Tag: New York City

Re-occupy yourself!

When I boarded my flight to Vietnam, Penn State was losing to Nebraska.

And after I landed in Vietnam, I read about New York “tent city” had been re-occupied by the Mayor.

Here in the land of motor scooters, and kids try to conjugate in English, I can put those problems  in perspective. It’s true that I have felt shaken that my University’s reputation was now tarnished.

But the moment I sat down with my Cafe Sua Da, and the first lady who walked around selling lottery tickets (the equivalent of Mexican child peddlers selling “Chicklets) approached me, I knew I was home.

I learned a hard lesson: it’s not the place. It’s the time and how mature we are at handling those curved balls life throws at you.

If Nelson Mandela can rise above the hatred, Khan can get out of jail to restore a nation, and Churchill never gives up, so can we. Those giants weren’t giants as we now know.  They were dirty (in detention), desperate (isolation) and constricted (as in London bombing). But they rose to the occasion, and never lost hope.

Vietnam is playing catch-up (its President thanked President Obama at recent APEC meeting for siding with Vietnam when China acted up on territorial dispute) starting with early school age (mandatory English).

I remembered how my mother, a school teacher herself, paid out a large chunk of her meager salary to send me to English classes. My first lesson “It is raining, isn’t it”. It will soon stop raining here, but the flood water in Thailand has yet to recede.

MNC’s are rethinking where they should place their manufacturing facilities to avoid similar occurrences (delay in part shipment). Perhaps Vietnam could be a viable alternative, provided that its workers are up to task. I know they already are resilient, heroic and resourceful. Now the hard part: get trained up in soft skills and softwares or risk becoming Asian sub-contracting factory due to skill gap.

That easy way out has with it myriads of unintended consequences such as pollution, traffic congestion and wage pressures as happening in China.

The other alternative has long-term benefits but also has its price: invest in its work force and young population.

It’s not just English. They will need a whole new mindset, one which is complimentary to their built-in advantages. Instructors will need to equip students to think, to respect quality (the Japanese way) and not to rely on the flow of FDI with its own unintended consequences.

Right now, its neighbor Korea has just entered WTO. I stopped in Korea for a flight change, and couldn’t help notice the wealth and inflationary level those folks are experiencing (Starbucks and Tiffany). I got a book “23 things they wouldn’t tell you about capitalism” in paper back (it costs me $31.00).  I hope I got a good lesson out of it from this Korean author. But more than that, I wanted to thank my mom for sending me to French school, Vietnamese school and English school. It’s been a long road since “it’s raining , isn’t it” to “23 things they won’t tell you”.

The only thing I have left to tell you is, “re-occupy yourself”. It’s not the park or the campus, New York or Happy Valley.

It’s in your mind. I am sure Mandela and Khan both learned that while in the can.

They didn’t let the outside walls occupy their inner liberated self.

A Jewish author says it best ” they can take my body, but not me who occupies it – I paraphrase”.

Yes, my body as of yesterday’s reading, requires Lipitor. I am not a young English student who can eat any junk food outside the school yard. But inside, I plan to “re-occupy” that 140 lbs of me for the long haul. Don’t even think of trespassing it.

Sur le pont

Oakland Bridge that is. The one got fixed by a China-based sub-contractor.

Now, down the dock and downtown, Occupy pledges to stay for the long haul.

Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland: “there is no there, there” (hence, no center to be occupied.)

When crossing that bridge, I thought of New York City (sprawling California only has a few thriving city centers such as San Francisco.)

Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that he would have liked to start again in Boston (too cold for T-shirt?), perhaps due to its proximity to Harvard.

We all grew up and felt attached to a certain place, whether it’s a city or  a village.

What drives our decisions often comes our sub-conscious: a graceful face or a soothing sound. For instance, when I listen to classic rock, I am transported back to high school even though geographically it’s an ocean apart.

I am sure it was similar with the Greatest Generation, when they saw something French (WWII) or Baby Boomers, when they saw “War” (e.g. associating War in Afghanistan with War in Vietnam).

American went abroad (unless they defected to Canada and stayed) and came home a different person e.g. Hemingway in Europe, or Hanoi Jane/Joan Baez back from Vietnam (Diamond and Rust). They have a changed view of looking at the world, at materialism and spiritualism, at family and country.

I still remember a striking title by Alan Paton “Cry my beloved country”.

Being immigrant, we lost our sense of patriotism (of the land we left). Yes, we voted and outsourced (to politicians) our freedom every four years, just like we outsourced the fixing of the Oakland bridge.

They in turn appropriate what part of the budget that goes to defense. Then men and women in the uniforms are deployed, many might not come back (offshoring the fight).

The closest thing we have to patriotism these days  is to watch Gen Y protest, 3 years after the Wall Street and Detroit debacle.

Our sons and daughters’ generation is at stake.

They have been told to stick to the screen and stay out of trouble.

When the internet connection got cut off, or their dorm rooms vacated, they turn indignant.

Not even Facebook can keep them in. This time, it’s Occupy Everything, except for the old job.

In Iowa, our Maytag man got laid off by the very sturdy machine he helped created (the quality and longevity dilemma).

Things got cheaper for a while, before interest rates kick in and push up the price on clothing, tuition and housing (rent).

What can be digitized and commoditized will be.

Our problem (high costs) = someone else’s opportunity (low labor).

Si tu n’existait pas. If we could disappear somehow (telepathy), there wouldn’t be such a big problem.

In fact, studies showed a decline in immigration population in Southern States.

One of the banners in Cannes this week is “people before finance” (in French).

Ironically, Cannes enjoys the showing of movie stars more than politicians’.

Conversely, stars couldn’t help crossing-over to politics (Some have likened Occupy to Flower Sixties with Peter w/out Paul and Mary).

I am glad the digital generation finally got off their PC chairs and hold up some signs (of protest).

No one expects them to pour gasoline over themselves (as I once eye-witnessed the burning monk doing just that).

Just get out and see the world as it is. The real should trump the virtual, since what’s out there is crueller and colder than what’s in our head and on the screen.

Just try to cross that Oakland bridge with windows open. Then you might discover, as Gertrude Stein did, that “there is no there, there”.

Simon’s Sound of Silence

“In restless dream I walked alone” this time, w/ out Garfunkel.

Two moments of silence descended upon two reflecting pools.

It was so eerie that ten years ago, of all things, Matt Lauer was interviewing a Howard Hughes biographer when the TODAY show got interrupted.

I don’t think viewers ever follow up on the bio after that morning:

Sound of smoke.

Sound of stress.

Sound of silence.

Silence, ten years ago, was deafening.

More like being speechless. Same freeze-framing the day President Kennedy was shot.

Even for those who made a living by commentating and improvising.

“Ten thousand people maybe more”.

People talking without speaking.

People hearing without listening.

Simon remains one of a few voices from the 60’s, who traveled far to Africa,

to enrich his repertoire.

The globalization of music.

Continuing Music Education (George Harrison and the Sitar opening act at Concert for Bangladesh).

Over the span of 60 years, more Americans have turned warriors without borders, might they be in Europe, Pacific, SEA, M.E. or South Asia.

The names which are now etched into the 9/11 memorial represent a diverse pool of country origins.

First, we have to be able to trust strangers.

Then, we do business.

Finally, we party and share the grief.

Besides English as lingua franca, we got music. We got Rock and Roll, soft or hard.

Then we got Sound of Silence.

In the decade since, I have been more aware every time I fasten my seat belt, before take off.

Hundreds of air passengers, strapped in for known and unknown destiny.

Like the Hockey team from Russia.

Even the last survivor didn’t make it.

Flight 93 passengers took destiny back in their own hands.

The hijackers got hijacked in a 9/11 twisted plot. Then, rescue workers needed to be rescued.

No crescendo for an already stress-filled morning.

We wanted to get back to book reading and book reviewing.

We wanted our loved ones to come home.

Le Monde headlines the next day was “We are all Americans“.

If there were Twitter, our chosen top tweet would have been

“We’re all first-responders”.

In restless dream, I walked together.

Simon and Garfunkel: twin talents for Twin Towers.

The future, never in past tense

Peter Jennings took a smoke break, his first in years, from 9/11 live coverage. It was the beginning of his end. The Canadian co-author of “The Century” must have studied the Wright brothers, whose invention could lift itself up into thin air albeit for just a few blocks. But he had never seen anything like the two planes that aimed low that morning.

In the decade since, from Steve Jobs (the I-series) to Steve Chen (Youtube),

from Facebook to Twitter founders, we have seen a new breed of inventors.

Instead of fixating on the hunt for an old man, wrapped in blanket with a remote control, watching makeshift propaganda videos of himself (BL), these digital natives followed the trail to the future.

They limit data transmission to short bursts (140 characters) or miniaturize play-back device (I-pod) while charging only 99 cents per song. Search has evolved from generic to semantic and shopping from global E-Bay to local (Zagat).

Rattled? Yes.

Deterred? Hardly.

Five stages of grief, processed in one fell swoop (in less than a decade).

What evil didn’t plan, was for the very invention in the West, be used against dictators in the MidEast.

(Arab Spring propagated and went tweet-viral in Egypt, birth place of caliphate).

You can take down a building, but not its blueprint.

Yes, there were people who ran down the stairs to safety, and stayed there in the past.

But there were also 343 heroes who ran up the stairs, 43 more than at Gates of Fire, to “fight (fire) in the shade” .

Just as the analog stairway (Encyclopedia Britannica, book stacks) shows the way down, the digital one (Wikipedia, Skype) points to “the sky is the limit”.

In the decade since, we have started “friending” each other, made possible by another Harvard drop-out, whether we were from NYC or not, just because we all share in a future, that will never be conjugated in past tense.

How I wish to have “followed” Peter Jennings on Twitter to read his post-9/11 reflections!

creatures of information

“We are ‘creatures of information'”, “in the library of Babel, seeking information past and future”, says James Gleick in the Information.

We might look in hardback and paperback, print books and e-books, newspaper and news broadcast, but we are still after the information. It reminds me of a line by St Paul “though now we see through a glass darkly…”

Never enough, or soon enough, from tweets to tabloids. So we hacked into phones, into computers, even broke into hotel  and hospital, (Colson ‘s Watergate) and (Coulson’s phonegate).

Watching trial-by-jury and inquiry-by-committee.

We want to know. The tree of knowledge.

Yet we succumbed easily to “bubbles” (every five years or so).

We lock away older people behind “secure”  doors, so we can “own” our own mistakes.

Mrs Ford embodied the ERA generation, while the congress woman from Arizona, NRA‘s.

Interesting data points: Japan women soccer team won the World Cup this afternoon (Mrs Ford couldn’t have been prouder: slim, Asian, women and soccer, given her starting point in early days with breast cancer awareness).

We seek and send information at nano level while debt ceiling reaches Trillion-dollar level.

The result: Chinese consumers and travelers are here in NYC, to buy Made-in-China I-phones and hand-carry them home (suitcase entrepreneurs).

It’s been a long journey, being expelled from the Garden of Eden.

We asked for the Tree of knowledge. Now we know: knowledge without the ability to act is crippling and demoralising.

So we tuned out (having been over-exposed to repeated news from hot spots around the globe e.g. Syria, N Korea etc…)

like the character in “Being There”. We seek information past (history), and future (horoscope), we want to know from palm reading and Palm Pilot. What’s the latest tweet? (Explosion at Boston Marathon finish line?)

200 Million registered accounts constitute an Information-rich but compassion-fatigue society. In the beginning…was the Word. And that Logos must not be decoupled from Pathos.

Information-rich society should bear more responsibilities for the privilege it was endowed, or risk dumbing down, while the machine grows smarter. That “library of Babel” will reach the sky, way pass the cloud, sooner than we thought. Robust information flow, on steroid, racing across all channels: print, online, push and pull media, without BORDERS (the bookstore).

Imagine, again

By now, we all have seen the picture of Congresswoman Giffords, in glasses, recovering from a near fatal shooting. Let’s rewind to 1980, and imagine John Lennon with that same  “luck”.

I can only see Lennon as the nemesis during the 80’s, if not again during the Iraq war.

We would have been stronger, not weaker, in the presence of harsh critics.

It would be a test, to see if the draft (Vietnam) itself was the main driver behind war opposition.

On the arts side, we would probably have seen Lennon in various designer’s sunglasses. Perhaps Paul and John would have played together at the marquee of the Ed Sullivan theater in New York City.

Thirty years is a lot of time for an artist to stretch his imagination, expand his vision and mature in his expressions.

If the US hadn’t been innovative enough, it would never be even with government mandate.

Creativity came from within. Intrinsic,  not forced or legislated.

I propose this time, not “American in Paris” as in the last century, but “American in the Orient”. Come to learn, not to loot. Columbus set a bad example and precedence (among the unintended consequences is tribal casinos, a legalized form of taking back what’s been taken). As of this edit, the Chairman of Blackstone did just that: offering scholarships for American to come to China and learn about China.

We watched in amazement as the head of an investment fund in Vietnam gave an interview on BBC, answering in Vietnamese, his second language.

http://bbc.in/kpiHH7

His obvious competitive advantage.

Britain might or might not have planned it, but the Beatles and subsequent ” British invasion” , have accomplished much more than all the germs, guns and steel. Soft power in the age of declining monarchy.

Artists and musicians connect at the emotive level. Memoirs and white papers are for PR folks. We got our Gaga on the ” edge” since she was “born that way”, or Madonna who had admitted long before Paris Hilton appeared on the social scenes that she was “a material girl”.

But then, I couldn’t have come up with a better plot than reality itself.

By shooting John Lennon, Mark Chapman forever became a publicity parasite, dangling on the looming shadow of a great artist and icon of all time .

I don’t know where John Lennon is today (we will all find out by default), but I do know every time I hear those piano notes from Imagine, it brought me back to that scene, with me waiting, under a tree, with my heart beating fast (puppy love).  Every generation has to come to terms with its own illusion and delusion. Mine happened to be eclipsed by war. One thing I know, time went faster when you lived in the extremes. Yet even then, we took time, to dream, to love, to hope and to imagine.

And John Lennon, shot down, but not out, helped us along.

I cannot imagine a scenario for Imagine 2.0, because one cannot mix oil and water, analog and digital. Genius and talent came once in a life time to grace us with their combination of the 7 notes. Can’t legislate that. Being outside of the box, we don’t have to be told  to “think out of the box”. What one sees depends on where one stands.

This side of doom

Doomsday prediction did not materiale.

On this side of doomsday, Southeast Asia is no longer a war zone. It’s the new fun zone (with young and upcoming demographics).

LinkedIn IPO gone through the roof while IMF Chief couldn’t check in at any hostel in NY (I did not mis-spell “hostel”). Whether you live in flood zone or dictator zone, mobile coverage is ubiquitous.

I can’t remember a time when we are required to get up to speed so quickly, from theology of rapture to sustaiability issues, from Bush tax cut to Obama’s TARP. We need to survive information glut.

All this makes the break-up of the Soviet Union (into different nations states with new names) a walk in the park. Even with public figures who still command some staying powers: Donald Trump and Henry Kissinger to Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, will soon join the baby boomers’ mass retirement.

The new actors on the scene will not take their public place, but will move onto virtual space (Farmville by Gaga and fireworks by Perry). It’s getting too crowded to actually compete in physical sphere, so we move on to virtual space (Kevin Kelly) where we can upload our “most outrageous marriage proposal ever” etc…The margin of acceptance is higher and the price of public humiliation lower.

This side of doom is quite accommodating: anywhere from child-rearing for gay couples to all-naked gym.

If we live in the most tolerant country on Earth, and still be jolted by change, how much more can citizens of Arab Spring be still and “watch the train go by”. 7 billion people living in jet age and internet time – discounted firewalls by political dictators and mind control by cult leaders – negotiate change, either by osmosis or by being active (open universities at MIT or TED talk online to help you “be all you can be” in your own time). I can’t wait to get up every morning, doomsday or not. Prophets (false or true) come and go. But in our internet age, we should reserve our judgement until all facts are in and not jump into conclusion for just one tweet.

Census in our mind

1976. Washington D.C. Belt-bottom pants and boom-boxes. The city was predominantly black.

2011 Washington D.C. Gentrified, half-black and half others.And that’s just one stat in the 2010 data.

Asian population in Arizona, Texas and elsewhere like Philadelphia should surprise any demographer.

While America went to war in Europe, European ended up at America’s shores. Then America went to wars in Korea and Vietnam. Asians ended up here in the US. “I see living people” (to paraphase “the Sixth Sense”) i.e. Iraqis, Afghans and Syrians in the US in next Census count.

More mosques and more tolerance, by osmosis.

Take KIA as an example. It is claiming the spot where Toyota and Honda Civic used to be: affordable, aesthetic and long on warranty.

We no longer discuss “Is America ready for a Catholic (or black) President”, we discuss “Is America ready for a Mormon President“.

This is to show how Bin Laden and  cohorts have become irrelevant. America has always been a moving target (no punt intended). My recommendation is that we should take the Census every five years. A decade is now too long to update policies. It’s ironic that after 9/11, we increased the amount of surveillance cameras by the millions. But those images were served up for security reason only, instead of for change management (as of this edit, this move served us well in the Boston Marathon apprehension).

Back to census in our mind. We have a mental map as opposed to the true map out there.

It’s called prejudging. We look for what eventually reinforce  what is already in our mind (a priori).

Texas is Marlboro country. Arizona, cactus. Las Vegas, casinos (- the Echelon). New York, well, high rises – Twin Towers.

Chicago, w/ Sears tower. California, gold rush?.

Often times, we refuse to absorb and adjust new information. So, Washington D.C. is all black. Chicago all Polish. And the White House, always “white”. The question to be asked is, what year was your census taken? or what century? Many backpackers travel to Vietnam were surprised to see new high rises and a Hard Rock Cafe. Naturally, the reaction is to follow “Lonely Planet” guide, to spend a day underground in Cu Chi tunnel and stay around “pho Tay” (backpacker’s quarter). This was like having an American compound in Baghdad, insulated from the real action. Just close the drapes, and open the old census in your mind, if that suits you. The next time you venture out into the open, be on the look-out for a Chinese debt collector who might serve you a notice. Back in 1971, the US economy was roughly 5 times bigger than China’s, and we laughed at Korean or Japanese-made cars. Now we can’t even afford a KIA Optima. Let’s see what your FICO score is, so we can put you in the right vehicle TODAY  i.e. Nano or Cherry (Indian and Chinese, respectively).

Growing old in post 9/11 era

Younger generations are growing up digital. I grow old in post 9/11. We were bumping along, thinking the dot.com burst was the story of the Century. Then, the unthinkable happened. Brave were the men on United Flight 93. Our lives have never been the same since (collective survivor’s guilt).  An act of outright violence needed to be dealt with. It was one thing for the French to vent about McDonalisation or Disneylandisation in Paris. But it’s quite another to plot and plan an attack on American soil to bring about caliphate.

Now they know. Now we know. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

The journey is still a reward. But on that journey, we bumped into all sorts of people (brave and abhorrable) . Quite an inconvenient truth. Bin Laden wasn’t the only one who got grey hair (or beard). This son of a construction tycoon would rather live in concrete than cave, not unlike other 21st-century men who now frequent spa and salon. A journalist teacher said it aptly, if only we had someone to blame for Vietnam as we had for Afghanistan.

On Sunday night, we forgot the financial bubble, the rising gas price and the drought in credits and jobs.

We got some closure, at least for the families of victims and heroes on United 93 (although dead, but they took matters into their own hands, hence, the term “victims” were deemed inappropriate).

George Harrison sang about “What is life” while his more influential band mate, died of senseless violence, “Imagine there’s no religion”. He must have seen the devastation done in the name of this God and that God, so his vision (often times through a pair of sunglasses) was without heaven (and certainly no virgins in neverland).

For me, with no sunglasses, I see life through that gaping hole of NYC ‘s two missing front teeth (courtesy of Tom Wolfe).

I see life from both sides now, from dot.com boom to housing burst.

I am growing old digitally in post 9/11 era.

Heterogeneous country, homogeneous thought

Google CEO blurted out what we all know (that tech moves at 3 times faster than other business sectors, who in turn, are 3X than the government). We are analog-built e.g. eating,  buying and thinking habits, while techies thought processing power is on a different plane e.g. Cold-War B53 bomb in TX is finally being disassembled and junked.

A Swedish public health expert gave a TEDx talk some years ago. He put up some slides which span 200 years just to show how entrenched we are in yesterday’s thinking (e.g. that women in emerging nations have a lot of children while the opposite is now true). In short, formative years continue to cloud our lenses (or our teachers’ who got their data from post- War textbooks). Another stat: more deaths from suicide in the US (mostly men in their mid-50’s) than from automobile accidents. Or more Christian in China, than the membership of the Communist Party.

Or  thanks to rural broadband, the creative class in the US can finally afford housing and pursuit their passion, let’s say in software programming, in 2nd-tier cities like Seattle, Austin (as opposed to New York and San Francisco).

One more thing. Back in the days when America found it hard to accept a President who was Catholic

and the only “Muslim” brother who left his last name blank (X). The Big Three in Detroit, Big Three in Broadcasting, and a healthy middle class, with Union wages. Now, things get splintered of, with MNC’s paying zero domestic tax (GE), and CDO peddlers paying no COD (it’s still a mystery that Madoff was the only fall guy – whose rehearsed bio was …”I was an underdog when I started in brokerage, so I got to have my revenge at ‘them'” ” we contemplated suicide but it’s our son that followed it through). The same tax codes hasn’t been 21st-century compliant enough to catch clever white-collar looters.

Meanwhile, across the pond, it will take another three decades for China’s branding to rise (The Chinese Dream) just as it has taken them 3 decades to ramp up manufacturing and exports. Reverse engineering will be followed by reverse branding. Their state machinery will be hard at work to take apart every element that make Cola and IBM global brands.

(try to top Steve Jobs, the marketer who still got marketed in his death: simple and elegant cover featuring his signature stare).

First wave will be tourists. Second wave, engineering students . Third wave, marketing catalysts, Huawei and Haier, try to pry open the US-EU domestic markets (foreign in their perspective). At today’s speed, even Toyota with its continuous improvement still can’t compete with revived brands like VW.  It seems that John Le Carre is not the only one whose career and mindset are stuck in Cold War era. Cuba still has 1950’s automobiles crowding the streets. At least, we must admit they don’t make things like that any more. Should have kept jobs in Indiana, and not India.

Things were moving quite rapidly at the bottom line, and slow at topline.