Tag: Chinese New Year

The ME who could’ve been

It’s Chinese New Year morning. Except there weren’t a lot of Vietnamese around.

They were here yesterday, and last week. But apparently, on this cold Sunday morning,

gym wasn’t their priority. Attention is devoted to festivals and festivities at the Temples, in the park and at the fair.

Like in-country counterparts, they would put on new clothes and carry li-xi envelopes ready to be dispensed, like an eager college freshman with stacks of condom supplies.

Here in Orange County, the festivities have only just begun. Bands were busy rehearsing, and bottles pre-ordered (up scale wine and dine).

I thought to myself, what a wonderful world.

Had I stayed my entire time in Vietnam, what the Me would have turned out?

– I wouldn’t show up at the gym on the first day of Tet either (none would be opened) and

would still fight the hang over from the New Year Eve’s celebration.

– I would drink strong cafe sua da (iced latte), perhaps from the only Starbucks in town.

– Sometimes people go the movies during Tet (since there aren’t a lot of entertainment venues that could accommodate an entire extended family). This year, Die Hard is opened on New Year’s Day in Vietnam.

Ten days before, they showed “My Nhan Ke” (femme fatale), complete with sword fighting and Crouching -Tiger Matrix-like effects.

– I would stay home early in the morning, for fear of being the first visitor to friends’ houses. Who would want to be blamed for the bad outcome of their entire year!.

Banh Chung (green-bean cakes) and pickled onion would be my brunch, since restaurant workers also stay home to celebrate their own Tet.

Then comes the dreaded part: the unwanted relatives.

They would want to reorder my life’s priorities by matchmaking attempts.

I would burn incenses for my deceased parents, offering fruits and flowers along with Banh Chung and confitures.

Tet in Vietnam or in the US is the same.

But the man I used to be (the Me in relation to others e.g. uncle, brother-in-law, etc…) has changed.

I work out, I read, I blog and frankly, I have become atomized and adapting to both virtual and western world.

My motto is to observe, filter and retain only necessary data (handling spam mail) for survival.

I want to connect the dots or else others would do it for me.

Instead of being the mini-we in We, I have become the Me on my own, with legs to stand on.

It’s like the spirits of the Dust Bowl. Rebuilding after the gathering storm, all on one’s own.

We are evolving into new creatures of the Web, where Who We Are is influenced by what we view, like and whom we share it with.

It won’t happen overnight, but it is evolving. The same way our taste for music and fashion by osmosis once shaped by our next up of kin (or closest friends).

Or else, how would we explain an entire generation falling in love with American Pie, Vincent, Say You Say me.

My friend mentioned Lionel Richie‘s line “easy as Sunday Morning”.

So it’s Sunday Morning. The Vietnamese who would otherwise show up at the gym, have taken it easy “like Sunday Morning”.

It’s new year. It’s a celebration. Time for feasting and eating. To broker marriages and business relations.

Even to forgive trespasses both from the religious (Sunday)  and cultural (Tet) stand point. Let us not fall into temptation. I am sure after these three days, (with gambling and drinking involved) many would find above prayer more meaningful if not personable. The Me who could’ve been should have taken it easy like Sunday morning.

Instead, I end up going to the gym all these three days and only take small bites of the bean cake. It’s brand simple, but a winning entry for our national contest for the throne. Back when the general consensus was that the Earth was square. And that it’s not good for a man to be alone on this very day. He has to be a mini-we in the context of a larger batch that hatched into a tribe called Lac Viet, ancestors of today’s Vietnamese. No wonder those “Individualized” stairmasters remain unoccupied on this New Year’s morning: everybody is reclaiming what’s they once were.

Clearing the deck

In about ten days, the world will see an exodus of millions. Chinese New Year.

Workers and students on The Last Train Home.

First day of the New Year (Snake) will be dedicated to ancestors e.g. visiting their graves or wherever the family altar happens to be.

From then on, neighbors visiting neighbors, catching up on latest gossips.

Saigon is about to be emptied out. Students have just finished their exams.

Workers party on with co-workers while try to save up for their home-bound trips.

Companies pay out bonuses. Not nearly enough. Hard times.

Money from the common pot, just changing hands.

Even Vietnamese American from overseas try to find an envy seat on those East-bound flights.

Back in 1975, some of them got experience, but at the opposite direction.

This herd-like movement is as predictable as the Muslim and Hindu pilgrims.

However, their sons and daughters have changed. More adapting to city landscape  and playground, with more mobile phones and supermarkets.

Even clubbing, an urban phenomenon, now a common practice in second and third-tier towns.

Parents put up one last-ditch effort to hold on. Who want to be an empty-nester!

Where have their children gone? Eyes glued to the screen, racing against the machine (virtual combatant).

This is not the first time parents learn to let go.

But it’s the first generation of parents who fail to understand the force of modernity whose grips are so strong on their fast-growing children.

We used to place blames on cultic figures (Jim Jones) or gang leaders (Hearst syndrome) who gather and garner followers.

Now, who can prosecute animation and urbanization.

A force of change here,  an adoption there. Before you know it, kids are strangers in their own homes.

They want to connect as they used to. But have lost the keys.

Alienation and estrangement. Celluloid and chip set. Instruments of change, but also instruments of divide.

I am glad people still go home each year. Keep them sane. When seeing yourself in the faces of others of common genes set, you can’t help questioning yourself.

No one comes out a winner. It’s not a race. Modernity and machine just keep going unstoppable. Up to us to regulate our internal filters and rate of adoption.

Last Train Home. There might be both blessings and curses awaiting at the last stop. Ironically, the symbol is that of a snake, which keeps you guessing, and sweating at the edge of your seat.

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.

Austin

Tech campus turned Mall (still keeps the “DOMAIN” name).

Borders out of business, but Apple store is thriving.

Austin, ranked as most tolerant city in America, saw Chinese Graduate students hang out leisurely on a Sunday afternoon, complete with rocking chairs, very well be made in China.

Welcome to America. Welcome to Starbucks. What’s your name buddy? My name is Buddy.

Howdy Buddy. Wait over that line for your gourmet latte.

It’s the one spot in the middle of Texas where even a native feels out-of-place.

It could have been a page right out of the San Jose playbook.

Silicon Valley meets Silicon Hills. If only they can pull off a Chinese New Year Parade as does annually in San Francisco.

Fifteen years ago, there was little of the town as far as Asian groceries and shops.

Now there exists a large, newly built compound, unmistakably Asian with names like  Pho Saigon, Saigon Baguette, Chinese barbeque. There even is a Chinese bank at the corner, as well as Chinese church at the T section of Braker and Dessau.

The Recession made strange bed fellows, at times, literally (interracial couples seen walking down the street, forcing senior citizens to pause and be puzzled: are we at war with China? The last times Asian girls seen walking with white guys, was during war-time that brought them together were during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.).

So, there it is, a new Domain, complete and transformed from a once overhyped dot.com era.

Yes, Austin is thriving and aggressive to win over California businesses and elsewhere. UT students are benefited from this microcosm of the larger world.

Gaming and software companies are source-coding every minute of the day and night. It’s fitting that 24-hr gyms pick this city to expand.

One thing that was left out in The Rise of the Creative Class. Austin, although ranked as most tolerant city in America, is also home to most allergies in America. I knew it’s too good to be true from the Chamber of Commerce web page. It is now a certified truth that one needs to walk the ground as well as see things from afar. GPS alone can’t quite do the job.  Onward, adapt (euphemism for step back), then onward again.

Starbucks knows it best. Until the McDonald guy catches on. He asked for my name (first time in 36 years). I gave it to him too. My name is Buddy.

Yearning for the new

The Year of the Cat.

Al Stewart in white suit.

Cyclical, eternal and in sync with nature. No “dominion over the land and seas” as in Western theocracy (in an ironic twist, outside my window, the work crew keeps digging, plowing, flattening and paving the sidewalks – one after another, from water to power, cable to phone companies – one dead-end street, multi-crew, stretching on for months).

People just want to rest, renew and reinvigorate.

Eat the fruit and replant the seed.

Eat the fruit, and remember those who planted the seed.

Greet the young and remember the old.

In letting go, one is free to receive the first visitor on New Year.

I could always tell who was going to be our first visitor while growing up in Vietnam.

Great Uncle, in bow tie.

(It would be an equivalence of man in black during New Year Eve’s party).

The bouquet, the basket of fruit and a bowl of brisket, all symbolize abundance from nature . This was during a pre-supermarket era i.e. fresh, not frozen.

Lunar New Year presents a different perspective.

I remember a movie joke line “the only restaurant opens over Christmas is Chinese“.

And perhaps the opposite is also true: the only establishment that is open in Vietnam during Tet is Circle K. (backpacker’s alley).

I miss the firecrackers. They replace them with fireworks now.

But the scent and sound of firecrackers truly marked the changing of the “animal” (from Tiger to Cat). New Year Day saw various shades of pink and red firecracker’ s ash on rich man’s lawn.

Everyone yearns for the new: new clothes, new money  and new coat of paint. The ancestral altar also got buffed up. My late parents used to pen some poems right after midnight.

If they had Web 2.0 back then, they probably would have gone on Facebook and “status” it. People forgive and forget. Life is hard enough with war, separation and loss.

For three days, food is taken for granted.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy. Let’s hear it! 10-9-8…count down. No, there is no such clear-cut.

Just a crack here and a pop there, and before you realize it, New Year has arrived . It dropped a ton of optimism in a hurry, like an overtime UPS man running late. Growing up in war-time and in poverty is like doing exercise: you have to do it every day to make it work for you (you learn to look at yourself and others not by the amount of possession,  but by the richness of one’s relationships).

New Year in Vietnam is  a time for communal self-renewal. Everybody yearns for the new, for a better tomorrow. For now, Al Stewart’s the Year of the Cat will do just fine, since it was a top hit back then. Every twelve years, it becomes relevant all over again.

 

The tough gets going

Steelers‘ number 33 and 34. Back to basics. One yard at a time to Super Bowl.

On the field or off it, we have to retrench and defragment. USA Today cover story features “the faces of today’s unemployed”, showing a nuclear family, sitting in the back of  the family pick-up truck, with two beautiful young daughters, a wife and a Dad who couldn’t turn to face the camera.

What have we done to ourselves?

Instead, we managed to distract ourselves with I-pod and I-pad, scrapbook and Facebook. User-generated content but not corporate-generated income.

World leaders are heading to Davos on private jets, while world factory workers take a nap on the last train home (Chinese New Year).

Instead of  having another Sputnik moment, we can barely have a picnic moment in the park, whose benches often serve as home for the homeless.

Each demographic cluster has its own “medium” of expression. In this case, card-board signs that say “anything helps”.

The longer the red light, the more time for guilt to build up (they should be in Davos street corners this week holding those card-board signs. Better donor pool).

I have noticed that:

– Star Wars and Apocalypse Now re-release (Blu Ray), the former made it as memorabilia for future generations.

– Men grooming sector surges with the rise of unemployment (first in Japan and now in the West).

– Virtual funerals, instead of “the Big Chill” reunion (In traditional China, they even hired mourners to jazz it up).

– McDonald did well during the Recession, so they can afford to raise the price, while Arby’s is up for sale.

– The life cycle of tech companies (or their CEO’s) is shortened as compared to brick-and-mortars’

– Starbucks’ new logo is not the answer to boost sales. Another bubble is.

– Facebook photos, men in long shots, while women in close-ups

– Amazon keeps plugging away, under the radar, to position itself for virtualization and cloud computing

(while letting Google, Facebook and Apple steal the headlines).

– Yahoo, AOL and My Space already look like dinosaurs from Web 1.0

– China is leading in solar panel manufacturing. This plays to their strength (very similar to India’s momentum post-Y2K).

So, we are content with old institutions e.g. Larry King Show (whose guests feel like they are on America Got Talent), Regis Show and Tonight Show while Boomers seek familiar routine and route (35 miles an hour speed limit, same channel on TV, same store for breakfast. No wonder they can afford to raise the price. No place else to go!).

Some old tricks still work, as the case with the Steelers’ that got them to the Super Bowl. Makes one wonder if we should bring back Reagan-Thatcher’s strong-handedness (whose inflationary consequences are still felt today). This time, it is going to be without Mr Stockman.