Tag: New York

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).

Calling on Leaders

Mongolian Khan, upon his first day out of jail, jumped on the horse to lead his nation to new height. Lennon and Yoko still purchased full-page ad in the NYT to run the same poster as they did 40 years ago “WAR IS OVER, if you want it”.

With the new digital order, thought-leaders emerged to shape our agenda and culture.

Gone are the days of orators speaking for hours in the arena.

In our digital age, one just looks you up, at his/her convenience.

The audience no longer has to shout out , as in the Network, ” I am mad like Hell, and I won’t take it anymore”. He or she simply clicks away or types in a negative comment.

Leaders will need to be transparent, harmonizing his/her on and offline persona (only a third of respondents said they were truthful on social networks). Past leadership styles e.g. empowerment, alliance,  command and control, and laissez-faire; need to be revised and perhaps, recombined.

Today’s leaders are real people, with hope, fear and dream, just like their followers (on a Harley over the weekend or ride a bike to work, New Year, New You in New York.)

In Matterhorn, we followed the new Lt of Company C through war-time Vietnam.

He learned to make hard calls, to sweat and to cry.

Leaders also face doubt and indecision.

But they are not philosophers. They do think hard but also act decisively.

And mind you, leaders are not accountants.

One of the Kennedy’s whiz kids regret having led the Vietnam War solely by number crunching. (Even the press briefing bore the cutting humor “5 O’Clock Follies”).

Leaders lead without regrets. When time calls for it, leaders are ready .

He or she is not a line manager ( who leads from behind or on the side). Leaders lead from the future, set the tone and inspire excellence . They reframe and rekindle while being “one of the guys”.

Leaders lead people to their deaths, and they thank him or her for it.

We have a few still around. Calling on leaders.

The larger-than-life generation

Tom Brokaw‘s coined it “The Greatest Generation” those who preceded the Boomer Gen.

This weekend we remember many who fought those huge battles.

The way they carried themselves: smoking, shooting and even kissing in the streets of New York (celebrating victory).

Subsequent G.I. Bill made possible their going to college (many were into

engineering and management, having been exposed to the world beyond their immediate borders and compelled by much needed infra-structure projects). They weren’t the “Deer Hunters” of the later war.

Instead, they hit the books and started families, despite Post Traumatic Disorder Syndrome.

I was born later, but the previous generation seemed to have left some trails, very gentlemanly ones.

People tilted their hats, held the door, and smiled at neighbors.

I used to shine shoes for my dad, prepared his coffee and watched him interact with peers.

(I remembered seeing titles by Somerset Maugham, Saint Exupery and Ernest Hemingway around the house.)

They way he carried himself, the romantic incline and how he responded to crisis (w/courage).

Those were the times. I even secretly wished I had grown up much faster then.

Maybe deep down, I knew those happy times would be short-lived.

And true to form, history pulled a quick dialectic turn on me: I was tossed into the seas (literally) to stake out my life and time.

I “imagined” (all the people, living for today) while my hair grew longer than generation, before or after.

My counterparts in the US fled to Sweden and Canada,

while my upper classmates to Australia, US and France.

The Greatest Generation secured an industrial base strong enough to spill over to the next century.

Just try to have breakfast at one of those 50’s diners, and you will get feel for what it was like back then: sturdy counter,

pleasant hostess and  full breakfast. Hate to say, but it was manly. Just like their days in war.

In French, it would be “le jour le plus longue”, whistling and marching to their destiny with bravery and grandeur.

Propaganda discounted, I would say, they staked  out their places in history by living, fighting and rebuilding a society worthy of men.

We are all inheritors of their war-rebuilding efforts, and the least we can do is to salute and keep our shoes shined. Oh, and don’t forget to hold the door.

Amuse ourselves to the next level

Neil Postman didn’t see the rise of game online when he penned “Amuse ourselves to death”.

But he was on to something worth discussing: we are heading toward becoming a couch-potato nation

or in China, Internet-addict camp.

When Chinese kids get sent to these internet addict camps, we witness another unintended consequence of our high-tech living.

This puts Mr Watson in the early days of IBM to shame. He said the world market could use a few, but no more than a dozen machines.

Nobody could foresee the fall-below-the-line price of the chip, maybe except for Gordon Moore who predicted the doubling of chip speed every 18 months.

My kid watches her cartoon on Hulu. Asked why she didn’t want to watch it on TV. She said on broadband, she could watch it when she wanted it.

This kid even wants control, and not waits for a scheduled time by the network.

I will have to put a cooking alarm clock next to her desk just to limit her screen time.

Or let her “amuse herself to the next level”, the highest of which is at the Internet addict camp. Long way from Florida. And she will have to speak Chinese to

understand guard’s command. Maybe it’s not a bad idea, the unintended consequence of it all: internet addicts from the West get sent to Chinese internet-addict camps,

thus picking up a foreign language.

Neil Postman built his premise on the 4-hour average  (TV watching). Now it’s 5 hours, not counting the many hours online.

No wonder advertising appears in most unlikely places: pop up (download wait), stand-on (beer aisle), stare at while in a moving elevator or taxi cab.

We are living on New York minutes, even if we are  not physically there. Because New York is now more than a New Year countdown. It’s every day’s ticking, a state of mind. No more Crocodile Dundee coming to New York.

New York is now in Dundee’ Australian back waters. Hello, hello, hello…..

Luckily, we have a built-in alarm clock : it’s our bladder. Nature break. Machines will have to wait. Human will survive and be adaptive. Continuous re-invention.

To the next level of distraction and anesthesia.

strip tease

A Canadian lady, on her insurance-paid leave for mental distress, walked into a bar. Not just any bar, but a male strip tease bar. And she posted her excursion in Facebook to share with “friends”. Among the uninvited  “friends” was the Insurance adjuster. So, her insurance checks stop coming. Reason: “we have joy, we have fun, we have seasons in the sun”, now back to work.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091121/wl_canada_afp/lifestylecanadahealthinternetfacebook_20091121190842

Yahoo News has “denial” theme today: claim denial (Canadian) to Communion denial (Kennedy).

Huge companies are probably up for another round of Stimulus . The Beast got a taste for blood. Should that be denied also?

V-shape recovery? Here is a portrait of a nation, according to Garp.

More people are “discovering” Thrift Shops. More people are buying Peanut Butter and Jelly.

Black Friday pre-sales, soft opening etc…Long Island or nation wide, Walmart doormen now have plan C, with color-coded alert taking a page from Home Land Security.

Less people on the payroll= less tax revenue=tuition increase.

Berkeley students protest , this time, not against the Law professor who argues for torture, but against the U system that seeks to turn torture closer to home: on their own students.

Instead of “Hell No, we won’t go”, it is Pink Floyd’s ” We don’t need no education”.

Some have argued for a 3-year college sysrem. Others went overseas to obtain nursing degrees (cheaper).

I personally went to Hanoi, to obtain my CELTA , a taste of Edu- tourism.

There is a growing field if one really wants to get a job: negotiating for a lower national debt in Mandarin. That’s what our Utah ex-governor was doing in China.

Or you can claim extreme stress, and wants to be depressurized in a strip bar. Just make sure you are thorough with your Facebook privacy setting. Out of fear, we settle for the lowest common denominator, and end up with triviality, and plasticity. Facebook turns Filebook full of self-incriminating evidence instead of peer recommendation.

Everything you post may be used against you in the court of law. There, you have been warned.

In social history, every time we were told to shut up, we ended up with a movement that changed history.

I can’t wait to see what’s next. But first, let me go get my Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich.

P.S. I feel for California college students, among them, my daughter. Give peace and Aimy a chance.

You don’t want both Daddy and daughter “backpacking” in Vietnam, on an extended eco/edu tour, do you?

I am just being proactive, in case the US needs a bi-lingual debt negotiator after I am gone. I got a succession plan in place. Today’s freshmen are tomorrow’s congress person. Treat them right, and do not provoke them, Provost!

Ireland and India offered free education, and look at where those two countries are today.

P.S. 2 we need a new policy to protect online sharing, that way, people are less vulnerable to preying and prying. The insurance claim specialist was probably enjoying his/her moment of “gotcha!”, thinking he/she was en par with CNBC special investigation.  I hope the lady (even posed in bikini lying on the beach) gets her checks. And this time, don’t spend it all in Chippendale.

 

deja vu

Yesterday I reposted “Invisible Man“.  Today, it’s about “invisible hand“. There is an invisible hand that definitely plays with events in history, and this Adam-Smith-like hand seems to run out of tricks every 40 years or so, so it seems.

In Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley Press), we learn that history seems to recycle itself every 40 years also

(29-69-09).  First the French romantic/liberty movement, then the generation gap movement, and now the consumer movement.

This time, with the confluence of technological shift, policy shift and evolutionary shift, we  see Vietnam emerge

and leap-frog (it now exports more handsets than garment) into the world scene. After all, it has

survived quarrels with three of the UN Security Council members and emerged unscathed (France, US and China).

Saigon Tourist (a Vietnamese consortium in VN) once acquired a SF hotel in Fisherman Wharf  for $44 million (as of this edit, a Chinese consortium has just acquired a development around the Staples Center in the Southland).

It’s like a bi-coastal mirror image of another Vietnamese hotel owner from New York (who by the way donated a lot of money to the victims of disasters in New York).

It’s about time Vietnamese philanthropy plays catch up. The Viet Kieu (Viet expats) community has another 2 years to  face its American version of 40-year cycle. At that point, there will be a hand-over of the torch to the second generation, whom , as studies often confirm, wants nothing to do with their first-generation immigrant parents.

Many FDI projects have been abandoned here in VN. Banks are stuck with bad debts. And companies pick up the tab to retrain their workforce, whose education ill-prepares them for the work world. The only sure thing here are young people getting married in drove over the holidays.

I have seen it before: the rush to spend, then withdraw syndrome to survive, then spend again as if there is no tomorrow, much less next year.

If any indication at all, the young demographics will take up on Western counterparts, from online gaming to online music, from lifestyle consumption to hopefully, a respect for the fragile environment. It’s deja vu all over again here Vietnam: eat, drink and be merry. They did that in war time, now they do it in peace time. 40 years is a long time, but then, 40 years seems like just a blink of an eye. Just try to hear the prelude to some songs you once loved, and tell me you don’t react on reflex as if you had done not so long ago, when you first heard it and felt it resonated.

I hope you love the “invisible hand” better than being the “invisible man”. At least, that hand might give you a chance, another dance.