Tag: Iran

Clancy Clan

I am sure Mr Clancy who has just died at 66 had many late nights facing the blinking cursor, unsure of where his thoughts and imagination might have taken him. The hunt for the next national-security threat.

Cold-war genre morphs into regional terrorism tale.

An epitome of story telling.

I am a fan.

It got me through many late nights as well, facing breakdowns in relationships and career.

Of course, in his stories, the good guys win in the end.

Adult children fantasy.

But we got enough real news out there. We need to retreat into a world of his own creation.

Suspense, sweat equity. Maryland and the fantasy land.

Not bad for an English major-turned insurance man turned best-selling author.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Fiction trumps non-fiction.

In life, we got government shut-down.

In novel, we have our heroes carry out their mission to the teeth, peeing into an empty Gatorade bottle before each sortie.

By the time his last novel is on the stand, Clancy would have mesmerized the world for 30 solid years, with big thick hardbacks.

Perhaps in today’s cloud computing, soft power diplomacy and screen addiction, people will look back to Clancy

s days as vestige of sorrow rather than celebration.

Intelligent adults still cannot solve their problems and resolve their differences except over a shoot-out.

Truth be told, the world still needs good story telling (J.K. Rowling) and are willing to pay for it.

I am glad he bought a tank. Whatever made the man happy before going over to the other side.

Macho man and mandarin man.

Hard and soft power.

The power of imagination and reconciliation.

The story needs a tight ending. He set it up and tied it neatly til the end. His end. Now we need a new Clancy for our new decade. One who can creatively plot a way out of chemical weapon violation and dictator’s dogma who still rule today’s Iran, N Korea and Cuba. Defense gives way to State, and combat to collaboration. It’s a tall order. A new world order.  A new generation of fictional writers will in turn face their dark nights of the soul and those damn blinking cursors, just as Clancy did prior to his 1984 publication of the Hunt for the Red October. Remember, we might run out of options for a Government Shut Down, but imagination itself has never run dry. Try it, it might work. If not, try again.

Chemistry: blessing and curse

Bodies of little ones lined up on the floor (Syria).

Little orphans waiting to be fed and sustained (Vietnam – Agent Orange victims) decades after the War was over.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima, if we can still recall those localities.

Wrong use of chemistry. Shadow effects.

Masquerading rhetoric.

Just as the Dow finally hit its height.

Who would want to rock the boat.

It only takes good men standing by and doing nothing.

Then before long, little bodies lining the street of America and Europe.

A likely scenario.

Not too far-fetched. Or maybe in N Korea, Iran and once thought, was in Iraq.

This time, we want to get it right. To give it a proper and concerted response.

Chemistry belongs in the lab, to make Oreo cookies and not cooked-up weapon of mass destruction.

Conscience doesn’t just belong to men of past era (WW II).

Conscience belongs to us, in the here and now.

In an era of “flat world”, we are privileged to the information just a tweet away.

But it seems to take longer (certainly long enough for perpetrators to destroy critical evidence) for us to formulate strategic responses.

We choose leaders not just to read from the teleprompter. We choose them to represent our interests and conscience.

The collective will and common goods.

It’s that time for leaders to lead, and for history to judge.

If it can take place over there, unpunished, then it can and will take place over here. Just a matter of time. The same time it takes for a few good men to stand by and do nothing. Churchill is rolling over his grave. So are many great souls of the past.

Below-the-belt offenses don’t deserve civilized response. Through the rhetoric, I see men in fear and not courage.

BTW, courage is calculated against-the-odd kind of response in face of danger, not in the absence of it.

Unfinished business

Program lingers on linearly while project has its own bell-shaped form.

Beginning and ending.

Life is constituted of both programs and projects.

Child-rearing is not a project. Schooling them is (until they come back and take over the couch).

Warring is a project.  At least when we could get out and not sink deeper into the quagmire.

When I finished Assassin Gate, I felt a striking resemblance to what the US had encountered in Vietnam (not knowing who the enemy was – the Perfect Spy – as case in point).

People form interesting alliances in war.

For now, world attention has shifted else where e.g. Syria, Iran and Israel.

Should they be classified as programs or projects?

We would hope for the latter.

If we take a zoom-out view of  history, we will find that one man’s failure is another’s victory. Innovation came about in clusters, in Europe during the Industrial Revolution. Scientists competed to file patents and announced findings.

Medical and mechanical surprises ( Marie Curie and Marconi).

Which leads to our present dilemma: we are more aware of vaccine and virus, wireless and wire line technologies. Since those are money-making business, we  give them more street’s cred and credits over low ROI projects.

Our life style has evolved to the point where we express ourselves in terms of technology (I am low on bandwidth, I need to be reboot, I can’t copy you, I am unable to process what you have just said).

We keep tweaking and tuning. To stumble upon that optimal-efficiency point.

When we left our phone (hardware) at home, we feel “naked”.

Out of the blue, we got “Drop Box” (the equivalent of train-station locker).

So on and so forth. Keep id the problems, we got the solutions. As long as we can monetize it. If not, we drop it (Blue tooth).

It’s not too long ago that Facebook was an unknown “face”.

Then everyone knows Mark (as if he were our son-in-law). Not sure between him and Justin Bieber, who is more  popular.

I am sure of the difference: Mark , in the language of this blog, is a program, a work still in progress. Justin would be a project, whose stardom has hockey-stick beginning and definite ending. That’s how the world works. I know this. I have just finished listening to “I’ll Be There” and remember how we all loved Michael and the Jackson 5. Then I realise we all were babies in our families. What has happened? (Babies turned burden).

The flow of life floats away relationships. Then what yesterday’s program has become today’s project (papa turns patient).

First we use relationship language to address one another (uncle, brother). Then we use machine language (leaving me a message on my answering machine).

Finally, we call them “patient”, “pupil” “inmate”. Institutional language that dehumanizes people. Turning them from “program” to “project”. My friend, you will forever remain my life-long program. Unfinished business. Work in progress. Not just a Contact, or Data Point.

This side of the curtain

It would have been stuff taken from” The spy who came in from the cold.”

For three months now, I have lived in the alley behind the local police station.

My big brother would have fainted just to learn about it.

He is a pharmacist, retiring, but still goes to work per diem.

He was drafted during the Vietnam War, like everyone else. But he only stationed in town, to teach a class in Medical Tech (X ray machines etc..)

He would never come back, would never hang out in the alley.

I even wanted to trade place with one of the guys in passing. Would you let me have your place, with you going to CA, and me staying here.

The guy politely declined, or brushed it off.

Times has changed!

This side of the curtain has mostly old files, not yet digitized.

People are in a hurry to consume and to spend.

It has been mild lately. Some people caught a cold.

It would be a funny movie to show a spy who caught a cold, instead of coming from the cold.

Now, we got virus, but from Iran, as they attack data centers.

Try to wake up to a different world. A connected one. And in it, most of the truths and threats we once held as absolutes, have become irrelevant. Yesterday’s fear should not hold us hostage today. I am just holding up the mirror : modernity infects everyone on both sides.

Technology is agnostic. Now, instead of iron curtain, we got firewalls.

Instead of flu virus, we got Iran-originated virus.

John Le Carre or James Bond, all need to update their software version.

Sometimes the virus is in us. Our James Bond character finds himself recede into the dark corner of his own.

We are the bad guys as well. Just didn’t realize it.

Until someone  shows us who we truly are. Mr Bond, tear down that curtain.

Convenience and conservation

Plastic or paper?

Here or to-go?

Before we know it, billions of mindless decisions are made everyday. Taylorism (efficiency down to the smallest detail) has found its way into fast cars and fast food.

Even into our every-day use of language: just a sec, ASAP, bs.

There is no excuse for snappiness. We have stood by helplessly as McDonalization and Walmartization take over our planet.

A signage up, a tree down.

I am glad to hear that people here in Vietnam send back their equivalence of Christmas trees (Mai) back to nursery farms, where they will be replanted until next year.

In the States, only old folks get sent to hospice never to return home.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Every morning, outside my door, a man took a fast walk with his old dad.

I enjoyed watching them.

With reasonable guess, we can deduce that that man’s son will someday go with him on the same walk.

There is something in life that we cannot rush e.g. losing weight, growing deeper in a relationship, acquiring a new skill set (10,000 hours).

In college, I produced a TV spot on energy conservation.

People thought it was just a trend (back then, gasoline was still cheap, and Three Mile Island had not yet happened until I stumbled upon that scoop during my TV internship).

With tsunami and Fukushima behind us, we seem to take the so-called “tree huggers” a bit more serious.

It’s down to our every day’s choices: re-use a plastic bag, place the cigarette butts in proper places (especially in Singapore), and water the plants.

Some scientists are urging to reclassify sugar as toxic.

It seems as if we are all beginners at comprehending our planet.

The 80’s saw peak use of hair-dryers (and shoulder pads).

The 90’s water bottles and SUV‘s.

Just lately that hybrid cars started to gain some traction.

Just in time for Iran‘s rumble (hence, Venezuela‘s oil supplies as well).

Trees will still be here after we are long gone.

So those trees (cay Mai) will be back next year, delivered by the nursery just in time to bloom again for the year of the Snake.

Meanwhile our daily choices boil down to “paper or plastic”, “here or to-go”.

Sit there and eat. Save a bag, and save yourself some stress (of eating on the run). Don’t fall victim to the economy of scale (default choice is plastic and to-go). Defense!

I am growing liberal by the minute as the planet gets hotter by one degree at a time. Let me know when you found a tree-hugger. I will embrace him/her as well. Conservation takes work and thoughtfulness. Convenience just happens by default. I stand at the fork in the road, I take the road less traveled, says Frost.

Internet intersects culture

In China,, teacher Ma was on trial for using the internet to recruit partner-swapping.

In Pakistan, they banned Facebook and then YouTube.

And in Iran, right after the election, they did not like Twitter.

Fast-pace technology collides slow-changing tradition.

As of this edit, Kenneth Cole (shoes-man) tweeted about “boots on the ground” as referring to to Syria’s dilemma.

No joking matter! But he did it on purpose to profit from planned controversy.

The gods must be crazy!

People feel invaded, and threatened (that life as they know it will forever be altered.)

Travelers kept saying that every time they are back to Beijing or Shanghai, they couldn’t find the same noodle shop.

It’s gone, and in its place, huge towers had been erected,in those spots.

If you looked at Miami in the old days, and Miami today, you couldn’t help but feeling the same.

Nobody seems to take full credit for the rise and roar of the internet .

Among the tech camp itself, mothers are eating their young.

Wiki displaced Britannica, Firefox took shares from IE.

Nokia got absorbed into the Office suites.

What we wear, eat and play might never be the same. They might not even be real (Samsung Swatch and Google Glass).

Back to teacher Ma. It’s not the internet. It’s his predisposition to activities that are shunned by most, with or without the internet.

Erecting urban towers, and putting some locks on the door doesn’t shut him

off from the larger Village of 1.5 billion or for that matter, 7 billion. Or let’s just for argument ‘s sakes, let Teacher Ma be the new Timothy Leary, then China will definitely need a lot of computing power for all those swapping and scheduling e.g. concubine.com recommends this xxx-pound lady, to schedule a meet at a local KFC, click here.

It’s exhaustive for them just to find one another in the big city (which noodle shop to meet at) to begin with. It’s open source on the internet, but still very much a closed society on the ground. Remember, Moore’s law only applies to chip processing speed, not to collective culture like in China, Pakistan, and Iran.

People there are still very much defined by a web of relationships i.e. son of so and so, daughter-in-law of Mr X etc… Change should start slow, let’s say to introduce Square Dancing, which allows for some partner swapping and swinging, then move on to Halloween Costume Ball . Then maybe, Farewell my concubines or Raise the Red Lantern, part II. Finally, comes consumer spending then Credit swapping, and Partner swapping (Ponzi).  The best case for Teacher Ma is to share a bunk bed with other inmates whose only wish is to someday have internet access.

 

Decoding America

It’s a grand title. But the intention is put up some guide posts to mark the new (Lonely) American trail

Or else, new comers to America, reading Orientation web sites only, would end up like the Oregon couple who trusted solely on GPS readout, without consulting paper maps.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100102/ap_on_hi_te/us_stranded_motorists

We learn and continue to refine our learning by decoding the multiple stimuli and messages thrown at us.

America is turning into a giant swap meet, and price doesn’t matter much. It’s our time, attention and labor.

If I were to advise incoming students, from China, India or Vietnam, I would point out that:

– In America, neighbors while living close by, are really far from you (proximity has nothing to do with social grouping)

– Inter-racial relations have improved a bit, but precisely in the cities, where one finds a higher concentration of people from various ethnic origins, that a higher rule takes over: survival in the urban jungle.

(Vietnamese students abroad, like in Russia, and recently America, should be vigilant about their own safety).

– clothing has been defining people since the beginning of time. Now, more than ever with cheaper imports (I spent more money on suits/ties but wore them the least. Invest on your informal clothing, which got more wear per dollar spent : 80/20 rule).

– when they start addressing you by your last name, watch out for the pitch. Not all sales pitches are bad. Just bad salesmen.

– American love their gadgets: it started out with horseshoes, guns and knives. Now everyone’s garage is like a pawn shop.

– People are always searching for another Gold Rush. But it’s those who sell picks and shovels who end up reaping the windfall.

Buffet is investing in railroad again, because of the high price of oil. Tools=treasures.

– Company’s parties are controlled environment. So are all parties, including the ones in your house. Neighbors love to dial 911.

– Cooking is not cool. Cleaning is.(German influence: efficiency. Cleanliness is next to godliness). Huge grills, small hamburgers and hot dogs. (once again, tool rules).  No place to buy your meals on New Year Day or Christmas Day. Be prepared.

– Respect your prospect’s time by being over-prepared. Remember the tip of the iceberg: every day is presentation day. And this means controlling your weight, your appearance, your speech and your up-to-date knowledge.  America has been and will always be a Revolution-in-origin, Evolution-in-progress Nation, where the best of everyone is expected. It’s a society with built-in obsolescence. Today’s best invention is tomorrow’s laughing-stock (Boom Box, VHS, IBM, MS, Kodak).

– Nobody seems to take anything personally. They can disagree all night and then achieve consensus in the morning. Unlike other countries (Korea or Italy) where disagreement led to violence in the legislative chamber. (J Kerry is now Head of State).

– And finally, America values your contribution: the President said he opened to all ideas, big or small, to help create jobs. Hope he doesn’t drop the ball, just because of one Nigerian brat trying to put something in his underwear in flight. American leaders are so secure that they are willing to have those “teachable moments”. They know that pride (know-it-all) comes before the fall.

Good luck with your visa application to come to the US to study. Your future is bright, because you don’t get in your own way. So will everyone else, who is busy with their social network, and backyard grills. Remember, virtual neighbors are the best. They can’t knock on your door and borrow some tools, albeit you only use it occasionally (80/20 rule).