Tag: Deer Hunter

Random meet

In Vietnam, don’t be surprised when you are placed  next to a complete stranger, who knows someone who knows your host.

It happened to me at Christmas party this year.

Next to me was a Vietnamese-American returning from multiple tours in Iraq.

He was here to fly his wife out. She had flown in as well, but from Australia.

Happy ending: he was back from the war zone while she from a former one.

The company she works for has agreed to transfer her to the US.

I was like NYT‘s Friedman, marvelled at how “flat” our world had become.

A teen-age girl at the table couldn’t help “omg”, “omg” “so you’re like in Hurt Locker?”

We were trying to break the ice waiting to be served when the spot light turned to our returning soldier. Rest of the night was “omg” etc…

I couldn’t help reflect on “the Deer Hunter” syndrome, and how drastic the change had been in our reception of veterans.

This story hasn’t taken into account how high-tech this war was as compared to Vietnam. Incidentally, I read a statistic that mentioned the average life expectancy for Vietnamese: 1960-40 years, 2010 – 73 years.

No wonder it’s jam-packed “scooter nation”.

When my fellow dinner guest left on his perhaps in-law scooter, I said “if you can make it in Iraq, you can ride in Vietnam”.

We were joking about his need to keep in shape after all the good foods.

One common ice-breaking tip is “who would you choose to be dinner guest.”

Some people mentioned Bill Gates, others, Kennedy.

My favorites would be Charlie Rose, since he can draw anyone out of his/her shelf.

Barbara Walters would be interesting if she stopped being a journalist, and just be a conversationalist.

I then would invite Elton John, George Harrison and John Lennon.

Let the party begin.

Random meeting but more enlightened towards the end of the dinner.

I realise one thing after last night: you might not agree with a policy (what Mass Destruction Weapon?) but you need to accept the person, soldier or civilian. We are all floating together (Christ Church in New Zealand got struck twice sitting on the ring of Fire) on the seabed and sitting around the table together.

Disagreement or agreement, we are fellow human beings, seekers of truth and beauty. And perhaps, for a moment there, he and I were both “viet-kieu” (you need a second helping there).

Random meet, but perhaps not quite random after all. Merry Christmas soldier boy!

Faith in humanity

A graduate of Penn State, I related well to the scenes from the Deer Hunter, set in an industrial town of Pennsylvanian.

Smokestacks on the slope, familiar faces and friends and the “Welcome Home” sign for returning soldiers from a distant war.

But unlike other wars before and since, this one was controversial.  It showed when the main character, portrayed by DeNiro, ducked behind a taxi driver and asked to be driven pass his own Welcoming party.

Out of three “deer hunters”, one came back without injury to the mind or the body. Am I thy brothers’ keeper?

In CBS  Vietnam‘s documentaries, soldiers were shown sitting in the shade, smoking and listening to transistor radio which was playing “Oh, I don’t want to die”  (Reflections of my life).

Yet decades later, land mines still exploded claiming many more limps and lives.

The late Princess Diana was advocating the elimination of land mines.

At long last, the largest nuclear bomb in TX is being disassembled (the article said engineers have since died off, so it’s hard to locate the blue prints).

Farewell to arms.

Hemingway, go home.

All we need is love.

Faith in humanity. Speaking of humanity. We saw quake in Turkey and flood in Thailand.

The heavy rain and flood forced Thailand to close its airport and evacuate parts of its capital (the toll: 506 deaths).

When it rains it pours there in South East Asia.

I was in Vietnam last year. All of a sudden, it poured really hard.

From a sidewalk cafe, I saw a middle-age lady in cone hat tried to push a scrap metal cart whose wheels were half buried in water-covered pot holes.

Now, the UN is advocating Environmental sustainability, with 7 Billion people sharing Earth’s limited resources, foremost is clean water.

China was quick to beef up R&D in solar and desalinated water.

We can not pretend we live in complete isolation. Debris from Fukushima quake drifted to California.

Flood in Thailand slow down server production, which pushes companies to the Cloud.

First wave: Main Frame, second wave: personal computer and third wave: cloud, which brings us in full circle.

Talking about automation, and unemployment. Stats shows high unemployment among returning veterans of the two wars. It’s time for that Welcome-Home sign again.

Hope they find a job and not wait too long for to receive those benefits.

Hope they won’t  have to duck behind the taxi driver.

Farewell to arms, to guilt and to self-recrimination.

All we need is love and a little faith in humanity. Princess Diana would have been proud to see a female film Director received an Oscar for Hurt Locker. The subject: land mine.

Unsung Peacemakers

In the wake of a huge catastrophe, we tend to rely on experts, in this case, geologists to lecture us on aftershocks, fault line, Pacific Ring of Fire etc…

We tend to miss the human dimension of unsung heroes, the peacemakers.

There were a Japanese crew, earthquake experts, in New Zealand trying to help out in anyway they could. Little did they know, more abrupt crises awaiting them at home.

Venturing beyond one’s border for the sakes of others, to pay forward.

That’s the mission of a peacemaker. During the Haiti quake, then Gov. of FL refused to let relief efforts to use his home state as a base of operations.

On CNN, we witnessed a Vietnamese doctor ferrying out dying victims on a private chartered plane. Actors like John Travolta also chipped in.

Those who cross the cultures (Euro-centric to Pacific Rim for instance, or in the case of our current United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon  from Korea, who has his hand full of crises) encounter both culture shock and reverse culture shock.  Those who return from war abroad also face Post-Traumatic Disorder syndrome (the Deer Hunter, Born on the Fourth of July) being misunderstood and marginalized (De Niro played a returning veteran who asked the taxi driver to keep going, pass his welcome-home party).

This week, CNN showed a short video of “soldier surprised daughter at school” in Idaho.

The 9-year-old said it was like in a dream (upon spotting her still-in-uniform Daddy

show up at school after finishing his tour of duty).

The scene has been repeated many times in American history

(children running to the tarmac greeting returning fathers – You Tube

video for Reflections of My Life by the Marmalades).

We now have a second generation – children of  Vietnam era  and nemesis i.e.- flower children – both wanting to to know what’s it like for their fathers to leave the comfort of the then-Middle class environment to engage in unpopular battles  on the other side of the world.

Even when trying hard, they could only walk a mile in their shoes, albeit as backpacking tourists.

(recently two young American females died along with many others in a tourist boat accident. )

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/vietnam-halong-bay-boat-accident-kills-11-foreigners-list-of-names-51466.html

Three and a half decades after it ended,  this war still has some legs. Last month,  Prime Minister of Australia pledged more money to support a Vietnam Memorial Center, to bring world attention to the hefty price Australians paid during this “American war” as known in Vietnam. No one said it better than John Savage, one of the four main characters in the Deer Hunter ” I don’t fit in” (back on a wheel chair , playing Bingo in a  Pittsburgh nursing home).

So once again, we rely on musicians to help us sort through our conflicting emotions. In said movie, it’s a guitar piece from the Shadows.

Blessed are the peacemakers. For they gave their lives and limps for the idea and ideal of freedom taken for granted by us here in the West.