Tag: Bob Dylan

Love sees differently

It’s half past five AM. Outside the Women Association of Ho Chi Minh City, I heard music. Not hip hop, not trance. Jut Gold music “Gui Gio Cho May Ngan Bay”, blasted from a boom box . It’s dark, but the sidewalk hosted a group of women practicing Tai-Chi.  The music was about acceptance, about one wing drops after another. But here they stood, with graceful moves and fateful lives.

Their counterparts meanwhile distribute magazines, newspapers, meat, seafood etc.. for the city of 10 million. I struggled to find room on the sidewalk for the run, before hordes of scooters claiming their right of way.

Common city dwellers don’t seem to be able to afford living space. NUSKIN and new Life Insurance, big-box Fast Food and sugar-drink companies such as Coca Cola drove up commercial real estate prices.

As a result, the face of the city has changed, over the last six months (faster than in the US).

One can spot the need for women gyms, for skin care and cosmetic products.

But then, love sees it differently. Here were mothers of revolution . Of future leaders.

and of past glory. Still out there before dawn. Still guarding the age of romanticism (w/out make-ups or cosmetic surgery).

Still staying fit for the fight. Vietnam is synonymous with war. War against Chinese invaders, French colonialists,  American reluctant Imperialists, Cambodian “cap-duon” and now, in full circle, back to the Islands against the Chinese  industrialists.

Still “Gui Gio Cho May Ngan Bay”, still with that cigarette-hoarse voice of Khanh Ly, the exile folk singer, muse of Trinh Cong Son (and Trinh Nam Son will be here for just one night) known as Vietnamese Bob Dylan.

Love sees it differently. The same song could be used to soothe the soul, comfort the afflicted, or to motivate the team . At any age, at any time.

I blogged about the resilience of the Vietnamese women (Mom’s Ao Dai).

Now I realized I did not know what I was talking about. I barely scratched the surface .

The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram spoke of a woman doctor who walked the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just to be near the war front where her lover had gone before. It spoke of the diary with “fire”. To others, war was hell. Love sees it differently (she died a martyr’s death, never to be reunited with her lover).

The irony did not escape me that, in contrast to Western sense of appropriateness,

here women could be warriors, housewives and heads of  firms, with no conflict.

Their ability to synthesize and compromise says a lot about how this society manage to gloss over enormous challenge.(see After Sorrow).

A city of 10 million or 1 million, it doesn’t matter.  What matter was how those women have taken over the education in public, and the management of the household in private. It’s they who make it happen. Just show up and see at 5 AM, the music and movement. Then you will see the tip of the iceberg. Often we don’t see those undercurrents. But love sees it differently. It got you up early and forced you to notice. I noticed. I learned.

je pense

Have you ever looked back at those goals you had set right out of college?

Marriage? Career? Health?

Then and Now. Perhaps they still remain the same or in reverse order.

No one set out with a goal of multiple marriages.

Or multiple careers.

Yet it has happened, taken most of us by surprise. On a macro scale, the same speed of change has occurred,  right after a State Visit of Chinese Leaders to a Texas range ( Deng wearing a cowboy hat), then the Soviet Leader advertised for Pizza Hut, sitting in the back of a limousine.

Bang! No more Cold War. Only hot food.

Berlin Walls down. Firewalls up.  Mainframe on Main Street, albeit smaller and smarter.

Our expectations have gone through multiple adjustments: fast food and fast divorce, financing and financial rescue (individual and institutional level; fiscal cliff?)

Nuclear families melt down, just as nuclear reactors did (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima).

Neil Young now grows old (Old Man Looks at my Life…) but Bob Seger is Still The Same.

Yoko Ono exhibits  John Lennon’s Art Works, instead of hers.

So we adapted. Bob Dylan said we always reinvented the past, because the Present and Future are both unknown.

Shirley Maclaine would vehemently disagree. She went all the way, claiming to have married with the Roman Emperor himself, albeit in his  reincarnated version as a Swedish prime minister.

What do I make of all these forward/backward worldviews? I have been told to keep my head down (slurping my cup-a-noodle?). Don’t think much. Then I heard the music “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”.

Then I start being futuristic: electric vehicles, solar energy and stem cells.

Those unknowns are fascinating. They bring new designs to auto and home building industries. They bring new jobs.

New hope.

America in the late 50’s had its mojo.

For those who are not afraid to set high goals, beyond just marriage, career and health, the future belongs to them.

Stay hungry, stay foolish. Think different. Je pense. Rodin’s statue of the Thinker could use some imagination ( sitting on a newly designed toilet seat, for instance)

Bill Gates is trying to do just that. Now, he starts to pick up from his friend Steve Jobs, some diversion thinking. The future belongs to those who are not completely satisfied with what now exists. Contentment or progress? Keep your head down or look up to the stars? Busy with Moon walk (Michael Jackson) or Mars Rover?

Your choice. I was just thinking out loud. It would be nice to have you join us. Imagine. And the world will be one.

Be sure to bring some flowers

That voice which slows toward the end of the song as the chord changes:
“If you’re going to San Francisco…” accompanied by the 60’s signature tambourine, has died. But his one-hit wonder stays, perhaps more famous than the city itself.

It’s a state of mine. A period in history, with in-depth expose by Tom Hayden and Tom Brokaw. A new explanation and “a vibration” (today, we got “going viral” ). People in motion.  Keep moving. Keep evolving. Keep changing at the grass root level.

No one wanted to be “institutionalized” (One flew over the cuckoo’s nest). Individualism championed by groups and movement, ironically. Out of the box, out of the can.
We got Papillon, the Great Escape (both played by Steve McQueen, a San Francisco’s familiar face).  We got the ethos (youth), the prop (flower), the non-verbal greeting (peace symbol), the hair, the costume (Indian fashion) and an anthem.

I first heard the song right before Tet 68. School was closed due to the uprising throughout South Vietnam. With a lot of time in my hand, I practiced the guitar. San Francisco over House of the Rising Sun, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road over both.  The girls (older than I) were with flowers on their hair.

Later, when I had a chance to revisit Vietnam, I looked up an old classmate who had been paralyzed, When I played the guitar and sang for him, who lied motionless in bed,  he requested San Francisco (people in motion).

My friend was one of the “gentle people” I have met in my life. He is into poetry, music by Trinh Con Son (Vietnamese Bob Dylan). And he got paralyzed for rescuing some kids who were standing under a fallen iron gate.

People in motion, people in motion. But my friend has stayed immobile.

And the singer of that signature song has died.

Somehow, I don’t think it would end here. I know the spirit lives on, in San Francisco. People are passionate about the city, its livability, environment and ethos.  Legislation there is fierce and uncompromising when it comes to sustainability. After all, we want to see flowers grow there, along with civil liberty and civil rights.

Even so, be sure to bring (and wear) some flowers when you go there.

The Bay areas get nice weather, gentle people and lots of hills. I even ran a Bay-to-Bridge race once, just to take in the scene. And the Chinese New Year Parade there is the event not to be missed. That era, those street corners and the people once flocked there to search (for a new explanation) and share (laying foundation for today’s internet peering, open source, wikipedia and interoperability) under one huge umbrella: McKenzie’s San Francisco.

Heck, I was just trying to get to Middle School in Vietnam. And I just stopped short of wearing some flowers in my hair. Instead, we settled for those flower stickers, along with the peace symbol, despite living at the height of the war. RIP Scotty.

Shore this!

It’s not good enough with automation.

They need to combine that with outsourcing, off-shoring, in-shoring and now, near-shoring.  The idea is to line up the  Filippino call-center workers at mid-night (to go to work, not in line for next-day Black Friday sales) to make a go at scripted greetings like “Have I done everything to your satisfaction”.

Now Google wants to be unique: back to using the shop down the street so Googlers don’t have to fly to China.

Meanwhile, Africa is buying in to the Chinese Dream.

What happened to California Dreaming? To the Mamas and the Papas.

Aren’t all the leaves brown any more?

(I definitely need to “walk into a church, and sit down and pray”).

Industrial might. Pressures of automation and legislation.

If one can get the right mix of technology prowess, regulatory compliance  and market demand, he/she  rules.  The kids are playing with the I-pads instead of cabbage dolls.

All the powers to them.

More information, hopefully leads to smarter and more compliant kids.

Not so sure on that last point!

When honeymoon is over for off-shoring, and inflation takes its toll in wage-pressured China, we will see a sad wave of unemployment and unrest there.

Of course, they can then “sub-shore” to Africa, to be evangelists of the new Chinese Dream.

Sort of Chinese Peace Corps. Know-how in exchange for rare earth. Fair trade.

Trinh Cong Son (Vietnamese Bob Dylan) had a line “Why travel to and fro so much, to tire your life out”.

The thing about companies and market is that they often don’t know what they want. A few years back,  focus groups said they wouldn’t buy a notebook (today’s I-pad). Go figure!

un film de Coppola

I heard “Bonjour Vietnam” again last night…”un film de Coppola…”

http://stanmark.multiply.com/reviews/item/9?&show_interstitial=1&u=%2Freviews%2Fitem

It evoked psychedelic images and texture of horror (adapted from  Conrad’s Heart of  Darkness.) Yet we were sitting in a boutique studio, with aged ladies sang along to Le Uyen Phuong’ s Last Word to You , equivalent of Bono and Cher: “let’s lay down one last time, kissing and caressing as primates in the wild.”

To top it all, we were introduced to an Anglo singer who performed three numbers, two of which by Trinh Cong Son, Bob Dylan’s equivalent of Vietnam (Ha Trang and Diem Xua).

For a moment, I was unsure of where I was: America? Vietnam? What time zone was it? Good Morning America or Bonjour Vietnam?

Both sides have paid a hefty price for the conflict that tore both nations apart: the anti-war movement in the States and the still-have-work-to-do integration of  the new Vietnam. Unlike in “un film de Coppola”, Vietnam Today has to manage the ever rising expectations in a flat world.

“Just want to overtake Thailand” commented an engineering department head at a Community College. Well, at least on two occasions that I knew of, Vietnam did just that: SEA games, and rice exporting.

Tourism is still up for grab for both countries.

The upcoming two-week break will see a lot of domestic touring.

Vietnam will see an exodus of its people taking buses, trains, planes and automobiles, just as  American comedian  John Candy and Steve Martin portrayed two strangers met in a snow-stranded airport.  In Apocalypse Now, our main character also came home, with chopper roar in the background overlayed Sheen’s narration ” I have found the enemy and the enemy is us”.

Coppola ran over budget multiple times (Dennis Hopper was half-stoned during the entire shoot).  But somehow, it turned out to be one defining movie of that decade.  To juxtapose 2012  (with dooomsday written all over) with the images of Apocalypse Now is to be redundant.

Vietnamese growing up all over the world can relate to “Bonjour Vietnam” who was sung by a Vietnamese-French girl.  They are curious, but have no context for their immigrant legacy. To self-protect in our age of data deluge, they partitioned their hyphenated existence from their parent’s experience. But the more they try, the stronger the grip (which according to sociologists, will manifest fully in the third generation). Eventually, both generations will have to reconcile and negotiate a truce. In Vietnam, it’s peace time. It’s America who is still in the state of war or readiness for war.

Bonjour Vietnam. Happy New Year. Let my people go.. home. Let them read from the tablet. Hopefully on it we will find:  love God and your neighbors (far and near) as you would yourself i.e. fight not without , for the enemy,  as found in un film de Coppola, is us.

Street sweeping in Saigon

I saw a funeral pouring out onto the sidewalk one day, and on the same  block, a wedding the day after.

Meanwhile, the street sweeper just went about his business of sweeping, regardless.

Even if they could use some industrial-grade sweepers, people prefer man to machine. This solves labor problems.

Scavengers make their daily routes by offering to buy anything and everything electronics.

Best Buy could use some help here.

E-waste! What a waste!

As long as one can make a buck, let someone else worry about sustainability.

I love trees but not to the point of being a tree-hugger.

But nothing gives me more pleasure than to see a shaded tree in the middle of a city.

Birds chirping, cyclo drivers napping, and my heart singing.

We got forests and we got trees.

It just that they are “unwelcome” here. Trees take up too much space.

Space for multiple use, such as weddings and funerals, marketing events and Sale Events.

One New Year down, another one (Lunar) to go.

Hoa Mai , kumquat , Lion heads, Earth man, lucky envelopes, confectionary of all kinds.

In the US, they are gearing up for Valentine.

Season changes, but street sweeper goes on sweeping.

Funeral or wedding, summer or fall.

He kept the streets clean, wiping out the past as if nothing had happened.

Bob Dylan’s equivalent , Trinh cong Son, once had a line “the bomb splattered from a distance, and the street sweeper paused to listen”.

If he were to compose a post-war version, it would be “the wedding karaoke party blasted out, and our street sweeper didn’t even stop sweeping”.

Oblivious to noise, dust, and smell, our street sweeper went about his business.

I hope among the stuff that got swept were some dead leaves; it would mean there were still hope of some shades under the scorching sun.

Street sweepers of Saigon keep sweeping and walking man walks on by. That walking man, c’est moi.

This side of doom

Doomsday prediction did not materiale.

On this side of doomsday, Southeast Asia is no longer a war zone. It’s the new fun zone (with young and upcoming demographics).

LinkedIn IPO gone through the roof while IMF Chief couldn’t check in at any hostel in NY (I did not mis-spell “hostel”). Whether you live in flood zone or dictator zone, mobile coverage is ubiquitous.

I can’t remember a time when we are required to get up to speed so quickly, from theology of rapture to sustaiability issues, from Bush tax cut to Obama’s TARP. We need to survive information glut.

All this makes the break-up of the Soviet Union (into different nations states with new names) a walk in the park. Even with public figures who still command some staying powers: Donald Trump and Henry Kissinger to Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, will soon join the baby boomers’ mass retirement.

The new actors on the scene will not take their public place, but will move onto virtual space (Farmville by Gaga and fireworks by Perry). It’s getting too crowded to actually compete in physical sphere, so we move on to virtual space (Kevin Kelly) where we can upload our “most outrageous marriage proposal ever” etc…The margin of acceptance is higher and the price of public humiliation lower.

This side of doom is quite accommodating: anywhere from child-rearing for gay couples to all-naked gym.

If we live in the most tolerant country on Earth, and still be jolted by change, how much more can citizens of Arab Spring be still and “watch the train go by”. 7 billion people living in jet age and internet time – discounted firewalls by political dictators and mind control by cult leaders – negotiate change, either by osmosis or by being active (open universities at MIT or TED talk online to help you “be all you can be” in your own time). I can’t wait to get up every morning, doomsday or not. Prophets (false or true) come and go. But in our internet age, we should reserve our judgement until all facts are in and not jump into conclusion for just one tweet.

Dylan’s time a changin!

Years ago, I rode in the back , my friend and his wife in front, and I popped “The Essential Bob Dylan” on “to knock, knock ….on heaven’s door” all the way to a Vietnam beach. On April 10th, the singer will be there in person, finally.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-20043290-10391698.html

American celebrities with conscience have fascinated with Vietnam e.g. “Mr & Mrs Smiths“, De Niro, J Fonda and now Bob Dylan.

Lady, lady, lay….A lot of teach-in and sit-in to culminate in his only appearance in the land which has sparked so much division and protest (take Wisconsin and multiply by 1000).

A legend in his own right, Dylan carried his guitar to NYC, played at clubs

and became a prophet of sort to his generation. During the 80’s, Dylan and  Springsteen flirted with God and Country, in that order. “You got to serve somebody” if you are “Born in the USA“.

Now, after a gig in Vegas, his promoter booked him for modern-day Mecca: China and Taipei. Vietnam will be something of a side tour, for catharsis.

Dylan, like other musicians of his time – Neil Young for instance – nurtures a love-hate arm-length relationship with the “System”. Damn if you do, damn if you don’t,  “in, but not of it”.

The WSJ pulled a quick punch when the man was almost down (saying he couldn’t keep up the beat during his Vegas’ gig).

At 60, you are glad to stay alive (his early date died just recently).

Keep knocking on heaven’s door.

One of these days, it will open up for those who are persistent.

Meanwhile, we live on, never stop questioning while the answers remain elusive, as if  “blowing in the wind”.

I can’t help noticing a stark contrast between two iconic photos: the Woodstock’s couple wrapped in a blanket, and the lone Japanese-quake woman among the rubbles. The former had a choice to be outdoor and enjoyed a 3-day of Peace, Love and Music. The later was forced to be victim of a 8.9 earthquake.  To celebrate or lament our existence, we need artists to point us to a more transcended reality (Dylan showed up at the concert by G Harrison for victims of Bangladesh flood).  In Dylan, it’s the combination of poetic justice, lyrical poignancy and one-of-the-kind eccentricity that set him apart from other revolving-door names (Ricky who?).

Dylan and Vietnam seem to be a match made in heaven, without all the knocking. Both seemed to survive myriads of controversies and contradictions.

Both remain mystique, alluding our attempt to put people and places in a box.

Gone are these jobs!

I read today about 10 jobs that did not exist a decade ago. http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/111973/jobs-that-didnt-exist-10-years-ago

It quickly came to mind jobs that are now gone, for good:

Telephone switchboard operators

Gas station attendants (who used to wipe our windshields and check the oil)

One-hour photo clerk (Remember Robin Williams?)

Milkman, mailman, newspaper boy (fewer jobs)

Typist – (transcription)

Watch repairman

Shoe-shine boys (still working in Hanoi two years ago when I was there)

Answering service operator

Borders bookstore owner

Shoe repairman or tailor

Toll collector (some States still have them)

Translator (gone soon)

Tutor (moving online)

English teacher (robot is taking over the classroom in S Korea)

Jeopardy player (Watson won)

The time, they are a changin!  The press made a note that he wasn’t on top of his performance in Las Vegas (I did not see it at the Grammys).

Again, everything is “blowing in the wind”, including jobs from a pre-digital bygone era. Photo copy clerks should learn Search Engine Optimizing skills to get jobs in the 21st century. But then, watch out for Google algorithm.

Found this in WSJ Opinion page, which went much more in depth about the disappearance of traditional jobs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703439504576116340050218236.html?mod=ITP_opinion_0

supply chain dilemma

First they outsourced to lower the cost of, let’s say, an I phone.

The guy (Chinese farm-to-factory worker) if not jumped out of the window from a Foxconn‘s dorm, wished he had because there was no way he could afford one. Even his counterparts in NYC had to get in line just to hand carry the same phone back to China for a profit.

Meanwhile, leaders are scratching their heads, trying to turn that same worker into a domestic consumer. So, he needs and wants a raise. Wage increases drive up production costs, making it less affordable for emerging domestic market.

Or, because of the innovator’s dilemma, product cycle, market adoption and planned obsolescence, consumers taste moves on to Galaxy etc…just as you adjusted your production strategy (Dell just-in-time, then went Retail, then went private).

It’s hard for young people in China and Vietnam not to want an I Phone. It’s harder to keep their wages down while aspiration is up. Meanwhile, the US needs jobs here at home. The same with European countries which can offer quality workmanship (even though for years, they haven’t had a decent manufacturing order to practice their skills ).

For IT outsourcing and cloud computing, it’s easy to “follow the sun”. But for manufacturing it is hard to pick up and move, then move back. Two trends seem to recently emerge in the US: resource-sharing (ride and facility), and reshoring.

A few workers jumped out of the window in China signals the beginning of many  to follow elsewhere.  Remember we live in an interconnected interdependent world where one-upmanship now spans the globe (Indian IT workers are seen partying just like counterparts in Silicon Valley during Happy Hour).

One CEO is nominated CEO of the Year (Netflix), two CEO’s going bankrupt (Blockbuster and MGM).

I got a Sixth Sense. I see dead people. The time, they are a’ changin.  The guy who hummed it (Bob Dylan) was featured in a WSJ article as slipping due to aging.

We got enough worries about the ever expanded and contracted cycles of long-tail product but short-term people.

Ford was quite correct to make the model T’s affordable to his workers (whose wages were quit high). That seemed to put the dilemma to rest in his time. Times, they are a changin, since Model T to I phone. Quite a gulf to cross from creators to consumers.