Tag: Norway

Certain summer

For young people, it’s a time for recreation, renewal and reviewing school materials.

For politicians, it’s time to pay the bills from Cold Wars, Star Wars, and Gulf Wars ….

For us, consumers, it’s a time to conserve fuel and energy, or just to stay cool.

One quote sticks, uttered by a friend of those who were killed in Oslo “Think of so much hate in one man, and how much more love in all of us together”.

Darkness and light. In each of us. Grant us the serenity.

There is fortunately a certain summer in all the seasons.

I like mature voices (like Terry Jacks or Gordon Lightfoot) who sang about lost innocence.

They lamented about a time that had slipped away undetected. Call it romanticism. Call it naivete. But we need leaders who can rouse the dreams.

We know what reality is like. And since we don’t like it, we invent an alternate one (..like an old-time movie)  with the help of our “high priests”: singers, entertainers, preachers and politicians, all masters and  manipulators of symbols.

Stephen King made this point clear: to write is to create another world. Once he took us inside a vacated hotel in the thick of winter (the Shinning) and moved us through the degenerative process of a defunct writer.

With Earth 7 billion, we’ve got sustainability issues.

Living in an age of de-leveraging.

Summer time in Greece and not in Grease.

“Skinned our heads and skinned our knees”.

I am finishing up “How the West was Lost” which depicts current reality in hard numbers. (as of this edit, Stockman releases his the Great Deformation volume).

Who is ultimately responsible? Fannie Mae? Greenspan? Clinton?

The rich-poor gap is so widened that the only people who feel stinky rich are the nouveau  rich in China mainland,

(rich people in the US dress down quite deliberately to blend in as “the millionaire next door”) with their Bentley’s and Gucci’s.

Summer traveling, with French waiters and Chinese tourists.

New world order.

Modern historians will be chronicling about Chinese in Paris.

(BTW, they are the ones who can afford “classical” music and high arts).

Meanwhile, the latest Economist issue features Westerners as the new Japanese (lost decades).

This summer in Oslo is also a turning point for the once Nordic Paradise.

To find Seasons in the Sun, one has to go further than Somalia, Sarasota or Singapore.

Maybe it’s a Lonely Planet after all. It’s the summer in our selective memory while reality is that of a declining  West. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun… Mature voices, innocent times. If you can read my mind…, it’s like an old-time movie.

Unfortunate guy and the happiest place

I still remember Sang. He helped me set up sound equipment on the weekend (my attempt to crowd-source and create an open-air coffee-house for refugees), and attended my class on weekdays.

Sang was in that transition camp in Hong Kong, on his way to Norway, his new home.

I was feeling sorry for him, an unaccompanied minor, who only knew the seas and spoke no other language besides Vietnamese.

Now he is in the happiest country on Earth perhaps with a fully paid house and a steady job.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/10/happiest_countries/index_01.htm?chan=rss_topSlideShows_ssi_5

You will never know.

I thought of Nordic countries as being very cold, isolated and their languages incomprehensible. While in Hong Kong, I was taken to New Territories, on my day off , for a peek at then inaccessible China. That same view, today, looks out to Shenzhen. Back then, it was the equivalence of standing at the Korean DMZ.

Back to Sang.

He got to Norway safely, I learned from a few letters, one of which had a picture of him with sun glasses and cigarette.

Cool!

I was impressed with Norway then, because they took on Sang and others in their most unfortunate of circumstances.

Norway had nothing to do with the wave of Boat People, risking pirates and prolonged processing at camps.

Yet they pitched in because their ships picked up refugees at sea.

And now, it’s voted the happiest country on Earth.

A lot has changed since. Back then, I read the Boat People story on Newsweek. It struck me.

The ordeal and the odd (1 in 2 survived. Survivors might resort to cannibalism at worst,

or got raped along the way, at best).

Now, Newsweek itself got sold off for a token $1.00

And “Ladies and Gentlemen on both sides of the aisle” actually sat together, from senior level on down (Kerry and McCain).

Sang looked up to me, naturally. Now, it’s my turn to envy him.

I wish I were the happiest guy in an unfortunate place instead.

So he projected himself on me, and I, with a delayed reciprocate response years later.

Back then, CNN was a novelty. Today, the President takes his Q&A on YouTube.

My hope is for the last of those “boat people” to find their happiest place this New Year (another wave has ended up in Australia).

Many have posted sweet memoirs about Tet and places they once loved.

It’s a culture which holds high regards for the collective memory (sticky-rice cake, moon cake etc…).

Allegorically, those symbols resonate even and especially for those who now live comfortably in Nordic states.

It will be so strange, if one day, I ran into Sang here in the States, or Vietnam.

And we will exchange notes, how much (the price) we have paid for progress.

We know there is not much room at the top (the Mayan pyramid steps got smaller as you climb higher).

And the way down has always been much scarier, because it’s counter-intuitive for us to ever look down.

Who wants to go back to school like that laid-off textile lady at the age of 55. We were toilet-trained and mentally trained for a one-way race. No one seems to be able to recall more than three top winners in each sector. Hence, it’s more than necessary to attain and sustain the top place.

Just make sure, you have ownership of the climb. For Sang, then, it was a very sad journey he took to transit camp and onto NORWAY.  As it turns out, he was an unfortunate guy in the happiest place on Earth years later.