Tag: Stephen Bishop

How do they know?

Have you ever wondered how some songs deliver just the right emotion? How do they know what’s relevant and resonating? Chicago‘s If You Leave Me Now, for instance.

On these blogs, we often mentioned the eccentric, the peculiar and oddities.

Rarely do we put much effort articulating those feelings and God forbid, meltdown or breakdown (Newtown, Conn).

This job belongs to recording artists.

In Advice to A Young Poet, Rilke was referring to being broken, being vulnerable, as prerequisites for being a poet.

Now, that’s painful.

To achieve authenticity, you to have to live through it. To pay the price (Eric Clapton‘s Tears in Heaven did not come about without his personal loss).

Who would be willing? To lose that much to gain that little? MBA candidates wouldn’t choose that route. (I was asked yesterday what’s the use of these blogs?).

Then, we touted creativity, inventiveness and “out of the box” thinking.

Serial entrepreneurs and lovers have one thing in common: they both tried and tried hard down that path (risk taking).

Without rejection, you wouldn’t get results (think of Marconi and Marie Curie).

Those in Sales know without Cold Calling, there wouldn’t be enough rejection to fill the sales funnel. Seth Godin wrote a bunch of unknown books before he got a hit (Linchpin). Colonel Sanders almost gave up as retirement was nearing.

It’s the numbers game. The Beatles logged in 10,000 hours bouncing around from Hamburg to Liverpool to become who they were.

To close : How do they know? They don’t.

They tried and failed. Then try again. Until they got it just right. It hit the spot . Think of Stephen Bishop‘s It Might Be You.

Maybe it’s you. “Wondering how they met and what makes it last”. Keep trying. Don’t give up on us, baby. It must be you. One-hit wonder is OK. As long as it’s the Whiter Shade of Pale.

Try until it’s right. How do I know? I am still trying. It’s only my 900th blog.

Recognize the face

Machine is getting smarter (facial recognition).

In “It might be you” Stephen Bishop sings about “if I found the  place, would I recognize the face“.

The face he has waited for all of his life.

Babies could hear before birth (the logic behind classical music during pregnancy).

Then psychologists theorize about us looking for that first trusted face (our mom’s or nurse’s).

I have talked to a bunch of xe-om (taxi scooter), who echoed the same theme: it’s hard to find “chan tinh”, real love.

Sounds hopeless to me.

But surrounded by young people on buses and on campus, I saw a different version: careful but calculated risk-taking.

Man-woman, man-man, woman-woman pairing.

If only we brought back Tootsie, “I became a better man to you by being a woman….”.

Men are built to conquer (biologically). Woman, nurturing.

They could make a perfect marketing team: cold-caller and customer relationship manager.

For now, we are at a juncture where men and women roles are being revised if not reversed.

Friedman’s Feminine Mystique needs its own 2.0 mobile version for Vietnam .

I don’t know about recognizing the face, but I sure have recognized the foods.

For the past three months, I have exacted my revenge.

Also, a good dose of music and arts (highly recommend the museum on Ly Tu Trong for arts and history and C’est Moi for live music).

During the course of my rediscovery (see Adventure in My Own Land), I stumbled upon “Cu Lao” where Nguyen Huu Canh founded South Vietnam.

Our own Columbus did not meet native Indian nor was he offered Turkeys for Thanksgiving.

But he might very well be.

We now have a city nearing ten million mostly young college students.

My job has taken me to different campuses, where I saw learners of all shades and stripes.

Part tech savvy, part social intelligence, these “faces” will be our future leaders.

Would I  recognize those faces, if I found the place.

I might. For some strange reasons, I feel closer to my now-deceased Mom by being here, than in the US.

Perhaps there are more faces like hers. Perhaps they put on Ao Dai (see Mom’s Ao Dai). I can’t figure it out yet.

But I guess I have found the place. That’s the easy part. The hard part is to recognize the face, as if facial recognition apps could help.

Maybe all we need is time

Time heals all wounds.

It also ushers in a generation, now in high school and college.

Here in Vietnam, students have classes on Saturdays and even Sundays.

Kids of all ages, in uniforms or out of, but always with a backpack, riding on wheels of all types: bikes, electric bikes, scooters, sedans, and

buses.

They shop at night markets where there are food stalls, snacks stalls and magazine stalls.

Life in the fast lane (the only time I slow down is when I jaywalk across a busy street).

I have tried to put Vietnam in a box, but so far it’s been in vain: not scooter nation, not helmet nation, not multi-tasker nation.

I know one clear difference between life here vs in the US: your survival instinct better kicks in quick (Maslow‘s basic need).

Because it’s noisy, dusty and hot, people want to cocoon themselves in A/C  cul-de-sacs.

Common use of language also helps people cope: “choi” (play aspect) is inserted in every other sentence: “choi troi”, “choi chu”, “choi noi”, “choi luon” (upstage, wordy, flashy and go all the way).

Give Vietnam some time.

It will soon get to be a nation of 100 million, whose population is evenly distributed in a bell shape.

The UN person, Mehta, warned Vietnam about the “middle-income trap”.

They have seen it happen with Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The trends are there for Vietnam to grow.  Next step is to harness growth to produce desired outcomes. It’s not accidental that the former leader of Singapore was invited to speak here quite often.

He knew a thing or two about realizing a nation’s dream.

Maybe all we need is time. Some watch trains go by, all of their lives. Watching and wondering how others met and make it last. (courtesy of Stephen Bishop).