Tag: Education

What happened to “Next Level”?

If you followed job ads or start-up pitches, you would be hearing “Next Level” multiple times back then..

In the 90’s it was “synergy” (M&A terms). Before that “re-engineering” (The Japan that can’t say NO). Now, it’s “collaboration”.

The Recession inadvertently served as an Editor who cut out words that don’t fit with the times.

You can’t promise “Next Level” when all you do is cost-cutting, the same with “growth” in the time of austerity and sequester.

The best we can hope for is “business as usual” i.e. keeping the lights on (and the heat).

Housing crash created excess inventory, abandoned homes – sold for $1.00- and owners turned renters.

What we thought was security turns out to be insecurity.

ADT stickers, still visible, serving no purpose.

It’s not “safe” to live in your own home when the whole neighborhood were foreclosed.

Now we need the return of synergy and neighborhood watch.

We need neighbors and community.

To come back to the question, what happened to “next level”. The bubble busted.

It has reached its limit, speculation that is.

The quants are hard at work.

The marketers are not , since  companies are not expanding.

Everyone is busy “collaborating” i.e. cost sharing, ride sharing and burden sharing.

In down time, we rediscover the value of inverted synergy.

Like roommates in the dorm, or our parent’s couch.

Hard times don’t outlast tough people . Hang in there, until we meet again, at the Next Level.

Closure

Fact 1: I went to Penn State.

Fact 2: I felt ashamed and defensive (no punt intended) at the same time

Fact 3: I am not alone in this.

There are more stuff to be worried about these days: immediate and long-term future.

Already a book was out (at 50% off) about Penn State and the culture of silence.

Collective amnesia.

Just like Vietnam War aftermath.

Or Watergate aftermath.

We move on. Have to.

It takes time discounting some relapses.

We are not therapists, much less self-therapists.

And we men don’t talk it out over coffee. Ain’t cool.

Let’s hit the gym.

Put some more weight on the bench press. Could you spot me!

Let pain reign.

It ain’t hurt.

Psycho-somatic syndrome.

What’s outside should not be let in, to infect and destroy what’s inside.

We last longer than the storm.

We survive disaster after disaster.

Only to get to the best part: closure.

By then, we have turned semi-experts on the subject of recovery.

Survivors and strivers. Long-distance runners and deep thinkers.

Conversation with myself while running, for instance.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance.

Each generation is tossed a curved ball. Up to us to catch it, spin it and develop new coping strategies.

Ours faces threats that we have never seen before.

Sometimes, from within. From the defense line. From the top whom we respect.

The day the music dies. Sometimes, I think it’s best for the candle to go out at peak.

Like James Dean, M. Monroe, J. Lennon and M. Jackson. At least, they are icons frozen in time.

A sense of permanence and immortality. For now, being human, I got to deal with stages of grief. I got to get to closure, to acceptance. Got to look at myself in the mirror and smile reluctant.

Empty space

Void. Vacuum. Unfilled and unoccupied space.

Plenty of them, within and without.

So we fear its vastness.

We try to fill it up with stuff.

In the process, making ourselves mini-gods.

Co-creators of space-filling. Bed, bath and beyond.

Then give them away to Goodwill to make room for more empty space.

Everyone got problems with fitting everything into a suitcase before each trip.

If you leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me.

That “part of me” is abstract and intangible.

But real nonetheless.

So we have commitment. We honor faithfulness and loyalty. not betrayal.

We extol unseen virtues, unspoken agreement between two people.

That thing called love, duty and honor.

Old school.

But we search for it all our life.

Business world says “screw it”.

Real world says “search for it”.

Which is which?

Lonely at the top.

The dying and fading King.

Kingdom in disarray.

Gates wide open for invaders and looters.

Who is going to stand by you in the hour of need?

Empty space. God-shaped vacuum.

Time flows one way into infinity.

Space is just out there, with Earth older than previously thought.

Space is also inside each of us. All empty.

Until it is filled with joy and laughters. Of children’s nagging and giggling.

It’s not about occupying space.

It’s about validating existing one, granted in each of us. Inalienable if you will.

The right to exist, to breathe, to figure it all out for one’s self.

Business says “screw it, let’s do it” (Branson)

Church says “save it in the name of our Lord“.

Life says “you are to hold on to it, since it is going around only once”.

That empty space, regardless being occupied with Gucci or Goodwill,  is all we’ve got.

Love, hate and fear. All share that same empty and inner space, called Self.

CWO – Chief Worshipping Officer

On my first week as CEO at UVT – I met an issue none of the Business School in the US had equipped their students for: to bow or not to bow at the Fortune–God altar in the school lobby.

It’s hard enough to know where the bathroom is – much less stumbling upon the Fortune Gods.

Yet I did. And handled it.

You see here in the East – one believes in not just skills – professional or otherwise but also in good luck and good heart. Without the blessings from the Underworld, no matter how hard you try – the results won’t be satisfying.

Yes you can manipulate or negotiate.

But human efforts don’t account for much (reverse 80/20 rule).

Hence the appeasement and appearance of compliance: to the authority and Higher Authority.

I feel humble.

I know there are forces out there beyond my purview and power.

I do my best and leave the rest to the Fortune Gods.

Power outage – gas price – typhoon.

Seeing students eager to learn  motivates me.

After all I still have my student ID card with me (University of Saigon 1975).  At their age – I did pray to the gods to protect me against the uncertain seas.

I was at the mercy of International waters and International Relief . I was at the mercy of prejudiced bosses at work and mean bumps on the street.

I have survived it all – unprepared or ill-prepared.

From this vantage point – it’s me who needs to burn that incense more than anyone else.

So I bowed and prayed.

I needed help.

I needed blessings .

I needed to taste sweat and tears – as cake mix. Then I can bake that cake of success. In Gates of Fire – the leader of 300 just responded after being warned that the enemy’s arrows will cover the sun: “That’s good. We will fight in the shade”.  Yes Achille Yes Samson Yes Pharaoh.

You will all die. Momento Mori.

But not yet. Not dead yet. Got to taste sweet success even when it is mixed with sweat and tears. Makes life more worth living. Rather try and fail than fail to try “and they bow and pray – to the neon god they made…”

Mom’s Ao Dai

When I saw a Vietnamese woman on motor bike with helmet, mask, sunglasses, messenger pouch, gloves and Ao-Dai steering scooter while holding a baby on her way to the sitter, it brought back memories of Mom’s dress.

She was a school teacher, deeply committed to her multiple roles: mother, teacher, wife, daughter-in-law and friend (to other teachers who had graduated from the same French Lycee, which in her time, was a big brag!).

Having spent her semi-orphan childhood in dormitory, she made sure we have what she had not: a loving home with home-cooked meals.

Not a good cook, she tried most times, without even taking off the Ao Dai she had on from work. By design or default, she had a good assistant: me. Here, hold the live chicken legs while I slit its throat (all the while, she would pray for its soul).

Then she would place the boiled chicken on the altar – an offering to our ancestors on the day leading up to the New Year (Tet).

I learned by observing and via osmosis (run to the market and get me ginger) and by cleaning.

And clean I did, on the cusp of New Year. Mom would put on her Ao Dai right before mid-night, light up three joss sticks and pray to the four corners of the Earth. There was something very sacred at New Year countdown: inspirational enough to my parents who often competed to compose and read aloud a stanza or two to each other (both were well-versed in French …Lamartine, Chopin and Flaubert etc..).

I meanwhile tried to finish up the last rinse for the floor in anticipation of throng of visitors.

Back then, you could hear occasional boom and bang (Chinese enclave was known to spend a fortune on firecrackers e.g. shades of pink and red – color of fortune, evident in spent shells which carpeted their lawn, our version of ticker tape parade).

The whole region threw a big New Year party that makes even the dead want to join.

Years later, Ao Dai evolved in style (Madame Nhu), hence rid of the collar.

But not for my mom.

She stayed on in that teacher’s style all the way to America, where once again, she trekked snowy roads to the Temple on New Year’s Day. I knew then and even now, she had prayed for me, her youngest who has never traveled traditional safe path.

In contrast, the Road Less Traveled took me far from the proverbial tree. The first few feet were the hardest, seeing her wave from my rearview mirror.

This made it hard the whole way to Chicago, to grad school and to an uprooted life.

Her picture has been on my altar. I wonder what gift I should buy to make it worthy a Tet offering (bean bun, bouquet and beer?) Banh chung, bong cuc va bia?

Perhaps the best way to honor and keep her memory is to be the best son/student.

I don’t want to see in the rearview mirror shadow of regrets. I realize the only way she could have let me go was for furthering education. Of any one in my family, she would be the one who understood it best.

When seeing a younger version of herself in scooter, mask, glasses and helmet, but still in Ao Dai, holding a baby on her way to the seaside babysitter, I was reminded of her: sacrificial and selfless, a role model with near spot free existence. Her contribution made my and our human family all the richer.

Si tu n’existais pas, I wouldn’t be here. As keeper of fine and fond memories.

Mom’s Ao Dai.

Old market New market

It’s a norm here in Vietnam that a certain market, after being moved to a new location, still has its old location called “cho Cu” (Old Market). My Dad and I used to go for breakfast in Cho Cu, which no longer does brisk business despite its prime location near the harbor (people are shopping at SuperMarkets, whose plastic baskets are overstuffed with stuff). Now we even have night markets such as Hanh Thong Tay, which during the day, is a “ghost town”.

http://www.eturbonews.com/27000/vietnam-wants-move-away-traditional-markets

Happy New Year, Happy New Year…..

The old markets  offer a common roof, spare ventilation and without piped-in music, whether it’s in the North as in Ham Long, or the South, as in Binh Thoi.

It is said that soothing music induces more shopping. Upscale shoppers want to assert themselves (life-style) and their social status.

In the States, Walmart has crossed-over to Supermarket’s turf (best-selling item: bananas),

Supermarkets crossed over to drug stores’ territories, and Walgreen-CVS crossed over to both.

In the alley outside where I live, people hold make-shift market in the morning: vegetables, fish, pork and fruits. The supply chain is simple: slaughter house to your house, with no refrigerated intermediaries. Chicken got charcoal-grilled inside a bamboo trunk or wrapped inside wet clay, feathers still intact.

It’s a good thing I blog about these things right after lunch (mouth-watering still). Fish glistened under the golden sun, while crabs got lined up in rows and columns neatly like an Excel spreadsheet in a tray outside a restaurant (normally when alive, these legged creatures crawl uncontrollably in all directions). An old American Indian captures this scene: when one tries to crawl out,  the others try to grab it right back in (as in Mission Impossible team rescue to highten the vertigo suspense on top of Dubai’s tallest building).

I had a late lunch next to a table full of restaurant staff. They were getting ready for their busy evening shift, Quang Trung style (celebrating Tet early, to pull off a military campaign that surprised the enemy during the Holidays).

I notice the stark difference in attitude and service between old and new markets: the mom-and-pop folks know your face if not your name.

The Supermarket staff work for a corporation, tend to be younger and can’t wait to get off work (factory style).

College students double up as city workers. College students as bus riders, and consumers of all kinds of goods (sweet and snacks) and services.

College students scramble for exams, for seats on the Last Train Home, for a table outside in the evening.

College students in Old Markets. College students work in New Markets, but can’t afford to shop there.

College students who Google but can’t connect the dots (not yet).  Educational managers whom I visited realize those gaps between High School and College levels, and between academia and active world of work.

(in ICT, this gap is even deeper when work means taking an outsourced load from overseas such as US and UK.  In that space, competitors are India and other Asian Tigers).

Welcome to the new market of talent, place and logistic cross-over (such as Boeing and I-phone, all made from parts supplied elsewhere, and later, sold back to those same countries as complete product.)

Old market, new market. Will one survive in the new century with just a warm smile and a broken back? Happy New Year, Happy New Year. May we all have our hopes, our will to try.

Let’s hope when one chapter is closed, another one will be opened. Places and time, people and opportunities: we are all in transition, from the old to the new.  So is the market. Just make sure you stay alive and hungry! Better that than be “confetti on the floor”.

The General Temple

When my mom, a teacher, took me there, I was 5.

This time, I  went there by myself.

Happy Teacher’s Day!

The Temple has always opened to seekers .

On New Year‘s Eve, it’s the equivalent of Times Square .

The crowd, the smell of incense burning and the long line at fortune teller’s dispensary.

It could last till morning.

But then, it’s not surprising to see less traffic here on New Year’s day.

People hesitate to be the first visitor (uninvited) for fear of initiating a chain of  bad luck.

I noticed how spacious the court-yard was, as compared to New Year’s day in my memory.

It’s a 20/80 use of space: 20 percent of the Temple were occupied by 80 percent of worshippers.

According to history, the General went down, like a Captain of the ship, after having set the castle on fire instead of letting it fall into the hands of  advancing French army.

Where once a ruin now an attraction at a busy intersection.

Art students whose school was nearby, sat in groups, in front of their canvasses, and sketched.

Upon entering its gate, I felt small again as memories of boyhood rushing back.

“Hang close to Mom, you don’t want to get lost”.

If I had a wish here at the General Temple, it would be to do my mom proud.

It is undisputed here in Vietnam that education is a lever to a better future.

Unfortunately for many, time in the classroom is perceived as time away from earnings.

Worse off, educational loan has reached 1 Trillion dollars in the US.

With no end in sight.

No one wants to Occupy the school.

Although their parent’s couch is still available, no one wants to occupy it either.

Although the lack of education limits one’s career choices , too much educational debt leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Not until their golden years will students come to appreciate the value of education (life enrichment, art appreciation, in-depth sense of history and personal fulfillment).

For now, what society wants is productivity at the least cost.

In short, harnessed knowledge and repetitive actions (to the point of auto-piloting) are preferred over a contemplative mind.

Charlie Chaplin all over (Un temp modern).

Think not of tomorrow.

Spin the wheel today.

Worry not about the past.

What is the value of a heroic figure who went down for his nation and neighborhood?

What is the value of human intervention and interaction?

What is the value of an educator, a trainer, a mother?

What can’t be monetized, quantified and duplicated , is set aside. Park it.

In Seven Habits of Effective People, we learn that our society values quadrant number 1 (Urgent and unimportant) over quadrant number 2 (Urgent and Important) e.g. environment, worker’s training, infrastructure investment and community development. In short, no commons. Just Ego over Eco.

No wonder on Teacher’s Day, I found the Temple absolutely quiet except for those Art Students.

Outside, the city was bustling with commerce. Perhaps quadrant 1 will continue to occupy everyone’s mind , until New Year’s Eve.

That’s when the wheel pauses, the workers (cogs) can then get off. The soul gets tended to. Incense burned next to fruit offerings on the altar. Just in those few days, the General spirit will be extolled, his legacy affirmed. I can’t even image being there on New Year’s Day. I hope his spirit doesn’t discriminate any one or any day, like today, Teacher’s Day. Seek not the crowd, for they know not what they are doing. At a fork in the wood, I chose the road less travel. Quiet and safe, though not popular or prosperous. Sometimes you have to let the soul have its quiet whispers. Mine got a small dose of stimuli at Lang Ong (the General Temple) and a flashback to those moments with Mom, a dedicated teacher and educator of Vietnam‘s previous generation. Happy Teacher’s Day.

Weekend Insert

I spent many college weekends at the library. The journalism library.

Work study program (certain publications need to be behind the desk. My desk.)

That P/T job followed two years of working at the campus TV studio.

I keep wondering how many of those communication students made it in the real world.  Has anyone landed on Page One!

After all, we weren’t Columbia Journalism School.

Just a land-grant farm University, whose football coach is still around after almost 4 decades.

(as of this edit, this is no longer true. JoePa was fired yesterday and Happy Valley turned uproar, flipping a CBS-news van on its side).

I realized then that many would go on to marketing and advertising.

A few would move up market, and eventually be settled in metros like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Occasionally, the school bulletin still advertises “insider” job openings for Associate Producer of sports TV, let’s say down in Jacksonville, FL.

But I have a feeling that many of those students who were there at the library on those weekends, are not holding communication-related jobs.

It’s too integrated a field of study. And unless you found a niche (dog food adverts), and honed in, chances are that you would end up in sales, as in my case.

Still, I hope to be surprised by a New York Times book review title, whose author I might recognize. It will be  a happy moment for me. That somehow, my butler-ing at the library on those weekends wasn’t in vain.

Words have always been cheap.

Now even memory (and expertise) faces its own deflation. Just google it.

Consequently, kids just text and invent shorthand that soooo SMS-fitting.

It’s been sequential, for movies to be derived from screen plays which are adapted from books. Now, it’s movies first, then games and cartoon or tie-ins.

If you feel socially awkward to “friend” someone online, maybe because people you actually know already died, or that they are also bewildered in this new social media landscape. Studies show that it’s the 2nd or 3rd degree connectors that somehow influence us most (see Connected, by two Harvard researchers – who found a link between obesity and those we hang out with online).

I didn’t realize then, what I now know, that those minimum-wage hours have been habit-forming for me. I have grown attached to print and the sound/smell of quiet minds at work. I know those same students perhaps still flip the channels to find out how Penn State team is doing (lost to Alabama), and maybe, still read a newspaper during commercials. Nowadays, you can hardly find any publications considered sacred or in short supply enough to be kept behind the desk. Consequently, I wonder if the school of journalism is still keeping a weekend part-timer  just for that.

Rough “road” to learning

 Please fasten your seat belts.

The road to learning is rough: one has to survive the transportation to and fro, bullies and academic pressures.

“it’s the same river, same ferry, and coconut trees along the banks, but, it’s different today. The difference is, …today, I am back to school” (paraphrasing a poem by Thanh Tinh)..

When their age, I got picked up by various adults in my household: father, brother, sitter and sister (my mom was a school teacher at another school, so she couldn’t have due to schedule conflict). They picked me up by VeloSolex and Mobylette. Twice my little foot got stuck in the back wheel (once I ended up in the emergency room).

Rough road to learning.

Seeing school children in An Giang getting ferried to school brought back some memories (last week, on PBS Newshour, on the subject of the Keystone pipeline,

one commentator even mentioned that current climate change was due to global increased energy consumption in countries like Vietnam and China etc… That prompted a rebuff from the environmentalist, who said “how much an average Vietnamese uses energy per day compared to the developed world”. We should chroma-key in above picture to make his point).

School could never equip us with survival instincts.

The best teachers can do is to create a sense of normalcy, habit-forming, and hopefully,

plant a desire for further learning.

Besides, they already got “tiger moms” at home who ensure conformity to village life.

Those are end-products based on century-old Mandarin system (to supply new blood to run the admin system).

Except now, we don’t face shortage of labor at all (fewer people are required to produce the same amount of agri and aqua products, fewer employees per factory/offfice square foot etc…No more “where is the white-out”.

Yet, children are risking their young lives to get to school across the river.

Quite a “distant” learning.

Could someone throw a safety jacket?

Here, people blog about  (wearing) “White after Labor Day“.

I just hope that one of those children will make it to the big city, and propel into the big league (statistical outcome of a large gene pool of 90 million). Perhaps through IT, or Math (one already won the most prestigious award).

One charity in the West was exposed for trying to build schools in Afghanistan while pocketing the rest.

He even wrote a book about it. PR man. Opportunist man. Spare a jacket?

I am sure these schoolchildren pick up on some survival skills during their one-hour commute (team work, social awareness etc..) before setting foot in the classroom.

And should one of them be drowned, (as already happened) I hope for the rest a quick move forward over survivor’s guilt.

Those scars take a long time to heal.

I know what I am writing about.

I still have the aching ankle ground by Mobylette to prove it.

It took place from a rough road back from school.

It’s the same road that I saw every day, but the difference was, that day, was the day I arrived home via the hospital. Rough “road” to learning, I tell you.

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.