Tag: Far East

Moon Cake

You can’t possibly finish one all by yourself.

In fact, when I was a kid, I remembered it got cut up not into four but eight pieces, like we would with a Costco pizza.

Slices of sweet moon cake, in all varieties.

Big confectionary  revenue every year in China and Vietnam.

Although it’s a Children Festival,  adults are in for those cakes as well. Later, it evolves into an occasion for gifting, and acceptable bribing.

Sweeten the deal.

It’s almost as if  business and adults  have hi-jacked what few festivals  children got left for themselves.

Let’s face it. In the West, we got Halloween. Then college students hi-jacked it with frat’s costume parties. Even at work. So Halloween spreads to other unintended age groups.

In the Far East, we see similar phenomenon: the commercialization and co-opting of  traditional events by the Retai industry.

As long as you can “create” a “first” event. Next year, it will become the Second X event, then Third…

Some events no longer reflect their original raison d’etre. Hence, a need for self-created tradition  (South by Southwest, TED). Somehow, cultural legacies are associated with “uncoolness”.

Malcom Gladwell recalls his Jamaican aunt (light-skinned) disown her dark-skinned daughter when she met a light-skinned man. In Outliers, he makes a case for cultural legacy,  which, after extensive analysis, proves to be the bedrock of  immigrant success. Personally I also found American cultural tapestry as strength (German Beer Fest, Irish pipers, Little Italy etc …helps induct me to early American immigrants) and not weakness. Case in point. I often run into bi-racial couples who took their half-breed children to these festivals. The “foreign” spouse indeed finds those cultural events fascinating. Perhaps he/she hopes to find some clues into the make-up of his or her spouse, or to simply please him/her culturally.

And it’s only fair. Because to marry into a dominant culture, one has to sacrifice and let go things that are deemed “strange” e.g. instant noodles, chopsticks (in California, sushi and Pho restaurants are actually operated by Korean business people, rather than Japanese or Vietnamese).

So this Blue Moon, full moon and Moon Fest. Go out and join the “strange” people. They have their reason behind the season. Find out the fairy tale, their  pre-Neil-Armstrong perception of the Moon. It goes well with Slow Rock. Makes for a perfect slow dance, while the children are occupied with their own lanterns. The commercial world does go ahead of us . But then, maybe they know us more than we do ourselves. After this weekend, watch for the Halloween pumpkin stand. Coming around the corner, literally.

Nature as reminder

Scientists just found out that Earth is much older than previously thought. It certainly has a way to maintain itself.  Remember Tsunami and Fukushima? or the Louisiana oil spill and Katrina? At the time, we thought we couldn’t bear the grunt, but one by one, they are now behind us.

Same thing with this summer ‘s drought and consumer sentiment dip.

Yet, it is known that many companies are hoarding cash e.g. Apple .

In NYC, Chinese got in line to buy a few phones, just to hand-carry them back to Main Land.

Those phones were made by FoxConn, Taiwanese who contracted out to Main Land to begin with.

When users need tech support or help from customer service, the calls got routed to India or Philippines. To be cool and hip, one buys clothes that go with the phone.

Again, those clothes are now Made in Vietnam.

There are signs every where to remind us of a wider world out there unlike the man who ” while life goes on around him everywhere he’s playing solitaire” courtesy the Carpenter’s Solitaire.

When we say our bedtime prayer, people in the Far East are off to action. It’s like the story of a hare and a turtle. In a race.

When do we turn around to learn from others, from nature and its permanence?

The best gift we can offer the world and others is being ourselves. By being authentic, we allow them to be themselves as well. Break the ice. Break the silence. Break the barriers.

We are not marketers who try to segment our customer base.

We are people who need people (who make our I phones and our Nike shoes).

Remember, tonight, when we go to sleep, others in the Far East are getting up to punch in, at factories and farms (server) to maintain our data base or make our footwear. Be mindful and thankful that nature and evolution are both working in our favors. BTW, they are talking about I-phone 5 already. It’s a dry summer here, but it rains elsewhere in the world. The machine is off here, but they are humming 24/7 around the world. It’s a different world now but nature stands to bear witness to those changes, as always.

Traffic turns attraction

Crunch time in Ho chi Minh City. A nuisance for many yet a photo-op for tourists.

Millions in ponchos, helmets, dust masks, sunglasses fighting for every inch (centimeter here) to get  home in the pouring rain, while tourists leisurely strolled the colonial side walks in shorts, sandals and Sony cameras trying to record their trips. Who is looking at whom?

These skinny people all wrapped up to protect their skin?

Or these fat people are not afraid of getting sun-burn?

Three years ago, I switched role by playing expat in Hanoi, studying among other expats

from US, UK, Canada, Australia and Ireland. I got a glimpse of how the natives were viewed, perceived and more often than not, judged: English school across from a dog-meat stance, ballroom-dancing in the park and to top it all, a 60’s Berkeley-style stripper family on the streets begging for money to cover health care costs (per recent Yahoo news).

One of our lessons for teachers of English as a foreign language that morning happened to be “soliciting money online from friends to cover shopping debt”.

It struck me that the Western girl in the lesson and the lady out there on the street were doing the same, one with wireless, the other voiceless.

Three years have passed since that morning.

A lot of bank bail outs are now behind us.

Bank buildings got renamed, CEO’s booted.

During the upturn,  people drink and smoke their lives away.

During the downturn, people drink and smoke their lives away even faster.

Always a vicious cycle, a race to the bottom. Vietnam spends 38% of its income on food, Mexico 23%, France 13% while the US a mere 7% (subsidized infrastructure).

I found myself in sudden tears at lunch. This was after I had heard that a friend with cancer would have only six months to live.

What would I do in his shoes?

Dzo (down) the Ken (Heineken)? Visit Yellow Stone Park? Eiffel tower?

My grandmother’s grave? (we’ll meet again soon anyway).

What would you do?

Fighting for another inch in traffic?

Every moment is precious especially towards the end .

“There is a pause in between life and death,” said my friend.

I saw it once with the burning monk. The rising flame was both his baptism by fire and his cremation.

To enter that next ring of eternity, he must and did leave all things behind.

To dance to another drummer’s beat.

After two weeks in country, I have learned to cross the streets without the usual reflex which I found counter-productive. And I definitely resist any impulse to take pictures, because someone else’s stress was not going to be my sensation. Not just Vegas, but also Vietnam, where what happened here, stays here. Traffic is to me, a distraction not attraction.

Faustian bargain

Most of us don’t face life-and-death decision everyday (gaining the world but losing our soul). Leave that to Caligula or Gaddafi.

Yet, a less wealthy Syrian, whose background had been oblivious even to himself, still got some press. Steve Jobs can still sell some books.

Like you, I was curious. So I browsed his biography. One snippet about Steve: he lived for ideas and did not mind recruiting the best of talents, wherever they might be : foreign country or far-out competitor (Dropbox was an example). We all read his introduction in Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check. Or about his last meal out (penchant for the Far East, relics from his early days seeking enlightenment). To this day, no one could explain why not once, but twice, some Beta versions of the I-phone managed to show up in Hanoi.

One man used his oil wealth to buy influence in Africa (calling himself King of Kings… the sun would never set on his Empire).

The other, used his sense of abandonment to “think different”.

Although both were ambitious, the market chose to follow Steve’s lead. We knew he would not settle. And he emphatically said so (Standford Address).

When I left my local Barnes and Nobles, I turned around and saw all those hard-cover books stacking up, all had Steve Job’s staring out the window.

As if to remind me not to settle.

I am sure people at Apple Inc and Apple stores still feel his midas touch. The book cover captures that magical feel, like the all-white room in John Lennon‘s “Imagine” video. Simplicity in life and in death.

Once in a thousand years, out of the abundant gene pool, emerged a few geniuses, in Physics (Einstein), in Arts (Van Gogh), in Music (Elvis), in Aviation (Wright brothers) or in Technology (Jobs).

Although we don’t face the Faustian bargain  on a daily basis, we have much to gain thanks to them. Now the burden is on us to make the most of this treasure trove. Go and invent your iNext.  Stay hungry and stay foolish.

colonize, globalize and localize

In that order. Just like Guns, Germs and Steel.

Natural, then with pesticides and back to organic.

First, Mattel outsourced toy manufacturing to Hong Kong (ironically, G.I. Joe , the real one, first saw the larger horizon including the Far East due to the two World Wars) , then every company considers “if it can be outsourced, it must”. In military term, it’s called “mission creep”.

In manufacturing, plant closing. In fiscal term, tax evasion.

No wonder, there are movements which call for localizing (an understandable reaction to the sweeping force of McDonalization and Disneylandization). This makes freight companies quite unhappy.

There is nothing wrong with economy of scale, or homogenization of taste and style.

It lowers the costs of manufacturing (but in my case, it is time-consuming to go for alteration) and uplifts living standards (rising expectations) in Asia, the world factory. Imagine how costly it would be to replace all those vacuum-tube monitors and TV’s had they been manufactured by Westing House, RCA or Zenith in America. We wouldn’t be seeing our  Ipad 2.

Still, it doesn’t make sense to ship tuna from Maine to Manila or rare animal delicacies from Main Land to Main Street Chinese restaurants.

We must apply the circuit breaker for a moment to ask that Reaganesque question: Are we better off than four years ago.

In pursuing that cheapest of price, aren’t we bought in to the relentless pursuit of logistic nirvana.

Neil Postman wasn’t a Luddite, but he raised a good question: through a vast array of technology (such as the amount of available TV channels), we must ask ” what problem was it that this technology is trying to solve.”

I like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. They happen to be empowering technologies, pull and not push.

From the information flow stand point, they are quite disruptive (for the first time, any one can upload this and that, instead of just “downloading”. See my other blog on South-South information flow).

Tools to share our lives, our stuff and our ideals.

It is happening and will be on grander scale. No wonder youth in the Mid East are restless.

Like Rob Reiner‘s mother in When Harry Met Sally, they want “to have what she is having”.

Freedom and self-governance is frightening. But it’s what we are wired for. Just give us the tool, we’ll show it to you. BTW, Facebook fans are joining  and saying, “we are born this way” or “ah ha ah ha, that’s the way the way I like it”.
Why would you try to make us consumers, debtors, etc…. just because of your lack of imagination and innovation. One thing we won’t miss is containerization once localization takes hold.

Until then, we got FourSquares and Groupon to get us a deal (for goods that shipped in from China, via you know what – that’s right. Container).

 

Mars or marble

Have you submitted your name to be shuttled up to Mars?  Space and sea travel or your names on Mars and not marble. This is to show our preference for progress over permanence  – technology over religion.

While it’s good to sit on one of the benches with our parent’s names “in memory of…”, it’s better still for our grandchildren to travel in space to look for ours on Mars.

I found my parent’s graves without a hitch. Right here on spaceship Earth.

In the Far East, people want to travel back to where their ancestors were buried (as of this edit, I have just stepped on a bunch of fake dollars, burnt during an early morning funeral).

Thus, “the Last Train Home” documentary about Chinese factory laborers trying to get home for New Year via train, plane or automobile (their version of White Christmas).

Modernity forces huge displacement. South-South movement will be next, not Earth to Outer space (Indian mobile phone companies are buying up Middle Eastern phone companies to cater to fast growing African markets, while Vietel engineers are rebuilding Haitian and Myanmar telecom infrastructure).

When you are uprooted, your sense of identity suffers. One used to be known by his/her relationship in a communal network. Now, with new “ID“, he/she is known by an employee number. Welcome to KFC, how may I take your order.

With industrialization comes frustration (discontent): who is going to move in those Shanghai towers , and who will have to relocate to make room for the 5th-ring highway?

Uprooted dreamers.

No place to go back to. No bragging rights for aging parents e.g. “my son went to the city and came back a millionaire”.  Bentley in Russia, Ford in China. Wealth shift. G-20+ (make sure Brazil is included, since they know how to party).

For years, we saw a steady rise of “emerging countries”, but we still resort to yesterday’s play book. (Remember the Yugo joke?).

The poor was materially poor, but not in spirit or intelligence. From a near-zero base, the only way for emerging countries to go is to “emerge” i.e. create better-paying jobs, while union and progress in the West , once a blessing, now a hindrance in this post-Recession recovery.

Darwin was right: survival favors the most adaptive. Instead of fighting for a seat on “the Last Train”, those smart entrepreneurs already built alternate-energy bullet trains. It’s not your names on Mars, it’s the challenge to think beyond the marble which for centuries was the last stop for even the most famous of names. A Roman Emperor once hired an assistant, whose main job is to remind him every so often that: “Your Majesty, you will die soon”.  Memento mori.