Tag: Spaceship Earth

My Cuore

If you look, you shall find. In my case, that little book by Edmondo de Amicis, translated of course.

It made an indelible impression on my little mind and heart. Years later, it still does. That is, after I have come in full circle, have travelled and traversed the geography of the heart. That “diary” genre though fictional, is more potent than Ann Frank‘s. To read it, you put on an Italian shoes of a school boy.

Bully, respect for others, compassion and empathy. Even patriotism (not trendy today).

To set this book, and its content, against the backdrop of school shooting, let’s say in Newtown, CT, or failed attempts else where, is to contrast night and day.

I went to French school. So this translated version must be one of those first Vietnamese books I read, besides Adventure of Tin Tin and The Three Musketeers.

In Cuore, you have enormous respect for the teaching vocation, and how it does take a village to bring up a boy. In our Facebook dominion, I am not sure how old values can fan out in cyber space. Do we bring old clothes to a poor classmate? Visit an old teacher (friending him?)

Subliminally, those values have triggered my many humanitarian action.

Now I trace back to its source, My cuore. Not the Italian heart, but  the human heart. It is translated into many languages, many outside the US. Perhaps it wouldn’t “sell” there. Not in the land of xtreme sports, female wrestling and lately, imported “girl with the Dragon tatoo”.

I rebloggd yesterday on Small is Still Beautiful. It was an old book from college. Today,  Cuore, an old book from Middle School. Both are still unpopular, yet both are still influential, to me. I hope you will at least wiki them, see what they have to say. The first book was Economics as if people matter. The second, we live among, with and for others. It is apt to coin the term Global Village, since we all go to school, get online and go home at the end of the day on Spaceship Earth. What if it is damaged, attacked or invaded?

We have enough resources, technologically, to solve human problems.

Now, do we have the courage and cuore to ennoble ourselves with bold action!

My 555 plan

Get back to your roots.

Eliminate waste and accessories.

Differentiate and make it relevant.

Actually, 555 is just a self-branding attempt, after a cigarette a friend of mine used to smoke.

I had to attach a numeric code to differentiate (sticky and trans-cultural)  my Yahoo log-on ID.

Now we hear of 999 plan etc…

It’s hard to stand out among Earth’s 7 Billion.

During a town hall meeting on LinkedIn, its CEO was ambitious to convey its vision i.e. to connect people to people, and people to opportunities.

Now we have the way (technology that connects millions at 2nd and 3rd degree separation), but we lack the will.

I heard of a new book entitled “Lean Start-ups”. The author mentioned “rentorship” of the means of production (Google Adwords, Amazon rack space etc…).

Even when the barriers to entry (means of production) are lowered, new entrants still get cold feet (catch 22: low consumer confidence leads to low spending, hence reduces the size of the pie, in turn, weakens the pull factor).

Even our Greek demi-gods need bail-out.

In education, we heard of “Waiting for Superman“.

Now, it’s waiting for Superman everywhere from EU zone to the O zone.

No, I don’t have a 555 plan to come to the rescue. It’s all in the unwinding.

And this takes time and belt-tightening (the 60’s protest was a rage against the machine i.e. inhumane,

now Occupy WS couldn’t articulate its distress i.e. wanting things back to the way it used to be in).

One thing is clear: we are in this together (dark side of globalization).

Vacationers from Europe couldn’t afford to travel to Hawaii. A resort in Hawaii got shut down (Michael Dell lost a lot of money there along with his Santa Monica hotels).

A Chinaman decided to shop in France (instead of Florida).  A Filipino street vendor just got flooded and went under. A Korean caterer LA tweets about his lunch site. And a Vietnamese man tweaks his latest app to share photos (Color) while Japan nuclear power plants striked a deal for two more reactors along the Vietnam coasts (this time, with Fukushima lessons learned).

There will be a lot of sorting out inside our hot and crowded sandbox.

The age of oligarchy has just dawned, not only in broadband, but in all sectors.

We can’t remember and choose among too many offerings (as BRIC countries export themselves e.g Tata in England, Huawei in TX).

Consumers always say they want more choices, while in reality, they pick the default option (organ donors in Europe were too lazy to opt out ).

So we are back to our roots (As of this writing re-shoring is on the rise with Albany getting $4 B pledge for chip facilities, and Pitts a huge endowment).  After all, America got talent, right!

I read somewhere that Youtoo is doing just that: to offer everyone a chance to submit their own video and to broadcast their 15-seconds of fame.

There will be enough bandwidth for everyone. Everyone is a star, because each has lived a wonderful life. Irreplaceable and invincible.

When your heart still beats, the cursor still blinks, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There are zillion of stars in the Universe whose 7 Billion are here on Spaceship Earth, wading water to school, landing a plane at near miss, or coding all night to finish version n.0.

There is no better time to live, to invent and to round people out of their slumber. Victim no longer. Victor all the way. Brain bubble is the kind that never bursts. What’s your 555 plan?

Attending my funeral

The paper announced “a A student committed suicide for not passing Vietnam‘s first IBM-graded SAT“. So, my classmates showed up at my house the next morning for condolences. True story. Not having seen the column the day before, I was completely taken aback.

Hence, my first exposure to bad journalism, and Vietnam’s first trial run with a machine (1974).

The Luddites must have been out for blood.

They wanted to “grade” our essays, in the old Mandarin style whose exams lasted three long days (camping out etc…) (Leu Chong).

We had been anxious leading to exam date e.g. shopping for the right No. 2 pencils, rehearsing multiple choices etc..

Our real first exposure to the “spiritual machine” with its lock-in platform.

In our little minds, machine was God. It could fail you (and in my case, it did). Turned out, they had to manually grade a few hundred of us in between batches.

I never forget the worrisome faces of loyal friends, who had passed but decided to hang out (our version of “funeral wake“).

I told them they should go out and celebrate. Forget about me.

But they insisted “one for all, all for one”.

Then those girls in the class who also showed up expecting to see me in oxygen mask, or in a casket.

The feeling was “out of the body” to say the least.

How often can you afford the opportunity to look at this scene from the outside? (astronauts get a rare glimpse of the Earth from space, but it’s a matter of geography).

That should put materialism in perspective.

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

The story did not end there without a happy ending.

We were sitting around, long faced, when a friend (drummer from the band), rushed in to announce that they had just posted an addendum to the results. So we raced to the school (on scooters, like the new Zappos ads).

And we found my name (as if it were the Vietnam Memorial, except this one was framed in glass).

And we opened the beer (my father paid for it).

And we jammed the guitar.

And we screamed (no karaoke back then, just yet).

Then we went out dancing.

The dead came back from the brink.

The A+ student got his dog day.

And got admitted to Pre-med (I would have entered the tweet contest for U of Iowa MBA scholarship if there had been such a thing).

With confidence and momentum, I helped raise fund for the refugees floating into our city (public speaking in front of a large lecture hall etc..). After all, I could have stood outside of its walls, cursing  the machine? the manufacturer? the IT administrator?

No college, no draft deferment i.e. enlisted and got maimed ( a friend came back from the front with one eye left in him).

For that one day, I had a preview of my funeral. In Amadeus, Mozart used this powerful visualization to finish his Requiem.

In my end, my beginning.

Unless the seed dies, it won’t produce much fruit.

Lose yourself, that you may find it.

This not a suicidal instinct. Just an acknowledgment that the seed of creative destruction was planted in each of us since day one.

Like a tracker, lo-jack.

We will need to be “disassembled” to be “re-assembled” on the other end.

Pride and prejudice, fear and loathing, all nano bots in the wind (Kansas).

Ask any leader about his lessons in success, he will mention failings.

They went together, like two sides of a coin.

That shock has served me well. South Vietnam collapsed that Spring.

And my summer celebration was the last of “Happy Days” with my friends (drummer, dancer, bass player etc….) many of whom I have lost touch (and I don’t believe they are on Facebook).

I just know that friendship is to be cherished, and that true friends forget  their own celebration waiting out for you. Victory for one is victory for all. That’s why, on Spaceship Earth, we need to be concerned about one man whose vegetable cart was taken away unjustly

(not to mention he got slapped by a female inspector in a Muslim society).

To him, death by immolation was better than death by humiliation.

And one man’s death sowed the seed of discontent that sprung up to become what we now coined the Arab Spring. To him, immolation equals cremation.