Tag: Hyundai

Easily swayed

According to social scientists, any two people are only separated by 6 to 7 degrees of connection. Last week I put it to test.

Surely enough, the quake victims in Japan somehow are separated from me by only three degrees. My niece’s friend had relatives who fled Japan and came to stay with them. Two short introductions and a short ride stand between us.

We are living on a planet of 7 billion people, 2 of which are online.

The cumulative brain powers are enormous. For the first time, it seems as if a lot of things are now made possible, from wikipedia to wikileaks.

Thirty years ago, I gave up my summer in between school years to do relief work. The only resources at my disposal was an address book of friends from college and a roll of stamps. I copied fund-raising letters, sent out to my “network” and waited for donation. Quite a risky adventure, both on the funding side and visa turn-around time. But we pulled it off. The summer turned out to be a highlight of my life.

If we had the online resources as currently available, we would probably have uploaded a Youtube clip of boat people cramped and confined in Hong Kong prison facilities, women who were raped and turned cannibalistic to survive….

You know the drill. My contention is, we are now resource-rich, but are we becoming more compassionate ? In other words, does the good-will increase proportionately with the tools to express it? Or precisely because of information-overload that led to compassion fatigue?

To sell something people need and want is easy. Costs vs benefits results in change (buy).

To sell an idea that people can become their better selves requires enchantment.

People died in mass protests (herd instinct) or annual Run-of-the-Bulls (even cheese rolling downhills). But to spare a change for the guy holding the homeless sign takes a lot more. He will need to sing and dance. He will have to put on an act of desperation before the lights turn green.

We act differently in public vs in private.

When survival instinct kicks in, self-preservation is above all else.

Multiply that 7 billion times. Then we get the picture of state of the world.

How does the quake in Japan affect our lives: a lot. Someone relates to someone who knows my relatives is suffering. He/she is doubling up in a house near ours.

Then the Toyota dealers in town won’t get foreign parts etc… Go Hyundai, this is your chance in this no-hire-no-fire economy. Sometimes people change because they are forced to, not because they would like to. But change is as sure as the sun that rises tomorrow. You don’t see it because you are not 30,000 feet above ground. Those who are at the executive level know to expect change, prepare contingencies for it, and profit from it. Same crisis, but it is danger to some and opportunity to others. We will learn to make use of the Web from sharing cute kitten clips to vendor’s immolation clip. Welcome to the age of participation/consumption. It’s never been more exciting and dynamic than time present, when both push and pull technologies are vying for our attention, swinging and swaying our votes and demanding our devotion. Hold on to your wallet while keeping an open mind, to quote Buffett.

seeing what’s been there

Adjust your lens or change it, then you will see all kinds of things.

Even the same things, but much clearer.

The power of reframing.

Organization or organism all need to self-examine at one time or another.

For instance, after taking your shirts back from the cleaners, you might notice that even though they are clean, but they no longer have the feel of new fabrics. There lies the difference between new and clean.

Take that up one more notch. Market that might be on the uptick today, will turn mature tomorrow (hence the need for product extension or reinvention).

Toyota took a page from Hyundai which has offered product warranty, to also give two-year free maintenance (on selected models).

We all need to work harder for the money.

It makes sense for Toyota to have customers come back to the dealership voluntarily instead of via forced recall.

We will either look at the same thing in new ways, or try to find new things.

There are things about ourselves we don’t even know. Doctors can always find out these things via all kinds of test (MRI scan).

Then at the culture level, we often learn more about our culture through the eyes of  foreign journalists and tourists (a journalist observes that daily traffic in Vietnam looks like people performing circus acts every day).

One example of this is Hanoi.

Many journalists camped out to give us modern pictures of the city.  Foreigners like Old town Hanoi.  The same way I enjoyed Old Town Alexandria near Mt Vernon.

So, in Hanoi they celebrate, while in DC, people are puzzled about Vietnam Memorial structural integrity (which had a crack).

During this recession, many of us are forced to reframe, and reposition our career.

Not all can self-reinvent to get into health care, education or environment.

Meanwhile, IT companies like Dell decided to invest billion of dollars overseas where future demands are.

Welcome to a  global world where India and China consumers dictate  brand extension.

In the US the only chain that seemed to grow was Dollar stores where you can buy last year’s Christmas gift wrap on the cheap. They would rather have you store their merchandise at home, then in their stores.  A new kind of inventory outsourcing, a new way of clearing the deck. Old dog, but new tricks.

 

body building in Saigon

I have paid my first-month membership and come back for seven days straight.

The place is tiny.  I must have timed it badly: my body peak performance coincides with peak-time traffic which weaves through the front door (bikes found their short cut artery in an alley).

So I lift while listening to Michael Jackson’s CD. I feel proud, to be among muscle men, although if you get at the truth, I am more like Charlie Chaplin at the swimming pool (who pretends to get water out of his ears, while actually stays out of the pool altogether).

So here I am, in a city of roughly 10 million. People try to get home by bikes or buses. A bike front ended a Hyundai at an intersection this morning. People exchanged some unpleasantries, and went on their way. No wasted time. Lean city. Lean people.

Back to my muscle men. The owner put up whatever pictures and posters he can get his hands on: his own when winning medals, body muscle tissues poster straight from medical book and half-naked lady (but tasteful art).

He said if I wished, he could open the door at 3AM for me.  I said it would be more likely 3PM.

When your body produces endorphin, you feel less of a need for caffeine or nicotine.  I feel refreshed now, after two weeks of reverse culture shock.

The dust, the noise and the heat. There is tension in next door Thailand and earthquakes in Japan and Indonesia. China is building a huge project in the Mekong River, which might threaten the natural down-hill flow of SEA including VN.

The bodies and muscles here will need a lot of strength and endurance to withstand all that is throwing at them. And mine in particular, will need even more since I have used to working out in an A/C gym. Now,  I learn how to sweat it out among others in this steam-bath gym. I need to pick up on that: no wasted body fat, or any fat anywhere in the city of millions. Lean bodies in motion.  No wonder westerners found Saigon a great place to shred a few pounds, with or without joining a gym.