Tag: Thailand

disposable people

Industrial society once allowed to run its full course leaves behind many casualties: pollution, typhoons, unemployment and crime.

Kids with early exposure to the I pad and I phone, turn near-sighted if not bi-focal.

Adults with easy access to porn (free or paid) found real organic relationship something of a burden if not boredom.

Back in the early 70’s the US and its think tank already realized the limits to growth, disposable society, fail-safe situation…..

The resulting strategies were to outsource, M&A and mass production to shave off  some costs. Every attempt has been either to cope with the irreversible growth of the chip speed (Moore’s Law) or to increase subscriber base by capitalizing on the Network Effect (Facebook and Ebay), economy of scale (Wal-Mart) and logistics (Amazon).

People and diapers are disposable.

BPO now talks about Social Mobil Access Cloud.  What can be outsourced will be, first offshoring, then full automation.

First, cut down on the amount of pollution. Second, on operational costs. Third, mass production process has been much easier, thriving on the 24/7 economy to deeper penetrate foreign markets where the new smokestacks are located.

For the first time in their 200-year history, N America and Europe face a crisis loom large: the people are disposable economically, while constitutionally, they have more  human rights than any other time.

There lies the tension, the frustration and lock-jam. To keep up with population and information explosion, we will get to the point, like alcoholic or chemical-dependency people, who start selling everything to feed the habit. The irony of all is when color folks finally get to be heard, their social and economical platforms get shipped online or overseas, first to Mexico and S America, the so-called 2nd world, where Paulo Freire used to call “the oppressed”, then onto frontier and emerging markets of South East Asia.

Yes, the poverty level has been decreased in countries where BPO  is in full steam. But the industrial waste and social ills have also increased. You may call this a new form of colonization, or selective recolonization. The new bosses are the go-between, facilitating the flow of fund and the hunt for local talent. This is also a problem deserving a separate blog.

Meanwhile, poverty level is up in the West, especially Portugal, Spain and Greece, where young people are disposable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/opinion/kristof-where-is-the-love.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

Go East young men. Travel the world in 80 years. Take a bullet train, or bite a bullet. I have seen EFL “teachers” smoke pot in Vung Tau (VN) and God knows where (Thailand, Malaysia). They are the new Missing- in- Action, unable and unwilling to be reintegrated back into western society. Their voices are unheard and aspirations unfulfilled.

While primitive society disposed people of no or little economic values, in present day there are people who also by choice drop out of main stream. Call them the misfits, outsiders, the beats etc… But if their ideas can be monetized, then suddenly, they are one of ours. Charlie Chaplin first got exiled, then knighted. Sir Chaplin ably made fun of the social and psychological consequences of over-industrialization. His warning had barely been heeded when Foxconn‘s workers jumped from company dormitory. How many more suicides before we realize something is wrong with the way we conduct our lives and business, given all the machinery and software application. We dispose the diaper because it smells. Will we do the same with people once they are deemed undesirable and under-productive? Business leaders are paid to deliver results. At what cost? Empathy deficit disorder? obsessive compulsive disorder? Attention deficit disorder?

When a business runs afoul, it’s the leader’s inside that is eaten up. Imploded. And of late, there have been a few (JP Morgan 13 B fine, or Obama’s no-show at the Trans Pacific Pact due to government shut-down). Have you had the time to follow-up and see where those “reparation” billions go to? Food stamps? Perhaps not. Dreams crushed, career derailed and families torn apart.

And the house of cards got rebuilt, bigger than ever (having pac-manned Washington Mutual and a bunch of tier-3 banks).

It’s like asking Germany to pay for WWII damage done to France, but 2 million lives were somehow eliminated without a small echo from the mass graves. When in grade school,  I kept hearing it on the radio that this president got assassinated, and that the one who gave the order himself got whacked. Then the “I have a dream” orator also got shot. Then finally John Lennon “was not the only one” He was hoping someday we would join in. Then he got a bullet by Mark Chapman whose musical talent was almost nil, but whose name forever got associated with someone whose band once self-pronounced that “we are more famous than Jesus”.

There has never been a better time to live in terms of comfort e.g. electricity and emerging technology. Yet there has never been a worst time to live as far as managing one’s expectations i.e. we want more but enjoy less, got treated less humanly (try to get in line at a Wal-Mart in Long Island this Black Friday, be sure to bring some pepper spray),  breathe worse air and have fewer or no friends over during the holidays.

Having said that, I wish you Happy Holidays with your loved ones, those kids whose constant companion has been the I pad and I phone. And be sure to have their eyes checked out. Who knows they already need glasses, like, yesterday. Just don’t buy them disposable.

 

On “Fraction of a Whole”

We are not invited into this dysfunctional family of three generations, all 750 pages of it.

Crime fiction, social commentary and extremely hilarious saga.

I stayed up late last night for its racing conclusion.

A year and a half ago, I read Freedom by Franzen. As engrossing as Fraction of a Whole.

This family questioned everything, but centrally, they wrestle with Death inevitable (committing suicide is to take the wind out of “natural” death’s sail).

From cover to cover, we learn to think and reason like Martin, Terry and Jasper Dean (Father, Uncle and Son), given ample details for contextual understanding. On the way, we learn to like the women in their lives as well. The settings took us from Europe to Australia, to Thailand and back.

I know a few Aussies. But this book took me deep in the woods, where to warn his family of imminent danger, Jasper had to resort to telephathy.

Terry Dean later resurfaced as huge as could be. With the locals taking the law into their own hands (machetes etc…), it reminded me of a scene from Apocalypse Now “horror, horror”.

It’s Jasper Dean who played memory keeper. He had his own set of problems: trying to find as much as possible about his deceased Parisienne mom.

This book  raises an important question: are we 100 per cent ourselves? How about our neighbors? Perhaps we all try to blend in, interacting with the lowest  common denominators (in the age of carefully crafted image on social network). If so, then, let’s turn the page and hear Martin Dean’s speech on the night his grand idea got implemented (making the population of Australia all millionaires).  Even fools sometimes got a point. And for someone whose debut got a finalist vote on Man Booker‘s prize, this is as good a read as can be. For me, it’s a rare treat,to follow the Deans in Vietnamese version. Fraction of a Whole. And that “whole” will soon be 9 Billion souls by 2050.

Each with a story to tell. In Deans’ case, a fraction turned out to be quite a hand full.

Joy of randomness

We move between chaos and control.

For those who experience Saigon traffic, the dance takes it to another level: randomness.

A tour bus made its final stop in front of a hotel. Tourists stepped down, immediately, with cameras (little did they know, traffic like this is all too common). Rain and randomness. Control and chaos, coexist.

That’s just one aspect of life in Saigon.

You might be sitting in an outdoor cafe, tucked in the corner table, still got sneaked up by a lottery ticket seller who lost both legs.

Even on a quiet night,  Saigon still has some surprises for you: a translated version of Wonderful Tonight, a circus show from China or a low-key visit by Entertainment’s Most Powerful couple: Angelina and Brad.

Saigon is standing in its former shadow, that of Paris of the Orient. Its skyline sees new addition every six months.

Consumerism of all shades puts on its best display (black and blonde mannequins).

Some guys even went to Thailand to have sex-change.

City life takes young folks out of the country and demands much less in social mores.

With chaos comes consumerism. With consumerism comes individualism. With individualism comes choices and frustration.

For now, the city is maintaining its equilibrium: buses weave in and out, parting a sea of scooters to pick up a few passengers.

Drainage capacity is pushed over the limits during rainy season.

And vendors claim whatever left of the already-carved up sidewalks.

I wrote once about a butterfly with its innocent dance in traffic. Now I realize traffic itself imitates the butterfly in its randomness . Here lies the key to crossing the streets in Saigon. Brave it! Don’t hesitate! Chaos, and not control.

First it’s stressful. Then it’s joyful. Once in a while, it’s painful (My xe-om driver made a 90-degree turn, and the scooter skidded. This destroyed my best dress pants, leaving a knee scar).

No pain no gain.

I guess by now I have gotten over the hump: reverse culture shock.

In academic parlance, I have gone semi-native.

Only when you stuck with it, that it made some sense: people do enjoy living here more than in the countryside.

Here, they can take classes, find jobs and get married.

More options, more choices.

Even amidst chaos, one can find joy in randomness. As unpredictable as a butterfly dance in traffic. I wish the place is a Hollywood set. But it’s far from it. Here the “extras” are the main characters. Or as in Roger Altman‘s genre, the place is the persona. No one seems to be in the lead. The city itself plays the lead role.

Museum of Loss

If you sneaked in the back street of Independence Palace here in Saigon, you would find  Cafe 30-4, named after that fateful day. Most of us have seen that 1975 tank-crashing-gate photo. But from the vantage point of the Cafe where I sat yesterday, I could only see people playing tennis and tourists walking about trying to use up the price of admission.

I felt a lump in my throat and heavy pull at the legs before entering this unholy ground.

The same feeling I had when entering the US consulate a few years back for notary public.

Those spaces represented more than just brick and mortar. They had territorial integrity but lost it.(The French originally built Saigon as Admin Centre for IndoChine).

The spot where the consulate now is, used to be the US Embassy.

And Cafe 30-4 had been just a side entrance for Palace guards.

And so it went with my visit to the Museum of Loss.

Loss of youth,  innocence, and root.

When I got to the US, the first thing I was given was an A number (for Alien).

Later, I “graduated” to a D (for driver). Some day, when cashing out, I get a “S” for Social Security.

Back to our Museum of Loss. In Dalat, at least you would find Bao Dai Palace, still presidential: high on the hill, with some class and signs of  Vietnam transition from Monarchy to Modernity (Western).

IndoChine at the time, shared  inter-regional currency under French colonial.

Those neighboring countries are still connected albeit loosely:

Thailand, still with King. Cambodia and Laos remain underdogs and China is riding to ascendency.

Things were quiet at our Museum of Loss, except for occasional tennis ball contacts. Players are still wearing white, just as the day of Big Minh (who was waiting to hand over the key of the Independence Palace) playing against Westmoreland.

I excused myself after getting up from that chunk of wood (used as stool)..

At least Cafe 30.4 got shades. It also sits in the shadow of Saigon’s former Self. I walked out feeling estranged. In fact, I couldn’t wait to fetch a taxi to the future where I might find hope and promises. It’s the future which decides the winner. Call it “horizontal” marketing, where market dictates the terms and values of everything. To turn a historic landmark on its head, and make a few bucks out of it is what I called entrepreneurial. In loss we find a way out, and in death life.

Vietnam’s outsourcing factory

I have heard about TMA Solutions new building in Quang Trung Software Park, but I have never got a chance to stop by, until yesterday.

1,200-strong, TMA begins to look like an army of engineers (my friend and guide showed me a beehive behind the building, after we had toured their lobby where Vietnam‘s historical artifacts were on display, next to the museum of telephony).

“It is to show the stream of history, culturally and technologically, so our engineers could get a sense of where things might be going” said my friend.

I could relate to that.

Users and programmers don’t exist in a vacuum.

We live and breathe the same air as everyone else.

Honda got hit not once but twice last year, both in Fukushima and in Thailand.

While incubators and laboratories are necessary for concentration and collaboration, they still function within a larger ecosystem.

Users tend to move on to the next big thing more quickly than companies.

Two great benefits TMA could offer to prospective clients:

– its time-tested know-how

– young work force who can stay on for however long the project requires (end-to-end outsourcing).

Yes, we had a sort of working lunch and then marketing presentation.

But it’s the spirit of the group, the speed of execution and the spread of product (cloud computing) that will work in TMA’s favor.

If they grew  (at least no lay-off)  in hard times, how much more in good times.

I am afraid this is counter-intuitive. But organizations need to secure talent just as much as they secure property and product.

When all boats rise, talent can then command higher salary leveraging supply vs demand.

As engineers huddle in conference rooms and cubicles,  consumers are shopping for the greatest and latest.

In turn, these technologies (cloud, social media apps) enable new applications (e.g. Google + Search) which in turn reshape consumer expectations.

It’s the loop, of empathy, of hits and misses (Betamax) and the drive for perfection (Apple).

Outsourcing is just a phenomenon, but man’s search for meaning and connection has been around much longer.

Get to the bottom of this, you will get to the bottom line.

I like my guide’s side comment “look at Napoleon! he was so short, yet so imperial”.

I just know from seeing the beehives behind the building that worker bees are busy at work, coding and collaborating, and  in the process saving tons of money for clients. Clients who now can sit back and choose from a score of outsourcing factories. Let the game begin. Stay hungry, stay curious (Jobs’ commencement address at Standford).  Vietnamese engineers at TMA can discount the first advice and focus on being curious. This, their shrewd leader had already anticipated. He wanted to leave his legacy via the museum of  ethnology (past), and technology  (future).

Oil-and-water economies

David Brooks of the NYTimes had a piece about the US economy which he coined as “mid-life-crisis economy that needs  to be rejuvenated”.

That’s oil.

Here in Vietnam, I found quite a contrast.

Young demographic, young economy that goes no where but up.

Community Colleges, Trade and Vocational schools, English classes.

One by one, they will progress to the next tier: married, having children, house-hunting and interior furnishing.

The accumulation game: he who dies with the most stuff wins.

People used to be content with three meals a day and a scooter parked in the house.

Then came the phone, the Ipad and the I-pod.

All of a sudden, expectations rise.

A new holiday ring tone, a remote for the scooter alarm, a new app for the I-pad.

Big-box supermarkets are gearing to push consumption pass their “valley of death” (early adopters seem to have done all the shopping they could besides taking trips to Singapore and Australia).

The early and late majority still bond with traditional outdoor venues: bartering is still common, but slowly it is being phased out.

One lighter note during Christmas: the meat-stall ladies up North uploaded their spontaneous dance number onto YouTube.

I can picture them with cell phones urging a quick delivery, but  they are now going “social” and “visual”.

Vietnam got started 40 years ago with Kennedy’s reluctant but pushed-ahead with that fateful decision to engage.

This has set the country back (while Steve  Jobs and Steve Wozniak grew up and toyed with personal computers in their garage).

Now it needs to play catch-up (while taming inflation). A dance that needs skills.

In war, the two sides already seemed to act like oil and water.

Now in peace , the two economies couldn’t be more different: one needs rejuvenation (per Brooks), the other revision.

ICT talent in a flat world –

re-post from 2011. This past year, things are getting heated up with “friend-shoring” chip manufacturing with Biden’s visit.

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If it hadn’t been for the slightly warm temperature, the water bottle that bore “QTSP” (Quang Trung Software Park) and the simulcast headsets, I would have thought I was back in 2005 at  a similar conference in Palo Alto. But this was Vietnam.  With speakers and delegates from Malaysia, Thailand, India trying to organize into a ICT block. “We competed with one another too much, selling to each other too much”, said a Thai delegate.

Instead, SEA ICT parks were urged to organize and synergize.

A message well worth noting and worthy of praise.

Except, Thailand just went through a century flood (at the tune of 46 Billion)

and Vietnam ICT college enrolment grew at meager pace of 2% (demands are calling for 12 times that).

I kept hearing the word “disconnect”.

Schools weren’t up to task for mobile, gaming and cloud computing.

Consumers just wanted to “use” technology, no matter where it’s from (mostly likely the West, but outsourced to the East and then repackaged and rebranded).

I worked the crowd, and walked the hallway.

I shook hands and met people at the booths.

I was behind those booths many times while at MCI and Teleglobe.

Now, it’s their turns.

Eye contacts, business cards in hand, and promise to keep in touch.

Right!

I said I was into softskills, not softwares.

They understood immediately.

Quid pro quo.

You teach me some, I teach you some.

We can send foreign teachers of every shade of accent for you to be exposed to.

Of course, at a very low price.

Accents are cheap.

Words are cheap.

Human connection: invaluable.

I lifted one guy’s spirit when I mentioned that companies like RightNow could still command a very high price, having been bought by cash-rich Oracle.

So the young and the younger got along, hand shakes without high fives.

Welcome to Vietnam, Welcome to the flat world.

Let the game begin. Somehow I know those guys behind the booths will turn out very OK, more than they now realize.

I have been there and I know.

They will hit singles and one of them will hit a ball way out of the park.

Just a numbers game.

Just a right mix of pressures, opportunities, collaboration and market demand.

Keep pitching

Keep selling.

Keep inventing.

They’ll come, even if it takes a huge flood to “flush” them out.

Currently wages pressure has turned to demonstration in China.

What are we waiting for? Someone else’s crisis, our opportunity.

Ironically, that double-meaning character was originally Chinese, now came in full circle there.

ICT talent in the flat world. ICT talent in Vietnam. I like it.

Still inflamed

When I witnessed the monk set fire on himself some forty years ago, the streets of Saigon had less traffic than it does now.

An American photographer got words that there might be something happening’.  By day’s end, morning in Washington,

his shot sent shock waves over the wire, as flammable as the content it carried: a monk set fire on himself in protest against the iron grips of the Diem’s brothers.

My understanding of Buddhism, at least in theory, was that the monks were not supposed to act that aggressively or with open hostility

against the authority, in this case, a very repressive regime (whose leaders were later taken out).

Now, at that same street corner I found an old version and a newer memorial worthy of his protest.

Rage against the machine.

Burning napalm and burning monk.

Ambassador Lodge then must have pulled out his hair.

It’s a long way from his Republican roots, and Wenham, MA home.

I have been at both places to envision how big a PR disaster it must have (nearby Salem, MA was known for burning gothic witches, but that’s a different Puritanical story).

(AP) Wire went wild.

The younger monks and nuns were all chanting, songs for the living and the dead (and in between –  while waiting for the kerosene to soak up his cloak). As soon as the younger monk walked away, barely a few feet, flame started to rise.

The photo captured a young bystander leaning against his bicycle, unable to register the significance of the moment.

Stillness. Heaven and Earth froze.

No survival instinct.

No kicking or screaming.

One way ticket.

Aller sans retour.

Religion against regime.

Turn of event and of public opinion.

How can a just war gave full support to an unjust dictatorship?

It will take a lot more than PR to “spin” this.

We all know the ending to the story, from our vantage point.

The vantage point that has Vietnam on HD.

No matter what kind of technology or lenses viewers can now afford to replay the past, what’s ugly remains ugly.

To view the Vietnam conflict in all its blood and gores on HD lends new meaning to the term ” irony”.

At the memorial for the monk, as soon as I flipped the match to light an incense, I felt chill down my spine.

Someone, perhaps the younger monk, did the same on that fateful day.

After all, it’s just fire and flame.

But this one was for keeps.

It must have crossed the minds of the Diem’s brothers, before they went down, how quickly things had spiraled out of control. Perhaps as quickly as that combustible  flame I saw nearly four decades ago. Time stood still that day, yet its impact reverberates for eternity.

Faith in humanity

A graduate of Penn State, I related well to the scenes from the Deer Hunter, set in an industrial town of Pennsylvanian.

Smokestacks on the slope, familiar faces and friends and the “Welcome Home” sign for returning soldiers from a distant war.

But unlike other wars before and since, this one was controversial.  It showed when the main character, portrayed by DeNiro, ducked behind a taxi driver and asked to be driven pass his own Welcoming party.

Out of three “deer hunters”, one came back without injury to the mind or the body. Am I thy brothers’ keeper?

In CBS  Vietnam‘s documentaries, soldiers were shown sitting in the shade, smoking and listening to transistor radio which was playing “Oh, I don’t want to die”  (Reflections of my life).

Yet decades later, land mines still exploded claiming many more limps and lives.

The late Princess Diana was advocating the elimination of land mines.

At long last, the largest nuclear bomb in TX is being disassembled (the article said engineers have since died off, so it’s hard to locate the blue prints).

Farewell to arms.

Hemingway, go home.

All we need is love.

Faith in humanity. Speaking of humanity. We saw quake in Turkey and flood in Thailand.

The heavy rain and flood forced Thailand to close its airport and evacuate parts of its capital (the toll: 506 deaths).

When it rains it pours there in South East Asia.

I was in Vietnam last year. All of a sudden, it poured really hard.

From a sidewalk cafe, I saw a middle-age lady in cone hat tried to push a scrap metal cart whose wheels were half buried in water-covered pot holes.

Now, the UN is advocating Environmental sustainability, with 7 Billion people sharing Earth’s limited resources, foremost is clean water.

China was quick to beef up R&D in solar and desalinated water.

We can not pretend we live in complete isolation. Debris from Fukushima quake drifted to California.

Flood in Thailand slow down server production, which pushes companies to the Cloud.

First wave: Main Frame, second wave: personal computer and third wave: cloud, which brings us in full circle.

Talking about automation, and unemployment. Stats shows high unemployment among returning veterans of the two wars. It’s time for that Welcome-Home sign again.

Hope they find a job and not wait too long for to receive those benefits.

Hope they won’t  have to duck behind the taxi driver.

Farewell to arms, to guilt and to self-recrimination.

All we need is love and a little faith in humanity. Princess Diana would have been proud to see a female film Director received an Oscar for Hurt Locker. The subject: land mine.

Sand bag Body bag

A Thai monk needs to lay more sandbags to stem the flow of water, while Libyan fighters can now lay down their guns since the Colonel was finally in the bag, body bag.

One country exports rice, the other oil.

Back in 1997, Thailand’s rising real estate bubble nearly took down neighboring Asian Tigers with it. This time, its rising waters will surely drive up the price of rice.  No one can yet predict oil price in light of the latest development in Libya.  But oil consortium already committed to the tune of $100 Billion to modernize Iraqi facilities.

While monks in Thailand have always taken up a still posture, young fighters were on their Westward move, hanging  tight to guns on wheel.

Hot sand in the desert versus wet rice  in the Mekong.

In Thailand, a Thai-American was jailed for speaking against Royalty.

In Libya, NATO’s jet fighters rained down  2-Billion dollars worth of bombs.

God must have a sense of irony for granting rain and shine on the good and the evil.

Next time, when they celebrate water festival in Thailand, I am sure some people will have  flashbacks.

But in future Libya, those young fighters can always look back with pride, because for them, to stay alive isn’t enough. They need to become “Colonels” in their own rights. Their turn at resolving the Oedipus complex. But that’s what history is made of: old wine in new skin. I happened to spot Cher’s image on a magazine cover, right next to Kardashian’s. There is nothing new under the Sun . The water will recede in the East, and fighting subside in Mid-East.

By then, we, with our attention deficit, will have moved on. Living in Internet time and on borrowed time. Living with higher price of rice and rising price of oil.  Sand bag & Body bag.