Tag: Beaver Stadium

My McBite

My first American solo supper was a big Whopper, at the time, sold by the leading Burger King.

The next day, I sampled McDonald known for its fries. You may say, I got myself into a blind-fold test not unlike Coke vs Pepsi tasting.

To this day, my number-one choice would be In-and-Out. But seeing McDonald opening its first restaurant in Vietnam, the taste of my first McBite brings back warm memories. Of friendship and winter cold, of people who care for total strangers in Happy Valley (petition to change Beaver Stadium to Paterno Field now surpassed 61,000 designed goal mark).

Penn State in the mid-70’s was the place to be: fast football, fast food with no fast lane. None of us would think of driving “fast and furious”. Just walk and jog, any time of the day and night. You would have to be really anti-social to not land a date on the weekend. We were “trapped” there in the valley.

Guess where we would go for a bite off-campus? Hardees, Roy Rogers, Arby’s, Burger King and of course, McDonald.

Who would have guessed with automation and standardization that the last has become first? Not a bad legacy for a traveling milk-shake machine man from Oak Brook, IL. Later, I traveled the same trail, going West. From suburban Chicago graduate school over San Bernardino ” until the sun comes up from Santa Monica”.

I have  had my shares of McBite, on road trips or just to baby-sit generations of kids in my family: niece and daughters.

Vietnam will get its first McBite after this year’s Tet. The once forbidden foods will taste so divine.

It’s not the burger nor the fries. It’s the culture of efficiency, cleanliness and consistency across the franchising empire.

Doing the same thing 10,000 times. Bruce Lee would have been scared (of someone practicing the same kick 10,000 times).

It all started with identifying and solving a problem: milkshake takes time and slows down the fast-food delivery process.

America’s beat generation was into outdoors (Happy Days): outdoor movies, outdoor picnic (station wagon) and outdoor concert.

Mr Kroc spotted an opportunity and zoomed in on it. The rest was history.

You bet I will get my first McBite when it finally arrives here in Saigon. And I won’t even wait to be asked “You want fries with it?”

(As of this edit, promise said, promise kept. See My McBite pt II VN).

Out here, like last night, Saigon young demographic was into outdoor cruising (on motorbike) as well. And McDonald here promises “drive through”. I think they meant “ride through”. Whichever way, the young patrons should know that they will be enjoying their first taste of milkshake, which started it all.  There is no turning back once automation and standardization took over. Algorithm and formula, mechanical precision and predictability. All hallmarks of 21-century society living on technique.

Taste just happens to be a side order. Bonjour McDonald, bye-bye  memory. The future is officially here. Turn back not, just like the time when I had my first McBite. Deep down inside, I knew it’s symbolic but nonetheless solid that my life has taken a turn for good. It’s that melodramatic. But you have to understand the context of  spending winter cold Christmas alone in Happy Valley, PA.

Myopia

It was just a few years ago when friends and I discussed the inevitable departure of Joe Paterno at Penn State. Retired? Replaced? Removed? Now, it turns out, it’s his statue that got removed.

Who would have conjured up that scenario.

Today, the Nittany Lions will get their verdict from the NCAA. I am hoping for a lighter sentence. I bleed Blue.

(and Orange, at MCI).

Penn State taught me about being a team player. WE ARE.

Today, my team, our team gets punished.

Not for its diligence and desire to win. But for its failure in moral leadership.

Physical and moral aptitude, hand in hand.

Certain lines cannot be crossed, not without penalty. We know the rules. We play by the rules. Now we are penalized by the rules. Fair play. The only way.

There will be no applause sound track today. Maybe just silence. The same silence that the leadership at Penn State chose as a response to the Sandusky‘s accusation a decade ago.

When I went to school there, during Spring Break concert, the opening act was “Here comes the Sun“. Maybe the school should invite that guy to play again. Maybe, the magic works again.

Pushing away darkness, pushing away institutional myopia. And most of all, showing and shedding more lights on Beaver Stadium, where our school mascot will once again do one-hand push-ups on the sideline while defense” Push them back, push them back way back.”

Changing-transforming

The first comes natural. The second,  involves an act of the will and intervention. Penn State will need to be transformed.

Besides, it’s not the place. It’s the institutional mindset. We know this. We will do it, individually and collectively.

It’s Sunday morning. I will use this day to reflect on my experience at Happy Valley. Those 4 years have always been special to me. Now, they will need to be looked at in a different light. Perhaps with more maturity due to hindsight.

Today, when I jog pass a lush-green golf course, I still think of PSU’s.

The shorter loop is 4 miles, the 8-shape loop 8 miles.

Students could be seen jogging around the clock up and down those hills. The book Running was a run-away best seller at the time. So were jogging shorts.

And…..long socks with color-stripes up to our knees .

We would watch Midnight Cowboy, Midnight Express…anything with “midnight” in the title. Disco was in the air. And the shiny silk shirts.

Long-hair students sat along “the Wall”, while more traditional ones would stop by the Creamery. The best there is.

When it’s home-game weekend, you can hear the roaring echo from Beaver Stadium. Post-game evening, win or lose, it’s full house at local pubs. It’s fun to go out in Happy Valley. Everyone finds a date, winter or summer.

It’s 50’s innocence, now facing 21st-century ethical dilemma: big box, big bucks and bomb-shell publicity problems.

I can well imagine the press descending upon State College, the Corner Room, Old Main, the HUB. I am sure they interview students, staff and faculty for reaction.

I am sure they camp out at nearby hotels (lots of them to accommodate tourists). Then, they would pack up and go on to the next disaster.

Happy Valley will once again be quiet..until September.

Summer there is hot. Student housing are sparingly occupied, either by those who need to work summer job, or take a summer course to finish up their degrees.

If any good comes out of this, it’s the proper place of football in the scheme of things. Perhaps academic, and yes, ethics.

Institution for higher learning, for learners and decent folks, PE included, but not as THE thing at Penn State. The changing and transforming of place, people and priority.

Ignore it!

Willful ignorance, kicking the can further down the road. Hoping it lands on someone else’s front yard.

Problems got ignored,  because if solved, it’s gonna cost. Penn State pedophile problem is one.

One of us vs societal rule of law, subjectivity vs objectivity, warm feelings vs calm rationality.

I read JoePa’s son’s op-ed in USA Today. He asks for suspense of disbelief until the full investigation is out (email in context etc….).

In short, we need time. Kick the can a little further down the road once more.

Don’t ignore it, but also, don’t just immediately jump to conclusion.

Moral dilemma.

Beaver Stadium was adding seats. Can’t just tear them down.

Moral rehab vs mortar remodeling. If you look back, you will turn into salt.

Just ignore it?

Tragedy comes in three for me: 1975 Saigon evacuation landing at Penn State – devastated. Three-Mile-Island internship 79 – terrifying. Now FootballGate.

I want to ignore it. Then it creeps up. Like an unwanted member of the family.

Hoping there is no such thing called Thanksgiving, so you don’t have to face him/her. Meeting with Jesus. Court date. Press inquiry. Public debate.

Can’t ignore it now, ever.

the right screen

Smart phones got computer, TV and phone screens, all in once. The combined screen.

I was sitting in front of a lap top and an attached large screen. For a moment, I looked at one screen while the action took place at the other. To catch on, I  need to follow the cursor to know where the action was.

In life, we have looked in the wrong place for the right thing.

(to make friends while in prison, for instance).

Penn State commissioned JoePa statue in front of Beaver Stadium, just to now debate whether to take it down.

The Christian in Asia a few centuries ago, were told to remove ancestor’s altars, traditionally placed at the center of the home.

The FEDs keeps reducing rates. Should we look there for future directions? Unemployment indicators? Housing and foreclosure reports?

Never have we been tested as during the past 4 years.

Am I looking at the wrong screen?

Prophets have arisen, and more shades of truths have been made available.

Which way is the wind blowing?

Put your money in Macau.

or in Manhattan?

Google Glasses or JcPenney?

Pick your people right. Business model can always be modified as we go along. Often times, it’s on the wrong screen anyway. Keep the statue. Make it a teachable monument. After all, JoePa had always championed scholarship and athletic pursuit hand in hand. Institution for higher learning should at least have intellectual honesty and moral conviction to defend its mantel and mission. Especially when it is now looking at the right screen not smokescreen.

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.

My Happy Valley

A photo of  Penn Stater, eyes glued to the Collegian, brought back strong memories of the HUB (Student Union Building) and my time in Happy Valley.

State College was home to me for 4 years. Happy Days. The Wall. The Corner Room. Beaver Stadium. Best ice-cream at the Creamery.

In the Spring, at outdoor concert , we heard  “Here comes the Sun” as an opening act. I saw Bruce Springsteen at a concert in the HUB Ballroom, and remembered thinking, “that man got juice”  (Born to run).

I too was on the run. From the burning monk and burning napalm. From the war last day (7th Fleet spanned the horizon as far as the eyes could see) I too was born to run. The road took me to Native American geography (Susquehanna River and Indian Town Gap). Most memorable was when  I ran into and received kindness from a fellow refugee I met on a  Harrisburg snowy night.

Across from campus, at the Corner Room, we had many coffee refills without getting dirty looks.

Raymond Brown, the Penn State Choir Master, drilled it in us to “Breathe” and “Think”.

His football counterpart, Joe Paterno, had turned Head Coach a decade before I got there.

When I left for a TV internship, he was still there. Today, as of this writing, he is still there (sneakers and Tootsie glass).

(Latest news break announced this would be his last season).

I never came back to Beaver Stadium for commencement. I was an intern at an ABC-TV station in Wilkes Barre on my last quarter.

We got a call to cover nearby Three-Mile-Island incident.  As usual, we set out with our battery pack and a fresh roll of tape.

Then the story broke, and we ended up in a ghost town (people rushed to withdraw cash from ATM”s) again, with lots of coffee refills

and still with no dirty looks, only worry ones. It’s the second time within the span of 4 years that I was stuck in one set of clothes for days on end.

In the span of those four years, I was insulated from a changed world outside of Happy Valley. That world had turned more cynical, and more sexually aggressive (Last Tango in Paris).

But I managed to take courses in Science, Technology and Society whose premises stay with me until today.

We invented the Machine, but in the process, the Machine reinvented us (I am a BMW driver, an I Phone user etc…).

What I saw before Happy Valley (7th Fleet on the War last day, B-52 bombers overhead at night etc…) and after (nuclear power went wild) served as two bookends, with near fairy tales in between (We went singing at nursing homes on Sundays, or performed with Andre Previn and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at Heinz Hall).

We were still using punch cards at the only two computers accessible to students. All of us used manual type writers to write term papers and produce newspaper, the Collegian. My dorm mate worked as an Editor  there.  Right after we saw Bruce Springteen, Jeff’s eyes lit up when he saw I could play the solo part of  “Born To Run”.

It must have been a trip for them to experience a foreign student first hand, as opposed to viewing characters like Sixteen Candles’  Luong Duk Long “what automobile?”, and to find out I shared  delayed curiosity and hidden aspiration (Deep Throat shown on campus? Is this Bob Woodward’s idea of a joke?)

Seeing today’s students holding up the Collegian warms my heart, despite the sad circumstance surrounded it (sexual abuse and institutional cover-up scandal).

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2011/11/07/column_sandusky.aspx

I know next to nothing about football besides coming into contact with a few players who dozed off in my Speech class and Jimmy Cefalo who served as an intern at the same time I was at WNEP-TV.

But for years since, I haven’t found a place, and a time, that shaped the lives of so many, mine included,  for the good.

When the Lion, our mascot,  did one-hand push ups, we and alumni counted out loud, you could feel the stadium rock. We all felt mighty proud. And rightly so, because WE ARE…and still are PENN STATE.

Losing one’s self

In a recent NYT op-ed, David Brooks summed up prevailing graduation themes: find yourself, live to the fullest, be passion-focused etc.. instead of losing yourself in solving others’ problem. Even my kid knows that time passes more quickly when you are absorbed in a task.

When you lose yourself, you end up finding it.

Before graduating, I took up an internship at an ABC affiliate in Scranton, PA.  At the time, it had a huge dump for abandoned cars. Mount Pocono was not too far away. Often times, the only news in town was trash workers’ strike, which I helped cover with passion.

Then, we were sent to Harrisburg to follow a lead on a nuclear power p accident. Before I knew it, I was held up for days, learning more about broadcasting than I could ever learn in 4 years.

I never went back to Beaver Stadium to receive my diploma. But I did get my badge of life. After the experience of working for nothing, but learning everything, I went on to make three rounds of volunteer overseas to lose myself again and again (all along acquiring the sense of place, of cultures and social webs.)

He who is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose.

From there, I found my modus operandi: work hard, play hard, and work some more (adrenaline producer).

Schools are so structured and protective. The institutions are built on a foundation of learning, character building and self/status-preserving. Students aren’t encouraged to take risks, much less think out-of-the-box (occasionally, they brought in speakers from “outside”, but the script remains the same: conformity).

I hung out with a group of well-meaning students: wholesome and healthy (Get Together, Kum By Ya).  But life outside of campus is quite off-script. On campus, Joe Paterno might be our “God“, Raymond Brown, another one (Penn State Choir), but the Trinity in real life, I found out, were gold, silver and green.

It’s hard to convince people to think critically and carry on intelligent discussions without screaming, attacking and holding a personal vendetta.

At work, instead of collaborating, I found clique after clique.

In school, I forgot that I was non-white. In life, they make sure I am reminded of it.

So, to recent grads: keep losing yourself that you may find it.

Other people may know some parts of you better than yourself. So, to fully discover yourself, you will have play sport-contact against life’s jagged edges.

One day, hopefully sooner than later, you will come to a sudden realization that you are not the center of the universe, and that not every one accepts and loves you unconditionally as your mom and dad have (I use present tense for you, but past tense for me).  And the most you can elicit from strangers are like a line in a Chicago album “does anybody know what time it is”.

Life is difficult. Life in post-Recession era is even more difficult.

The only way to survive this downturn is to charge out of the gate, ready to give yourself completely away without hope of a return. Surprise the world with your Camelot zeal . Ask not…..Infect others with your enthusiasm and passion.

We need your strong muscles and your radiant smile.

I love those who pulled all-night going over text books. Now get ready for lengthier and thornier book of life.

It’s only just begun. Ironically the beginning was at the end, the way Orientals flip their books. Counter-prevailing as it is, David Brooks has a point. So was T.S. Elliot.

the dot connector

I am referring to Dr Rustum Roy of Penn State whom I met almost 4 decades ago.

I knew then just as I know now that he was ahead of his time. He pushed for integrated studies in Science, Technology and Society.

He showed up at a demo of  hologram which is now being worked into 3-D Telepresence. Along with his wife and colleagues from all over the world, he quietly developed Material Research Lab up the hill near Beaver Stadium.

But his most enduring and endearing influence on my life was that of his house church. The Sycamore Community signed on to be my sponsor to provide some  cushion from “culture shock”. (On the way to University Park, we even stopped to pick up a hitch hiking student, who looked like he just had  lunch at “Alice Restaurant”).  I was “clueless” among the giants. On one Wednesday night, I even strummed my guitar and had them join me in a chorus to Carpenters‘ “Sing” (the group went in circle and each “shared” something).

Dr Roy did not do too badly I might say.

But in looking back , I realize how my new beginning served the group right: they rediscovered their reason for getting together: to reach out to the downtrodden and focus then on the second “S” of his life work (STS).

I forever remain in their debt for my start in Happy Valley. The warm clothes and warm reception have been ROI’ed multiple times. And in the tradition of “integrated” studies, I have tried non-stop to connect the dots as I recognized them. But for every two dots I could connect, Dr Roy probably did ten or a hundred times as much. He acknowledged in his last interview on YouTube that these new technologies can now liberate “useful science” for the mass. Sort of “unchained melody” used to be confined in the “Vatican” of Science.

His sons were with hair down to their knees when I first met them.

And that how cool a scientist family could get to be. Between them, father, mother (a whole biography on her own) and sons, I don’t think that family let any revolution go unnoticed.

He was last quoted on yahoo as saying “I felt chilled down my spine” when the lab uncovered that salt water could conduct electricity. I would too if I had been there and witnessed the experiment.

But for all the white papers and honors he deservedly received, he remained a dear fellow sojourner, one who came before me as a Penn Stater albeit of a different kind not degree.

For “We are” and forever will be, Nittany Lions, lurking with inquisitive minds, while letting no dots go unconnected.

Kindness from your lips

My kid’s elementary school is collecting lip balms to send to our troops overseas.

It struck me that we spend our entire life trying to do good, from small gestures to larger ones, only to see others take it away in an instant.

I saw the beautiful picture of the 9/11 girl whose life ended last Saturday in Tucson.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110110/ap_on_re_us/us_congresswoman_shot_girl

Said she wanted to attend Penn State (We are). Her grandparents live in Philadelphia,

hence the Penn State motif.

9/11 generation already shows some promises, potentials and now with its poster child.

It also struck me that with every click, every digital image and footprint, we leave behind our legacy. Henry Gates, the professor who had a run-in in Cambridge, MA last year (resulted in and resolved at Beer Summit on White House Lawn) authors a book about how DNA live in us from ancestors on down, never gone through mutation.

What we collect and store become archives for future generations.

It looked as if we lost a few leaders this past weekend, one of whom could have become Class President who delivers Commencement Address at Beaver Stadium.

In the East, there is a saying ” When Bulls and Bears are in combat, mosquitoes get smashed”.

That baseball team will miss its only girl teammate and Penn State its future recruit.

I am going out to buy some lip balms, but feel sad inside for the parents who couldn’t do a simple act of kindness I am about to do. Hug your child and have him/her hear kindness from your lips. The troops will know this too while under heavy fires.

Kindness in the most unlikely place.