Tag: Mission Impossible

Adventure in my homeland

One of my earliest  collections was the Adventure of Tin-Tin.

It was a roadmap for my adventure later in life, which took me to ten countries and roughly fifty cities in North America. But nothing had prepared me for an adventure in my homeland. Certain familiar elements still exist: Chemin de Fer, Ben Thanh Market and the noodle stand in my old neighborhood. But new elements have emerged as well: I-Pho T-shirts, I-Center and Steve Jobs biography in Vietnamese.

At rush hour, thousands of helmets compete for pavement and sidewalk. Call it “Helmet Nation”. But at night, when the heat subsides, tables and chairs sprout up on the very sidewalks commuters had just fought for the right of way earlier.

People are getting married (young demographic), are into fashion and style and going to school at ALL hours of the day ALL WEEK LONG.

I heard that Koreans work  the longest hours (55) and the French shortest (35).

Maybe Vietnam should be ranked at the top for classroom hours vs free time.

(This study load perhaps did not scare off the only Korean student enrolled in Vietnam University to study MBA out of a few thousand foreign students in Vietnam, most taking Vietnamese lessons).

During my “re-entry” I could pass as a “pure” native, until  my slightly red-hue hair gave me away

“Good morning Sir, would you like to see the menu?” one vendor approached me at Ben Thanh Market.

And before I knew it, I purchased a Steve Jobs biography by TIME’s former Editor (in Vietnamese, by Alpha Book) instead.

After all, Steve was born Syrian. And his idea of “think different” would fit here where “Sorrows of War” copies are sold along with I-Pho T-shrits.

On my way home, I stopped by the I-Center in District 3 to see how closely this “reseller” reflects Steve’s original and obsessive control of  every Retail  detail (inadvertently, I acted as an unsolicited mystery shopper).

The rep asked “what would you like to buy”?

In the States, his counterparts would have left me alone to play with the I-products, until I became so engaged and enthralled that I wouldn’t need to be asked (puppy-dog sales).

The strangest feeling was to walk out of Mission Impossible (which took the audience to the Kremlin, Dubai and Mumbai) and emerged into the sunlight of my old neighborhood in District 3. For a moment, life seemed to be  a continuous loop, from Adventure of Tin Tin, to Tom Cruise, to Tommy (me), as one  writer put it, ” return to the same place, and see it for the first time”.

I finally understood the expression “the eyes of one’s heart”. Perhaps we will reach the Empathic Civilization sooner than thought: understand others and be understood. Full circle. Adventure that started at my doorstep ended there as you may have guessed. Ecole L’Aurore. District 3.

Beyond Hero

On Easter, the networks dutifully searched their archives for larger-than-life movies like Ben-Hur to fill their air time. From the Beat Generation to the Beatles, anti-hero started to emerge, like in “Rebel without a cause” (the knife-fight at the Observatory between leader of the black leather gang and James Dean in white T-shirt). Since then, anti-heroes, like at My Lai Village, Vietnam, or Nixon, after Watergate, got choppered out of the White House (premonition of the last chopper out of Saigon two years later).

Fast forward to recent James Bond character. He had to be reigned in by his female boss ( the trend with female CEO now prevails at HP, IBM, Xerox, Yahoo).

Riding that trend, in Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise is also portrayed with more psychological depth. In short, more human, as opposed  to  super hero in Ben-Hur (whose showing was at outdoor theater, with viewers “parked” in Chevy convertibles).

Today’s gen Y have their own version of villains and heroes: their Lab-created Avatars, in 3-D, descendants of  comic heroes like Batman, Spider man and Iron man.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan, drones are the new heroes (while pilots who remote-control them can go home in Nevada unharmed; all in a day’s work).

Welcome to the digital age, where commerce, coupon and combat are all conducted online.

We use Search before Select. Parent used to be consulted on almost everything large and small. Now, it’s the screen.

Most of us grew up observing and imitating our dads: shiny shoes and the must-have watch. I used to shine my Dad’s shoes while he groomed.

From that vantage point, he was a towering figure in L-size clothing. He was never afraid to defend our home against robbers (or in my case, bully). He had only low tech (no surveillance camera or motion-detector flood lamps) to rely on. One night when I was about three-year-old, I woke up with a start, just to see a thief sticking his long pole, with hook  on end, trying to fish my mom’s purse.

Before I realized what had happened, I heard footsteps running, pole dropping and my Dad charging out after having thrown his kitchen knife with all he had. Quite low tech defense!

His world was simple, and his concept of security unambiguous.

Unlike the world I now live in.

Unlike the movies I now see .

Unlike the Bond characters which have come and gone. Remember Q?  Bond’s in-house gadget expert ? His expertise is needed to gear 007 up for mission.

It might be a self-driven BMW, or a self-destruct briefcase.

No heroes today can hold up just a staff and look to the sky, waiting for water to part. Yesterday’s low-tech movies,  even with larger-than-life  heroes, couldn’t hold the water in today’s split screen and split attention.

I need a hero, like Bonnie Tyler sings, but more than that. In today’s machine-driven world, we need to go beyond Hero.

Heroes who use high-tech and are hyper alert. Heroes among us. TIME magazine featured YOU as Man of the Year a few years back.

It’s only fitting that YOU who invented Social Network, surveillance and surgical instruments are to be cheered.

My Dad, who died roughly at the same age as Andy Rooney (92), who couldn’t stand those two-prong plugs in a three-prong society,  remains forever my low-tech hero in today’s high-tech society.

P.S. I wrote this a week before the Sexual Abuse Scandal broke at Penn State, my beloved alma mater. In this vein, I now have to move beyond “JoePa” image of a hero.

It’s not enough for good men to stand still and do nothing. We have laughed at the YouTube viral video showing two vehicles ran over a child in China with no bystanders’ intervention. Now we found out it could happen anywhere, and ironically, in Happy Valley. Still memories are always soothing, whether when we were 3 years old or 30 years old. Towering figures that have served as guideposts for us are now gone by attrition, while automation, esp. in Japan, is filling in the gap. Where man failed (inconsistency) becomes an opportunity for machine to rise. The net result: children don’t know what they are missing, for instance, the tears and agony many of my classmates were experiencing while the scandal unfolded in State College. We, Penn State alums all of a sudden, share that sense of solidarity and determination to make a better tomorrow , and the school a better place to learn . I admire the tenacity of some emerging writers there at the Collegian. David Brooks calls them “the Emperical Kids” i.e. validated before venturing.

Go Penn State, Go. Beyond Hero, beyond ourselves. Let not complacency win again this time.

Clothes and costumes

Just about now, we start thinking Halloween costumes.

We have tried on cotton, polyester, paper, fur, animal skin (leather) and raw meat.

At work, the dress code has changed as well since IBM went “soft” (ware).

Gone are the blue suit, white shirt and red tie. Who wants to upstage their CEO’s at Facebook, Google, and Apple (turtleneck).

So the working men are out shopping for “casual”.

And the sales clerk adapts: “Do you want the I-pad carry-on with it?”

Salesmen are facing an identity crisis. Gone are the 50’s hats, and the 80’s suspenders.

Now, with robot wrestlers, robot cops and robot ads (pop up), the next outfit will probably be Star Wars’s.

Clothes don’t make men (appearance matters, though).

But it certainly goes along way to buff up what’s already there (or cover up some tattoos ).

If I were to choose, I would pick Mission Impossible for this Halloween.

In fact, they did just that at Dancing with the Stars last night.

First, it’s Hollywood that set the standard (for music and fashion).

Then, TV followed in (dancing) step. Finally, we saw tie-in merchandise and toys.

Hopefully, the raw-meat-as-outerwear trend doesn’t catch on (Bruce Willis appeared with a raw-meat toupee on Letterman’s Late Show).

In fact, the go-casual trend fits right in with the digital generation.

Poor dry-cleaner chain! (who needs their T-shirts dry-cleaned).

Now, even brief cases and PCs  don’t sell. Just sleeping bags,  T-shirts and tablets.  Campus life forever at Google Plex. No clear break at Facebook’s Timeline. One infinite loop in the here and now (A/C, 24/7 news cycle and global office with backroom in the Cloud).  There is talk that Mark Zuckerberg will be the next Steve Jobs (after all, they both were on TIME magazine cover). In other words, the (turtleneck) long sleeves has just been replaced by the short sleeves. Just don’t skateboard in every time you launch a product (Google). Gaga would have preferred to be carried in, inside an egg, with hatch opened. Ham and egg breakfast-wear.