Tag: Third World

The normalization of the abnormal

Some of us who still remember the Cold War remember how easy things were: black and white.

Everything else “Third World.”

Now, the Third World has emerged. Hence, we live in a multi-polar world.

More complicated world. More are at stake.

People wheel and deal.

Purchasing parity has become less of a parity.

Trading up and trading down. Things and places are interchangeable (Banana Republic , despite its name, used to carry made-in-India or the Philippines – no banana republic there).

Marijuana used to be a taboo. Now it’s legal in some states.

I am confused. My moral sense (put there by my parents who were born early in the 20th century) has been challenged and put to question.

Those foundations are constantly revised and compromised.

First by others, then myself (or else, I am looked at as a loser or an outsider).

Sounds like a teenage phenomenon. But it’s real. Flight or fight.

Cavemen syndrome still.

With technology moving so fast, energy consumed at break-neck speed, our sense of the world and how it should operate needs a relook.

The enemy is now our friend ( for example, Russia as supplier of oil and arms).

Our friend has become enemy (by abandonning us when the coalition calls for joint troops in the Gulf Wars).

What was abnormal has become normal.

In this multi-polar world, China, now the largest automobile market in the world,

doesn’t discriminate imported products, but its export ones are.

For the right reason (unsafe, copy cat etc…).

We have an image problem.

We need to improve our relations with others (who have also changed).

We need new friendnemies.

We need to normalize that which was considered abnormal.

Gay is the new straight , the pheripherals have gone mainstream.

It’s late-stage now for a lot of things such as globalization and world trade (finished products get shipped back to the US and Western countries, turning the US standing into a Third World status by definition).

I am glad we still agree on grammar points and earning points.

Do unto others as we would like to be done onto.

The only thing that is constant is change itself. Grow up!

The Routine

Instinctively, we follow the path of least resistance (park in the shade, grab the nearest item on the shelves…).

Marketers make it their mission to study this, the same way scientists experiment with reflexive rats in the lab.. Nike even filmed the Standford team, trained barefooted, to see the landing and movement of their feet.

Creatures of habits. Social animal.

Maximum connections: 120, to stay meaningful.

Yet, we are now networked at hockey-stick growth chart.  Majority of the world, including what used to be called the Third World, got phones. Can you hear me now!

Mobile payment, mobile banking, mobile TV.

Nomad lifestyle all over again. I blogged about Point A to B.

Louis L’Amour said it best ” the problem with mankind is that we can’t stay put in one place”.

Train and now plane hobos. Air travel used to carry with it social badges: prestige and class (think Pan Am).

The same with the automobile when it first came out. Then the assembly line (yesterdays’ Foxconn) and high-paid manufacturing jobs at Ford, changed all that.

Everything is new, yet nothing is new.

The rich have to (and have always) reinvent the game, find new playground and fence it off to stay exclusive (can you imagine online education for the mass, live streaming from the Ivory Tower of Ivy League schools). It is all happening.

MIT, then Standford. My fair lady, for the world. The rain in Spain doesn’t fall mainly on the plain.

It is common grace (rain on the field of the good and the evil).

Brazil is hosting the next Olympic. Perhaps it is fitting and symbolic that after England, we shift focus to BRIC, with B for Brazil.

Something about growing ethanol down there. About reinventing a country, about female leadership in a vibrant and colourful nation.

Let’s hope that spirit and energy rub off on us, stodgy and austere nations.

I believe our best days have yet been behind us.

We just need to look inward, take an honest inventory and reinvent ourselves. Focus on the essentials and task ourselves with the right things. Ignore the critics. They are always there, taking shots at doers. And above all, believe. We have pulled this off before. Can and will do it again. It’s our good routine. It’s us, intrinsically and uncompromisingly, at our best. As Chris Gardner puts it, “only us can give ourselves legitimacy”.  Routine, but earned routine, not forced.

Third place, third screen, third world

Known as the third place (away from home and work), Starbucks did not stop after opening up in Forbidden City, China.

It has just opened for business in Vietnam (where the I-phone, our third screen – after TV and desktop – recently made a stirring appearance).

Vietnam young consumer segment and older generations with French-cafe habit are low-hanging fruit.

It will have to acquire prime real estate and make an inroad into tourist centers, or M&A with existing Viet-Thai International who operates Highland coffee chain.

Either way, the WiFi Third Place is here in once Third World., Cheryl Crow‘ s pipe-in music (if it makes you happy, and why the hell are you so sad).  After all, Hard Rock cafe has beaten Starbucks to the punch.  Now the hard part is how to translate those “tall ice latte” into Vietnamese.

Those slim bodies are ready to put on some weight.  Soon, location-based promotion will pop up on those I-phones, showing tourists where to get a foamy caffeine fix. It’s no longer Third World but where ever there is a Third Place with Third Screen, that’s home.

No need for coded song (White Christmas) to launch an evacuation. Just stay put for the next Cheryl Crow’s spin on an old Carpenter’s song “While life goes on around him everywhere he’s playing solitaire”. Third Place, third screen, anywhere.