Tag: Tom Clancy

Positively positive

Same set of situation, variety of readings.

Rashomon effect.

In Vietnam, if you ran into a funeral, it’s luck.

Wow! Positively positive.

The deaths live on in the family, albeit high up on the altar.

Part of one another forever.

Unlike in the US, health care for all is health care for none (shut down).

Negatively negative.

Here in Vietnam, the recycle mentality is quite ingrained: even in the soaking rain, I saw a lady wearing rain gear, picking up a plastic bottle. Not sure how much she earns from the act, which Bill Gates once said he wouldn’t be bothered.

And those with legs cut off would ride their manual cart to sell lottery tickets.

Positively positive.

Those who won a lump sum often spent it all in one place.

Those who sell those tickets keep on with their daily grind.

Positive begets positive.

A butterfly flapping its wings. A dog “saying goodnight” (It’s a Wonderful World).

A stanza of Samba by the Santana.

Even Requiem by Mozart, written for his own funeral. All positive.

Or Steve Jobs and his I phone, I tunes and I pad.

Or Tom Clancy and his much-anticipated publication after his death.

George Harrison has a song called “What’s life” and “My sweet guitar gently weeps”.

Play it on your rainy day?

Positively positive.

Life will get you at your least suspected moment.

Up to you to spot that rainbow and the starfish.

Or succumb to the Rashomon Effect. When in doubt, stay positive. And not just positive, but positively positive.

 

 

 

 

Clancy Clan

I am sure Mr Clancy who has just died at 66 had many late nights facing the blinking cursor, unsure of where his thoughts and imagination might have taken him. The hunt for the next national-security threat.

Cold-war genre morphs into regional terrorism tale.

An epitome of story telling.

I am a fan.

It got me through many late nights as well, facing breakdowns in relationships and career.

Of course, in his stories, the good guys win in the end.

Adult children fantasy.

But we got enough real news out there. We need to retreat into a world of his own creation.

Suspense, sweat equity. Maryland and the fantasy land.

Not bad for an English major-turned insurance man turned best-selling author.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Fiction trumps non-fiction.

In life, we got government shut-down.

In novel, we have our heroes carry out their mission to the teeth, peeing into an empty Gatorade bottle before each sortie.

By the time his last novel is on the stand, Clancy would have mesmerized the world for 30 solid years, with big thick hardbacks.

Perhaps in today’s cloud computing, soft power diplomacy and screen addiction, people will look back to Clancy

s days as vestige of sorrow rather than celebration.

Intelligent adults still cannot solve their problems and resolve their differences except over a shoot-out.

Truth be told, the world still needs good story telling (J.K. Rowling) and are willing to pay for it.

I am glad he bought a tank. Whatever made the man happy before going over to the other side.

Macho man and mandarin man.

Hard and soft power.

The power of imagination and reconciliation.

The story needs a tight ending. He set it up and tied it neatly til the end. His end. Now we need a new Clancy for our new decade. One who can creatively plot a way out of chemical weapon violation and dictator’s dogma who still rule today’s Iran, N Korea and Cuba. Defense gives way to State, and combat to collaboration. It’s a tall order. A new world order.  A new generation of fictional writers will in turn face their dark nights of the soul and those damn blinking cursors, just as Clancy did prior to his 1984 publication of the Hunt for the Red October. Remember, we might run out of options for a Government Shut Down, but imagination itself has never run dry. Try it, it might work. If not, try again.

Cranking up, hanging in

Post-holiday blues. Cabin fever. And the return of routine.

And the Oscar goes to……

We weeded out unwanted inventory and unfriended people.

Clearing the deck and crank up the engine.

Sports Illustrated illustrates tan and skin underneath winter jacket.

While Readers Digest finally suffers inDigestion.

Books of the Times and books of the Post.

New faces and new titles ( from “How to get filthy rich in Asia” to “A Good Son”).

I was at the opening of a branch library yesterday.

I had never seen anything like it: families lined up and singed up for library cards, as if it were Black-Friday Sales.

Since when people are that much interested in books.

It must be because of pent-up demand in this area.

Tom Clancy still pairs up with other writers to crank out humongous volumes on the genre.

While Grisham sticks with litigation.

Writers cranked up and not cramped up.

Everyone hangs in there, at least those who can still be productive and sell.

Venues might have changed i.e. Newsweek and Readers Digest out! but demand are there (Amazon’s Kindle and B&N’s nook).

I have picked up on Facebook chat (over the top platform) and found it more convenient than the old purple Yahoo messenger.

Change has come to me.

The future is now. The library has opened, but with more desktops and less bookshelves.

More best-sellers and less of the old inventory.

Of course, with no Clearance Sales, at least, not yet.

And the Oscar  goes to….some winners for sure.

I read an article about the Oscar set. It should look very magnificent on TV, with a promise to ” turn Stars into star-gazers”.

Winners or losers, Oscar or Daytona, we hang in there and move forward.

Time flows just one way. And it waits for no one. With no action, even angels leave us.

Wait not for the snow to melt. Put on those boots and march on. Get cranked up and hang not in there for too long.

Reality cross-over

In a  God-Father scene, the execution order was carried out as cut-away from the black-tie wedding scene.

Lately, President Obama in Brazil attending state dinner (while France-led air strike was carried out over Libya no-fly zone ), and two nights ago at the White House Correspondents’ dinner (while the takedown was carried out in Pakistan). Hollywood materials. (at this edit, Hurt Locker’s Oscar-winning director was slated to direct “killing BL”).

Then there was Tom Clancy‘s Dead or Alive just out late last year.

People are confused and intrigued more with reality than fiction. China news agency published a different version, and I am sure, in the dark corner of Islamic extremism, we will find a Moon-Landing type of  conspiracy to vent their anger.

Meanwhile, our Reality-Show star (as of this edit, he withdrew after the birth certificate debacle) wanted to run for President.

And our current one could be cut out of Hollywood billboard (with the God Father’s sound track, of course).

One reality that should overshadow everything else: Twitter rules the day, as far as  scooping.

140 characters is hard to beat.

Until some young guys in a garage  come up with another disruptive technology, Twitter is King of the Hills.

It jolts you out of your seat. Sparks a conversation. Triggers further inquiries into said topic.

To Tweet is now our 21st-century verb, as common as Xerox and Google (whose re-org charted a new course, that of “knowledge creation” as oppose to just Search, or document handling as Xerox).

Our attention span can always handle one more tweet. And one more.

Same 24 hours a day. Same sleeping pattern and daily habits. But a tweet can always enter and intrude our lives.

Until we can no longer do without it.

There are lots of  lessons in short-burst communication. Use imagery that strikes the chord, like :

“I will be back!” (in this case, the same actor, making a real Hollywood comeback after trying his hand at governing).

Reality finally has another way to creep into our lives, in new format.

No more newspaper on the train. Just me, and my tweets, 140 characters at a time. Until eternity.

No one wants to be left out of the loop.

Now, the meaning of “up to speed” just gets more refined, or should I say, re-calibrated. Up to the second.

We will sort it all out later. Is he dead or alive? The guy who broke the story had to tweet good-night “I did not kill him, now can I catch some sleep”.  Twitter is our 21st-century communication conveyor belt, and excellent source of materials for Chaplinesque school of comedy. Communication in short bursts. Think in chunks of 140 characters. I was told there was a margin of allowance, but the limits were set for optimal transmission and reception.

For sound bites such as “I’ll be back” or “Dead or Alive”, we don’t even use up all the Twitter’s allowance.

Last Sunday night, a short burst of tweets i.e. we’ve got him,  was enough to turn college students into monkeys. Catharsis it was.

My SAAB story

OK, I took a picture standing next to the convertible SAAB I won, but I took the cash option ( for grad student loan).

Now, this brand, along with Pontiac and Saturn, will soon be relics of the past.

We have a lot of In’s/Out’s at the end of this decade: ABC new anchor, BoA new CEO…

It’s been a strange decade. “Overloading” is the word.

On top of Y2K, 9/11 and 06.08 Recession, I have some personal reshuffling, not to mention the deaths of my parents

and father-in-law.

All along, I knew Google would hit the jack pot and  Voice will be at near-zero pricing ( even when bundled with wireless).

I have been privileged with friends and colleagues online (thank you Social Networking sites).

We went through a lot together, some have gone with me through 5 companies.

And I don’t remember when I do away with watching Network news at 6:30PM.

Perhaps by 6:30, I have already got “informed” with pop-up news online, radio and cable news.

PBS format of the News Hour stays very consistent and this has been a blessing in disguise (amidst uncertainty and change).

I have worked out of home a lot during this decade, except for a few years of commuting to Santa Monica from Orange County, and a few months abroad.

I don’t understand people who not only make money with “the 4-hour work week”.

Naturally, this decade has seen:

– cutting the wire line phone

– doing away with the fax machine

– Skype becomes the new wire line (w/headset)

– driving smaller vehicles, if at all

– watching HDTV

– lost taste in ties (what color and pattern is in now? )

– hardly see “chain” e-mail regarding Microsoft handouts, or Nigerian fake uncle’s will

– Vista Operating System gone

I enjoy all the feedback loops, collaborative tools and open-source in this Brave New New World.

Next decade?

CD‘s will join the fate of cassette tapes, books belong to those archives, and students don’t carry hard back text (just E-reader and other gadgets).

More on-screen heroes will emerge from the East, to retire Jackie Chan ( a new Bruce Lee).

Boomers will volunteer to build a more conscious-raising society.

They have been witnesses to changes, from social to technological, from local to global.

That generation is worth listening to (who wouldn’t want to be critiqued by Robert Redford at Sundance when trying to make a film).

And perhaps, the most anticipated happening of the next decade is the Next Big Thing.  Maybe it will be out of Shanghai or Mumbai. Keep your mileage plus handy. You might need it for those long flights. But this time, no more lugging those hard-back books (Tom Clancy) or heavy lap tops. And, leave your tie home.