Tag: Organizations

Impending Incident

The North-East is once again bracing for a gathering storm.

Climate change and the prolonged cold front.

Satellite tracking has improved weather forecast substantially.

Other things in life seem less certain e.g. financial market and food/fuel prices.

The Queen of England was reported as saying “how come no one saw this coming?” (in the context of this past Recession).

Our 21st-century narrative should have bluntly shown the Elephant in the room.

And that was with all the predictions of Nobel-prize-winning economists.

After averting an avalanche, we now face a cliff.

All impending incidents. Everyone was aware of the Sequester. The budget cuts and the cancelled contracts.

700,000 jobs are to be eliminated, to bring the unemployed population to just about 13 million. Adam Smith got hand (invisible) but not heart.

To survive, one needs to be tough . This is a test of not manhood but nationhood.

There is a piece about Finding Love in Walmart (18 States). What about Walgreens?

Too convenient and high-priced?

Let’s face it. The Elephant has stood there in the room.

Much has been written about it, but it refuses to budge.

Still high unemployment, still high fuel prices.

The best brains simply surrender, while the top 1 percenter simp;y accumulate. That is an impending event (as of this edit, the DOW has just reached its all-time high since 2007, much of it came from institutional investors).

So we join a new spectator’s sports: space traveling (of course you have to be very rich to ride). Aristocracy in the age of Austerity. Our version of the dream has just been upgraded and most impossible to realize. Well, we can always rely on the weather man for better odds. With space stations, weather forecast, once a hard uncertainty, has now become a soft one at that.

P.S. The area did experience end-of-season snow blizzards, just as predicted.

(You) Tube and Toast

The English had their toasts (toasters) thanks to electricity. I’ve got my music thanks to Youtube. Each generation tries to outdo the previous one. My daughters would read about Mars, not Moon (I blogged about the excitement of waiting in line for hours to see that rock brought back from the Moon).

Thanks YouTube. The three founders I believe who invented this medium.

It brought together a platform made possible by broadband and algorithm (perhaps you might like to listen to this…..).

Don’t give up on us baby, then If you leave me now, or Adieu Sois Heureuse.

“Lord knows we’ve come this far”

“We went too far to leave it all behind”.

Innovators, don’t give up. Lord knows we have gone this far. We can’t change the way we are.

Push forward.

Science at the forefront of change.

Let’s tweet again.

Politician and musician will follow suit.

As long as scientists and technologists don’t give up.

I know you are more intimate with your sleeping bags than your spouses.

But for generations to come, you have us forever grateful to your “prototypes”.

A VoIP call, a clip we share, a link we paste.

How can this be?

I started out my Telecom career throwing a tin can with string attached across the alley to my neighbor’s house.

Despite the heavy rain, we communicated without shouting.

But it was “wire line” then. It’s wireless now. And not just voice. It’s the apps era.

Here or To Go?

When we grew up in Vietnam, at the height of the war, we stuck our noses into our neighbor’s window to catch a glimpse of Vic Morrow‘s Combat, or Wild Wild West. Large crowd, small screen.

Now I see small kids, watching large screens.

The time, they are a’changin, as Dylan would say.

To close this blog, I want to draw our attention to a very controversial character: Insull, who died in a Paris metro with a ticket in his hand.

Insull would make the Ebbers of the world look like they are from Junior League.

Insull left behind the electricity meters and business model we see today.

It made possible the electrifying of the English toasters and todays’ Youtube.

Insull rode the ups and downs of an entrepreneur life. And he died riding the subway in Paris a homeless and wretched man. But Don’t give up on us Baby.

We have come thus far, can’t we stay the way we are.

We have come too far to leave all this behind.

I enjoyed my toast and tube this morning. Feel like a million-dollars.

Thanks to those guys that went before me. On shoulders of giants we stand, we sing and we soar.

(You)tube and toast. Let’s toast to the spirit of innovation and creativity.

Think of something new and bigger than yourself today. Even the moonlight.

Before the ground claims us all to itself. Vic Morrow has died, in accident, and not in Combat. The  point is, fight for every inch against complacency. Read Ron Paul‘s parting message. Appreciate the liberty we are given to pursue dreams and discovery. I have blogged about the payload. All into it, except for those outliers. Then the world will join you .. the way they are hunting for an I-phone 5. VoIP, data and video, on the go. Beautiful apps, wonderful world we are living in.

People-people problems

Technical issues can be dealt with, even if we have to farm it out.

People problems, especially when it’s personal, and potentially embarrassing, tend to linger on, and if unresolved and cancerous.

We simply wish they go away.

And they will. When the people died.

Those of us who stand one foot in tech and the other in marketing must understand where our customers are, before we can sell them. Consumer savvy and marketer savoir faire.

When relationships are going well, nothing come close.

We sleep better, eat better and drink more.

Joie de vivre.

It keeps going and going.

We need to work with and through people to achieve great things.

We need people to use our services and products.

And we need people to share our time and lives with .

Unless you want to read the whole library, alone,  the rest of your life.

People who need people.

People who are hurt by people.

And people who think they can do without people.

Learn the basics: their needs and wants, their psychological make-ups,

and even learn through mistakes: what makes them tick.

The thing about people is that they know when we are sincere and trying.

And chances are, because none of us are angels, we will soon forgive the person who pissed us off, since we ourselves are none the better.

I hope things work out for you this day, as mine did.

I could sleep through the night just because people-people problem went away.

Again, we smile at people. Curse them not. Because positivity begets more of the same. Keep your relationship currency balance. And free your emotional reserve to collaborate and to achieve greatness.

Male vulnerability

Behind the tatoo, the tobacco and the toughness, lies male vulnerability.

I read about how the Watergate break-in was just one among a list of outrageous proposals such as kidnapping, wiretapping and high-priced hookers blackmail etc…

You can’t find tougher looking bunch than those “plumbers” and their Archille’s heels.

Yes, there is also female vulnerability. But male’s vulnerability turns everything upside down: how can he be…..?

Males are wired (no punt intended) to conquer. His logic flows one way: hunt, see, conquer. Nothing gets in the way.

He likes closure, trophies and the declaration of victory.

Like a book with many short chapters, a male life consists of many failed attempts (often edited out).

You are lucky if you landed a few by lines on the New York Times’ obituary page.

Male with high EQ are rare: flexible, creative, sensitive and intuitive.

I am surrounded by male who smoke, swear and swindle. So I am forced to decode quickly. everybody has his or her vulnerable spot.

Call it blind spot. Some has a larger “spot” than others.

When cultures collide, there is a huge gap:

attitude towards the opposite sex, family, society and war invalids.

Men went to war. Men got hosed down. But not stay down.

Yes. Male vulnerability is not much different from human vulnerability at large.

Only when he attempts to gloss it over,  to live in denial and with the illusion of grandeur, that it’s laughable

Momento morir (You will die, your Majesty).

Be mindful, be restless.

As I did. When woke up to the sound of funeral music.

Someone in the neighborhood was buried very early this morning.

The music might as well have been for me. For whom the bell tolls!

Yes, I am vulnerable. Always have.  No sense to deny it.