Tag: Paris

Softer side of Soft Power

In the end of A Christmas Holiday, our Somerset Maugham‘s character went back to his middle-class comfort zone but quite aware of his “plastic” existence. This was right after he had spent a week in Paris, meeting Lydia, a Russian gypsy whose suffering life was nothing Charlie had ever imagined.

I couldn’t help think of a parallel to what America was going through: having involved with a suffering Europe and came home with a G.I Bill, went through a life-altering experience and education. Then we got a Kerry who once testified before Congress as an anti-war camouflage-wearing activist (John Lennon-like) , just to find himself decades later on the other side of the mike.

Softer side of Soft Power.

War-weary country, post-industrial America no longer wants to play global cop, regardless of the nature of mass weapon violation.

We truly are entering the Post-American era whose first phase leaves a huge void to be filled by a host of BRIC countries.

(NATO now stands for No Action, Talk Only).

In short, when the world calls 911, there is no answer.

Only a recording that says “we are short of resources and too compassion-fatigued to be involved, please call back at another time. Sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused”.

And that recording might be generated from a pre-recorded upload from India.

Syria or India, to an average American in this post-Recession era, is the same.

Kids need shoes, need to be dropped off and picked up. Groceries in the freezer and fast food at the second drive-through window.

That’s about it.

Please don’t bother us Please do not show us any photo of mass massacre, or influx of refugees to Lebanon and Turkey.

We might enjoy a vacation or a movie set in Istanbul (Taken 2), but we prefer marginal exposure, not deep engagement.

Yet, there has been a significant rise in NGO’s treasure chest during this Recession.

Where is our sense of priority?

Back from our Christmas Holiday, to same old La-Z-Boy chair , feeling life returns to normalcy.

We might have met a few real-life characters whose suffering we could only imagine. But then, it’s better to let sleeping dog lie.

Even Soft Power has its limits (we no longer talk about Hard Power). State is leading Pentagon, but then Russia is now in center stage. Where are Britain, Germany and France?

The so-called Lords of Finance?

In a Post-American World, the power vacuum is up for grabs But no one is big enough and “naive” enough to step up to the plate.

Perhaps there will be a new “NATO”, one that acts only, and no talk at all.

Our Somerset Maugham’s character did give Lydia some money. He felt good about giving. He had a wonderful Christmas Holiday in Paris, the Louvre and the London’s status-quo existence. Will life ever be the same after each human encounter?

The answer lies in whether there is a softer side of Soft Power. I believe American at heart are people with a softer side.

It is finding its footing and balance after a period of growing pain. Mr Kerry wasn’t shunned by first turning into an anti-war, then a pro-war and finally the Geneva deal. Maybe someone will pick up the 911 call after all. It’s called a change of heart. That call can be routed anywhere in the world, It’s called follow-the- sun technology and follow-your-heart ecology.

No Spring attached

Having lived in coastal cities for quite some time, I forgot what’s like to wait for Spring.

We need Winter as a set up for Spring.  Winter-Spring contrast is more striking than that of Summer-Fall.

We also anticipated Spring more than Fall (some even wish for endless summers).

Vietnamese literature and lyrics (Gold music) nevertheless, serenade Fall and fallen leaves more than other times of the year.

Something about a dreamy creek which evokes music and deers which stand still, clueless and trusting.

The wait for Spring has stretched out a bit further lately due to climate change.

But Spring has always been a symbol of  hope and renewal.

Gone are the days of cold temperature and heavy coats.

Spring breakers are anticipating wild celebrations down Florida beaches.

The Church is electing its new Pope just in time for Easter Celebration.

And Wall Street keeps ringing its bell.

Something is in the air, if not Spring itself.

Optimism is more contagious than grim bad news.

There is nothing more forward-looking than holding a baby in arms.

So much future, so many more seasons.

In that context, it’s not so bad to put up with a few overcast days.

There are also sparks of creativity in this year’s Paris outerwear collection.

With Spring comes less laundry to do (wearing less), some Easter candies to eat and the Cherry Blossom Parade to attend.

Spring is in the air. Everyone seems to be eager for it,… except those with hay fever. Now, that explains the eye irritation starts coming my way.

There are always strings attached, even for Spring.

the Bi-Lingual Mind

Those of us who move back and forth in between two worlds can relate to this.

Every time we pick a language to speak or write (E or V in my case), we subscribe to a whole new context e.g. away from tutoyer to address someone as big bro, younger sis  as practiced in the Vietnamese culture. Edward Hall distinguishes between E2 and E3 (E2  for crossing between two similar cultures e.g. French and English). East and West crossing would be an E3. Recent Post article by Richard Cohen addressed the informality in our language ( I love you man). Early in the 19th century, people hardly traveled outside their continent.  WWII unintended consequences were the closing of that distance.

Graham Greene and Murukami are on the opposite end of the East-West spectrum.

They brought us keen observation because they were looking at it from the outside.

Hemingway wrote well when in Paris during the 50’s.

A bunch of Hollywood actors also flocked to Paris.

The bi-lingual mind never feels bored. It has access to two strands of thoughts, two treasure chests to draw from.

More choices and challenges.

All the richer.

One cannot approach bilingualism from a pure political stand point.

Instead, it should be recognized and rewarded (some Multi-National Corporations churn out bonuses for multi-lingual staff for riding both horses at the same time).

America has been blessed with global citizenry. They came, conquered and created a country.

They invent Brand America, as they reinvent themselves. Endless possibilities, boundless opportunities.

Bi-lingual talent is a terrible thing to waste .

They are our national assets. Twice the contribution, twice the richer. Europe has enjoyed the gifts of multi-lingualism for years. It’s America’s turn to embrace it.

World on wheels

You want to see wheels at work, you come to Saigon.

(Baby) strollers, scooters, (food) stalls, all on wheels.

But instead of having you walk up to a vending machine, here the merchandise come to you. Ladies in cone hats would walk about with all sorts of knickknacks on their shoulders: toe clippers, wallets, key chains etc….

At night, snack vendors come around the neighborhood, waking everyone up.

“Banh gio”.  KFC, Pizza, Hot noodle bowls all delivered on wheels.

It’s a 24/7 world on wheels. Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.

They finally put the canal fences up, but the “river doesn’t flow through it”.

Saigon used to be known as the Pearl of the Orient.

Neither Paris nor London, Saigon is a synthesis of every strand and shape. Young people from the country side pour in and mix in to form a kaleidoscope. It is as if the old energy from a mix of Cambodian and Chinese were not enough. Now with young and old, East and West, it is transformed into something unrecognizable. Perhaps a Singapore of the next century.

I live next door to a young couple. Their son is just one year old, barely taking baby steps. In the morning, mom would be walking vending machine. In the afternoon, Dad would walk around shoe-shining. The boy is well cared for. The boy has just got a toy automobile for Christmas. The young couple were discussing about buying a Nokia phone.

The future of Saigon. Of Vietnam. Soon they would save up enough for a scooter. Nuclear family on wheels. The kid after all had already got his wheels.

World on wheels.

How do they know?

Have you ever wondered how some songs deliver just the right emotion? How do they know what’s relevant and resonating? Chicago‘s If You Leave Me Now, for instance.

On these blogs, we often mentioned the eccentric, the peculiar and oddities.

Rarely do we put much effort articulating those feelings and God forbid, meltdown or breakdown (Newtown, Conn).

This job belongs to recording artists.

In Advice to A Young Poet, Rilke was referring to being broken, being vulnerable, as prerequisites for being a poet.

Now, that’s painful.

To achieve authenticity, you to have to live through it. To pay the price (Eric Clapton‘s Tears in Heaven did not come about without his personal loss).

Who would be willing? To lose that much to gain that little? MBA candidates wouldn’t choose that route. (I was asked yesterday what’s the use of these blogs?).

Then, we touted creativity, inventiveness and “out of the box” thinking.

Serial entrepreneurs and lovers have one thing in common: they both tried and tried hard down that path (risk taking).

Without rejection, you wouldn’t get results (think of Marconi and Marie Curie).

Those in Sales know without Cold Calling, there wouldn’t be enough rejection to fill the sales funnel. Seth Godin wrote a bunch of unknown books before he got a hit (Linchpin). Colonel Sanders almost gave up as retirement was nearing.

It’s the numbers game. The Beatles logged in 10,000 hours bouncing around from Hamburg to Liverpool to become who they were.

To close : How do they know? They don’t.

They tried and failed. Then try again. Until they got it just right. It hit the spot . Think of Stephen Bishop‘s It Might Be You.

Maybe it’s you. “Wondering how they met and what makes it last”. Keep trying. Don’t give up on us, baby. It must be you. One-hit wonder is OK. As long as it’s the Whiter Shade of Pale.

Try until it’s right. How do I know? I am still trying. It’s only my 900th blog.

Madonna and child

Not the Seine in Paris. But Rach Nhieu Loc in Saigon. She wore a cone hat. Baby tanning in the morning sun, resting in her bosom. The other hand, she checked her messages from a mobile phone.

It’s  Thanksgiving in Vietnam. People  have a lot to be thankful for. It’s now ranked second on Happy Country Index (the US 25th on infrastructure).

Infrastructure and Index of Happiness. By all counts, the canal stings. But people as a whole are considered happy. Many would care less for the Mayan calendar and its doom prediction.

When it gets too hot, it rains. Nature idea of  a “smart” grid. GE is investing heavily in “industrial internet” (the way Bill Gates referred to in his “at the speed of thoughts”.)

People here move about at the speed of motorbikes. It barely rains and people are already in ponchos and helmets , zooming by non-stop. No delay, no second thought.

Moving forward. Day after day. Only the future. When school is out, kids pour out into the concrete sidewalks, like a disturbed  beehive.

High-margin items are on display, all mobile related (I phone casing, eye glasses and sun glasses, helmets of all stripes, pull-overs and book bags).

Students from the country side try hard to accommodate themselves off campus by working at odd jobs.

I found an eatery with decent meals. Sharing a round table with strangers: meat, rice, soup and iced tea.

French-style cafes are extremely popular, serving cafe-sua-da at all times of the day.

007 is shown here too, interlaced with Twilight.

I wonder if the life style depicted in those movies ignite young people’s aspiration.  The Twilight cast, red-eye aside, all look perfect when they don’t go “hunting”.

Books are confined in a dozen outlets, scattered around the city, still priced themselves out of reach of the average wage earner.

The publisher I am in talk with has a branch office behind a huge pagoda, which is located across from Vietnam’s famous Vinh Nghiem pagoda. So, it’s not just KFC and Burger King who stake out prime locations. Religious outfits do so as well.

Meanwhile, the population understands health and fitness, how they relate to happiness. A nation ranked second after only Costa Rica in Happiness can surely connect the dots.

Their diet is healthy and their movement swift.

It starts early in the morning and early in life.

I saw the evidence this morning. Mother and child. Sun bathing.

Texting and tanning.

All contribute to the formula of healthiness besides discarded Vinamilk pouches on the street.

Perhaps technology has contributed much to Vietnam’s progress. Today, if you found a bicycle moving about, it’s a rare sight.  You can’t reverse history (especially in China, where automobiles are now as common as bicycles three decades ago).

You can only move forward with industrialization.

You read these lines. You know I am at an internet cafe next to my cafe-sua-da.

I do have something to be thankful for. I found a high-speed internet location.

Humble dreams

Here at UVT, students wear chef uniforms to school.

Dressed up for the part.

They are to finish their last leg in Hospitality and Tourism at one of the Australian Universities.

Humble dreams, yet tangible outcomes.

I respect young people who knew what they want to be when they grow up/old.

At their age, my family and society at large were pushing for doctors, dentists and designers (architects).

Now, everyone is aware of new trends and options.

Pathways to success. Gateways to employment and empowerment.

Dining and touring experience.

The new economy. Nouveau riches.

Chinese shoppers in New York, Milan and Paris.

Shop til they drop. Maybe one day, these shoppers will stop by and be served by our graduates.

A cappucino here, an expresso there. Ring the register.

Count your money, and take it to the bank.

Forget not your humble origins. Forget not time spent here at UVT, conjugating and even copulating.

We turn Vietnamese boys into English-speaking men.

We help turn students into culinary stars.

Don’t doctors, dentists and designers need to eat and travel?

Well, maybe my parents and their friends were too particular and restricted in their choices.

Maybe they stumbled upon the trail of success in their time, but times has changed.

We are better informed and more practical.

We put our money where our mouth is. We eat, love and pray.

Someone needs to be in the kitchen. It’s hot in there. And the training hours are long. They need to log in enough hours to graduate. And while in uniforms, they are reminded of who they will become. A far cry from their humble origins.

Teen boys’ dreams

It’s all there on my friend’s web site: the seating lay-out in the classroom (three jr-high students to a table) I drew up 40 years ago. When you click on a name, it pops up a few byline and that friend’s mushy words about “summer time” or “we will never be this good as a group – cutting classes… knowing a few of us would be drafted to the war zones”.

Also posted was a picture of three guys, who shared a table in the back of the class, all with bell-bottom pants and innocent looks (one of them later came back from the war zone with only one eye left). Ironically, it’s him who later created the web page, which also runs a personal ad looking for the other two.

On my first trip back to Vietnam after 25 years away, I managed to track down a friend who used to sit next to me (table next to last). He in turn helped connect the three in the picture I have just seen.

Those early day “postings” were our version of facebook. They bore imprints of innocence and premonition for our soon-to-be-lost youth , fours years after Tet 68 and one year before the Paris Accord, which was signed 40 years to date.

I still remember those diaries. They were passed around at the end of the school year, to record our impressions of each other and our time in middle school. During the year, we had produced our version of Wall Paper (the student version of White Paper), for the entire school to read.

We stayed up late, typing, designing and laying out. Then, we used the school stencil (roneo) papers the night before deadline.

We named it “Uoc Vong” (Aspiration).

Since co-ed only introduced a few years later and only for night school, we boys had to stick together all those hot afternoons. Extra-curricular actvities would include volley ball, soccer, ping-pong, Rock music practice, karate, fund-raising campaigns for refugees fleeing the war zones (the girl in the  picture) and a bit of home-grown journalism.

Those four years were incubating time.

We were pruned in school tradition with “flame” as our mascot and learned to emulate upper-classmen (Quoc Dung who wrote music at the age of 12, and got noteriety at 16). We participated in and campaigned for student representative posts. Even after getting elected to the Student Council, I still had to observe the pecking order (seniors got to pick the best all-girl schools to sell our Tet magazine to). Being junior, I ended up with a nearby “rough” co-ed schools (where other boys surely wouldn’t give us free rein on their campus to court “their female classmates”).

We also learned a very important lesson: friendship lasts forever!

After four decades of drifting apart (with one known dead, and two wounded) then stumbling upon that picture of the tallest boys, with Lobo‘s hair and bell-bottom pants, facing the black/white camera, I felt a lump in my throat. If they had only known.

Had I only  known.

Yet even then, I sensed that our lives would be swept along by strong political currents.

I wrote  on our Wall Paper ” around the bend, further ahead, where we have yet seen, but with a good chance of turning out not as thought.. in whatever shape or form we found ourselves then, let’s meet and greet as if time had stood still and that we remain friends despite of it all”.

That turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The one-eyed red-beret is currently visiting Vietnam. I showed up early on the third day of Tet at his door step to fetch him, and guided him across a busy street.

He used to be a black belt but has to wear black boots to straighten his crooked ankle (a one-eyed shaky hand and crooked leg man). “No matter what shape or form we found ourselves then, let’s meet and greet as if time had stood still”.

In the US, Vietnam vets are calling attention to the plight of vet homelessness.

It’s the same everywhere: we are quick to forget, unless something triggered our memory and sparked our imagination. It’s not an unsolvable issue, but the “social” dimension needs to be personalized. When asked why a little girl tried to save a star fish when the seas are full of them. She replied “it matters to that one”.

My teen boy’s dream has made a 360-degree turn on me; my personal Timeline has just sent a reminder to my inbox, urging me to click on a link to the past.  Around the bend, further up the road where things have yet revealed themselves to us, let’s make a commitment to stay friends despite of it all (war and its unintended consequences). Dream, dream, dream.

Load-lightening with clouds

Load balancing, redundancy, follow-the-sun operation centers etc..

to be topped up by cloud.

We did that with business phones (Centrex), and mainframes.

More than a third of North American phones are now smart phones, with computational power not unlike earlier version of our desktops. When Turing and Shannon conceived a  “thinking machine”, they were just happy if it could make basic calculations.

Now, we interact with machine on such a regular basis that our language shows: down time, ramp-up time, recharge, warm up, another run at it, press reset, in the loop, boost up, and vent. (In Freedom, Franzen’s character even referred to freedom as “choosing your own apps and features”).

If there were a place for us to unload what’s in our head (let’s say to an external hard drive or upload to the cloud), we probably would, to lighten the ‘things we carried”. Over the years, we put on weight, but also stored millions of bits of information in our brains.

Random facts. Some connect. Others lay dormant but someday, will be recalled with the right stimuli.

For instance, when I read about an amputee who got thrown out of a NY amusement park ride to his death, I got a chill in the back of my head. My daughter works at a theme park.

So I would hate to hear any accident on theme park ride.

In The Greater Journey, his latest book about American in Paris, David McCullough said that what he had chosen to leave out was more important than what’s in the book.

In life, we cannot afford to “defragment” our memories i.e. to make them more compact hence more room for new facts.

Yet, even with all the “heaviness” that weight us down over the years (and it seems there were a lot of bad news lately), we barely used up a few per cents of our brain capacity.

I read about an “Afropreneur” today (a librarian’s child-turned-philanthropist who wanted to supply Africa with books and more books). I happened to be on a summer tour in W Africa with similar mission years ago. So I can once again relate to his narrative and cause.

In our open-source and open-border ecosystem, we need an open mind.

When it comes to knowledge, the more you share, the more you acquire.

Again, McCullough told Charlie Rose that in the process of researching for his book, he learned more (by plunging in).

Learning by doing. It’s a loop. Half-baked knowledge is a dangerous thing, Ivory Tower is already full of “analysts” and “thinkers”.

All the world’s knowledge, once stored in the Library of Congress now accessible to all (instead of just to congressional aides in SE D.C.). So are MIT open courses.

Load-lightening or not, we learn more if we acted more.

I did not learn from the Art of War. I learned more from my broken arm after three months of Kung Fu. Call me a wimp. But I have survived thus far. The best battle is one you don’t engage (or get drawn in). I guess, in that vein, you won’t see me strapped in one of those devilish rides any time soon. There is a fine line between foolishness and bravery. And it’s a personal call. That’s what memories do for us: to keep us alert and alive.

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.