Tag: Southeast Asia

Middle-Income Trap

The phenomenon known as Middle-Income Trap is alive and well in SouthEast Asia.

Not all boats rise with the water. Contentment sets in and gets in the way of progress.

Countries like the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are  in this trap.

From a global perspective, they could do better if getting over the hump. Yet people are caught  with false sense of security (just a little bit over the Survival phase). No challenge, no progress.

Entrepreneurs, innovation and R&D? That’s a luxury one cannot afford here.

I went pass a Malaysian Educational Center here in HCMC. Apparently to get to Malaysia nowadays is already a step-up (then Singapore, Australia and/or US).

Vietnam needs to leapfrog to be in the forefront of science and technology, commerce and communication. FDI and Tourist dollars unfortunately landed mostly on infrastructure investment more than talent investment.

Its young people will need more than a dose of legislation. They need role models, encouragement and financial supports (to truly master English for Commerce and not just to pass a required placement test).

Encourage Life-Time-Learning.

Life-Time-Learning leads to Life-Time-Fulfillment. Middle-Income will be de facto results.

My hope and wish is for college students to master life’s skills, and to see the big picture, that of being a global citizen, where Many-to-Many is the new model and Pull, not Push, prevails.

Brief shinning light

TIME and Life’s Turbulent Years (60’s) has a picture of JFK just an hour before his  death.

Presidential, Camelot and eternally youthful in that Dallas morning.

Another picture shows after a dip in Santa Monica. What other President would do that today.

Summer time. Pool is opened. Life guards and their whistles.

Sun shades and sun tan.

Sun burn and sun block.

Heart throbbing and heart breaking.

I had one indelible summer memory of staying indoor: had a broken arm from Hapkido went wrong.

Summer-long restlessness.

Forced me to sit down. To be reflective.

Trajectory deflected.

Before that, I hadn’t realize that life never travel in a straight line

(white, yellow, blue, brown then black belt. Supposedly).

Even product planners can tell you that (S curve, valley of death etc…).

Instead, forced disruptions, surprised and blessed events strung together to make what’s called life.

Those in leadership factor in  the “unexpected”, plan B, plan C , worst-case scenario.

Even then, things still turn out not as planned.

(ComSat with low battery life, no reception etc… that forced our Lt Mike Murphy to the clearing hence drawing fire).

The team that got Bin Laden, even with the Iranian hostage crisis in hindsight, still left a burned helicopter.

Apollo, Challenger all had their shares of disasters. Skype with multiple dropped calls,  bought out twice to land in Seattle, Washington (but managed finally to link Video Chat for friends on Facebook).

Camelot and America’s brief shinning moment “Ask not…”.

So we did. A race to the moon, and a race to the jungle of South East Asia.

B-52 is now a throat-burning drink (ironically) and Apocalypse Now, a gay bar in former Saigon.

Horror! (line from the film).

I still remember where I was when I heard JFK was shot.

I was discussing it with Pierre, my half-breed schoolmate, on our way to L’Ecole Aurore via a short-cut.

We were in blue uniform, pretending to be adults. Even then, we knew somehow life would never be the same.

That world events somehow would directly impact our little lives (not too long before that, our own President had been assassinated along with his brother).

Still we had a dream (that Vietnamese kid and half-breed French kid would happily go to school).

Summer time, and youthful dream (especially when you are confined at home on cast).

And no matter what, taking down political leaders didn’t seem right in my naive assessment.

I have waited to see better solutions. And lately, with the trial of Egyptian President, I started to see that things have changed for the better.

And that if you waited long enough, what’s right will always have its day in court (or get declassified).

For that brief shinning moment, no one knew the handsomest President would hold office for only a little over 1,000 days.

Yet, his impact and influence lasted way beyond his grave e.g. private-sector space travel like Virgin Group etc..

Ask not….. for you will never know when the bell toll for thee. Summer time. Youthfulness. In restless dreams I walk alone.

This side of doom

Doomsday prediction did not materiale.

On this side of doomsday, Southeast Asia is no longer a war zone. It’s the new fun zone (with young and upcoming demographics).

LinkedIn IPO gone through the roof while IMF Chief couldn’t check in at any hostel in NY (I did not mis-spell “hostel”). Whether you live in flood zone or dictator zone, mobile coverage is ubiquitous.

I can’t remember a time when we are required to get up to speed so quickly, from theology of rapture to sustaiability issues, from Bush tax cut to Obama’s TARP. We need to survive information glut.

All this makes the break-up of the Soviet Union (into different nations states with new names) a walk in the park. Even with public figures who still command some staying powers: Donald Trump and Henry Kissinger to Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, will soon join the baby boomers’ mass retirement.

The new actors on the scene will not take their public place, but will move onto virtual space (Farmville by Gaga and fireworks by Perry). It’s getting too crowded to actually compete in physical sphere, so we move on to virtual space (Kevin Kelly) where we can upload our “most outrageous marriage proposal ever” etc…The margin of acceptance is higher and the price of public humiliation lower.

This side of doom is quite accommodating: anywhere from child-rearing for gay couples to all-naked gym.

If we live in the most tolerant country on Earth, and still be jolted by change, how much more can citizens of Arab Spring be still and “watch the train go by”. 7 billion people living in jet age and internet time – discounted firewalls by political dictators and mind control by cult leaders – negotiate change, either by osmosis or by being active (open universities at MIT or TED talk online to help you “be all you can be” in your own time). I can’t wait to get up every morning, doomsday or not. Prophets (false or true) come and go. But in our internet age, we should reserve our judgement until all facts are in and not jump into conclusion for just one tweet.

Branding in Vietnam

Long ago, at Saigon Central Market round about, Saigon’s equivalent of Times Square, Hynos billboard featured a smiling person, showing his white teeth. Back then Vietnam had just done away with blackened-teeth, the same way China’s counterparts were shelving away their bound-feet practice. A society in transition.

Kids wore BATA shoes ( a popular brand in US during WWII, a period when men were enlisted leaving women behind to connect phone calls – switch-circuit technology or to produce army uniforms and weaponry,) Vietnamese women on the other hand, would model after Madam Nhu’s collar-less “ao dai” (she herself perhaps took a page from Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany).

One would find simplest advertising : Co Ba Soap, or Tiger ointment.

You got to brand your products using animal symbols to tap into the undercurrent worldview: animism (tuc “Xam Minh” i.e. sea-creature tatoos for divers and fishermen).

Vietnam has been predominantly an agri-aqua economy, which is well-integrated with other species: even whales got a proper burial. Clever marketers would go along and not against the grain: Eagle batteries and Black-cat Craven-A cigarettes (incidentally, at the movies, MGM opened well with its signature Lion’s roar).

Mothers would feed babies with condensed milk (Birdies), and housewives look for Elephant rice at the market.

Children’s lanterns are in various animal shapes: butterflies, fish, elephants and birds.

One ill-researched professor at Stanford went so far to conclude after being here just one week that the eerie absence of birds, rats and dogs in the cities was due to the aggressive diet of the Vietnamese (I found many dead rats after heavy rain on the street. He apparently chose to tour Vietnam during dry season). I would say he arrived at the city with a pre-conceived demonizing notion ( like his compatriot Buckley’s “They eat dogs, don’t they” (a fiction about China). Incidentally, there has been a growing trend to raise pets now that Vietnam experiences peace for 5 decades.

And when it comes to choosing among the multiple carriers for mobile one must consider Beeline (as of this edit, this Russian-backed carrier didn’t fan out, being a late entry into an entrenched duopoly). Unlike in the States with Cricket Wireless (BTW, our own To Hoai already had his fictional character as “de men”, cricket, more than half a century ago).

In some shopping malls, it’s Lacoste  . The ubiquitous crocodile may someday get a proper burial as well.

Such as the harmonious nature of the Vietnamese consumers who often smile even amidst a tense confrontation. But with that ubiquitous smile, I still miss that of the Hyno’s man when boarding a bus at Saigon Central Market with my grandma on her monthly trip to the bank (grandpa’s retirement allotment), I often cherished both her still “blackened teeth” and those of the Hyno’s figure.

Today’s students carrying RMITbackpacks don’t realize what had transpired : blackened teeth ancestors who greeted you with sincerest of smiles, people who took time for Sunday stroll, and both love and music were in the air

“Sunday Morning, I walk in the park, hey, hey, hey, it’s a Beautiful day”.

Do you know where Saigonese often ended up? Where else but the city zoo.