Tag: Special Olympics

One-legged work-out

Most people are out to celebrate the upcoming New Year (Tet). Dzzzzzzzzzzzzo!

Heineken toast!

Except for one young man, crutches aside, lifted his body (one leg dangling, the other with flipping blue jeans) up to train his upper-body. Now, that got my attention. I complimented him on finding out the right angle to wrap his hands around the bar. I mentioned there was a glove with an iron middle finger to protect one’s wrists ,  giving them more support and strength.

That young man could have stayed home, feeling sorry for himself.

Yet, that’s not what happened. He did with what’s left on him.

I had a mild scooter accident the other day (people just washed the sidewalk with soapy water to rinse out grease dripped from barbecue grills. Together, this made for potent slip-slide formula).

On my first few trips back to Vietnam, I saw fatal accidents.

Now, it’s “helmet nation”. This alone must have saved thousands of lives.

Most accidents happened over the holidays in the US (DUI).

It shouldn’t be any different here.

I did not know what had caused his leg to be amputated.

I dared not ask.

All I know was he was cool in my book.

After all, the current leg still needs to be toned up.

He just have to put on half the weight.

Unexploded land mines could have been the cause.

Recently there was a successful operation at Franco-Vietnamese hospital.

http://m.timeslive.co.za/?name=timeslive&i=11263/1/0&artId=6283

The patient’s thigh just grew to become a huge chunk of tissues after a failed amputation. A chief surgeon from where I used to live (Palm Beach) flew over with fund raised by the American Cancer Society to conduct surgery to remove the gigantic tumor.  Happy Tet!

Perhaps our patient from DaLat can someday  join a gym like my cool amputee.

Eventually, we will be confident enough to hold Special  Olympics for the disabled.

That would please Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She must be smiling from above.

Pass the torch

At 95, the founder of Peace Corps left us to figure out world affairs by ourselves.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/topic/sns-ap-us-obit-shriver,0,2461815.story

I used to shine my dad’s shoes, while he slicked his hair back. From where I sat, he appeared a towering figure.

Men from that generation ( like Burt Lancaster’s “From Here to Eternity”) stood erect,  principled and was willing to pay hefty price

(the costs of WWII got the US a deficit of 110%).

With GI bill, they went back to school, and from there, a two-front race (with Japan on the economic front, and Russia the cold front). We saw a shift to industrialization (and suburbanization and standardization, so sterile that the Flower Generation revolted by putting stickers on their Beetle’s bumper to “brand” themselves). With cheap fuel, we got drive-in movies, and McDonald’s drive-through.

Sinatra and Elvis the Pelvis first pushed the envelope, then the Baby Boomer gen questioned everything. Skepticism ruled the day.

(I still remembered one classmate’s comment that “they kept us in school to keep the unemployment rate down”).

Their legacy remains with us today (coffee-house, open source, social network etc..).

They would rather go overseas to teach ( Peace Corps) and to build (Habitat for Humanity), than to bomb.

“Ask not…”.

Have you seen “Special Olympics” just for disabled children?

The husband sent young American volunteers overseas, while his wife cheering “Special Olympians” at home

(son-in-law kept promising that “I’ll be back”). Bono who sang “I still haven’t found, what I am looking for” had a close-tied memory of them.

“Nobody does it better”. I often got a knock on the door just to see two guys in short sleeves and black tie (the Mormons). At least, they dedicated themselves to learn a foreign language (good enough to get appointed to ambassadorship in China). At the end of life (in this case, 95-year-run), what would be our legacy?

No longer with hair, boomers (born in between 46-64) are retiring en mass, but still with elastic age (male) and cosmetic surgery (female).

Hefner just got engaged again, while Demi Moore hooked up with man demi-age.

The Greatest Generation preceded Boomers’ and their strong stance gave rise to a Hegelian anti-thesis ( “the Kids are all right” or Elton John on the magazine cover again, this time with husband-and- baby to redefine the nuclear family). So, the Industrial revolution (itself anti-thesis to the agrarian past) is now winding down to pass the torch to the digital natives. Each generation must define their space, whether it is a cow barn or a cubicle, or caught in a smokestack or smokescreen. And when they are on the move, it’s in their own term and time-table. Many chose Peace Corps. Others simply back-pack on this Lonely Planet, a self-imposed draft. Louis L’Amour was right,

the problem with mankind is that he cannot stay in one place.

Today, people still want to study abroad, but not in Oxford or Cambridge. They are turning East, just as Harvey Cox predicted 40+ years ago (remember the George Harrison learning the sitar, which we will hear again in Norwegian Wood, the film).

It’s get too crowded, hence innovation by necessity. There aren’t that much room at the top, hence flat organization.

As a famous line from the sixties “what it is ain’t exactly clear”. But something is definitely happenin!.

The torch will get passed on. Time does the very best of us in. Stay hungry, stay connected.