Tag: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Reading People

I was approached by a guy wearing an FBI cap, asking me to buy lottery tickets.

It’s hot in Vietnam this time of the year. Almost everyone wears some sorts of caps with USA on them,  helmets with the Nike vectors or a hybrid version: helmets shaped like caps.

From top to toe, we send out signals and messages. Call it Non-Verbal language.

2/3 of our communication are not verbal (in Without You, there is a line “you always smile, but in your eyes, your sorrow shows, yes it shows”).

Yet few of us were schooled, trained or able to detect these hidden codes: I am cool. I don’t give a damn. I am somebody. I am everybody. I am nobody. Try me…..

Conversely, people receive unintended messages we did not know we  send.

I’ve got money. I don’ t respect you enough (clothing mismatched). I am carefree. I am careful. Don’t mess with me (tatoo and black T’s).

In the States, cars make statements. Here, it’s the scooters.

A guitar as backpack (musician) a rolled-up mat (yoga) a cone hat (urban migrant) a kid with balloon (mom has a night out and spends guilt money).

Every stripe and strand co-exist and negotiate limited space.

The upper crust has already left town to exclusive and elite resorts, leaving behind the “mass who live in quiet desperation” in the tourist district, where people lean against fake trees and work up a fake smile for photo ops.

If you stood and watched people, you are not sure between background and foreground, which one is more on display.

Wait until 4-G is here.

Then we will have completed our evolutionary cycle (self-expression with a cost).

When those sport cars came out, they were intended to say: I own this toy, reserved for me and my girlfriend (parents and entourage are not welcome).

So will it be with the I’s family of products (unless you share the listening device  with one significant other). The I-pod Shuffle was meant for one, jogger preferably.

Not the boombox that blasts out Christmas music for the whole neighborhood.

Yes, in our technological society, the clear message (which happens to be the medium, according to McLuhan) is that, I finally am. Arrived. Leave me alone. Leave your old world behind (communal and village-bound). I am OK, you are OK or not, it’s irrelevant. When the playing field is leveled (by us duck-sitting as advertising headcounts), they will upgrade to some other games which will require premium fees.

So we celebrate the upcoming New Year, with ” a will to try” so as not to be left out or behind.

My New Year resolution is to read people better, however subtle the intended messages might be. Often times, it’s mixed message. After all, the world is our non-verbal bookstore. Just  hope I don’t run into a real FBI agent, undercover as a lottery-ticket pusher.

Grace Jones, Jim Jones, Terry Jones

All with a “view to a kill”.

Jim Jones at least took the cool-aid himself.

Terry Jones, after delaying the Quran-burning date for a few months, gave in to his arsenic urge (or attention-getting disorder).

I am all for learning, from book lessons, and life lessons.

Life teaches us lessons from the doing and wrongdoing of others (this is the basis of Good vs Evil struggle in movie themes).

Eventually, consequences of an individual’s aggression will catch up with him.

For now, just as the young, educated middle class in Egypt and neighboring countries wanted a piece of the democratic dream, we got the worst exhibited here (in Netherlands, the comment from a mall-shooting witness was “we heard this sort of things happened in American schools, but little did we know, it’s here – the Netherlands-where we live”).

So, this is how the world perceives America, land of the free.

A few years back, in Little Saigon (Orange County, CA), a pirated-video shop owner exhibited a Ho Chi Minh portrait knowing full well his action would cause distress to his patrons and community he served. Westminster police had to protect him against demonstrators  while the FBI eventually moved in to confiscate his stocks (FBI warning at the beginning of every video came in handy). If they hadn’t he would eventually have joined Blockbuster Video in bankruptcy court anyway (karma-coded video).

The case was nowhere as huge as the Gainesville church’s sponsored Quran-burning.

In his burning, he dampens world’s enthusiasm for what America stood for.

We sent out mixed signals: follow us, we are the good guys/burn us down, we are the bad guys.

Which is which? 007 or Death Angel?.

When Malcolm X advocated separate-but-equal, he was shot down too.

Now, times have changed. While the desecration of others’ sacredness is constitutionally protected, it should not be encouraged (because it incites hatred and polarizes an already hate-filled world in need of healing and soft-power diplomacy).

There is another higher law: love your neighbor (and what they believe as sacred) as yourself (and what you consider as sacred.)

The Gideons better get hurried because a lot of Motel 6 bibles might be collected and shipped back to the Mid East to be burned in retaliation.

It’s tit for tat, and the best-case scenario. I hope the worst already happened last week.