides of the aisle.

Ladies and gentlemen, may we welcome our new leader, via podcast and broadcast, via tweets and texts and via whatever platform they will and surely will invent. We just did not know we would someday ride in EV and get stuff delivered by drones.

Stay healthy and stay tuned (because we are going to live very long life) to be witnesses to change.

New world requires new leader. Just that they will come in packages we might not like or are comfortable with. In MN, they voted for wrestler and SNL comedian. Someday, our leader might come with tattoos and ear rings in non-traditional places. You might wish it otherwise, but it’s the new reality brought to us by the virtual world we had created in our own image. For now, the Pope will do.

Friendship and Fraternity

At work or at home, we relate to a network of people e.g. parents, siblings, neighbors and co-workers.

Now, on top of that, we got our online reputation to build and keep up. It’s the new currency. Trust and transparency.

Amazon and Facebook model are built on that. Delivering what we are promised, on time and every time.

On Social, we live the illusion of grandeur, having connected with many virtual friends, but having no real and close friends.

The key lies in your emotional intelligence and empathy.

Judge not.

The passing-away of my parents left a vacuum hard to fill. Now, I am like Eric Carmen “All by myself” or  Kazuo Ishiguro‘s “When we were orphans“.

I realize I lost more than a set of parents. I lost my two best friends. Friends who cheer me up when I am down. Talk me down when I was way over my head.

You can’t get that online, or ordering it on Amazon.

Then there were friends at work. All of the sudden, when you are out of work, you lost pension and insurance. You lost a set of friends.

Each of us moved on. Some to better positions. Others worse

But the pain remains: we will never get back together, like the Beatles.

Women problems at work are now a popular conversation with Sheryl Sandberg‘s “Lean in”.

But when one is out of work, nobody sings “Stand by me”.

Or, “That’s what friends are for”.

So we keep connecting, liking and commenting.

TED keeps coming up with cerebral lectures to motivate us. Bill Gates with new products that save the world.

But deep down, we all know that people are hurt by this economy. The pain and avoidance of pain take on subtle forms: alcoholism, passive-aggressive behavior and withdrawal.

In other words, what happened out there finally affects what’s in here.

By severing our lifeline, those intangible values of friendship and fraternity, the powers that be have failed to calculate and factor in those hidden costs. That which injures people, set them back and de-motivating. Smart people have moved on to better things taking a page from a different playbook. But those of us who thrive in togetherness and inter-connectedness can never stay whole. Something is missing. Somebody is not showing up at the Thanksgiving table. Then those defensive mechanisms kick in, to explain away someone’s absence e.g. demonizing the person, writing them off as “weird” or “mal-adjusted”. Yes, nature favors those who are the fittest. Wait until nature calls on you.

Meanwhile, I feel like tripping over on some neural minefield. I know we are not dispensable like yesterday’s version of Nokia. But somehow, the hidden costs of industrialization e.g. planned obsolescence and disposable society, have taken a toll on all of us. Starting with some line items on Excel down to our co-workers, then friends and families. It’s easy to connect with thousand friends on Facebook than talking to your parents who know you better than anyone else. I envy those who can “bounce it off” their parents on choices for a career or a mate. It’s necessary and it’s human. We pass on our DNA and our stored experience. As Viktor Frankl puts it ” they can take away my body, but not me who resides in this body”. Our genes pass on, but while we “do time”, we cherish those encounters and engagement with friends. Just a few laughs. Passing the time and not judgment. Seeing the world as if we were they.

I miss my parents this Thanksgiving. They were my best friends who passed on the appreciation for poems and patience with people.

I didn’t realize then, that I was born into a fraternity, where friends cared. That’s what they are for, in good times and bad times.

What’s your tale? Where will you be this Thanksgiving? In it’s origin, it’s a simple meal of wild turkey among early settlers and native American. Friendship was fostered and trust built. A nation was born and decisions were made. Gut check and gut call. True-North alignment to create and grow a nation where all men (fraternity) are born to pursue happiness among them (friendship).

New Context New Narrative

When Starbucks opened its first store in Saigon, it must have been a big blast.

Centrally located, visibly in-your-face, upscale e.g. wifi and air-conditioned.

Early stage.

When I had my cup of Starbucks, like this morning, in a Virginian Mall, there was no fanfare, no fuss.

Late stage.

Same store and story (pour your heart into it) but in different contexts.

Geographical expansion, and brand extension (more international e.g. Starbucks on the Allure).

With each new day, we add-on to our narratives new twists and turns with challenges in between.

The story of Starbucks as a brand, or the stories of our lives as biographical history, both evolve and encompass elements outside of our control.

Good to great stories require comparable-in-size conflicts.

But for many of us, ambition and adventure are better lived out by actors on the screen than us on the street.

Still, experiencing the tranquility of an enclosed Mall vs the bustling round-about near Ben Thanh Market, I felt out of context.

My body is here, overcoming jet lag. But my mind still replay the sound and sight of Vietnam (where people obviously don’t need a coat or jacket).

I know the iced latte is more popular there, while in Virginia, in the winter, it’s the opposite.

And the tip? That remains to be seen.

To top it all, my sister ran into an old American GI who had been in Da Nang and Hue 44 years ago.

He couldn’t stop talking about his experience back in Nam.

Had he stayed on and waited long enough there, he wouldn’t have to come back across the world, in new context, for that cup of coffee.

I am sure when he first returned 44 years ago, he would have felt the same. The body is here, adjusting. But the mind is else where.  That’s how we are: facing similar set of challenges from the outside, but the interior reservoir and responses are different. It makes us different and unique. It is that pause, however long, between stimulus and response, that defines who we are e.g. Walmart door opens on Black Friday (stimulus), people push and jump for stampede (response).

Same Starbucks, two different localities. East vs West. “And now, the end is near, final curtain…. ” In our own way, each of us is a Star in this Starbucks universe. They can recreate the franchise anywhere, but there is only one you, in or out of context but only one narrative. Own it. Celebrate it and don’t forget to share it. Your personal brand is un-franchisable. It rocks!

Brand America

American Apparel ‘s tag line is “sweatshop free”. Nike‘s Just Do It (i.e. Just Buy It).

Apple‘s – Think Different.

Meanwhile, Haier and Huawei are trying to copy Hundai and Kia who tried to copy Honda and Toyota who had tried to copy VW and Mercedes. Brand building in and outside of America.

What would John Kerry ‘s “elevator speech” be?

That America is exceptional?

America has always reinvented itself?

Or it has lucked out, despite its short history (compared to other nations). Ironically, its short memory has been its strength – less dogma and insistence on a set way, more adapting and opened to adopting best practices (sort of leap-frogging its political history).

We have heard so much about brain drain (to America, it’s brain-gain).

Perhaps Brand America pays well, encourages mistakes and risk-taking.

Brand America is quite tolerant even forgiving (entrepreneur’s oxygen).

Brand America has always been youthful (Rock and Roll) and sporty (Super Bowl).

Brand America might have its British roots, but then Britain had to invade it again (the British Invasion e.g. the Beatles).

Brand America exports Hollywood and imports not Bollywood.

Brand America exports clean toilets (American Standard) and fast food.

Brand America leverages low-interest rates and cheap labor.

People line up to get in, many stay on, but some have left because of the recession.

Brand America advocates racial and gender equality, champions environmental and civil rights.

Brand America is indeed exceptional in the way it treats its weakest link – from pets to children – from the handicapped to the retired.

When values are at odd, it’s where Brand America shines albeit with vigorous debates and violent disagreement.

Brand America has enduring values that need constant refresh.

It is continuously transformed and transfigured: two World Wars , two Recessions and two Towers. Brand America’s strength lies in its people.

Free thinking and swift action. Some residue from Frontier’s Days won’t hurt. Shoot from the hip. You add to this train of thought. Because you are as much a part of the brand as I. Brand America’s tag line: reinventing you (from Eisenhower to Einstein), sweatshop free, but not free of sweat.

Long Winding Road

To your door……

I woke up to a Friday. Not any Friday. But a birthday Friday.

Long and winding road. Like a graph, your life can be “manipulated” to make it a more positive-trending (not Bell-shaped).

Depends on how you look at it. People have said that President Obama looks older than when he first took up office. Oh well, who wouldn’t  after three and half long years.

I share concerns with friends these days. Always with long shots, and high hopes, from Electric Vehicles to Electronic Medical Records. Stuff that earlier generations had never heard of.

(except for the EV part).

The same with Mars and upcoming discoveries in Science. How they will shape and reshape the human race.

Yet one thing stays unchanged: human nature itself. We still react under certain principles, Pavlovian, for instance.

Ring the bell, the dog salivates. Facing danger, fright or flight.

Oh well. Long and winding road.

Friends said no matter how far and how much traveling they had done, when they came home, they just wanted mama’s cooking. Acquired taste. Subliminal and unconditional trusting. Talk not to strangers (yet I keep connecting with the multitude of you out there via Social).

Talking about networking. Since it’s my birthday. Can you send me a referral. Some doctors who need to install EMR?

Or a telecom engineer department that need their software tested offshore. Long shots? Yes. Long winding Road? Yes.

We , social animal, do need each other and do reciprocate.

I am here today thanks to the help of many friends and families.

I in turn have helped friends and again, some families.

That’s how the circle of Life operates. How pay-forward  works. And how the virtuous cycle is. There is no need to recast that graph. Just be and become better. Each life is different and each person unique. Born on a different day and dies at a  different  hour. While living, let’s make it a pleasant journey. The tilted clock on the wall reminds me that there was an Earthquake a few days ago. Even time is not standing still. Nor is the clock that shows time. How can you assume too much that it (Life) is going to be a straight line? To me, it’s more like a long and winding road.

Jog and blog

The only way to hold a job and still jog and blog is to sacrifice your sleep. You will always find time for things you hold near and dear e.g. texting to ones you care about, reading about Oakland shooting etc….

ROW rest of world could wait. There is only 24 hours in a day.

At this rate (of information explosion), we might need another life.

When fake news are more entertaining than real news, lies more attractive than truth and violence more justified than love, we have a problem. Can’t start all over again, because the world as is, is all that we ‘ve got.

A friend loaned me a copy of past lives and reincarnation.

It documented hypnotic healing sessions conducted in the US by Dr Weiss, himself an agnostic scientist. Catherine, the patient in tow, recalled in full detail her past lives. True or False?

We do seem to feel a special connection with someone, calls it Deja Vu.

Could it be that we had indebted each other in past lives?

How about paying it forward? Will we ever see our ROI?

I just know my experience with earlier and next generation (parents and kids) have been great and rewarding. Nothing has come close to it.

Yes, many ups and downs. Broken pieces and piercing pain. But they count. Making me the man I now am.

Without my parents’ sacrifice, I wouldn’t be here today. Without my kids, I wouldn’t be the one today.

Those who cannot give any more thought they had hit bottom (compassion fatigue). They haven’t understood what giving really is about.

We are nearing the next phase, that of an Empathetic Civilization.

Strangers to strangers, thanks to the internet .

The vices will be followed by the virtues.

I know people are loaning each other money (micro lending) and giving each other money (foundation). One day, it will be direct, without the middle-men.

I need to go jogging now. Enough blogging. Train the muscle and train the mind. Yet the heart of men is unfathomable. Bend it while learning to love and learning to learn.

Trust a little. Then trust a little more. Maybe it (the heart) will get stronger, with muscle memory. The world can use some of that loving.

All you need is love, sing the Beatles. Love heals and succeeds in places we cannot accomplish all by ourselves.

Pre-Karaoke childhood

We always rushed through dinner to claim our living room space, or call it a stage.

Daddy’s mandolin, brother’s violin, and my guitar.

But we never played with one another, being from three different generations.

So “Du Am”, “Em Toi” and “Le Da” in mandolin.

Then “Serenade”, “Guitare D’Amour” either by violin or guitar.

Finally my turn, with the Beatles, Bee Gee or Bad Fingers.

I had never given any thought to the music of earlier generations.

But having lived in the US for most of my adult life, and now returned to the same place, I finally saw the connection:

music has been the invisible (but audible) links between us. Had there been a karaoke machine in the house, we would have fought over the mike.

But given that pre-karaoke era, the best we could do was to race through dinner to get first crack at the music room.

My Dad’s choice painted a vague but very sentimental pictures of North Vietnam where he used to live before the country got partitioned. Then through my brother’s choice, I had a peek at Johnny Holiday, Sylvie Vartan and Elvis Presley.

To me, those were “uncool” music, but I tolerated them.

My “youthful” music, by today’s standard, would be considered “uncool”.

Performers got wireless mikes, and could move about freely.

On YouTube, one can see how “stuck” the 60’s bands were to the confinement of the studio (lighting, cameras and boom mikes).

You can only do so much with dissolve and editing.

The best we could do in our time was those sound distortion accessories, once plugged into an electric guitar, produces solo material as you would hear from Santana.

I thought the world was already “flat” when Santana rules Woodstock (he recently married his drummer – a she).

A Facebook posting of “Le Da” brought all this back. Memories of yesterday, of rush dinners and spontaneous rehearsals, our secret sauce for survival. Now those survival instincts are returning like a long lost friend, whispering ” you don’t need all the gadget to be happy.”

In fact, overly accessorized society has produced more neuroses. Birds and lilies in the field don’t need to be adorned. They are beauties in their own rights. The funny thing about today’s headline in Yahoo, was that of Facebook founder riding a buffalo in Northern Vietnam.

“Ai bao chan trau la kho” (who said riding a buffalo was a chore). High tech needs high touch, the virtual needs the real. The Japanese knew a thing or two about these instinctual needs when inventing virtual pets, or a karaoke machine (without the band). The question is, with all the gadget for education and entertainment, are we learning more and singing better? I wish we (Dad, brother and me) had at least found one song we all loved to jam together. Ask your teenagers, if they would like to hang out with you or their friends?

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.

message in the bottle

Cast away. Sending an SOS. an SMS. I hope that someone will get my message.

We are born to connect (our belly button testifies to this) with nature and others.

Yet marketers are telling us that in Retirement Ville, cruise ship (with sauna sound that reminds us of incubator) and virtual existence can substitute for the real thing.

In Japan, a generation grows up with comic characters and robots ( Miku, a 3-D virtual rock star got

her star treatment not unlike The Beatles).

Children in the West and BRIC nations will follow suit with what Neil Postman coins “amusing ourselves to death”.

If you look at the statistics on how we spend our time, TV and the Web are at third spot after sleep and work.

We in mail, g-mail, dropbox, chat, text, store, tweet, Like, blog, comment, delete spam, mass e mail etc….

As of this edit, Salesforce is buying another cloud-based marketing company at the tune of 2+ Billion.

To be social. To connect. To be human. It will be the first time in our human history that one can connect more than the optimal 120 (The Tipping Point).  This revolutionary change is the most significant since the 60’s.

Music is to be shared (Woodstock), the Earth is to be shared (Whole Earth Catalog), ideas are to be shared (Google), courses are to be shared (Coursera) and ride is to be shared (San Francisco). It’s not by mistake that San Francisco and adjacent Silicon Valley come out ahead in thought leadership.

It’s been a while since campus coffee-house (our 70’s version of karaoke, except you have to bring your own guitar).

Now we got Facebook to share a clip (ironically from Youtube, which is own by rival Google), a photo or an article.

All of a sudden, it’s like play time, share time. Everyone is an artist i.e. to let the world know we once exist.

Adults, retirees, and yes, even x’s, “friending” each other. Amusing Ourselves to Death.

The Genie is finally out of the bottle.

I send an SOS to the world…….I hope that someone, I hope that someone, read my message in the bottle…….