Tag: tech and multi-cultural marketing

She is famous still for her role as an Egyptian queen.

And she is famous now for engaging to be married the 9th time.

Yes, never too old to love.

And the heart is not just a pumping instrument. Not for our Queen.

A viral mail sent to me last week about a 80-year old Hanoian lady who is still searching for love.

She however went through 10 previous relationships. Now, that’s World Record stuff.

Elizabeth Taylor however had been seen as very supportive of the late Michael Jackson.

I guess they had their shares of fame, isolation or just existential loneliness.

Or as proven this time, a constant need for companionship, for love and affection.

I guess some people just know their priority and went for it.

Asian kings were known for having thousand of concubines. Why can’t our Queen have a go at it.

A shot at love. With or without the approval of Tila Tequila.

Phoenician Queen deserves no second best. And the rest of us will just have to go about our peasant lives,

one day at the time, as she goes about her life, one husband at the time. Hail to the Queen.

In the 60’s, that song was found on the top of the chart.

“It ended when you said ‘goodbye'”. In between then and now, we have seen various versions

of war, weapon and warriors (Space City should be counted in here as well). And there have been many “ends of the world” for people

who were caught in disaster zone, earthquake zone (Mexico City) and epidemic zone.

God must have grieved. So must man.

Yet our young people, tuning all that out, go ahead and fall in love.

The world is shut out, leaving just two people in their quarrel.

The objectivity gives way to the subjectivity (which hurts you more).

We have tried to analyze, and to put things in perspective for the past two years.

Each of us, survivor of this fiasco, should be awarded a PhD in philosophy (subject: End time).

Remember “green shoots?” which were pounded around last year?

Or a thousand points of light, trumpeted during the first Bush years?

Or city on the hill, during the Reagan trickle-down economy?

From Mac Namara to David Stockman, from Greenspan to our Man of the Year, the effects have

been the same. Unless you found yourselves invited to Davos, their policies don’t seem to make a dent.

It’s been the end of the world for a few guys we saw on the news. They couldn’t take it.

And some good guys who said goodbye to us from the entertainment world (Swayze, Jackson).

Lastly, celebrities who slip, like Tiger Wood. End of the (endorsement) world for him.

We don’t need self-reinventing. We need fundamental shift in attitude and action.

A calm, cool and collected (well-dressed model from Paul Frederick shirts for instance) persona can be

reassuring.

It says that despite all that is coming down, a man still put on his after-shave, tug in his shirts and pump up his chest.

He is to face the aftershock. And having survived the big One, he can do it again (survival).

He is our Last Man Standing.

End of the world for others. Not for our hero. Not for us. Not for me. Go away, not dead yet (Ishtar).

Michael Moore calls it a wrap (wrapping Crime Scene yellow tape around Wall Street buildings).

Same style as his other movies (slice and dice, half-truth and naked truth).

And we are forced to relive the pain that won’t go away: foreclosure, life insurance on employees, and the bail out.

These days, we are just about to get paperback versions of what happened late Summer 2008.

The two silos, economics and politic seem to converge at that moment, and the “pursuit of happiness” got arm twisted into the

“rescue of the common”. We are in this together more than we would like to, earth spaceship that is.

Moore’s love for Flint is clear. And his unique blue-collar cap has been his signature: a producer who won’t take “No” for an answer.

Ambush docudrama.

Embarrassing? Yes.

Apologizing? No.

And the congress woman from Ohio. She is a fireball.

Articulate, forceful and uncompromising.

You will have to view it to see it for yourself.

When I grew up, there were two poles on both sides of the Cold War (and hot war).

Now, I am not so sure one existed just because of the perceived fear of the other (MAD).

Or else, why does it seem to trample upon itself, without Samson doing anything to its pillars?

I knew what’s it is like to no longer live in the house where you grew up. It’s painful.

A piece of heritage is gone with it. What’s a life except for a collection of memories?

Structurally, before the advent of digitization, those memories are fragments of the past, stored up in the attic.

Cousin so and so. The ex-auntie whose tracks we have lost. Oh, what about “Luong Duc Long”, that foreign exchange student?

Wonder if he made it big back in his country? Or he is now out on his own, tossed and turned by market force (unemployment).

Oh well, at least we gave him the spill while he was with us: how great the Commonwealth was , and what it stood for,

from sea to shining sea. Stuff that makes you teary, and enlist. Stuff that makes visitors wanting to someday get in line at
“citizen only” immigration counter. Why are they still coming? Haven’t they heard the story? Love story. Capitalism.

I have just heard that someone I know died.

Like a sorority sister who is last in line to get married, I immediately make that connection: “am I next?”

A school principal knew that he had five years to run his school, then retirement.

It’s good to know how much is left in the gas tank versus the distance to be traveled.

Simple math.

There is no living on borrowed time.

(or else, there would be “banks” to charge nifty fees for these services).

Just plastic surgery.

And life support system.

I knew this years ago.

And I did it “my way” i.e. turning the Maslow scale on its head (self-actualize first, while living on peanut butter sandwiches).

I saw a priest and a nun greet us on Subic Bay with a sandwich and a coke: I turned around a few years later to do this unto others.

I saw a boat dock in Saigon river to give or sell discount English books: I volunteered to do the same to West African countries.

There is no debate when it comes to returning someone’s kindness. My turn.

In sales, we call this reciprocity need (Influence by Cialdini).

Let’s say that the Christian premise be proven true, the least one can do is to reciprocate God’s sacrifice by: staying alive, living productive life and dying each day to

“the flesh”, which is withering away anyway.The party goers would agree on action item number one, and disagree with the last one. Because the body is dying, they think we should party it out, because life is too short.

Same premise, different conclusion.

When it comes to my turn to lay down, I plan to have no regret.

I have lived a life which raises my brother’s eye brows too many times.

And when I work, often times, I raise my boss’ eye brows as well. Same guy, same intensity.

As the saying goes, there are three types of people: those who wait for it to happen, those who make it happen, and those who ask “what happened?”.

We all have our expiration date. On this Easter day, let’s appreciate the temporariness of our lives and use it as a springboard to a must-exist next life where things will

definitely are better, more desirable and suitable with the Augustinian longing for eternity all along planted inside each of us.

Last Saturday, by chance, I was at the mental health facility in Thu Duc, near Saigon.

I was joking that I wouldn’t want it to be a drop off trip.

The facility needed a new Mess Hall. And my nephew was tasked to design and build it.

The patients seemed to have adapted to their new home: some got visitors because it was during the weekend.

The Operations Manager wanted to have a backyard area where patients could sit and finish their coffee

(and perhaps talk out their problem among one another?).

What happen to Facebook, the third largest country in the world, size-wise?

This week, being back here in Palm Beach, with not much action, I try to visualize what would happen if I

had stayed on at that facility. Will I be working in the Mess Hall? Introduce myself to people who might not

remember it the next time? Will I find kindness in most unlikely place?

Love in the time of mental illness. That should be a book title for Mr Marquez.

Michael Lewis, in his latest installment “The Big Short”, mentioned that at Sachs, the top heavy hitters would pull the weight for the

rest . I wonder if it works the same way with some of the night clubs in Saigon, where a few VIP tables cover the

entire electricity bill.

In Thu Duc, at that mental illness center, the gate is always guarded and closed. Patients don’t go out at night. perhaps not  until next visiting time.

I can’t come back there this week. I am a world away.

But I can imagine the anticipation and longing by some for that special time.

When you are a shut-in, there isn’t much choice.  It’s a one-way traffic from the outside in.

I heard there was a patient who just asked for a nickel. My nephew gave him a quarter. But he insisted that the quarter be changed to five nickels, of which he just kept one.

Mental illness, or pure honesty and integrity?

Greed is bad.

Maybe, a Neil Young’s line says it best ” I have been to Redwood, I have been to Hollywood, …I’m.searching for a heart of Gold, and I am getting old.”

Maybe Greed is not always good, at least not everywhere. The more individualistic a society, the more prevalent it becomes.  Lewis calls this “The Big Short”.

At 9AM this morning, I was number 2 car on the right-hand lane waiting at the bridge here in Palm Beach.

My thought was: why would people who sail at leisure be given the same right of way as people who rush to work?

Why can’t they go at 9:15AM instead?

In Saigon, there are now many more bridges to free up traffic.

There is a small bridge in Binh Thanh district that only allows one-way flow each time.

I was on the bus when it crossed that bridge, and it was an experience.

There is a sense of history in that district though. General Le Van Duyet did not let the invaders take the city. He burned it down and went down with it.

Bravery. Mastery of one’s destiny. Slave to no one much less “thing”.

We need heroes. Heroes who challenge our assumption and presumption. Heroes who lift our ambition and show us new horizons.

Jesus wept.

This was when He looked down and saw humanity in trouble, in confusion and in distraction.

If they had only known.

So he  took on the suffering himself. Stations of the Cross.

No death, no resurrection.

That which was once shameful (Roman public display of humiliation, a common form of capital punishment which did stamp out Spartan rebellion) has now become his believer’s crown.

Bridge over troubled water.

And muddle it is.

People proposed a bridge over the only canal in Saigon.

Maybe upon completion, traffic can split vertically (Like the Oakland Bay Bridge, or its counterpart on the Hudson River).

Either way, we need to bridge point A to point B.

International migration. Supply side. People in motion.

Louis L’Amour said it best: ” the problem with humanity is that they can’t seem to stay in one place”.

So homo sapiens keep wandering and searching without realising that they just act out their pre-coded ancestral DNA which dictate their action almost like the 20/80 rule: early imprints decide later-in-life action. No round about. No exit. Sartrean cave. We are seeing moving shadows.

But it’s the flickering of the light and not our own movement. If that makes you happy (illusion) then so be it: Action movies. Digital or otherwise. Just 1 and 0.

We have lived those long three days of uncertainty: between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Somewhere along the line, we doubt. Many shades of gray.

Will thing ever get better? Just improvement in increments. But our Maker seems to run on a different time-table and scale. One day equals a thousand years.

So we are back to our side of the bridge, stand , look over, and wait. Doubting and having little faith. Just don’t look down to the water. It’s murky. Once we are allowed to cross over, don’t ever look back. Ahead is the promised land. Or is it? Friends share doubt. True friends are there with you in cave and canal, not cathedral.

The journey is the joy, filled with struggle, doubt and anticipation. Back from a trip, with jet lag, then one must settle back into those routine. Then complacency.

To take the path of least resistance. How long more can we afford short-term thinking? The bridge we need is the bridge that connects rhetoric and reality. EXECUTION.

I got back from Vietnam last year around this time, hoping against hope that the US economy and job situation would improve.

It hasn’t. And this year, after spending another 4 weeks in Vietnam, I have just returned to Florida to find a deja vu.

How long and how far more will I have to go (deep freeze) before seeing anything resembles “normal”?

Wall Street and Oliver Stone. The return of “GREED IS GOOD” character. How about the return of Dot.com boom?

We find version 2.0 for almost everything: PR 2.0, Sales 2.0, and Social Networking 2.0.

Sounds to me like lagging 2.0 (tomorrow’s job indicators are highly anticipated).

Vietnam is trying to tame inflation, as it has done well in absorbing the impact of current global recession.

Night clubs were empty (they would normally cater to Viet kieu, coming back from abroad) and less people at

the Starbucks equivalence.

The consensus has been that America has won the war although it lost its battle in Vietnam.

Peace-time generation just want to have it all: LV, Gucci, Hard Rock cafe and Mont Blanc.

They are selling “seen on TV’ types of products: exercise accessories, interior decorating stuff.

And hair dressers try to catch some TV news on their cells in between appointments. You can’t even do this in the US.

With progress, comes its unintended consequences: students who stabbed their teachers, young people who did not finish

high school. Educators complain that these students weren’t competent in their first language (Vietnamese) let alone trying to

pick up English.

But urbanization, consumerism and digitization are obvious. Vietnam is a society where everything is going at once: leap frogging the costs of R&D, bridge and road building, cable laying, fire at factories etc…

I learned how to navigate a motorcycle through unpredictable traffic jam. My noted achievement.

A Viet Kieu told me it would take 4 years for someone like myself to get back to the swing of things there.

I said this would have been more difficult than Vietnamese trying to make it in the US back then (1975).

Maybe because of the pace of dizzying change. Maybe it was progress lag.

Or maybe because of Lag 2.0 in the US which drove people like myself to consider alternative care, alternative career and alternative country.

In the US, you know right away when the going is good: Can’t stop illegal immigration at the border. These days, visitors are hardly found coming, let alone

illegal workers. To work in Construction? Where have all the Indian IT engineers gone? Long time passing.

I will need some sleep soon. I hope by the time I wake up, the Census 2010 will show a different America. One which is desirable, and beacon of the Free World.

First rain has visited the city over the past week. But not enough to quench the heat, or dust off the pavement.

On both sides of  the city’s  canal, you can find young people sitting on stools and share a hot-pot.  A pony tail guitarist/singer entertains you (Vietnam Mariachi version).  I heard “your Song”, ” I started a joke” etc….

as the breeze carried  his voice and rhythm into the night, still young by their standard.

Young people. Restless dream.

Plenty of options to go both right and wrong. The future is now.

“oh I believe in Yesterday”.

They celebrated John Lennon’s birthday here.  Can you “imagine”?

Helmets on. Zoom zoom.  Consumerism is taking hold.

Start a mobile account, win a Mini Cooper.

Big wheel keeps on turning, proud Mary keeps on rolling.

It’s the age of franchise: Pho 24, KFC, Lotteria, Co-op neighborhood mini-marts, high-end coffee, New York Steak House, French cuisine (ironically, housed in colonial French maison, without having to build one from the ground up).

At 3AM, it starts to get quiet.  A few night clubs push the boundaries to close at 4AM.

At that time, flight attendants are getting ready for early take offs.

And the cycle gets going again. Everybody seems to know where the best sandwich is (O-Moi) and where to snack even at 3AM (Tan Dinh market).

Saving face but not saving account.

Code of silence.

As long as everyone can get along, stay on the same page.

Look but do not see. New rules. Paradigm shift. Infrastructure up.

And old society gets a make over. And old ladies get a face lift.

Things are moving forward, one rung at a time. Darwinian process at work.

Isn’t everywhere else? To end this on a funny note. I got approached by a guy wearing a FBI blue cap. He asked me to buy a lottery ticket. Got me jolted for a moment.