Tag: Michael Jackson

Content poor

Latest study pointed to Vietnam workforce skill deficiencies, particularly in critical and behavioral skills (numerical skill was a given).

This study came not as a surprise. For years, kids have adopted a rote learning, picked up from peers and adults, who in turn, had picked up from earlier generations.

We are heading toward an era when technological platforms are abundant, but content wanting.

It is an equal of having all the stages in the world, smoke machines, sound machines, lighting machines, keyboards and sound effects machines, but no singer and composer.

Take the Beatles rooftop performance of  “Don’t let me down” as an example.

It was a winter day in England. Who would have thought of going out and holding an impromptu concert on the roof top, with “social proof” crowds gathered on the street and London police kept quite busy?

According to Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, the Beatles by then had played together for nearly 10,000 hours, first in Hamburg strip clubs, then elsewhere (except Japan where they were banned) before that memorable Rooftop concert.

Michael Jackson did buy all their copyrights knowing those were treasure troves.

Now, Bill Gates and tribes have risen, with Windows and Outlook for the desktop.

In short, the nerds have taken over. And there is nothing we can do about it.

Hardware rules. Until now.

Someday we will wake up and realize, what’s happened here?

Since when do we need to turn on the machine first thing as opposed to burning the incense? Bowing at the virtual altar and not the ancestral one?

Where are our priorities? chasing after the next version of the x-box at Best Buy and whatever OEM  happen to retail at the time?

One machine that has had some staying power (because it caters to a communal need): the karaoke machine. It cuts out the band (in its original meaning) and allows the mass to pick their own content and lyrics. Voila! instant party.

Cheers.

It asks little of us: cognitive skill (knowing which song and how to encode it), behavioral skills (how to take your turn and compete) and of course, numerative skill (tabulating the scores if you compete in teams).

Back to our skill deficiency alarm. If kids are allowed to explore and exploit their multi-talents, whether it’s in sports (Vietnamese women soccer team might score big this year, World Cup material) or music, designing or drawing, let the thousand flowers bloom. Move them up the chain of values, and not the chain of command (do you want to wage war forever? or else, why do we still behave in cold-war fashion?).

With inter-connectedness, mobile platform and dropbox, kids should be set free to pursue and optimize their lot in life. A nation whose policy is to blossom its young is the nation of the future. Take Israel, Ireland and India. What do they have in common? A national strategy and focus on IT talent infra-structure.

I hope someday you’ll join us. And I don’t think I am the only one.

Again

Thought I saw the last of it. Snow again.

The element of surprise, overused, lessened with each encore.

I saw Paul Anka the other day on PBS. He did it “his way”.

And then another encore.

Again. The audience was on their feet, not wanting to leave.

But then, everything, including good times, has to end.

There are lessons about Exit.

When you are dismissed, no miracle can turn someone whose mind has been made up.

This gave rise to the Colombo close i.e. start leaving, then bang, turn around to play dumb (w/Lt Colombo’s slanted eye): “oh, one more thing”.

Then, start again, with the Summary sales pitch.

On YouTube there was a clip entitled “Passed on”. Something similar to a digital scrapbook,

to be seen and shared after you have died. That’s an “Again”, with tag line: “Love in the Digital Age“. An E.will.

I have had the opportunity to learn a few things about my very grown bother and sister.

These are non-digital people. So they won’t be recording stuff on Passed On or anything near it.

What they do show me was my parent’s death certificates, refugee camp exit papers and life insurance policies accounts.

It’s like attending my parent’s funeral again, without the distraction of relatives and visitors.

Exit with a small “e”.

No wonder the place has a smell of decay. Buried in the snow. Closure!

On the flip side and brighter side, I have met new-born babies of the clan, seeing them all grown.

Winter and death, as set-ups for Spring and New Life.

With nature cycle, business cycle and yes, War-Peace cycle (Iraq 10 years on) I come away more  in-formed. Those who wait the cycle out will eventually see changes coming the other way. In the event one can’t hang on, digital services like Passed On can help with E.will. To be seen and heard, Again, albeit virtually and digitally. Paul Anka’s Papa would have been proud that his legacy was preserved and passed on. The footage should show “those shoes on my feet”.

je pense

Have you ever looked back at those goals you had set right out of college?

Marriage? Career? Health?

Then and Now. Perhaps they still remain the same or in reverse order.

No one set out with a goal of multiple marriages.

Or multiple careers.

Yet it has happened, taken most of us by surprise. On a macro scale, the same speed of change has occurred,  right after a State Visit of Chinese Leaders to a Texas range ( Deng wearing a cowboy hat), then the Soviet Leader advertised for Pizza Hut, sitting in the back of a limousine.

Bang! No more Cold War. Only hot food.

Berlin Walls down. Firewalls up.  Mainframe on Main Street, albeit smaller and smarter.

Our expectations have gone through multiple adjustments: fast food and fast divorce, financing and financial rescue (individual and institutional level; fiscal cliff?)

Nuclear families melt down, just as nuclear reactors did (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima).

Neil Young now grows old (Old Man Looks at my Life…) but Bob Seger is Still The Same.

Yoko Ono exhibits  John Lennon’s Art Works, instead of hers.

So we adapted. Bob Dylan said we always reinvented the past, because the Present and Future are both unknown.

Shirley Maclaine would vehemently disagree. She went all the way, claiming to have married with the Roman Emperor himself, albeit in his  reincarnated version as a Swedish prime minister.

What do I make of all these forward/backward worldviews? I have been told to keep my head down (slurping my cup-a-noodle?). Don’t think much. Then I heard the music “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”.

Then I start being futuristic: electric vehicles, solar energy and stem cells.

Those unknowns are fascinating. They bring new designs to auto and home building industries. They bring new jobs.

New hope.

America in the late 50’s had its mojo.

For those who are not afraid to set high goals, beyond just marriage, career and health, the future belongs to them.

Stay hungry, stay foolish. Think different. Je pense. Rodin’s statue of the Thinker could use some imagination ( sitting on a newly designed toilet seat, for instance)

Bill Gates is trying to do just that. Now, he starts to pick up from his friend Steve Jobs, some diversion thinking. The future belongs to those who are not completely satisfied with what now exists. Contentment or progress? Keep your head down or look up to the stars? Busy with Moon walk (Michael Jackson) or Mars Rover?

Your choice. I was just thinking out loud. It would be nice to have you join us. Imagine. And the world will be one.

Beauty, yes. Beast, no.

Elizabeth Taylor and Colonel Gaddafi. What do they have in common? Nothing, except for being on the cover of People and TIME, respectively.

The Queen of Tinsel Town once played Cleopatra, while the Colonel orchestrated his self-ascendency to be King of Kings (Africa). She was surrounded by men (husbands) he women (bodyguards).

Liz hung out with the King of Pop (incidentally, Michael Jackson was wearing uniform with white gloves, like the Colonel’s) in trying to support AIDS victims, while the Colonel welcomes back the Lockerbie‘s bomber.

Both lived through high times and turmoil (she was on a wheel chair, he bullet-proof golf cart). Perhaps the only brush the Colonel had with Hollywood was when former-actor-turned-Governor-turned-President Reagan almost got him from the air. (Obama on the other hand, was wearing black-tie on his Brazilian state visit when the second air strike was ordered, straight out of Hollywood’s script). The world mourned a passing Queen, and anticipated the fading King. TIME and time never does justice to anyone on or off cover (wrinkles, extreme close-ups, ill-lighted etc..) and easily turns beauty into beast.

That said, we expect drama just stop short of King Lear‘s. Modernity had a poetic way to march into cities past and present. It did in France back in the late 19th century.

It is doing it again, also by the French. First was Egypt’s dictator & son, then next in this Africa’s top-tier nation. However long the stalemate, the end will be eminent as a thief in the night, and all the female guards in the world won’t be able to fend it off.  All depends on logistics and supplies of arms. No arms-for-hostage deal this time, please.

Maybe Beauty knows best, when it’s time to go (they call it a wrap where she came from). It’s called D-day in war-time, and expiration date at Wal-Mart.

The Y bridge

Years ago, I met a GI in West Virginia. He couldn’t recall the name of a bridge in Saigon, only that it’s a fork on the road.

I blurted out, “the Y bridge”. Something came rushing out of the man’s eyes albeit well-hidden behind thick glasses.

He was instantly transported back to a time and place. When he was younger, more eager to help (he served as a chaplain in the Army)

and perhaps, more idealistic. For me, the Y bridge was the bridge we took to my grandpa.

We took the right of the fork, leading to and pass the Slaughter House (Lo Heo Chanh Hung).  And on our way back, of course, we made a left turn to go home to District 3.

Vietnam now has a bunch of forks on the road to take, most critically, how to get through “valley of death” to join the league of middle-class nations (Singapore, Taiwan, S Korea)  or stand on the side line and watch others zoom by (like the Philippines). In short, middle-income trap. (As of this edit, Vietnam’s Leader is visiting Washington in a series of talks about Trans-Pacific Pact. Another Y bridge after Clinton’s initiative to normalize relations).

It’s common knowledge that each Vietnamese thought highly of him/herself  (one upmanship) e.g. my girlfriend got a whole mouth of crooked teeth – more than yours who has only two.

In that vein, we don’t need a panel of judges to decide which Vietnamese Got Talent. It is happening naturally, every day. Yet, each person needs to make that choice at his/her Y bridge. I learned from a cousin recently about my now late father who once said, ” just to take the turn and deal with the consequences later”. To my Dad, there were no indecision (imagine each traveler stops at the Y bridge, undecided which turn to take).  A dilemma of pre-mortem brain-storming. Calculate the risks. Take the plunge. Fall not into the paralysis of analysis.

A friend shared a YouTube clip on “Ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things”. In it, I found heroes who also faced life dilemma, a fork on the road, their “Y bridge”. But their choices left great intended consequences to this day.

Only after they paid hefty prices.  My Dad lived on until he passed away at the age of 93. Apparently, whatever consequences he had to sort out did not bring him down, otherwise, he would have been dead much sooner.

Put my Dad up against the x-Army chaplain who couldn’t recall the name of the bridge, I would classify my Dad in the first group (Three types: those who made it happen, those who wait for it to happen, and those who ask “what happened?”.) Take the right turn. Then take the left. It’s 50-50 chance, rather than no chance.

 

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.