Tag: Los Angeles

If you could read my heart

In Eastern cultures, one relies on traditional matchmakers to “read” marriage prospects.

Online, we’ve got eHarmony.com or Match.com.

Over job interviews, we rely on body language, off-guard remarks and (in)consistencies to form an impression and to determine candidate’s culture-fit.

If only could you read my heart.

How are we to determine his/her reaction after the learning curve? We don’t.

But there are a few principles:

– one tends to act consistently with his or her own internal set of standard

– we subscribe to a social compact

– we seek to preserve a long-term win-win balance i.e. cheating doesn’t pay

– collaboration leads to synergy which in turn feeds the virtuous cycle

– we seek to need-fulfill from the bottom of the Maslow scale up (survival first).

I never forget the Northridge quake, when we couldn’t get to work.

Co-workers, Hispanic, Korean, American, Vietnamese, Chinese (Los Angeles office), were all “quake victims”.

Apparently, there was something bigger than ourselves (and our ethnic make-ups).

We cared for one another as fellow human beings and shared inhabitants of this fragile planet Earth.

If they could have read my heart then.

So, on this Valentine Day, may we – co-workers – assume first the role of fellow inhabitants: from the inner ring loved ones to the outer ring – the human family: black, brown and white.

Once that social compact is bought in, it is easier to work with someone, to empathize and to collaborate. Test your candidate, see what planet he/she is from. Does he/she even feel at all? Respect at all? Or just go about “doing my job” regardless. No man’s island. Especially on Valentine’s Day.

Expired Empires

The Distributed Model has enabled the Rise of the Rest.

Capital, talent and market flow where the chips may fall. Apple courting China, China Africa, Japan Rest of Asia etc…

Everyone is out on the dancing floor.

Dance anyone?

The combinations are endless. Permutation and exponential.

Hard and soft powers, hard and soft currencies.

Exert that influence. Assert that strength. Differentiate.

Nations, like people, will have their 15-minutes of fame.

Advertisement section (like ones in the Economist) paints beautiful, picturesque locations, from Japan to Jamaica.

In reality, no one wants to remember Fukushima and Sandy.

Amnesia and amnesty.

Shelters from the storm.

America got its own set of problems e.g. FOR LEASE and FORECLOSURE.

There was a sign in Los Angeles that says it all. It was NOW HIRING, but the W has been whited out to be read: NO_  HIRING.

I got all sorts of CV’s (binders full of men). I feel the weak pulse of a declining empire.

We have squandered the opportunities this side of the Cold War (the US fared much better on this side of World Wars). Peace time problems e.g. Petro State (Dutch disease) to Penn State (low morale).

Meanwhile, the C in BRIC keeps growing stronger by the day. Scrapped metal scavenging, refined and remade into finished products, which got shipped back. In the process, this turns America into a Third-World nation by industrial standard.

China on the hunt for raw material, for petro, for talent, for know-how, for creativity. It has Soviet, US and Japan lessons to learn from. And it has Hong Kong and Taiwan as matchmakers. When a Taiwanese University came to Alhambra, CA to recruit students, we know the Rest is Rising.

And this foreshadows an expired Empire. Wake up Ivy League. Start at Little League. Math, Science, and English. 10,000 hours.

The undercurrent

Got jolted last night. 4.1 shock. And this morning, some more aftershocks.

It reminds me we share a vulnerable surface: ozone layer all around and a sea of lava underneath.

While we receive pictures of Mars surface, we are reminded of Earth surface as well.

It takes some getting used to, living in California.

But it’s here where talents come, from Silicon Valley to San Fernando Valley, from Redwood to Hollywood.

This is as “West” as you could go. Even waiting tables out here is like “acting”, or pre-acting (waiting to be casted).

Everyone wears shades. Expensive-looking ones. You got games. Got to have that “player” look.

Billboards on Sunset are huge, in-your-face.

and you are forever in need of a better T-shirt.

If you happen to put on Tennis shoes, make sure you don’t look like that little-old-lady.

Gotta have that Air Jordan feel, whether you play basketball or not.

Girls wear pajama pants. But it’s a statement, not garment.

It says “I don’t give a damn”.

I don’t need to put on a suit, to look like a male to get by.

In fact, nobody, at least in the summer, puts on a suit in Southern California.

Let’s not forget about Summer Concerts in the park. Wonder where those bands were coming from.

But they are here, getting paid to play.

Music is in the air. The Earth gets shaken every now and then. And people continue to move out West.

Running away from God knows what. A wet winter? A bad relationship? A need to reinvent oneself?

Even waiting tables out here is not just a job. It’s a part, a role. You are on-stage, waiting for the next “gig”.

Got your head-shot? Underneath it all, you can take off the facade that is required back East, but then, you will have to put on another, just to play the part (an extra). It comes with the territory:  nice weather mix  in with earthquakes.

They keep coming

In a few days, they might put on Neil Diamond‘s America.

Voter registration. Organ donor. Vehicle registration.

They bring some cash (let’s hope so) and a load of dream.

Many had left personal chapters of their lives before boarding that plane.

Just like the Irish and Polish a century and a half ago.

Except that the ports of entry may now be in Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The new Ellis Islands.

First stop often are ethnic enclaves which help ease their transition and acculturation (euphemism for losing out that which had made them them in the first place).

Gone are the scarves, the beards and the cone hats.

Instead, we have everyone wearing some sort of emblems: American Eagles, Newport Beach, Disney and sports teams.

I used to proudly wear PENN STATE grey and blue.

I still am proud.

But having been here too long, I started to realize I had overcompensated to becoming an American. It is a melting pot which frisked me of my ethnicity.

Once in CA, I realized everyone had come from somewhere else.

It’s LA. Dream factory (Hollywood) and Disneyland.

Not just people who reinvent themselves. The city itself has done that (you will not find the setting like you saw in the movies).  You are lucky to buy a map and take a tour where the stars might live (if they don’t check in a secret hotel to hook up).

Stuff of dream, of mirage (farther out, it’s more true in Las Vegas, but then, what happened there stayed there).

Yet they keep coming. Keep driving the vehicles. Keep smiling for the camera (except for the traffic control one).

And best of all, like one of the two Google founders, parents raised them to be good in math, which indirectly give us “Search”.

I feel lucky.

America feels lucky. And should be thankful (two-way street).

OK, now you can fade in Neil Diamond’s America. It’s Fourth of July.

If you hear a lot of fireworks, you know the economy is back in full swing.

One more reason to celebrate, besides Independence from the Brits and wherever else they – we – were from. But keep a toe back there, because

it’s good to know where one was from, and appreciate that unique root. May your descendants give us all the “googles” in this land of opps, starting at the DMV line. License will be in the mail in three  weeks.

Neon God

” People bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made” (Sound of Silence now inducted to

the American Museum as Classic American Sound to be preserved).

Meanwhile, we spend an average 8 hours per month on Facebook, “the cathedral they made” (same amount of time people attend church services).

Twitter is not addictive. Facebook is.

Via the latter, we learn about people and companies, and the company they keep.

Those “likes” and snippets keep trickling in, like rain drops that Pavlovian-condition us to salivate.

Facebook works well with Youtube. One-two punch.

The video link is right there, ready to be viewed.

While Twitter is like a news feed, Facebook has become our trusted source of recommended entertainment and enlightenment.

Family photos and commercial photos both pop up indiscriminately.

It’s all in the pipe, and we open the floodgate, willingly without reservation (after all, we “friended” them in the first place).

What in the beginning resembled child’s play now commends global attention and respect (our next Steve Jobs).

It’s like a Casino, Cathedral and Community theater all in one.

While Ebay might be the largest bazaar, Facebook has become the Neon God (the Bubble of our own making) to which people bow and pray.

The platform has become the prophet.

The medium, the message.

8 hours a month, forever and ever, world without end.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2095516,00.html

In restless dreams I walk alone…. and the voices of the prophets are written on subway walls, Facebook walls, and whisper’d in the Sound of Silence.

My 555 plan

Get back to your roots.

Eliminate waste and accessories.

Differentiate and make it relevant.

Actually, 555 is just a self-branding attempt, after a cigarette a friend of mine used to smoke.

I had to attach a numeric code to differentiate (sticky and trans-cultural)  my Yahoo log-on ID.

Now we hear of 999 plan etc…

It’s hard to stand out among Earth’s 7 Billion.

During a town hall meeting on LinkedIn, its CEO was ambitious to convey its vision i.e. to connect people to people, and people to opportunities.

Now we have the way (technology that connects millions at 2nd and 3rd degree separation), but we lack the will.

I heard of a new book entitled “Lean Start-ups”. The author mentioned “rentorship” of the means of production (Google Adwords, Amazon rack space etc…).

Even when the barriers to entry (means of production) are lowered, new entrants still get cold feet (catch 22: low consumer confidence leads to low spending, hence reduces the size of the pie, in turn, weakens the pull factor).

Even our Greek demi-gods need bail-out.

In education, we heard of “Waiting for Superman“.

Now, it’s waiting for Superman everywhere from EU zone to the O zone.

No, I don’t have a 555 plan to come to the rescue. It’s all in the unwinding.

And this takes time and belt-tightening (the 60’s protest was a rage against the machine i.e. inhumane,

now Occupy WS couldn’t articulate its distress i.e. wanting things back to the way it used to be in).

One thing is clear: we are in this together (dark side of globalization).

Vacationers from Europe couldn’t afford to travel to Hawaii. A resort in Hawaii got shut down (Michael Dell lost a lot of money there along with his Santa Monica hotels).

A Chinaman decided to shop in France (instead of Florida).  A Filipino street vendor just got flooded and went under. A Korean caterer LA tweets about his lunch site. And a Vietnamese man tweaks his latest app to share photos (Color) while Japan nuclear power plants striked a deal for two more reactors along the Vietnam coasts (this time, with Fukushima lessons learned).

There will be a lot of sorting out inside our hot and crowded sandbox.

The age of oligarchy has just dawned, not only in broadband, but in all sectors.

We can’t remember and choose among too many offerings (as BRIC countries export themselves e.g Tata in England, Huawei in TX).

Consumers always say they want more choices, while in reality, they pick the default option (organ donors in Europe were too lazy to opt out ).

So we are back to our roots (As of this writing re-shoring is on the rise with Albany getting $4 B pledge for chip facilities, and Pitts a huge endowment).  After all, America got talent, right!

I read somewhere that Youtoo is doing just that: to offer everyone a chance to submit their own video and to broadcast their 15-seconds of fame.

There will be enough bandwidth for everyone. Everyone is a star, because each has lived a wonderful life. Irreplaceable and invincible.

When your heart still beats, the cursor still blinks, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There are zillion of stars in the Universe whose 7 Billion are here on Spaceship Earth, wading water to school, landing a plane at near miss, or coding all night to finish version n.0.

There is no better time to live, to invent and to round people out of their slumber. Victim no longer. Victor all the way. Brain bubble is the kind that never bursts. What’s your 555 plan?

When truth shows up

On the list of “cities that might get worse”, many are from California (Stockton, Bakersfield…but surprisingly, San Francisco as well).

Even with and despite boosted help from Tinsel Town. My first impressions of Los Angeles were formed back in the midst 80’s, during the commercial real estate boom (remember Michael Douglas and the Japanese gangs, or automobile factories that required workers to do exercise every morning – Michael Keaton and his gold fish!).

We were in Search of Excellence back then.

Re-engineering everything.

And greed was good.

Friends who worked for Zerox looked at me as if to say “who do you think you are, going to refugee camps trying to save the world” (today’s equivalence of “who do you think you are, going around leaving scars” by Perry).

Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda (before Three Mile Island) starring and posing as a news crew trying to cover  a nuclear meltdown and a financial meltdown. Both events happened albeit three decades later.

When truth shows up, it’s quite inconvenient.

Dead bodies cannot be recovered for proper burial in Japan.

Automobile and chip factories slowing products shipment.

Even if they could, oil price and overseas rising labor costs leave laser-thin margins for producers.

Even breakfasts at Tiffany will have to be rerouted to China.

Quite inconvenient indeed.

Operations folks now hedge their bets, co-lo and cloud centers spread out logistically. The next economic recovery will see millions if not billions of young Middle Easterners joining the fold. From Facebook to phonebook, they will show up. Their aspiration is our very own aspiration: housing, school, environment, sustainability, connectivity, dignity.

By the time America got used to spelling “Nguyen”, a sign that we finally came to peace with America’s lost war, it will need to learn a whole new lot of last names, some of which might not be as easy . Get used to it. The doctor should learn to take his own medicine. Democracy finally came home to root on American’s soil.

Roll out the mat (for prayers), not the red carpet.

Send them to Stockton, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Cities that can use some new blood launching another Facebook or Twitter.

Halloween in Vietnam? A redundancy

Young people are out in drove, that is, if they were not already on bikes, racing like mad on weekend nights.

This time around, in costume. Halloween costume. In Vietnam, of all places.

First, the masks trickled in at tourist and expat hot spots. Then, wider adoption is made possible by cheaper goods from next door China . No stranger to superstition and spirits, Vietnam has always opened to trying new things, from Tango to Hip Hop, Vespa to Roll Royce.

Only this time, young people agree with their elder generation: the spirits world.

Their parents would burn incense on the 15th of July, Lunar calendar, and the younger generation dress in costume, Twilight style. Long held reverence for both the living or dead (animism and ancestral worship), Vietnamese are no strangers to para phenomena and cyclical lives. In contrast, to be consistent with their linear and industrial model, Westerners have tried to suppress witchcraft and superstitious belief which gained popularity in revolt of Darwin and the rise of science and technology.

That can’t explain away Twilight, the Blair Witch project and tons of Halloween  candies and candles flickered inside pumpkin shells on US front lawns.

But in Vietnam, year around, in any household, one finds incense burning at the family altar. Even in Catholic households.

In fact, Cao Dai ism accommodates all spiritual traditions under one roof (Victor Hugo was one of the saints).

Caodaists wear white, symbol of purity. Another striking contrast in how funerals are conducted. White robes in Vietnam, all Black for the West (this tradition is widely adopted by Vietnamese overseas who attend Chapel services in Rose Hills, a popular cemetery in Los Angeles, California. The Buddhist Vietnamese in the US struck a compromise when colliding with public ordinance and traditional mourning practices: they brought in the monks,

then the limousine people take over.

So, the children in Vietnam  got both Moon Cake last month, and Halloween candies this month.

Halloween allow both adults and children to take on an alter ego. Someone said aptly that “give me a mask, I will tell you the truth”.

Actors do that all the time, and get paid handsomely.

Halloween, it’s one day out of the year, when the bad and ugly feel accepted at the table, or a bar stool in Vietnam. Westerners are welcome to join in what had already been a built-in practice in this culture: a reverence for the non-living.

transitory stage

I once got a 12-hour lay over in S Korea. The airport boasts itself as ” a world best airport hub”, w/ picture of a janitor-on-duty in men’s bathroom. Every hour, there were a  procession of some sort, complete with traditional gowns and ceremonial hats. Passengers-turn-shoppers (the airport was designed as a Mall) paused and expressed curiosity, but only to resume window shopping.

A flight to Istanbul was full, not with Turks going home from S Korea, but with Koreans vacationing or visiting Turkey, their launching pad to Europe.

The Financial TImes ran a piece on how for the first time, a new release was sold more in e-version than hard cover. Paper or I-Pad?

And social networking turned intranet, turned outsourcing product for other companies to adopt social networking as an official backroom function.

Steven Hawking argues that gravity and other natural forces alone created the Universe (via Big Bang).

Babson (later Babson College) wrote a book entitled “Gravity is our greatest enemy”.

When we buy a pair of Jordan Air, we conspire that “I believe I can fly..touch the sky”.

Anti-gravity urge. Immortality urge. Anti-inertia urge.

I know one thing: I heard so much about Korean ubiquitous broadband connection. So, here I am, with Samsung notebook access for free.

Blog-in-the-air. On the ground, and everywhere.

The new Korean airport appeals more upscale than Korean American Mall in Los Angeles. Perhaps their success lies in grand design, homogeneous work units and morale -average work week of 50 hours, as compared to the French 35.

It rained slightly at noon here in S Korea and made the place seems surreal.

I read about the bomb scare in Miami airport. And hurricanes in N Carolina.

Hope my plane can land in Atlanta as planned.

There will still be another short hop before I get to sleep in my bed at home.

Unemployment figures are still bad. Made the Federal Reserves frown.

They should send us money, hence turning jobless folks into active shoppers

(by sending vouchers good only for shopping, similar to cash-4-clunkler). The Korean airport certainly did this by having it built into their architectural design. People were crowding at the tobacco and malt counters. I remember that Korean’s GDP growth, the last time I looked, was somewhere positively .01 percent. At least, in this part of the world, one can find some positive signs, besides the janitorial logo which boasts  “a world best airport hub”. I concurred, since I took a nap undisturbed (unlike chairs that were designed to deter such activity in Miami airport or others). In marketing, it’s called differentiation and late mover’s advantage. You can change marketing practices, but you cannot change the man and his habits. Much less 7 habits of ineffective people.

California Dreaming

TIME spotlights California on its cover this week.

As a country, California would be with the G8 ( between Italy and Brazil, thus displacing BRIC with CRIC  i.e. California, Russia, India and China).

Yet it has no world-class soccer team (despite having in-shored Beckham) just yet. That’s said, it is one of the brownest States in the Union. And it will stand tall, demographically and technologically.

I wrote about the up-trading Taco truck in my earlier blog. TIME also showed a Korean BBQ truck  using Twitter to announce its stops (high-tech high touch).

What surprised me was foreign students’ major in the State: more chose Business and Management over Science, Math and Engineering (exactly what the Chinese need to move up the value chain).

With 13 percent Asian, California has a natural inroad to Asia (just a plane-hop away).

Washington State has also capitalized on its geographic “proximity” to set up strong ties with the East (and sell some apples, Window and Starbucks while at it).

Who wouldn’t want to live in California: paradise and paradox, problems and promises, most congested freeways, yet greenest state. It has a underexploited Modesto and an overexposed Hollywood , clean tech and bio tech; gay and straight.

California is home to dream factories (Disney and Dream Work). So enamoured with the big screen that the State elected actors to be its Governor not once but twice. Its script keeps getting a rewrite even on location (budget cut? well, hold up a knife Governor. “This is a knife” the line last said by Crocodile Dundee on his first visit to the Big Apple). It’s used to be “Go West young man!” Now, it’s keeping going West and follow the sun.

I talked to people in the Orient and they wanted to come and live in California. To them, California is America (especially if they have a free account on Yahoo, own an I-Phone and watch YouTube, all California home-grown, like its wine and raisins). In up scale China, one can find new developments that were modeled after Newport Beach.

“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray”. If the gubernatorial race is an early indicator of things to come, we are in great shape. After all, anything can happen in a dream, or when we “sit down and pray”. The truth is, my relationship with California has been a dysfunctional one, as is the State.

Despite its high costs of living, California is where you’ll find innovation around the corner, or in the garage .

Californians don’t do attic or basement like East-Coast counterparts. They compose music on wheels (Jewel), produce TV shows on wheels (Jay Leno), and of course, cater tacos on wheels. Year round, they don’t need the bottom half of their jeans (hence the cut off or zip out). This recession and recent gold price peak led a bunch of people to the high mountain, once again, creating a mini Gold Rush, California’s original raison d’etre.

Most listened to is its rush hour traffic report. Least visited is the downtown LA library, before or after the fire. When EReader and Kindle get full adoption, they will turn library into museum .  What’s hip in California (women volleyball, muscle beach) can’t be easily duplicated .  This Wednesday, Google will team up with Lala to help us search for that “California Dreaming” tune. Just a phrase, such as “I walk into a church” can trigger a bot crawl.

Or ” I’ll be back” to pop up the Terminator. It doesn’t hurt to have a Governor with sound bites or once picked up a dumb bell in what remained of  a LA fire.

And the media ate it up: light, camera, action (background lighting, actor, prop and audio). Keep dreaming California.