Tag: Tootsie

Recognize the face

Machine is getting smarter (facial recognition).

In “It might be you” Stephen Bishop sings about “if I found the  place, would I recognize the face“.

The face he has waited for all of his life.

Babies could hear before birth (the logic behind classical music during pregnancy).

Then psychologists theorize about us looking for that first trusted face (our mom’s or nurse’s).

I have talked to a bunch of xe-om (taxi scooter), who echoed the same theme: it’s hard to find “chan tinh”, real love.

Sounds hopeless to me.

But surrounded by young people on buses and on campus, I saw a different version: careful but calculated risk-taking.

Man-woman, man-man, woman-woman pairing.

If only we brought back Tootsie, “I became a better man to you by being a woman….”.

Men are built to conquer (biologically). Woman, nurturing.

They could make a perfect marketing team: cold-caller and customer relationship manager.

For now, we are at a juncture where men and women roles are being revised if not reversed.

Friedman’s Feminine Mystique needs its own 2.0 mobile version for Vietnam .

I don’t know about recognizing the face, but I sure have recognized the foods.

For the past three months, I have exacted my revenge.

Also, a good dose of music and arts (highly recommend the museum on Ly Tu Trong for arts and history and C’est Moi for live music).

During the course of my rediscovery (see Adventure in My Own Land), I stumbled upon “Cu Lao” where Nguyen Huu Canh founded South Vietnam.

Our own Columbus did not meet native Indian nor was he offered Turkeys for Thanksgiving.

But he might very well be.

We now have a city nearing ten million mostly young college students.

My job has taken me to different campuses, where I saw learners of all shades and stripes.

Part tech savvy, part social intelligence, these “faces” will be our future leaders.

Would I  recognize those faces, if I found the place.

I might. For some strange reasons, I feel closer to my now-deceased Mom by being here, than in the US.

Perhaps there are more faces like hers. Perhaps they put on Ao Dai (see Mom’s Ao Dai). I can’t figure it out yet.

But I guess I have found the place. That’s the easy part. The hard part is to recognize the face, as if facial recognition apps could help.

Blogging is sharing

It is also fun.

Certainly it is not work.

An insight here, a discovery there.

Hey, look at this!

I still remember appearing in a school play (Elementary).

Got a lot of laughs from the student body (playing a mother, Tootsie style).

Somewhere along the way, we have lost the inclination for play, the urge to create and an eye for  possibilities.

IKEA is redesigning its home-office furniture to accommodate digital demand of a mobile workforce (first they sit in cubicles, then they commute from home with virtual-style cubicles at work or at Starbucks and finally back to the office, per Yahoo).

More than furniture, we too will need to adapt (CD holder and PC desk anyone? before Goodwill takes them).

Even Palm is up for auction.

I didn’t  let Amazon‘s Fire go unnoticed.

Whoever named that product knows a thing or two about human need for tribal affiliation, for gathering around the camp fire.

Camera men and news men all know that viewers glue to the set when they show fire scenes.

TV screen has replaced that warm fireplace in everyone’s home. Now Amazon’s Fire (pad) wants to take it to go.

Hey look at this (from my Fire).

E commerce has just got leg.

No longer shoppers are desk-bound or multitasking during lunch hour (last-minute browsing and clicking “Put this in Shopping Cart” for the holiday season).

Speaking of Holiday Seasons. It looks as if we are home free with Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas-shopping).

Consumers spending drives the economy forward (bulk shopping in December).

What is the point of putting up Christmas decoration in the house while telling your children to shut the door (to guests and families).

Kids are smarter than we think (mine said yelling is counter-productive i.e. honey makes for better mouse trap).

Back to my Elementary school play. Back to childlike creativity and imagination. Back to sharing. Back to the beginning when everyone got his/her allotted sparks of creativity and of the divine.

It’s still there, lying dormant underneath your Christmas decoration. Sharing is not seasonal. And the tribal fire has never meant to be extinguished. It was meant to be shared, in gathering circle.

Just like when we were told to sit in circle, at a school play, dressing up like Tootsie.

Tech rules again

We all saw Google’s numbers surge. I remember the last time I feel this way was a decade ago. Something is in the works. The market responds. New apps, new ways of accomplishing things.

This might be it.

Just like a line in “It Might Be You“, a theme song in Tootsie.

Maybe it didn’t come in the shape or form we were expecting  i.e. green shoots. But it seems right. A surge in productivity, efficiency and confidence. We barely scrap the surface of Web 2.0.

Just as Wall Street and the old guards found more dirt in housing finance, Silicon Valley struck new gold via better apps. Somehow, as a system, we are self-healing, thus ensuring species survival.

We will soon have to do away with yesterday’s vocabulary, such as “the  engine of the economy”, “ramping up” etc.. all belong to the Industrial past.

In their places, let’s talk about “intelligent search”, “smart appliances” etc….

We will come to understand ourselves, with higher IQ, EQ, social intelligence, and cultural intelligence. The deeper the degree of automation, the freer we are to learn and grow.

In short, minimize chores, and optimize passion.

This 90/10 equation was once enjoyed by aristocrats now available to the common man whose hands are holding smart phones i.e. all-in-one information and data sources.

The faster the processing speed, the more available information, the quicker the decision.

The gods must be crazy (remember the coke bottle dropped out of the sky  into a primitive tribe?). Via GPS alone, human now get bird-eye-view, lifting his gaze way above earthen sky.  Advances in medical technology and environment will push life expectancy even more. It used to be 47 back in 1900. Now it is easily in  the low 70’s and counting.

World’s median age is now 28. But in a decade, this median age will change dramatically. Future aging world population.

(Imagine summer concert full of old rockers, wearing golf shirts).

However it turns out, we celebrate the triumph of human imagination, invention and innovation. One day, the machine will finish this blog for me.

It already knows based on a year’s worth of data what I am going to say next.

So I can go fetch my second cup of coffee. Have a great weekend.

 

My first day at school

Everyone remembers that dreadful day.

I did.

My mom was a teacher herself, but at a different school.

So my sister, 19 years my senior, had to grudgingly play surrogate parent.

She dropped me off to join a bunch of babies whose cries were contagious.

The French school was two blocks away.

It required students to wear blue uniforms and  proper shoes. They checked our finger nails every day, a fear that takes me to manicure shop to this day.

Bonjour Madam. Bonjour Monsieur.

So I joined the crowd, moving from one lesson to the next, from private to public school (in Vietnam, back then, it’s an elite thing).

A lot have happened since.

I still remember walking to school with Pierre,  a fat half-breed.

We discussed the assassination of President Kennedy (cool? They have barely released the suppressed document on the second Tonkin incident).

And later, I eye-witnessed the self-burning monk.

I even played a woman in our annual school skit, and gave the student body a wholesome laugh (Tootsie).

And to this day, I could only recall two kids from my Elementary school.

Pierre was one of the two. He pulled the lever at the traffic post and somehow,

got traffic to stand still for hours.

Vietnamese literature has a famous passage.

It goes like this: “these routes I have taken everyday, but somehow, today it’s different.

The difference is, today is my first day at school.”

Because of that first day at school, I look at that intersection of Cao Thang and Nguyen Dinh Chieu in a different light.

The traffic post is still there, with faded white umbrella. (as of this edit, that was finally taken down, leaving a chunk of square concrete blocking the sidewalk).

Many pass by but few notice it. But to me, it’s special.

Because, it bears witness to my fun childhood albeit in war-time. People I interacted with then were of Indian descent, French half-breed, French (principles), GI teachers etc…

Later, I spotted a transferred student to my jr high. Over recess,  on his first day at school,

I approached him to include him in our group “Hi, would you like to join our volley ball team?”.

He remains my friend, if not best friend, since.

You’ll never know who will click and stay on with you.

But one thing for sure, you have to take that first step.

School or life, there will always be that first awkward, and sometimes, dreadful first day.

Even when it’s in your old neighborhood. The difference is, now, you see it with  different lens.

I cried hard on that first day. I realize now that I shouldn’t have. School has been fun, and I can’t get enough of it.

The only constant is change. So we must embrace it, and learn from it. For instance, the new battery in Volt

costs about $10,000. And GM promises that it will last 8 years, or 100,000 miles. Good luck with lithium.

No smog, no noise. But when it makes a stop at the intersection where my Elementary school is, watch out for Pierre, the Devil.

There will never be my last day at school. Learning has taken on a different form for me. It could be a pearl of wisdom on LinkedIn

discussion board. Or a stranger on the bus. People are willing to share hard-earned lessons for free. Embrace the new, the hidden gem in every day’s encounter, with capacity to surprise us.

(Coronado could have found gold in the SW territories of the US, but he went looking specifically for a city made of gold, thus missed out on a great opportunity). Learn all you can learn from those acres of diamond.

It’s not what you know that will save you. It’s what you don’t (see my other blog, Chief Learning Officer). The same with Social Network.

It’s not who you know, but it’s who knows whom you know. The network effect (more on that on other blogs as well).

Teilhard de Chardin predicted the Omega point sometimes between 2030-2040 ” when for the second time in the history of the world, mankind will have discovered fire”.

That “fire” which he refers to was “the energies of love”, among them should be the love for learning i.e. self-advancement (even if we come in full circle,  the journey is well worth it). I would cry harder than I did on that first day of school if today were my last day of learning.