Tag: Nittany Lion

Repatriation

You can take a boy out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the boy.

This happens to me, not once, but twice. Culture shock upon culture shock! until I feel numbed.

I jog on the street full of motorbikes (nice people would say “Co len”, bad people would try to run me over), or tell jokes at music jam session, oblivious to the fact that half of the audience barely catches the meaning, much less the punch line.

So I made a few mistakes upon repatriation.

Mistakes I have had to pay for dearly, monetarily or otherwise (just stop short of  becoming a social stigma since it’s more acceptable to backpackers to come across as free and loosed, not someone whose outward looks exactly like locals).

There are Viet Kieu, and there are Viet Kieu.

The former, tourists – waving their US dollars , and the later, expats – hiding their VN dong.

Or, as I often joke: the real Viet Keu would react “OUCH!” when got slapped, while the fake ones “UI DA!”.

But it depends on where you go and spend your money. If a place rates you on how thick your wallet is, then it will throw you out the next time when you are a bit short .

Back to my jogging across the round-about. Quite challenging. In the rain, and in the thick of Saigon rush-hour traffic, I had to tap dance, jog in place or run in opposite direction like a running back at the starting line of another down in football).

I do miss my time at Penn State. Just like when I was at Penn State, I missed my time in Saigon. You can take the boy out of Saigon, but you can’t take Saigon out of the boy. At Penn State, I simply wished for a meal surrounded by my extended family, or to hang out with friends, some smoke, some play the guitar. Now, I am back, repatriated. With some new friends who smoke, some play the guitar. Then all of a sudden, I wish for that 8-shaped trail which wraps around the University Park golf field. There, I wouldn’t get run over by two-wheel bikes, but then, I wouldn’t hear “co len” by complete strangers either.

More than once, I have let the outside affect what’s inside. Now, after taking so many punches, I counter-punch by let the inside affect the outside. Like telling a joke in English to an audience of mostly Vietnamese . The experience was diametrically opposite to the time at Penn State when I was trying to blend in without  “getting” the punch line (since I was unprepared for a completely different conceptual frame of reference ). Exile to expatriaton.

At the end of all travel, one returns to the starting point and know the place for the first time. It has happened to me. Like a newborn again, taking in and embracing everything. So familiar yet so foreign.

Moving on

I read about and followed with much interest the Penn State game this past weekend.

Where is Joe? First he was absent on the side line, where his rolled up pants were a fixture more than signature.

Then he went up on the booth. This past Saturday, he wasn’t there either, nor was his statue. Ohio won, but not as easy.

The Nittany Lions put up a fight “push them back, way back”. Still, a lot went unsaid there. Just moving on. Motion forward.

Aren’t we all!

Labor Day, Memorial Day. First rest a bit, then Rest in Peace.

Moving on.

Self-deception.

Who are we trying to fool, except ourselves?

I read about the original cell which stays on for billions of years. I am glad we could die (rather cancer war than casualty of war). As  far as biology is concerned, we were meant to be immortal, Greek or geek.

But then, with all the abuses and accidents, we have pretty much done it to ourselves (global sales of weapon, pornography and drugs together curtail population explosion).

So we give the workers a symbolic rest, Labor Day. But actually, we meant for factories to have their machines deep-spayed and well-oiled.

Farmers don’t rest on Labor Day. IT supports don’t rest either in colo centers.

Labor Day belongs to the Industrial Revolution, the 2nd wave, with coal as the main source of energy.

I read that in an interview before his death, an out-spoken Cardinal talked about the Vatican being behind two centuries.

He must be referring to the image of  Sheep May Safely Graze while parishioners “flocking” to the only village church.

I think it’s Marshall McLuhan who coins the phrase “global village”. Even then, he  meant the mass brought together by mass media (Tower of Babel analogy) in a one-to-many broadcast. Little did he know, we now have many-to-many conversation, originated and uploaded from the ground level. As of now, everyone got their 15-minute of fame on Facebook (Famebook?) and 140 characters on Twitter (modern-day AP) – as in United Breaks My Guitar.  Perhaps even we, at one time or another, think, maybe the world can use a few personal computers, as Watson used to think back in 1943.

Institutions and individuals, both are behind the times. I caught myself a few months ago in a moment of prejudice. I heard a ringtone rap music. Not from urban blacks. But with Central Vietnamese accent. The combination shocked me, then it delighted me the second time around. But my knee-jerked reaction was “you must be kidding?” One would expect to hear Northern Vietnamese accent  in songs, not Central, and when it comes to rap music, it’s the American quintessential, not Vietnamese. If this long Depression does us any good, it’s a wake-up call. It humbles us . Yes, it’s the “end of men” as titled in an upcoming book, but by the time the “end of women” comes about, it’s the beginning of the machine age.

The point is, early adopters will keep on adopting (space tourism, echo tourism, edu- tourism, medi-tourism )

And the richest among them, will keep moving beyond Beverly Hills and Betty Ford clinics to “the Island” to do some serious make-over (spare body parts replacement and rejuvenation). Versailles-style ($17,000 leather boots).

Go ahead and protest. Show some guts and show some skin. By the time we do, they no longer find some use for fur coats to cover their once wrinkled bodies. They already got new ones put in. Talking about moving on. Just make sure we don’t become the Pharaohs of the 21st century, embalming ourselves to no avail.  Where is Joe Pa? Ohio won again. Shuck!

Myopia

It was just a few years ago when friends and I discussed the inevitable departure of Joe Paterno at Penn State. Retired? Replaced? Removed? Now, it turns out, it’s his statue that got removed.

Who would have conjured up that scenario.

Today, the Nittany Lions will get their verdict from the NCAA. I am hoping for a lighter sentence. I bleed Blue.

(and Orange, at MCI).

Penn State taught me about being a team player. WE ARE.

Today, my team, our team gets punished.

Not for its diligence and desire to win. But for its failure in moral leadership.

Physical and moral aptitude, hand in hand.

Certain lines cannot be crossed, not without penalty. We know the rules. We play by the rules. Now we are penalized by the rules. Fair play. The only way.

There will be no applause sound track today. Maybe just silence. The same silence that the leadership at Penn State chose as a response to the Sandusky‘s accusation a decade ago.

When I went to school there, during Spring Break concert, the opening act was “Here comes the Sun“. Maybe the school should invite that guy to play again. Maybe, the magic works again.

Pushing away darkness, pushing away institutional myopia. And most of all, showing and shedding more lights on Beaver Stadium, where our school mascot will once again do one-hand push-ups on the sideline while defense” Push them back, push them back way back.”

My Happy Valley

A photo of  Penn Stater, eyes glued to the Collegian, brought back strong memories of the HUB (Student Union Building) and my time in Happy Valley.

State College was home to me for 4 years. Happy Days. The Wall. The Corner Room. Beaver Stadium. Best ice-cream at the Creamery.

In the Spring, at outdoor concert , we heard  “Here comes the Sun” as an opening act. I saw Bruce Springsteen at a concert in the HUB Ballroom, and remembered thinking, “that man got juice”  (Born to run).

I too was on the run. From the burning monk and burning napalm. From the war last day (7th Fleet spanned the horizon as far as the eyes could see) I too was born to run. The road took me to Native American geography (Susquehanna River and Indian Town Gap). Most memorable was when  I ran into and received kindness from a fellow refugee I met on a  Harrisburg snowy night.

Across from campus, at the Corner Room, we had many coffee refills without getting dirty looks.

Raymond Brown, the Penn State Choir Master, drilled it in us to “Breathe” and “Think”.

His football counterpart, Joe Paterno, had turned Head Coach a decade before I got there.

When I left for a TV internship, he was still there. Today, as of this writing, he is still there (sneakers and Tootsie glass).

(Latest news break announced this would be his last season).

I never came back to Beaver Stadium for commencement. I was an intern at an ABC-TV station in Wilkes Barre on my last quarter.

We got a call to cover nearby Three-Mile-Island incident.  As usual, we set out with our battery pack and a fresh roll of tape.

Then the story broke, and we ended up in a ghost town (people rushed to withdraw cash from ATM”s) again, with lots of coffee refills

and still with no dirty looks, only worry ones. It’s the second time within the span of 4 years that I was stuck in one set of clothes for days on end.

In the span of those four years, I was insulated from a changed world outside of Happy Valley. That world had turned more cynical, and more sexually aggressive (Last Tango in Paris).

But I managed to take courses in Science, Technology and Society whose premises stay with me until today.

We invented the Machine, but in the process, the Machine reinvented us (I am a BMW driver, an I Phone user etc…).

What I saw before Happy Valley (7th Fleet on the War last day, B-52 bombers overhead at night etc…) and after (nuclear power went wild) served as two bookends, with near fairy tales in between (We went singing at nursing homes on Sundays, or performed with Andre Previn and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at Heinz Hall).

We were still using punch cards at the only two computers accessible to students. All of us used manual type writers to write term papers and produce newspaper, the Collegian. My dorm mate worked as an Editor  there.  Right after we saw Bruce Springteen, Jeff’s eyes lit up when he saw I could play the solo part of  “Born To Run”.

It must have been a trip for them to experience a foreign student first hand, as opposed to viewing characters like Sixteen Candles’  Luong Duk Long “what automobile?”, and to find out I shared  delayed curiosity and hidden aspiration (Deep Throat shown on campus? Is this Bob Woodward’s idea of a joke?)

Seeing today’s students holding up the Collegian warms my heart, despite the sad circumstance surrounded it (sexual abuse and institutional cover-up scandal).

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2011/11/07/column_sandusky.aspx

I know next to nothing about football besides coming into contact with a few players who dozed off in my Speech class and Jimmy Cefalo who served as an intern at the same time I was at WNEP-TV.

But for years since, I haven’t found a place, and a time, that shaped the lives of so many, mine included,  for the good.

When the Lion, our mascot,  did one-hand push ups, we and alumni counted out loud, you could feel the stadium rock. We all felt mighty proud. And rightly so, because WE ARE…and still are PENN STATE.

the dot connector

I am referring to Dr Rustum Roy of Penn State whom I met almost 4 decades ago.

I knew then just as I know now that he was ahead of his time. He pushed for integrated studies in Science, Technology and Society.

He showed up at a demo of  hologram which is now being worked into 3-D Telepresence. Along with his wife and colleagues from all over the world, he quietly developed Material Research Lab up the hill near Beaver Stadium.

But his most enduring and endearing influence on my life was that of his house church. The Sycamore Community signed on to be my sponsor to provide some  cushion from “culture shock”. (On the way to University Park, we even stopped to pick up a hitch hiking student, who looked like he just had  lunch at “Alice Restaurant”).  I was “clueless” among the giants. On one Wednesday night, I even strummed my guitar and had them join me in a chorus to Carpenters‘ “Sing” (the group went in circle and each “shared” something).

Dr Roy did not do too badly I might say.

But in looking back , I realize how my new beginning served the group right: they rediscovered their reason for getting together: to reach out to the downtrodden and focus then on the second “S” of his life work (STS).

I forever remain in their debt for my start in Happy Valley. The warm clothes and warm reception have been ROI’ed multiple times. And in the tradition of “integrated” studies, I have tried non-stop to connect the dots as I recognized them. But for every two dots I could connect, Dr Roy probably did ten or a hundred times as much. He acknowledged in his last interview on YouTube that these new technologies can now liberate “useful science” for the mass. Sort of “unchained melody” used to be confined in the “Vatican” of Science.

His sons were with hair down to their knees when I first met them.

And that how cool a scientist family could get to be. Between them, father, mother (a whole biography on her own) and sons, I don’t think that family let any revolution go unnoticed.

He was last quoted on yahoo as saying “I felt chilled down my spine” when the lab uncovered that salt water could conduct electricity. I would too if I had been there and witnessed the experiment.

But for all the white papers and honors he deservedly received, he remained a dear fellow sojourner, one who came before me as a Penn Stater albeit of a different kind not degree.

For “We are” and forever will be, Nittany Lions, lurking with inquisitive minds, while letting no dots go unconnected.

our team always wins

In three hours, Penn State is going up against Ohio State.

We are….

I have had a down morning, until I remember what’s like at tail gate parties: blue-and-white everywhere, strangers cheering you up  and Joe P our god eternal.

My spirit is always lifted when the marching band runs into the stadium to lead the way for the rest of the team.

We learn about team loyalty, competitive spirit and “reset” mindset (nice try, defense!).

The alumni kept coming back, many with season tickets.

Happy Valley was indeed a happy place especially on home-game weekends.

Despite the ups and downs of my post-college years, Nittany Lion has a special place in my heart.

All positive.

Practice, practice, practice.

Players are to show up in class as well (even though they napped in Speech classes).

Mind over body.

Team over individual.

Winning is not everything. It’s the only thing.

We are…. Penn State.

It’s a microcosm of a larger universe, called America.

Lose not the competitive spirit, team spirit and grace in defeat.

For me, our team always wins, because We are…..