Tag: tech and multi-cultural marketing

Not by the Marmalade.

But by everyone on this busiest calling day.

It’s the one number you don’t need to use the White Pages to look up.

BTW, Verizon no longer publishes those door-stoppers. Save a tree.

The DIY movement kept men busy, and kept moms everywhere at work:

cut your own grass, install your own sprinklers, wash your car, heat up your meals,

(as of this edit, Coke is perfecting the soda fountain with which you can mix your own flavored version.

Here or to go? You might as well say it to yourself)

rent your video (at the machine), pump your gas (which started everything), grind your own coffee beans,

wash and dry your clothes, iron it yourself, steam it (now the local laundryman is out of work), bake your own bread,

barbecue your dinner, scan your own merchandise, install your own shower  head (with the help of Home Depot video),

create your own Home page, bag your own bulk groceries (Costco), and fill your own soda ,  prepare your own tax (Turbo),

assemble your furniture (IKEA) and clean your own office (telecommuting).

You just stop short of changing your own automobile oil (Toyota has its own version of self-accelerated pedals).

No wonder men are busy. So busy. 21 st century men. Totally feminized. As the pill celebrates its 50th birthday,

men are celebrating the disappearance of machismo (and with it, the third place where they can toast a beer or have a smoke outside. Starbucks saw this void

and has been trying to fill it). We no longer need to hunt for food as in pre-historic time. The only thing left is bargain hunting.

Mom would have been proud. That I still manage to have time to read. I understood now that she was a multi-tasker who juggled

her teaching career and house keeping, in a traditional society where women just stopped short of wearing a cover on their faces.

There weren’t any DIY machine to help her out. I was that water boy, the sprinkler etc….

I wouldn’t want my daughters to do chores. So I sacrifice for them to have more screen time with all three screens (TV, computer and phone).

And now I understand my mom. It just makes my free time and fun time all the more sweeter, if any.

Her name is on the boat in the background of a BBC reportage.

It spells THUY TRANG.

And I wonder if this is the second or third time the owner faced hardship (Vietnam evacuation, Katrina and now oil spill).

Three strikes.

At least they are hired to help with the clean up instead of fishing.

When the roof caved in, everyone has to chip in.

During the Katrina evacuation, I suggested our company to print the Katrina Relief pre-paid cards to be given out in Houston.

And I went there to the shelters to give them out ( it would be my third time doing such a thing as well, after Hong Kong and Philippines).

This time, after watching the segment, I know the price of oil and shrimp will rise by this summer.

But one special nagging feeling is about THUY TRANG  and other Vietnamese fishermen.

Are they holding up? Having just rebuilt their houses and communities, will Mr Quan and others decide to quit?

I know one thing: whatever Kim Phuc (the girl in the picture, running naked down the escaped road from napalm) is made of, Thuy Trang will be up there:

full of resilience, resourcefulness and on the look out for people in the same boat, literally.

Talking about living in the global village in the jet age: THUY TRANG still needs that oil to power the engine. No way around it.

Thirty years ago, there were some confrontation between old and new comers. Now decades and two disasters later, I bet Vietnamese fishermen and others in Gulf

all looked as if they were made of the same clothes: tan, oily and the smell of the seas on them. Nature has a way to blend its creation, but something don’t mix well, like salty sea and crude oil.

With 70 million expected to visit the World Expo there, Shanghai is braced to rake in 1.6 Billion just in admission ($23 per entrant).

Strength in numbers.

We had a taste for numbers back in the days when President Nixon first made his visit to China. That state dinner was rumored to be a royal thousand-course meal.

The Chinese like to guest-entertain first, then do business later (unlike its Western counterparts “get set, shoot, aim”).

In “Switch”, the authors of “Made to Stick” brought us once again the seemingly paradox: we are mixed creatures of both emotion and intellect.

To affect any change, we must work at both levels. More importantly, when it comes to East meets West, there exists another layer on top .

The expats can attest to this: once they have lived overseas, it’s hard to come back States side, and live on without a critical eye.

Here, we are obsessed with weight (yet we shop by carts), hygiene and punctuality.

I bet you the opening ceremony in Shanghai won’t begin on time in the Western sense.

Events in the East begin when all those expected to be present get there.

And if you  showed up early, you would appear too eager (not punctual, which is the norm in the West).

Anyway, the World Fair tradition which began in Chicago years ago has seen the center of gravity shift to the East.

(or for that matter, the Olympics which had started in Athens was last celebrated in Beijing, with unmatched fan fares and fireworks).

I must admit I did not see this coming. Back in the late 70’s, we saw an increased number of Chinese students, but they were mostly from Taiwan.

Then, in the 80’s, mainland students started to arrive to US campuses, picking up critical supply- chain skills. And before you know it, you are awaken by the sound of fireworks.

The question is, can we afford to ignore the inevitable rise of BRIC nations? And if not, how are we equipped to benefit from it, or forced down in ranking?

As one Social Network comment put it ” is your elevator pitch taking you up or down?”.

I would hate to see another missed opportunity. You can see it for yourself. It only costs $23 for admission.

Who in the Western world would want to admit that he or she is out of work, or worse off, underemployed (MBA grass-cutting day laborer? mind you, I don’t look down on manual chores, it’s just that I am allergic to fresh-cut grass).

But 23 million in the US have said the prayer of serenity for a while (“Grant us the courage to change that which can be changed”).

This wave of job shredding involved non-farm workers i.e. construction jobs, middle management jobs, and jobs that get outsourced or off shored.

(they have tried to hide this last one. You have to look hard with your undies inside out to read the label and find out where they were made. Quite a secret brought to you by Victoria).

But the crux of the problem does not lie in competing for Malthusian scarcity of  jobs versus immigrants or overseas labor.

It’s against robots, bots, highly efficient supply chain, prosumerism (grind your own coffee beans), automation, pay scale unfairness and extreme high productivity “volunteered” by incumbent job holders (45% or more say they will change job if possible, but not now).

On my trip back from Vietnam, I didn’t realize how time-consuming it is just to be functional here in the US: walk forever in Super Wal-Mart to find canned juice (that is if you can find a parking spot), getting in line at an express lane (20 items?), opening those cans to feed the kid, washing, cleaning, laundering, ironing and blogging (prosuming). (Just now, I tried to support education. I helped sell those cookies for school. They looked nice on the brochure, but upon delivery they actually are frozen dough. So I have to apologize to neighbors, and turn around to bake them myself – prosumer at last, unavoidably).

Many of the UA’s men haven’t been to Brooks Brothers in a long time: IBM not only changed from Main Frame to Second life, their sales force also no longer dress in red, white and blue (navy suit). At least I saw a commercial about outfitting women reentering the work force. But for men,

it’s been a free fall ever since telecommuting took shape  (broadband, cell phone and teleconferencing). How do you mix and match work casual when you have put on some weight in between jobs?

So, back to our UA meeting (Nothing to do with United Airlines merger with Continental, which inevitably send fresh meat to our weekly meeting. Those pilots have worked for minimum wages anyway). It’s like admitting you are a complete loser (I admire X-President Clinton for his parody at Correspondent Dinner. In the clip, he was shown running after Hillary with a bagged lunch. Ultimate modern man!).

Honey, I shrunk the kids.

The Baby Boomers finally retire. Either that or they will be joining us at the ever-widening circle of UA meeting to recite in unison Niebuhr’s line “Grant us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed”. How about send the 20+ million of us to clean up the oil leak in La? I care for dead birds,

and more for living people who turned

bread bakers at home instead of bread-earners at work.

Vietnam’s Viettel invests in rebuilding Haiti’s telecom infrastructure

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/43111.php

After all, they can communicate in French during the project.

Just like New Orleans and Hanoi, both have French architect resemblance.

When I was in Cote D’Ivoire, I was struck at how similar it was to Saigon (the police post at the intersection, boulevard with tree lines,

colonial admin buildings, and of course, la language.)

This time, those with former French ties ended up helping each other out.

Viettel has expanded to neighboring Cambodia and Laos, both were under French Indochina’s banner.

So it will be Viettel’s repeat performance, even though it’s continent’s away.

The geography of culture will be similar, at least, less wide than let’s say, Chinese laborers exploring for oil in Africa.

That would be E1 and E3 cultural divide.

Good luck with the island. There will be a lot of coordination with the many NGO’s in the island.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/05/25/financial/f080837D09.DTL&type=business

Viettel workers are no strangers to disaster relief. They ventured to Cambodia during the war there and some must have seen the worst of Pol Pot.

It is said somewhere that people of misfortune can help one another more readily than those who are worlds apart.

In academic circle, we term this proximity of suffering. It’s easier for E1 to empathize with E2 (Spain and Argentina) than let’s say Germany and Greece.

Iceland will be a class of its own: banking collapse and volcano eruption.  Some country just seems to get it all in one place. Haiti is included and well deserved

our help and attention. In this case, a telecom deal with Viettel. Bonne chance.