Tag: Plastic surgery

When dreams are gone!

A few blogs ago, I wrote about Noel Decoration in Saigon.

A few weeks from now, the glitters will have been all gone.

Party is over.

Then, it’s a long grind. 2013.

The quants have already crunchedl year-end data: sunk costs, margin, consumer behavior (irrational at times – hint: sell spirits over the holidays).

The monks look on Christmas helplessly. They wait their turn (Buddhist birthday).

Girl friends are hoping loudly for gifts, employees for bonus.

After all, it’s Christ‘s birthday.

The author became a character in a  play he had created.

Empathy. Homelessness. Rejection. Illegitimacy (ask him for his birth certificate).

Our consumerist society has co-opted and corrupted every single occasion to sell merchandise. Together, we build “brand”.

The dream goes like this, “it’s Christmas, the season of giving. So borrow and buy, first for your miserable self, then for those near and far, like them or not. Ship them, don’t like them, then return them. We will send something else, or give you store credits to shop some more”.

Many of these “gifts” end up in the closet along with next year’s wrapping papers.

And dreams just don’t stop there. New Year’s Resolution, ranging from vocational training, weight loss program, and cosmetic surgery. We keep trying, because after all, “life’s a moment in space” with a few surprises around the bend (hopefully they installed mirrors around the curves).

“When dreams are gone, it’s a lonelier place”. In a few weeks, those same hot spots where decorations are now up, will be desolate.

The crowd will have moved on, from Bethlehem to Babel, from cashier to customer service. Next! Return or exchange? 2013, long grind.

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.