Tag: Macau

the right screen

Smart phones got computer, TV and phone screens, all in once. The combined screen.

I was sitting in front of a lap top and an attached large screen. For a moment, I looked at one screen while the action took place at the other. To catch on, I  need to follow the cursor to know where the action was.

In life, we have looked in the wrong place for the right thing.

(to make friends while in prison, for instance).

Penn State commissioned JoePa statue in front of Beaver Stadium, just to now debate whether to take it down.

The Christian in Asia a few centuries ago, were told to remove ancestor’s altars, traditionally placed at the center of the home.

The FEDs keeps reducing rates. Should we look there for future directions? Unemployment indicators? Housing and foreclosure reports?

Never have we been tested as during the past 4 years.

Am I looking at the wrong screen?

Prophets have arisen, and more shades of truths have been made available.

Which way is the wind blowing?

Put your money in Macau.

or in Manhattan?

Google Glasses or JcPenney?

Pick your people right. Business model can always be modified as we go along. Often times, it’s on the wrong screen anyway. Keep the statue. Make it a teachable monument. After all, JoePa had always championed scholarship and athletic pursuit hand in hand. Institution for higher learning should at least have intellectual honesty and moral conviction to defend its mantel and mission. Especially when it is now looking at the right screen not smokescreen.

Numbers game

At any time of the day in Saigon, you might be approached by street vendors selling lottery tickets, snacks. Even Buddhist monks hold a donation box but with fixed gaze in Zen steps i.e. barefooted on hot concrete.

Self-punishment. I respect the monks. Their self-control , from strict diet to dress code.

Life evolves around 8-fold path.

Born to suffer. Born this way.

The vendors of Saigon play their numbers game.

Lottery players do so as well.

They gather at close-of-business day for the winning numbers.

Dream on.

The more tickets you buy, the more money you lose.

Meanwhile, folks flock to Cambodia where casinos are legal. Reminds me of S Californians who make similar trips to Sin City (Las Vegas).

Dream on.

Meanwhile, Mirage expands to Macau.

Numbers game again. Improving your odds.

Everyone is on the move. Einstein theory on motion (Earth rotates etc…). Gotta improve the odds. Gotta to change that luck. Gotta play the numbers game, however small the probability. Dream on, move on. Nghin nam sau soi da van can co nhau. Thousand years on, rock and pebbles still need each other. What a song and a line to be played at funerals. Quite fleeting.

Saigon Skyline

Like a scene from Cinema Paradiso (when the film producer returned to his village just to find out his beloved movie house demolished for a parking lot) I too start seeing the skyline of Saigon rising, blocking the old bank where my sister used to work. Another one is being planned next to cho Ben Thanh where on a Sunday stroll, one could hear restless horses tapping their shoes on city pavement.

Modernity and memories.

Future and nostalgia. Progress and the Past.

More square feet from above and less stretching room down below.

Skyscrapers and shanty towns share the same eco-sphere.

Pedicabs and taxicabs, Marlboro and cappuccino.

Let’s go.

I remember the go-go bars on what used to be called Tu Do (now Dong Khoi). Our first rock and roll band played there at Ritz (Jo Marcel) with matinée show, which I sneaked in to hear. Toi muon minh la thu co cay, vui trong gio va khong uu phien (just want to be wild flowers, flirting in the wind without worry).

The 60’s America sang about “share the land”, while its military industrial complex “spray the land”. Now people are planning to build on the land.

Green building and green bag of money.

More living space on top of bank, more trees in the middle of  concrete structure.

Let’s do it.

Let’s do a deal.

Let’s build and they will come. Like Vegas and Venetian, like Macau and Madrid, Shanghai and Singapore.

No more Cinema Paradiso.

Just lost love and lost youth.

The village fool still stands in the town square, wondering what all the fuss was about. To him, cinema or parking lot, skyline or battle line, are the same. He never got a chance to be in the game.

He never even registered that his presence was acknowledged, much less his opinion.

Our iconic producer however felt a lump in his throat, seeing  the icon of his youth got demolished. As of this edit, my old neighborhood cinema just happened to catch fire.

You can never swim in the same river twice.

Certainly not here in the Saigon River.

 

Twice the romance

For almost a century, we have gotten used to Hollywood‘s sunset scenes of the Pacific (they could even make Skid Row desirable).

Now, fiction is trumped by recent discovery of a two-sun planet.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/215013/20110916/planet-two-suns-star-wars-kepler-16-b-tatooine-seti.htm

Sunset scenes will need to be re-cut. Twice the work. But also, twice the romance.

As evolving species, we will adapt, both to adversity and austerity. Just eating in.

You might resent the new acronym (PIIGs), but wait until you have to go without pork (like in China in the time of inflation).

The Chinese are stepping up to the plate by offering to stabilize the Euro zone currency. with condition.

They failed to mention the arm shipments to Libya during Gaddafi‘s time (perhaps, already a market-economy exchange on that deal).

With every earth-altering discovery like that planet with two suns, we need to re-examine our assumptions.

What if we can also discover alternate energy out there? What if we can alter our attitude toward consumption and community?

Why would the damn vehicle always have to seat 4 people in “bowling alone” era (how about sidecar motorcycles; after all, Henry Ford was just tying two motorbikes together to make his first 4-wheeler, all in black, of course). As of this edit, Toyota concept EV is doing just that: three-seater enclosed vehicle.

What defines “hip” and romance (Gaga , the mermaid on wheels, w/ a “bad romance”).

What if we were given another shot at life, with our current macro-economic vantage point? (the rogue trader is doing it again, this time in the tune of 2 Billion).

Planet Bollywood.

Las Vegas in Macau.

Ford auto assembly plants mushrooming along China’s Eastern coasts.

We only transplant and replicate what works.

A tweaking here, a tweaking there. Not an overhaul. Not a paradigm shift.

Until, it’s in our face, at planetary level.

Two suns.

A discovery that should silence both Galileo and Copernicus .

Before we know it, we will adapt and take the two sunsets for granted. We will long for thrice the romance, two off-line, and one line.

Enlightenment turns entitlement again.

Turn off the telescope and turn on the microscope to look inside. We will find the thing called desire. And it’s unquenchable, and our last frontier to be conquered.

The happiest moment might not be a  Hollywood sunset. The happiest moment lies in our selective memory, wired in our deepest part of the brain. There, you will find twice the romance. More than provided by the two-sun planet’s. It’s a remarkable discovery nevertheless. Go NASA!