Tag: Japan

message in the bottle

Cast away. Sending an SOS. an SMS. I hope that someone will get my message.

We are born to connect (our belly button testifies to this) with nature and others.

Yet marketers are telling us that in Retirement Ville, cruise ship (with sauna sound that reminds us of incubator) and virtual existence can substitute for the real thing.

In Japan, a generation grows up with comic characters and robots ( Miku, a 3-D virtual rock star got

her star treatment not unlike The Beatles).

Children in the West and BRIC nations will follow suit with what Neil Postman coins “amusing ourselves to death”.

If you look at the statistics on how we spend our time, TV and the Web are at third spot after sleep and work.

We in mail, g-mail, dropbox, chat, text, store, tweet, Like, blog, comment, delete spam, mass e mail etc….

As of this edit, Salesforce is buying another cloud-based marketing company at the tune of 2+ Billion.

To be social. To connect. To be human. It will be the first time in our human history that one can connect more than the optimal 120 (The Tipping Point).  This revolutionary change is the most significant since the 60’s.

Music is to be shared (Woodstock), the Earth is to be shared (Whole Earth Catalog), ideas are to be shared (Google), courses are to be shared (Coursera) and ride is to be shared (San Francisco). It’s not by mistake that San Francisco and adjacent Silicon Valley come out ahead in thought leadership.

It’s been a while since campus coffee-house (our 70’s version of karaoke, except you have to bring your own guitar).

Now we got Facebook to share a clip (ironically from Youtube, which is own by rival Google), a photo or an article.

All of a sudden, it’s like play time, share time. Everyone is an artist i.e. to let the world know we once exist.

Adults, retirees, and yes, even x’s, “friending” each other. Amusing Ourselves to Death.

The Genie is finally out of the bottle.

I send an SOS to the world…….I hope that someone, I hope that someone, read my message in the bottle…….

Rare Earth beats

If you want to set the tone for the whole day, pop in Rare Earth collection which opens with a 22-minute long Get Ready followed by I Just Want to Celebrate. The name has nothing to do with current dispute between China and Japan for those planned-scarcity elements.

Get ready to celebrate.

Dream, dream, dream.

Back in the early 70’s, amidst America’s recession, oil crisis, Watergate and Vietnam, at least we got the beat (while pushing those huge Detroit automobiles inch by inch in gas line) and all sorts of movement for change (women rights, civil rights and rare species rights).

Those dudes got hair. And a slight mistrust of government conduct in world affairs (Iranian hostage crisis 1.0).

Fast forward to today’s early voting at the poll. (BTW, they are re-releasing Back to the Future series on Blu-Ray). It is said that France’s protest and Britain’s austerity foreshadow America’s future. Or worse off, Japan’s lost decade. Frantically, policy makers such as Chairman of the Fed are crunching numbers (consumer spending dropped below 70 per cent, hum, not good. What can we do to stimulate Christmas spending? Confidence index at 50, hum! We need to get it to 90) Well, we need those rare earth elements to make electronic components).

In case people forget, America has always moved forward despite setbacks. Just because it is based on checks-and-balances doesn’t mean paralysis of analysis. There is an Opinion piece in the NYT  about our corroded water system. Out of sight, out of mind.

The water department is going to shut down our neighborhood water today. It is advised that we boil our water after it is back on.

There it is. I get ready to celebrate, another day of living (with or without water in America) in Third World America (Huffington).

If I remember correctly, the Obama administration said they were opened to wiki-ideas on how to reduce unemployment (job creation).

And people have opined left and right about clean tech, smart appliances, infrastructure upgrade etc…

Nothing seems to be working. Meanwhile, large companies such as GE, IBM and COke continue to shift their workload overseas where tax incentives are irresistible. According to some accounts, GE paid zero tax for its operation in the US a few years back. I am sure it paid a lot for tax lawyers to figure that out.

So the dudes keep pushing the automobiles, except this time, it’s 40 yrs since our favorite band debut its Rare Earth collection. Get ready, I just want to celebrate. Back to the Future. Selective past is always best

when the future is uncertain. Then I understood the luring smell of a Thanksgiving turkey. It’s like mom’s cooking when you come home after being away in college. It’s the only constant in a not too favorably changing world. You know what CD I am going to play to celebrate another day of living in Amerika. Dream, dream, dream. A portrait of America Before and After Recession could be used for weight loss advertisement. People and cars both get slimmed down. Surprisingly, Rare Earth stood the test of time especially the drum solo part. It serves as a benchmark. That’s the America I first learned to admire, similar to the way Fareed described his version of America when still in India. Maybe it can still be for millions, if we can figure out the beat.

 

My machine vs yours

When Henry Ford put together two motor cycles side by side to invent the automobile, he wasn’t interested in pleasing his customers, “you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black”.  Now, car turns commodity, the Chinese came up with Cherry, the pink car designed to please its female customers  Bye bye Alpha Male.

We are moving swiftly to post-industrial society, where valued apps differentiate services (the Application layer).

My android app vs your I-Phone‘s. More women play games that fit their lifestyle, instead of shooting down the enemies in Mortal Combat. And medical records can be made available to avoid cross-drug effects. Ironically, pornographers are way ahead in tech curve (money-motivated people adopts invention very quickly).

How much more the “good” guys can advance if they put their mind into it.

My machine vs yours.

Let’s race.

We went to the Moon, collected rock samples, and returned safely.

Now, we just have to sit down in a chair and think.

Let our fingers do the walking on the keyboard, not feet on the surface of the Moon. Let them glide, and be the extension of our speed of thought.

Besides speed (Moore’s Law), and network effect (Melcafe), we need Movement (macro-wiki?)  to lift ourselves above the mundane.

Google’s “don’t be evil”, Steve Job‘s “be hungry”.

Sadly but truly, hunger and fear are good driving forces. The former compels us to hunt, the other to invent weapons to protect ourselves. Peter Drucker once said “organizations exist to do two things: innovation and marketing”.

From Taser to Tommy, it is not unusual to find in a woman’s bag: car alarm, I pod, I phone, flash lights, garage door openers, remote control of all sorts etc….

Wireless technologies have liberated dancers/singers so they can move around the stage, and their laptops around the house.

My machine vs yours.

Surround sound. Shared sorrow. The Japan that can now say NO.

Once thrived, now disheartened, Japan has quietly moved on to robotics to serve its aging population. If any country that could work technology into health care, Japan should be it. I had a chance to sort through first hand, all sorts of machines junked by hospitals. Brace ourselves for 21st-century hospitalization, where you can’t affor having allergy to all things machine. From Youtube to test tube, you will instead of viewing your music video, end up breathing from one.

My machine vs yours.

The Who will change its tune, from “see me, feel me” to “test me, read me”.

The machine won’t prolong life, but at least, it can give exact reading of time of death. That’s when the cursor blinks, without going to the next alphabet.

No period. Just blinking, incessantly.

My machine vs yours. Learn to live and love it while you can.

butterfly in the sky

Amidst traffic and smog, a black/yellow butterfly dances its way through the intersection, bouncing from motor bike to motor bike.

I shouldn’t have paid too much attention to the creature. I need to worry about my safety. But it struck me as odd.

All concrete in the city with only few trees left in old Saigon. Yet we saw a rare beauty. Just like Nha Trang, south of China Beach, where Miss World took place.

But I can’t pass on learning from this creature, whose primal instinct is to survive.

Human beings instead took their own lives (in this recession, it happens a lot). Or like a Vietnamese student studying in Singapore, on her boyfriend’s support. When the well runs dry, she committed suicide and found dead in her closet (her love story and financial support ironically have been well hidden, a closeted affair).

And the Fashion TV channel keeps unveiling many thin couture, very chic.

So, the co-existence of what’s ugly and what’s beautiful, what’s shameful and what’s honorable is a norm.

The Prime Minister of Singapore, on the country’s birthday celebration, touches on this issue: many conflicting interests.

One of his solutions is to allow immigrant workers, unlike Japan who opted for automation over immigration.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, tourists’ expectations are varied.  Many are from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Singapore. Hence, inter-regional business interests arise naturally due to proximity. Reverse tourist flow has also been on the rise. One of these days, the imbalance in trade and tourism will find its equilibrium, and incidents such as dorm-room closet suicide will be a rarity. For now, going abroad to nearby countries,  to study, to settle and to sight-see have been and will be a boost to the ego: look at me, I have it made. Let’s book that regional flight and shop til we drop. Long live luxury goods and those can afford them. High living and up-stairs living. The once-colonies now turn new crops of shopper colonialists.

Who gives a damn about wolves in Mongolia, or butterflies in Dalat? Just cut down those trees and make ways for the flow of goods made else where to come and conquer. The shoppers are invited foreign elements in. No need for Trojan horse.

Even butterfly wants to swing out of the congested situation, much less the nouveaux riches who never seem to run out of options to shop.

 

If this were my last day

I would hold the door for the person behind me as always.

I would call people whom I have avoided and face those dark alleys once petrified.

I would lay down my guards, strip off my veneers, and empathize with others.

I would clean up my desk, make my bed and re-arrange my shoes. One movie touched on this subject, whereby our cancer-contracted heroine went out and charged for her Manhattan flat, ordered in electric guitar and decided to live a life she had always wanted. Another movie, called “A Single Man“. Once his partner was dead, the main character tried his hand at suicide. But he was anal when it comes to being spotless.  This helped thwarting his plan: he tried to put the gun in his mouth, imagine  blood splat on the wall and bed sheet.

He even tried to slip inside a sleeping bag to avoid leaving behind a mess.

Last day or first day, we are creatures of habits.

Doing the same thing and hoping for a different result (like squeezing the toothpaste the same way, hoping for magic).

At the end of the movie, our “single man” said he had a moment of clarity.

We can see things as they are ironically in hindsight more than in foresight.

George Harrison put it in “While my guitar gently weeps” that “with every mistake, we will sure be learning”.

Enlisting death to live better sounds like a poor strategy, but

pre-mortem works better than post-mortem. Begin with the end in mind.Those of us who have been 7-habit practitioners know this all too well (BTW Steven Covey, the author, did leave a good legacy as a Master trainer of human potential).

So, if this were my last day, I would live fearlessly, unleashing and emptying my reserves.

And perhaps there comes a moment of clarity: seeing myself and understanding myself as others have seen it all along.

I would forgive both friends and enemies: friends, for not being true, and enemies, for being so true. You see, life comes as a package.

And up to us, to make order out of chaos, to find beauty in the beast: a single mom struggles to raise a deformed child while juggling another ball in the air (aging parent), the damn residue of Agent Orange or the Anniversary of Nagasaki. Chemical companies and cleaning products, weapon merchants and nutrition vendors, fast food and slow growth, mortgage lending and housing bubble. What do they took us for? The already-dead? Even if we sit still, practicing yoga or eating yogurt, the aging process is taking place, regardless.

I now understand that less is more. Live simply, and die tidily.

And if it’s the end, then, it’ s actually the beginning (T.S. Elliot).

Many people actually become influential more in death than in life (Van Gogh, Proust).

So if this were my last day, I would still be eager to see what’s next, invent and open to possibilities. And if I lived tidily, I would leave behind only few loose ends.

Oh, and I would say thank-you to the many whose help I couldn’t do without.

Like a book’s acknowledgment section, my list is long, but I know I am bound to leave out someone. That’s the part I need to work on right till the end, where the book closes. For now, it’s still an open one, full of surprises at every turn. No, it’s not my last day. I’ve only just begun, with the weight of death fully accounted for and acknowledged.

He who knows the why can endure the how.

Kaizen

In the 80’s, we saw many books about Japan e.g. Rising Sun, The Japan That Can Say NO.

Now, the Most Admired Country list seems to say NO to Japan, and places it at number 5.

Versace closed its door there after having sold to all the old people of the laggard group.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e5e6a886-b325-11de-ac13-00144feab49a.html

(in Dalat, Vietnam, a plan to build an all-Japan city for retirees was also scrapped).

Meanwhile, Toyota put out a recall for many of its late- model vehicles (its floor mat made the gas pedal stuck and killed 4 in San Diego).

And last month election results ushered in a new Prime Minister  from the opposing party.

Japan needs a quick fix.

Not from Robots, or foreigners, whose labor it needs (especially for the service sector), but whose origin it despises.

Young Japanese, generation without the Sun, got their play book from the Woodstock generation, hence no Versace

or if they needed accessories, they try SampleLab, or knock-off. When you sleep on your parent’s couch,

you don’t want to get caught trading up. Besides, high-end accessories don’t jibe with dark leather.

I admired the Samurai spirit, and how quickly Japan adopts technologies: AI, nano, just-in-time manufacturing, and

of course, the Beatles.

I also respect their stamina when faced with humiliation, from France’s De Gaulle to America’s Japan-bashing era.

I also wowed at their bouncing back , from the real estate fiasco to the Asian crisis of the last decade.

Somehow, Japan, personified by Toyota, seems to be able to pull rabbit after rabbit out of the hat (kaizen?)

Lexus, Scion, Sony (with Samsung “closer than it appears in rear view mirror”).

Its export-driven economy has been its crown jewel. Until neighboring China, India, Singapore, Korea

joined the game. All of a sudden, Japan found itself defending its home turf.

No more shopping trip to destination Vegas (whose show hosts used to greet the tour audience in Japanese in between drum rolls).

The outlet mall which served as a bus stop in between Los Angeles and Las Vegas has seen this boom and burst too well.

Now, at Number 5, Japan needs a miracle to get out from bad loans, to sustain its world tourist life style and to take care of its aging population.

At least, its defense bills have all been paid for since WWII.

Now, it needs to open up to fresh voices and visions. It did that when sending a Toyota designing team to drive up and down California Freeways. The result was the Lexus. It should now do the same, only this time, Kaizen at home.

 

Spent

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/477965/Lotto-winner-Callie-Rogers-reveals-hell-her-pound19m-fortune-brought.html

You can’t handle the truth!

Or blew 3 million dollars of lottery winning on booze, boobs and bags of white powder.

What a boyfriend the 16-year-old lottery winner hangs out with.

Meanwhile, another couple from Tokyo win the Tango contest, leaving the Argentinians in the dust (another couple from Colombia win Second place).

Now, that’s winning by hard work and collaboration.

I can’t help noticing the Japanese influence and presence in South America, just as I have recently about Chinese in Africa.

The East has produced a few “Columbus” of their own.

Can’t blame them for wanting to see it up close after years of Hollywood education. Meanwhile,

America still perpetuates the image of Iowa Jim (Incidentally, Clint Eastwood who directs the movie, also stars in his own Gran Torino which shows sensitivity to the plight of Asian immigrants)

even as Japan has moved on (signified by the start of a newly elected government). As of this edit, Japan has scored some shots at the Trans-Pacific Pact in the absence of President Obama, who had to stay home to resolve US Government shut-down.

We have yet to figure out the post-globalized world model.

Our lyric, liturgy and law that govern commerce and communication seem to freeze-frame at the post-WW world.

The star of Bollywood had already arrived at Newark Airport for a film premier, while  Hollywood still churns out Halloween franchise (same weekend that a Hawaii-born President delivered an Eulogy amidst an Irish white congregation.)

I admire the Tango winners ( hard work and collaboration) as much as I empathize with the 16-year-old lottery winner (luck) who has to move back in with her parents. She is learning her lesson at age 19.

To win means perseverance from within and facing challenges from without. Some passengers on United 93 made that heroic and fateful counter measure to retake the  hi-jacked aircraft. Now, that’s a challenge. In my book, they are winners.  Nature never fails to teach us the obvious: even dinosaurs couldn’t survive bio-meteorological pressures.

Size doesn’t make a difference in the scheme of things (my neighborhood bully, bigger than I then, is now dead). And certainly a whopping $3 million for a 16- year old on her spending spree won’t either. She can’t handle the truth!

 

Fat pipe, fast food

FIOS in Triple Play, for $79.00 for the first six months.

The last time I looked, it was $100 for the Triple Play package: phone, TV and broadband.

In China, kids played until they dropped dead (unwilling to lose their seats at the Internet cafe and online, where supposedly, they were up against competitors from all over the world. Sort of 24/7 Beijing Olympics).

And the China you and I had in mind (Nixon and Mao, Madam Butterfly and man in front of the tanks) is now replaced by a new generation of only boys, obese and online.

It will be just another step before they are online and home alone (at least, they drag themselves out to the internet cafe around the corner for now).  At home, one has access to Haeir small refrigerators: lactose, sugar, carb diet are in abundant supply. Stressed over a lost game? Have some more sweet!

The chairs and screens grow larger to accommodate larger “young” population. The next Billion ( according to Jump Point).

Marketers always seek to win over the next generation. Well, they are no longer the Generation without the Sun as in Japan, but something resembles Bangalore and Beijing. Without repeating Friedman’s mantra, but they are the ones who will take away my kids’ jobs, if not mine already, while we are asleep.

Their older and rural counterparts might have been mistreated and working under age at off-shored garment plants,

but these Asian urban kids are internet savvy, and fast food junkies.

They could multitask (typing and eating fries at the same time), code, and speak two if not three languages. Hard to beat!

The future prospects are quite frightening, if you can envision the Hongkongization of  China. 1.3B entrepreneurs and consumers of every thing fatty: fat pipe and fast food. It’s quite a recipe for a disaster, if not, obesity and obscurity.

Asians kids are by and large, not that extroverted. Now, they spend hours in front of the screen, developing and playing games. We will have to take old maid’s matchmaking from an art to an industry. Honey.com anyone? Remember now, when both boys and girls look like Sumo, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Plus, they can do a lot of stuff online nowadays to alter the look, size and shape of a person. Plastic surgery goes East, right after Madison Ave.

YouTube China will have quite an audience to reckon with, provided they roll out enough fat pipe for fat people.

 

Heroes in our eyes

We got some footage about those Japanese astronauts now.

This brings me back to those endless summers when I watched all sorts of movies: French, American, Chinese and Japanese. Among the Japanese ones, the most memorable is the “blind Samurai”, who exemplifies the spirit of quiet strength.

We self-project, so our heroes tend to reflect our inner psychological make-ups. And of course, the spirit of the time

has something to do with it: Bogart’s line “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” probably propelled him to the all-time

Hollywood endearment (but he smokes). While our Stallone of the Rocky series could barely utter a few lines, most memorable was his Rambo’s line “where they call Hell, I call Home”.

Another mesmerized experience was the Who in Woodstock concert film, where at the end of their performance, Pete Townsend, the lead guitarist, smashed his instrument to get the reverberation from the speakers (must be quite a buzz for those who were on drug at the scene).  The Japanese Samurai do more with less, while his Western counterparts do less with more ( over consumption and property destruction).

No wonder I was made to read those “Small is beautiful” titles when in college. It was right after the Oil embargo, and the social critics were having a field day. Some scholars even predicted the end of cheap oil as imminent, and this was in later part of the 70’s (I was more inclined to revisit their premises last summer when oil was up around the $150 mark).

Back to our heroes. To the millennial generation, those two guys at Google who rolled out their G Phones on roller blades, or the Facebook founder who refused to sell. These are today’s heroes: working from dorm rooms, and piggyback the University backbones. The next generation of heroes will be more likely to wear a turban or glasses

(slanted eyes). Mine, I must admit, are more feminine (my mother for one): O, J.K Rowling, Hillary and Swimsuit models (must be hard to keep up with the appearance for the shoot). See, I happen to be entrepreneurial, sociable and creative. My heroes got to possess all three attributes to make the list. Branson of the Virgin group made the profile also.

In seeking your heroes, you found your very self. We all live in a cave, and look up to our own shadows on the wall, that is, if we can make a fire. Sadly, I don’t find that many heroes in today’s business world . That is why they make the graduating class of MBA to take the oath (before they turn Wolves on Wall Street). At least, the biz schools finally own a bible or two, just for ceremonial reason.