Tag: Hot air balloon

Resolution Revisited

Remember ABBA‘s Happy New Year refrain? Seems so far away, yet so near.

Remember those resolutions? To finish a book, lose a few pounds and pick up a new skills?

Almost 80 days into the year. Even in the days of hot air balloon, people would  have finished circling around the globe.

There has been a few hot-air balloon accidents lately. But news of cruise ships malfunctioning seem to dominate prime time (hints: visual footage).

ABC Diane Sawyer mentioned that this was the year a new Pope was elected, but also, a year that flashing cameras (smart phones) illuminated the square. Diane was joined by Cokie Roberts who sat where David Brinkley used to sit (Senior Commentary spot).

Times certainly has changed in the town square, town hall and on the balcony.

Asia, Africa and Latin America sheer demographics dominate.

7 Billion and counting.

More conflicts and more chances to make it happen.

While our New Year Resolutions were meant to be personal, and only partly achievable, on the grander scale, we have seen the force of change usher in new actors on world stage in the first quarter of this year alone: new Pope, new President and perhaps new hot spots (N Korea).

Fasten your seatbelts, for late winter road condition is quite hazardous. We are not quite out of the woods just yet, until the last speck of snow gave way, to the chirping sound of Spring.

That’s when we can really renegotiate those goals, pick up a course online, order a book or try to fit in last year’s swimwear.

Life’s soundtrack

I have just received a photo showing a hot-air balloon over Seattle, with me and Geoffrey in the basket. We just need a soundtrack to add to it. The puffy hot air, the wind which carried us over the lush-green scenery with Bill Gates himself living on the ground. If given a choice, I choose “Theme from Woodstock”, since we were kidding ourselves that we were “stock East” and “stock West”.

The same lay of the land, without the housing bubble (Seattle and Washington D.C. exempted).

Home to MSC, Amazon and Starbucks.

My cousin used to live there until he died. A former Red Beret and a school teacher.

The last time we spoke was when he wished me a happy marriage. In hindsight, I wished I had made the journey to visit him up there instead of Nova Scotia. By the time I was in that company-sponsored hot-air balloon, my Seattle-based cousin had already died.

Given that context, I would lay down the music track “theme from the deer hunter” (Cavatina) instead for that hot-air balloon trip. Same visual, different feel to it when you lay a different soundtrack underneath.

The difference between the soup lines from the Recession of 1930 and this one, was in how we recorded history: one in Black-and-White grainy photos, and one in crisp digital copies.

Men who carry themselves with whatever dignity left inside of them (even when the fire went out).

President Obama is urging the nation to go back to Community College to get manufacturing certificate. He did not mention that we are living in a disposable society, where the manufacturing sector (which used to produce disposable goods like Campbell soup) is itself disposable, outsourced to lower-wage countries (and downward spiraled from there).

We are lucky now if we can view Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin and laugh.

If he were alive, he wouldn’t think it’s funny at all. He meant to be prophetic, not to produce a documentary about globalization of the manufacturing sector. He wanted to humanize the workers, just to see his audience now sidelined, watching the process repeat itself overseas (with Asian actors).

If I were to lay a soundtrack to these “silent” movies, I would put Theme from the Exodus

(during the Tet massacre of 1968, they laid this soundtrack to show mass graves in Hue).

As in any movie, I need to zoom out now. Back to my hot-air balloon trip with Geoffrey in Seattle.

We saw the lush green, other teams’ balloons, and finally landed safely to the gathering place where we congratulated ourselves for being Ovation winners. Let the bonding continue. Soundtrack “theme from Chariots of Fire“.