Tag: Burger King

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.

The things they still carry

The war novel with similar title was surprisingly good. I have known about it for a while, but couldn’t get myself to “carry” it home. Until now. Until it’s translated into Vietnamese.

It’s the opposite of reading Bao Ninh‘s The Sorrows of War in English.

Both novels had the same setting, same period, same conflict, same ending (went down with whatever they were carrying, on their bodies and on their minds).

Sorry winner and lucky loser.

All the while, the sound track for that same period was Proud Mary (you don’t have to worry, for people are happy to give).

In The Things They Carried, supplies were chopper-ed in (chocolate, cigarettes and C-rations). The military industrial complex was “happy to give”, from Hartford, from MN etc…

Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.

I could barely get through the first few chapters, reading about the members of this fictitious company as they went down, with the things they carried (one of them even carried sleeping pills – for eternal rest).

We can now look back, with recognized names like J. Kerry, J. Fonda etc… at a  safe and rational distance, away from the heat of Kent State and Watergate and My Lai.

I have seen the things people here in VN carry, on their shoulders, on their scooters.

But inside, unless they sit down and tell me, the hidden things that they still carry are scary.

Those with vivid memories are dying one by one, on both sides of the Pacific.

We got scholarly volumes and doctrine (Powell) on the conflict.

And we eventually got Burger King and Dunkin here in VN. It’s like the tunnel is finally closed  with sign which says “Go away, leave the past alone”.

For here or to go?

It’s Future Land now. Happy Land. Disney Land. Dream Land. It has to be.

Yes. Young students carry a lot with them today: book bags, smart phones,  eye glasses, cigarettes, lighters, even IDs. No dog tags. No Zippos. No memories.

Just a bunch of “nic’s” and passwords. Everything is in the Cloud. On Facebook. On Drop Box and Mail Box.

To search for them. Easy. Just Google. In Vietnamese, or English. No translation needed. Sorrows of War or The Things They Carried. Instant access.

Perhaps that war, Vietnam that was, was the last  “hardware-driven” conflict.

No wonder, the things they carried, seemed awfully heavy and burdensome when viewed from a light-weight I-pad.

Madonna and child

Not the Seine in Paris. But Rach Nhieu Loc in Saigon. She wore a cone hat. Baby tanning in the morning sun, resting in her bosom. The other hand, she checked her messages from a mobile phone.

It’s  Thanksgiving in Vietnam. People  have a lot to be thankful for. It’s now ranked second on Happy Country Index (the US 25th on infrastructure).

Infrastructure and Index of Happiness. By all counts, the canal stings. But people as a whole are considered happy. Many would care less for the Mayan calendar and its doom prediction.

When it gets too hot, it rains. Nature idea of  a “smart” grid. GE is investing heavily in “industrial internet” (the way Bill Gates referred to in his “at the speed of thoughts”.)

People here move about at the speed of motorbikes. It barely rains and people are already in ponchos and helmets , zooming by non-stop. No delay, no second thought.

Moving forward. Day after day. Only the future. When school is out, kids pour out into the concrete sidewalks, like a disturbed  beehive.

High-margin items are on display, all mobile related (I phone casing, eye glasses and sun glasses, helmets of all stripes, pull-overs and book bags).

Students from the country side try hard to accommodate themselves off campus by working at odd jobs.

I found an eatery with decent meals. Sharing a round table with strangers: meat, rice, soup and iced tea.

French-style cafes are extremely popular, serving cafe-sua-da at all times of the day.

007 is shown here too, interlaced with Twilight.

I wonder if the life style depicted in those movies ignite young people’s aspiration.  The Twilight cast, red-eye aside, all look perfect when they don’t go “hunting”.

Books are confined in a dozen outlets, scattered around the city, still priced themselves out of reach of the average wage earner.

The publisher I am in talk with has a branch office behind a huge pagoda, which is located across from Vietnam’s famous Vinh Nghiem pagoda. So, it’s not just KFC and Burger King who stake out prime locations. Religious outfits do so as well.

Meanwhile, the population understands health and fitness, how they relate to happiness. A nation ranked second after only Costa Rica in Happiness can surely connect the dots.

Their diet is healthy and their movement swift.

It starts early in the morning and early in life.

I saw the evidence this morning. Mother and child. Sun bathing.

Texting and tanning.

All contribute to the formula of healthiness besides discarded Vinamilk pouches on the street.

Perhaps technology has contributed much to Vietnam’s progress. Today, if you found a bicycle moving about, it’s a rare sight.  You can’t reverse history (especially in China, where automobiles are now as common as bicycles three decades ago).

You can only move forward with industrialization.

You read these lines. You know I am at an internet cafe next to my cafe-sua-da.

I do have something to be thankful for. I found a high-speed internet location.

30 years on

USA Today celebrated its 30th anniversary issue, with bolder graphics and fonts (thanks! we can use larger fonts now).

Those papers we pick up outside our hotel rooms when traveling on business  (to be left behind at airport lounges).

Anyway. This issue features some “futurists” in each sector: urban architecture, space travel, transportation (Ford), internet (Twitter’s founder) etc…

A quote that jumps out of the page: “in the future, the world will be divided into two classes: those who are told by the machine what to do, and those who tell the machine what to do”.

Wow! unmanned cars which Google is currently test-driving. Electric cars = computers on wheels.

Information will be ubiquitous, like those electricity plugs we scarcely notice.

We will be 30 years older (just think back to 1982. Back then, a friend was “experimenting” with his personal computer).

Back then, we were transiting from cassette to CD, from a weak America into a stronger one (Carter was quoted as saying:” we have a crisis of confidence”), from being a debt-free nation into a debtor nation.

Now, Iran came in full circle.

30 years on.

A lot has happened, but then, nothing has been off-script: we still have an election, the economy is still in the top 3 along with the Arab Spring went south. Hatred incites, love unites. We need Buscalia (love Guru) and Moon (matchmaker).

30 years ago, we got the Concorde, Mc Donald Douglass and McDonald. Now only McDonald (even the Burger King near me was closed). A bounty is still out for the head of Rushdie, the writer in exile.

I heard in Detroit, houses were foreclosed section by section, and sold for 5K, but no one dared to come in and be the first penguin.

30 years on. Where would you be after paying off the house and college loan. Will you be driving an EV?  a domestic?

Will we do away with laptop as we now do with desktop (BTW, the father of laptop has just died. He brought friendly design to computers ).

It’s in the American character to “make things happen” instead of “letting history happen to you” (quoted Marc Andreessen).

30 years on. We will all be writing our memoirs (lots of time on hand). WordPress will be bought out by other photo and video sites, perhaps Google. Then when we search for someone or some place, it will show all the tweets and Likes, Linkedin’s profile and blog, video,  Google photos and Facebook social graphs).  

Our “ego-sphere” will be stored in the Cloud (reminds me of Augustinian line “our soul is anchored in the heavenly, no wonders we feel restless unless we find rest in Thee). Deep search will  not be just for private investigators.

Then we will have privacy issues just as in Electronic Medical Records. In an accident, the EV will pop up our medical conditions for first responders to attend to. It’s a bold new world. Can’t wait to grow old. Aging will be a cool thing, and not jeered at (especially when we can afford spare artificial organs) (see my other blog on NEVER LET ME GO) . We will stay active in the cities and don’t have to move to Cocoa Beach, Florida (home of the USA Today founder). 30 years ago, even while escaping to Bali or Bahamas, we couldn’t wait to get online (You’ve Got Mail). 30 years on, we can’t wait to get offline. Maybe the hotel still leave a copy of USA Today outside the door. This time, definitely in bolder prints.

My edu-tour to Vietnam

When you are on a tourist visa, you have to keep renewing it every three months.

Each stamp was like a certificate of completion of my self-education. I learned that:

– my friend’s music students, blind or bright, respected and adored their dead teacher

– dead people, in casket, still get his/her last chance to bow and say goodbye to the alley

– everybody is in motion, rain or shine. Those who work in A/C environment also pound at the keyboards, hence fingers in motion

– individualism will have a hard time here

– living and working in Vietnam equals to living and working inside a fish bowl

– one force gets multiple counter-forces, in all directions, hence, defies physics as we know it

– people lock their doors so carefully that it seems as if they locked themselves in more than lock someone out

– music and movies somehow freezeframed as if the Americans had never left (Woman in Love,  I’d love you to want me…)

– peddlers would ride their three-wheeled stalls down the street while on a mobile phone: double-mobility

– you lose a lot of weight while here (sweat and luckily, not tears)

– you will be approached half a dozen times a day by lottery ticket sellers or xe-om

– Carl Jr and Burger King are here but not Mc Donalds (and not because Vietnam is more anti-MacDonalisation than the French).

– people ask why you live and eat alone. My loneliest meal was having a steak and fries just because my appointment screwed up

– consumerism has not saturated the place with high-margin products and services: spa, sweets and sporting goods

– unless you are an established brand name, forget trying to get in now. Amway all the way.

– you can get live entertainment every night : singers on scooters would bar-hop, while in-house musicians play for time

– another generation of kids are growing up watching flat-screen TV‘s and I-pads touch screens. In twenty years, with full effect of global osmosis in tech and commerce, you will not learn as much from your six months here as I have about the old and the new.

24/7 world. Outsource that software testing project. Fly here to check the lab out. Do what you have to, while it’s still fertile. While the water is still lukewarm. Once things are set, you will be just another globe trotter looking for a trophy to bring home. After a stop at a burger joint, of course. Please don’t eat alone. Still not acceptable then as it is now.

Recovering in Joseph’s way

There are some positive upward movements today.

Brought to mind Joseph story i.e. recovery from the seemingly bottomless pit (put there by who else but his own brothers).

But Joseph managed to press “reset”, reinvent himself (befriending the warden), to eventually rise to be Chief of Staff.

What did he have ? Persistence, ability to turn revenge into reward, and finally took the high road (of forgiveness).

We can take a page or two from that play book.

Great men were great not because they managed to avoid the bottom.  Precisely the opposite: they face it and not face down.

(Churchill’s line : never, never, give up. Although he later admitted to making a mistake by going by the gold standard during post-war resettlement).

Just make sure your stance is sturdy . My trainer said he could tell the shape you are in by watching how you squat.

What ever the stage of grief we are in, press “reset” and move on .

I have seen companies that thrived (McDonald’s and McAfee), folded (Circuit City and Bebo) or acquired

( Burger King by 3-G Capital and Hertz by Dollar.)

In crisis there is opportunity (builders in San Bruno are called back to work).

So begins our long climb out of the pit. One step at a time. Oh, don’t forget our Joseph who decided early on that the best revenge is sweet success, success that spills over and lifts everyone, frien-emies included.

 

Defunct fast

Fast food companies got fast funding last week: Wendy, then BK.

For the past two years, I have stopped by BK twice, each time, for the buy-one-get-one-whopper-free deal.

We will look back to this Recession as a house-cleaning era, when BK might mean bankruptcy, or Burger King.

HUD Secretary was interviewed on Capital Connection this weekend. However articulate he was, the housing sector and homeless prevention program have room for improvement.

Winter is coming. And I know a thing or two about volunteering to help the homeless.

The vicious cycle of not having a permanent address to receive the assistance checks.

(Just like many of us who were just above the poverty line, wishing sometimes we fell below it to qualify for assistance).

In fact, right after the interview, the show went on with latest poll figures showing voters’ discontentment i.e. intention to switch from coffee to tea.

I have seen change at work, from hot war to cold war, from RCA to Apple. (BTW, Ritz was acquired by Marriott, Rolls by Tata, surprising?)

Where is Bob Dylan? The time, they are a changin!

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich put it well in this weeks’ NY Times Op Ed  that unemployment is structural (top percentage of wealth earners get to keep more than ever before, leaving the shrinking middle class unable to afford life they are capable of ). Super Frugal instead of Super Power. US turns Britain i.e. less action in world affairs (can’t afford it to spread defense funding every where). It’s fitting that a new domestic infrastructure overhaul bill , Obama’s Great Society, is announced on this very day.

When still at Penn State, I tried both Burger King and McDonald. At the time, I did not know better, so I liked Mc Fries. BK , meanwhile, offered me bigger burgers for the bucks.

I did not know at the time that Hardees was home of then defunct Burger Chef (just like Arby’s now absorbs Wendy “where’s the roast beef?”).

American business landscape witnesses all sorts of consolidation: oil, airline, telecom, fast food industries, car rental and car companies.

Telecom executives are now pitching cars. “May the best car win”, push-talk advertising (from former Nextel exec).

Somehow I wish to hear from the other side of this prolonged Recession, “May the best worker rise”. The rest can join in Network-like protest: ” I am mad like hell, and I won’t take it any more”. I am glad for blog, for Web 2.0 and whatever invention that comes next. It shows human are still in charge, despite the forces that try to keep them down.

As a book’s title, let’s have the audacity to win. Not to keep the status quo, but to be true to forms. After all, each of us exists for a reason. Mine is not different from yours: a shot at life and an invitation to prom. That’s all. But these days, the barriers to entry seem enormously high.

Thanks to all the structural impediments  and bills that came due, one won’t hear “Happy Labor Day” from 9.6 percent of the population for a while. Let’s fade in “Monday is Happy Day.” instead.  How I wish we could bring back the innocent 50’s, and yelp! Grease.