Tag: Shanghai

The thrill of a trip

Essentials only. Portable stuff. Restricted carry-on.

Off we go. Leaving behind the desk top, roof top and all  the stuff on the counter-top.

While traveling, we put on more weight. Eating “lesser-of-the-two-evils” choice of foods.

Meeting and making small talks with people we had never met.

It’s  a thrill nevertheless. The exchange of goods and services. People come with it, to wheel and deal. To be the middle man. Silk road to railroad, Shanghai to San Fran.

We toss and turn. The vessels are not designed for sleep comfort. Want that, you have to go to the nearest Mattress Discounter. I was told the internal combustion engine was really hot inside. No wonder, in the heat of summer, it is only getting worse, even with coolant and freon to insulate us. One more reason for the switch to electric vehicles.

Those who take the train. It is analogous to one’s life.

Once you took that fork in the road, let’s say career vs stay-at-home, from there, many mini-forks will present themselves. And it’s irreversible.

People advise us first to pick a good team. Then, a product, strategy and exit.

It is to show who you  chose to work and live with are of extreme importance.

They can bring out the best or worst in us.

Dreamers, Doers or Nay Sayers.

Take that road trip, or that rail track.

Just be mindful that with thrill, comes (price) tags.

And pick your travel mates carefully. It’s going to be a long and winding road. But short, if in good company. That’s a thrill in itself, who you are with.

Saigon Skyline

Like a scene from Cinema Paradiso (when the film producer returned to his village just to find out his beloved movie house demolished for a parking lot) I too start seeing the skyline of Saigon rising, blocking the old bank where my sister used to work. Another one is being planned next to cho Ben Thanh where on a Sunday stroll, one could hear restless horses tapping their shoes on city pavement.

Modernity and memories.

Future and nostalgia. Progress and the Past.

More square feet from above and less stretching room down below.

Skyscrapers and shanty towns share the same eco-sphere.

Pedicabs and taxicabs, Marlboro and cappuccino.

Let’s go.

I remember the go-go bars on what used to be called Tu Do (now Dong Khoi). Our first rock and roll band played there at Ritz (Jo Marcel) with matinée show, which I sneaked in to hear. Toi muon minh la thu co cay, vui trong gio va khong uu phien (just want to be wild flowers, flirting in the wind without worry).

The 60’s America sang about “share the land”, while its military industrial complex “spray the land”. Now people are planning to build on the land.

Green building and green bag of money.

More living space on top of bank, more trees in the middle of  concrete structure.

Let’s do it.

Let’s do a deal.

Let’s build and they will come. Like Vegas and Venetian, like Macau and Madrid, Shanghai and Singapore.

No more Cinema Paradiso.

Just lost love and lost youth.

The village fool still stands in the town square, wondering what all the fuss was about. To him, cinema or parking lot, skyline or battle line, are the same. He never got a chance to be in the game.

He never even registered that his presence was acknowledged, much less his opinion.

Our iconic producer however felt a lump in his throat, seeing  the icon of his youth got demolished. As of this edit, my old neighborhood cinema just happened to catch fire.

You can never swim in the same river twice.

Certainly not here in the Saigon River.

 

Au cinema

When Facebook profile (soon to be called Timeline) needs me to complete my favorite movie section, I put down Cinema Paradiso.

It’s in Blu-ray now (Oscar-winning, well-preserved quality). It’s about growing up in an Italian village, with the cinema , Cinema Paradiso, as central theme. It was later demolished to make room for a parking lot. It’s a coming-of-age movie, with movie house no longer pro-fit-able (like Friendly’s ice-cream chain).  It mourned for the Best of youth, with melancholy and nostalgia.

It’s every man and woman’s twist-and-turn of fate, like an amusement park ride.

Mine was also related to a neighborhood cinema, one of dozen own by my uncle.

So I got in free, double or single features. My cousin just waved me in, no ticket was required.

I shed a lot of tears there in that darkened theatre.

I also watched Woodstock, the movie, a couple of times (Ten Years After, remember?) and was amazed at the energy and freedom of  American youth.

I even took my first date there, and half way through the movie, we sneaked out for a smoothie.

The theater is now own by someone else while both my uncle and cousin were no longer with us.

I sat across the street from it on one of my trips back to Vietnam. After I had finished my smoothie, I stood up and did not look back.

One cannot swim in the same current twice.

Yet, like the character in Cinema Paradiso, I often wonder what’s like to have lived the second time around.

Would I be embarrassed by a sudden surge of youthful feelings?

Can grown-ups like me indulge in another treat that of a child?

Will my first date and I even recognize each other however precarious the encounter may turn out to be?

I wish I could fade in the music piece (Cinema Serenade) from the movie right now.

It never fails to bring back scenes from the movie, but also, scenes from our own interrupted lives.

It’s so Italian yet so universal. “Go, don’t come back here”.

A little over ten years ago, they demolished a drive-in theater in Southern California to build a Walmart. Every time I drove past that site, I couldn’t help thinking of the old drive-in (teenagers were denied another place to hang out, unlike when my cousin took the projector home to show family wedding clips to hundreds of kids out in the open).

I guess that same sentiment was a trigger for the making of Cinema Paradiso: the loss of a gathering point, a common space and screen where we all are projectionists (self-projection). People nap, snore, kiss, eat and sometimes, just escape summer heat.

Now, we got home theaters (buy now, pay later) but it’s a solitary not communal act of viewing.

And certainly, no adult is going to take time to show a kid how to load a film reel inside the projections booth, or as in my case, wave me in to see a movie for free.

Yes, it’s now in Blu-ray: neither grainy nor counting down (or waiting for the second projector to kick in during intermission.) And certainly no attendant with flash light.

Technology (digital) brings change, at neck-breaking speed (hockey-stick curve), while our ability to adopt is bell-shaped.

I have waited for Alvin Toffler to come out with more of his series (which began with Future Shock). But apparently, yesterday’s futurist is today’s museum curator.

The thing with speed is, like the bullet train in Shanghai, no one knows how damaging the impact is going to be when two fast-flying objects collide.

I felt that gnawing in my stomach when taken up to the top of an amusement ride. I know it will soon drop me mercilessly with kids sitting behind screaming like characters in a horror movie.

The best scene in Cinema Paradiso was the one which our Toto enjoyed a stress-free ride leaving Alfredo with all the hard pedaling.

On becoming

We are diamond in rough cuts.

7 billion of  us. The stats show the costs of raising a child in the US at roughly $200,000.  With educational score cards showing flat line, while other countries are on the up tick (albeit Shanghai focused on rote learning and test preparation), policy makers might have to offshore some departments i.e. sending students to India for math tutoring, for instance. This should reduce school loan a bit.

It might do us some good to have a generation of young people who are globally intelligent (Ask not what the world can do for you…), and know how to exercise and exert soft power . The FT puts the x-President of Brazil and Turkey on the list of top influencers.

Economic standing aside, these leaders know how to position themselves in world affairs. They know the time is now (for the rest to rise).

No one can take the US place at the table. It’s just that the table now accommodates more participants, from G7 to G20 and counting.

On New Year Day, I went shopping. Couldn’t help putting my marketing hat on. Cuban Americans are buying clothing on sales by the bulk. They might be suit-case entrepreneurs (after Christmas is also a good time to travel).

What’s good for the world is linked to what’s good for America (and vice versa).

Certainly it has kept Western Union in the game (money transfer back to Mexico, Philippines and others). Consumption here means production there (and shipping in between). Vietnam shrimp export rises from 1.69 B to 2 B this past year as an example.

We constantly take in new information, brain storm our options and force-rank our choices.

Speed used to be the watch word. It still is. But smart speed (both “aim” and “fire”) – like soft power- is all the more desirable. When head, heart and feet are aligned, we no longer have a rough-cut diamond. We got a priced one that serves a grander purpose.

Instinctively, we in the US know this. That somehow, things will get back to “normal”.

But this time around, we will temper growth with sustainability, strength with wisdom. and fun with respect (raw meat dress, anyone?)

We have grown mature. We have moved further in the scale, toward becoming what we are all along. In crisis, there is opportunity. The phoenix finally emerges out of the ashes to fulfill its destiny, that of true leadership.

Mars or marble

Have you submitted your name to be shuttled up to Mars?  Space and sea travel or your names on Mars and not marble. This is to show our preference for progress over permanence  – technology over religion.

While it’s good to sit on one of the benches with our parent’s names “in memory of…”, it’s better still for our grandchildren to travel in space to look for ours on Mars.

I found my parent’s graves without a hitch. Right here on spaceship Earth.

In the Far East, people want to travel back to where their ancestors were buried (as of this edit, I have just stepped on a bunch of fake dollars, burnt during an early morning funeral).

Thus, “the Last Train Home” documentary about Chinese factory laborers trying to get home for New Year via train, plane or automobile (their version of White Christmas).

Modernity forces huge displacement. South-South movement will be next, not Earth to Outer space (Indian mobile phone companies are buying up Middle Eastern phone companies to cater to fast growing African markets, while Vietel engineers are rebuilding Haitian and Myanmar telecom infrastructure).

When you are uprooted, your sense of identity suffers. One used to be known by his/her relationship in a communal network. Now, with new “ID“, he/she is known by an employee number. Welcome to KFC, how may I take your order.

With industrialization comes frustration (discontent): who is going to move in those Shanghai towers , and who will have to relocate to make room for the 5th-ring highway?

Uprooted dreamers.

No place to go back to. No bragging rights for aging parents e.g. “my son went to the city and came back a millionaire”.  Bentley in Russia, Ford in China. Wealth shift. G-20+ (make sure Brazil is included, since they know how to party).

For years, we saw a steady rise of “emerging countries”, but we still resort to yesterday’s play book. (Remember the Yugo joke?).

The poor was materially poor, but not in spirit or intelligence. From a near-zero base, the only way for emerging countries to go is to “emerge” i.e. create better-paying jobs, while union and progress in the West , once a blessing, now a hindrance in this post-Recession recovery.

Darwin was right: survival favors the most adaptive. Instead of fighting for a seat on “the Last Train”, those smart entrepreneurs already built alternate-energy bullet trains. It’s not your names on Mars, it’s the challenge to think beyond the marble which for centuries was the last stop for even the most famous of names. A Roman Emperor once hired an assistant, whose main job is to remind him every so often that: “Your Majesty, you will die soon”.  Memento mori.

Up the value chain

China is dreaming up its own Silicon Valley.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127742250&ft=1&f=1017

Its young are flocking NE universities in the summer, learning about American culture and history.

While in San Jose, they visit Tech Museum.

Are ideas and innovation moving offshore?

I was told to “follow the money”.

Does anyone know what time it is? Doesn’t anyone even care? (Chicago).

Actually, they have been nickel-and-dime, with rising costs (of wages, inflation pressure etc…).

Either they move South to Vietnam, Cambodia etc… or up the value chain.

Moving of the mind instead of moving the factories.

In crisis, there is opportunity. (Inida after 4 decades of leapfrogging the manufacturing step, end up with inflation).

30 years ago, China did it, out of necessity (with obvious consequences such as wage pressures and pollution).

This time, it is forced to go beyond dorm-room refrigerators to solar panel and software development.

Already we saw Baidu. And cities which offer high rebates for film makers (free extras). Watch out Bollywood!

If history taught us anything, it is this: China made a huge mistake by burning its world-class vessels back in the 16th century.

It drifted away and distracted itself  with opium and orthodoxy. Now China wakes up, moves fast and away from its progress-resistant mode. It has no time to eat or spend its money.

Money and success feed themselves. And each Chinese is moving up the Maslow scale. So is the interior country (with each province’s RFP and coordinated initiatives),

to catch up with Coastal cities such as Shanghai. The latter have been on steroid, while the former adrenaline.

Turns out, China is doing what exactly anyone in its place would: follow the money because its leader said “to get rich is glorious”, in this case, optimizing the value chain and use all its resources (which means it will soon have to outsource, offshore and build Tech museum as well). The force of nature favors survival of the busiest. And China is busy building its own Silicon Valley.