Tag: Turkey

Spending spree

Right about now. If the economy is going to pick up, authorities should push spending. Credit card spending.

Gadgets are out. Electronic devices miniaturized. Skirts cut shorter even when it says Winter Clothes. Victoria Secret pulled Native American outfit from broadcast. Planned controversy or not, we don’t know. We just know that things are back to its normal pace.g. Windows 8,  I-phone 5 release etc…

With Halloween behind us, Veteran Day being celebrated, what else to look forward to besides Turkey and Tree.

We got the calendar seasons, then we got shopping seasons, but for centuries we live with only a few seasons (until they made up Fall and Autumn).

Seasons are good for the Soul. They roll in cyclically, to remind us there is a rhythm of life: hard times and good times.

Unlike compound-interests chart and monthly bills. These come in under a different chart and graph.

We still respond to seasons in awe: autumn foliage, first snow etc..

When something like Sandy screw up our lives, we are at a loss (blaming it on those new voiture in China and Brazil?)

Meanwhile, those with or without money still have to spend. For loved ones and for oneself.

Gotta get those midget gadgets: i-pod and tri-pod.

Who would find out that our taste for music has been the same for decades? or what content women read on airplanes (E-readers).

Something strange has happened  lately, but then nothing strange has happened lately (covert ops but overt affairs etc…)

Banks and retail stores are still into collecting ROI perentages. And we consumers still fall for it, willingly.

We are creatures of habit and of harmony. We put on warm clothes and winter clothes. We feel a warmth in our hearts when we see Christmas decoration  all around us. We  miss that fireplace scene and the gathering of the faithful. We long to belong and to be home (Train, plane and automobile) . We long for rest and comfort.  The world knows this. It will offer a different version of our hopes and dreams. It will instead offer false hope and unreachable dreams. It will in fact give us the opposite of what we hope for. In the race to embrace our dreams, often times, we have to outsmart those who claim themselves to be dream providers, of essentials that we need like homes, health and happiness. We gotta to own the process of attaining them ourselves. When we do, we will be rooted firmly in that which we can call home, that which anchors our restless feet and soul. True happiness lies in the heart of those who feel content and are not in denial of death, the only reality that matters most. So spend, spend, spend. But keep in mind that those gadgets will be obsolete next year. In their places, are successive versions and newer generations. That’s what keeps us awake at night.

Progress has its pain and price to pay. To stay in the game, one needs to constantly pedal forward and uphill.

Again, I admire people who stay up all night out in the cold for a shopping spree phenomenon we call Black Friday.

Just remember to leave those pepper sprays at home this year. Walmart is trying to outsmart the competitors by opening early. Thanksgiving night as a matter of fact, for your 24/7 shopping need.

Becoming yourself

Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize Winner, told a story (in the Black Book) about a writer

whose wife left him for no reason at all. Restless and sleepless (and perhaps facing writer’s block) he imagined living out his former single self ( the status he now found himself in ). After a while, the mind played trick and he got used to being single. Until one day, his wife returned to him for no particular reason at all. He again found himself in a situation precaire.  Would you once again imagine yourself  being married so you can get used to it?

I am not sure what the moral of the story is, except that we are not  content with who we are. I guess once we figured out our boundaries, our strengths and weaknesses (painful), we are on the way of becoming ourselves.

Not the kind of person our families wish us to be, nor who we thought we were.

Just is.

After millions of encounters, negotiating and coordinating, including navigating the Wild Wild West  (wow! they did that) and World Wide Web (wow! they are doing that?)  we are on the way to becoming.

With one new revelation, one turn of event, one special encounter, our lives take on a new shape and contour. Dramatic events tend to dominate and serve as bookends to our otherwise uneventful lives. But most lives are lived in “quiet desperation”.  Having said that, what looks like boring to us might be very peculiar and interesting to others (if not for people in other place and time). From future vantage point, our action and inaction during this Housing Bubble  make interesting historical studies (the same as we study the Dutch Tulip Bubble – now with hindsight, we can see it as bubble. But to them, at the time, not jumping in was akin to suicide. The same with the Chicago World Fair, and how for the first time, attendees saw electricity. They simply thought they were in Heaven).

I guess part of the fun in living is discovering. Not so much about places and people, but about how we give and take, turned on and off by a certain place or people. Then we learn about our chemistry as well as our social identity.

Orhan Pamuk moves back and forth on the East-West continuum, so he is more attuned on the subject of identity e.g. women who put on veil or unveiled in Snow, his other novel.

We too in some small way, assumed multiple identities every day. Even if we don’t want to, people still put us in a box, a number and a place in line. NEXT.

Now serving G24 at window number 9.

Please punch in your last 4 digits.

Don’t stand too close to the vehicle etc….

So many web sites, so many log on ID‘s.

Avatars and photos. Inner and outer circles.

No wonder at times, we feel neurotic.

Split identities. Being one thing online and another off-line.

And yet another when we are utterly alone, with a clock or a cross on the wall.

Who are you? Who am I? The color of my skin? The pronunciation of my name?

Or the size of my bank account? If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad (sings Cheryl Crow). I hope tonight I don’t have to wish I were my former self. It had its own set of problems back then. Just as now. So just live out the present self. I like it. I like my becoming self. Who else can put up with me besides myself? Wife comes and goes, for no reason at all. It’s me who has to negotiate with my restless self (and muscles) to get some sleep. In restless dream I walk alone,..

Neither East Nor West

Orhan Pamuk must be born of “Other Colors” and in the “Snow” who later built his “Museum of Innocence“.

He got the Nobel Prize for his unique perspective and perception on being in the middle of things: Istanbul.

Pamuk invited us back to his childhood, to view changes through a child’s eyes “when we watched the film, up to the part where

Abraham loved God so much without expecting anything in return, we all cried…then when the lamb suddenly appeared out of nowhere to stand in for his only son, …we busted out in tears” (Museum of Innocence).

In Snow, his character was a journalist who investigated why veiled women went on a suicide binge.

We were invited into the inner sanctum of a mysterious culture, an exclusive club.

There, we learned that they laughed, cried, went to theatre or appeared in play.

The West can learn something and so does the East.

Pamuk truly serves as a hyphen to both worlds.

He inadvertently takes up an ambassadorial role for our new globalized world.

In our broadband world, the speed and spread of information has no longer been an issue.

But information often times don’t equate with knowledge or cross-cultural sensitivity.

Until we enter our customer’s world, with all its habits and behavior.

When Vietnam was partitioned back in 1954, 2 Million North Vietnamese migrated South in “tau ha mom” (French carriers left over from D-day). The majority of them settled near Vung Tau, Bien Hoa and Ban Co.

I was born there at the last stop. Being Northerner inside the house, and Southerner outside, I grew up aware of the subtlety of sub-cultures as they came into contact or even collision.

Later, in America, I seeked out classmates from Ghana, Singapore, Taiwan, Netherland, Argentina …to ask questions, to hear their world views.

Thirty years ago, the issues were information flow (North-South).  Now that Korea and to a certain extent, Vietnam, all got access to broadband and I-phones. The results: South-South lateral flow e.g. Korean soap programing.

Vietnamese companies, meanwhile, are trying to export themselves, from tangible products (rice, garment, cashews and coffee) to intangible products (outsourcing and software testing service.)

Those who enter and embrace customers’ world will win the day.

Those who don’t, won’t.

It took me a while to register Pamuk’s name, the same way North American did with names like “Nguyen”.

But once the lights are dimmed, and you took on the character’s role (suspension of disbelief), you became a “universal” Turk with his hopes, fears and dreams.

Pamuk’s signature is his remembrance of childhood in all its particularity and his negotiating/reconciling East-West identities.

He did not floss over the details. He paid attention to them.

Because of this, he earned our trust and established himself as an observer and author.

He made the mundane his most cherished.

Because of Pamuk, I will never look at the Turks the same way (as friends rather than foreigners).

It’s as if I got new lenses to view the world, from his point of view,  as neither East nor West; just global citizenry who struggle and savor their dreams, exterior and interior.

The problem with our material-centered world is that we focus on the outside and observable at the expense of the inner beauty.

He is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. This is true from Abraham on down to today.

Thanksgiving, tradition and technology

While almost everyone in the US gathers around the traditional meal, here in Vietnam, some people come up with a way to marry tradition with technology: ancestor worship online.

Its highway to eternity has 10,000 plots, already booked for burial and continued ceremonial service online (to accommodate overseas relatives and those who have resettled to urban centers).

Don’t be surprised to see an emerging generation of ICT engineers who ride the waves, from mobile payment to mobile commerce.

If their counterparts in Israel could come up with heritage.com, they sure can match it with ancestor worship online.

Or English learning to match Khan Academy for math tutoring,

English schools sprung up to meet the growing demand for talent infrastructure.

I-pad, I-phone, I-pod could be found at almost every street corner.

Banks are in a race to compete with traditional merchants of gold and hard currency.

One storefront builds out by adding another floor, its neighbors will one-up it ( even hiring away the neighbor’s security guard).

At lunch time (my version of Thanksgiving), I had to zigzag the busy streets to hunt for food.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my family in Virginia perhaps noticed that I missed the Turkey dinner.

A generation back, we wouldn’t know what a turkey tastes like. But I remember our grandmother staying with us, and not the nursing home. My  mom’s generosity spoke louder than all the lessons she had taught at school, whose  sign has always said “Tien Hoc Le, Hau Hoc Van” (First, learn respect, then literature).

With WordPress, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, I can now connect and be connected to thousands of like-minded professionals. Together we are linked for mutual benefits.

It’s an open race.

Occasionally, we pause to reflect on the past and tradition, like Thanksgiving or ancestor worship.

That too can be accommodated digitally. What can be digitized will be digitized. Except for the plot of land, where my grandmother rested in peace.

I had put down on my must-do list to visit her grave, out in the country side of Hai Duong.

But that too, might be digitally do-able.

Perhaps in the very near future, we in Virginia, can put up on the now-used-for-Karaoke screen, the burning of incense at our grandmother’s grave outside of Hai Duong. Then, it’s only a matter of the will because there already is a way.

Technology and tradition. One ushers you into the future, the other reminds you not to forget the past. Happy Thanksgiving!

On becoming

We are diamond in rough cuts.

7 billion of  us. The stats show the costs of raising a child in the US at roughly $200,000.  With educational score cards showing flat line, while other countries are on the up tick (albeit Shanghai focused on rote learning and test preparation), policy makers might have to offshore some departments i.e. sending students to India for math tutoring, for instance. This should reduce school loan a bit.

It might do us some good to have a generation of young people who are globally intelligent (Ask not what the world can do for you…), and know how to exercise and exert soft power . The FT puts the x-President of Brazil and Turkey on the list of top influencers.

Economic standing aside, these leaders know how to position themselves in world affairs. They know the time is now (for the rest to rise).

No one can take the US place at the table. It’s just that the table now accommodates more participants, from G7 to G20 and counting.

On New Year Day, I went shopping. Couldn’t help putting my marketing hat on. Cuban Americans are buying clothing on sales by the bulk. They might be suit-case entrepreneurs (after Christmas is also a good time to travel).

What’s good for the world is linked to what’s good for America (and vice versa).

Certainly it has kept Western Union in the game (money transfer back to Mexico, Philippines and others). Consumption here means production there (and shipping in between). Vietnam shrimp export rises from 1.69 B to 2 B this past year as an example.

We constantly take in new information, brain storm our options and force-rank our choices.

Speed used to be the watch word. It still is. But smart speed (both “aim” and “fire”) – like soft power- is all the more desirable. When head, heart and feet are aligned, we no longer have a rough-cut diamond. We got a priced one that serves a grander purpose.

Instinctively, we in the US know this. That somehow, things will get back to “normal”.

But this time around, we will temper growth with sustainability, strength with wisdom. and fun with respect (raw meat dress, anyone?)

We have grown mature. We have moved further in the scale, toward becoming what we are all along. In crisis, there is opportunity. The phoenix finally emerges out of the ashes to fulfill its destiny, that of true leadership.

transitory stage

I once got a 12-hour lay over in S Korea. The airport boasts itself as ” a world best airport hub”, w/ picture of a janitor-on-duty in men’s bathroom. Every hour, there were a  procession of some sort, complete with traditional gowns and ceremonial hats. Passengers-turn-shoppers (the airport was designed as a Mall) paused and expressed curiosity, but only to resume window shopping.

A flight to Istanbul was full, not with Turks going home from S Korea, but with Koreans vacationing or visiting Turkey, their launching pad to Europe.

The Financial TImes ran a piece on how for the first time, a new release was sold more in e-version than hard cover. Paper or I-Pad?

And social networking turned intranet, turned outsourcing product for other companies to adopt social networking as an official backroom function.

Steven Hawking argues that gravity and other natural forces alone created the Universe (via Big Bang).

Babson (later Babson College) wrote a book entitled “Gravity is our greatest enemy”.

When we buy a pair of Jordan Air, we conspire that “I believe I can fly..touch the sky”.

Anti-gravity urge. Immortality urge. Anti-inertia urge.

I know one thing: I heard so much about Korean ubiquitous broadband connection. So, here I am, with Samsung notebook access for free.

Blog-in-the-air. On the ground, and everywhere.

The new Korean airport appeals more upscale than Korean American Mall in Los Angeles. Perhaps their success lies in grand design, homogeneous work units and morale -average work week of 50 hours, as compared to the French 35.

It rained slightly at noon here in S Korea and made the place seems surreal.

I read about the bomb scare in Miami airport. And hurricanes in N Carolina.

Hope my plane can land in Atlanta as planned.

There will still be another short hop before I get to sleep in my bed at home.

Unemployment figures are still bad. Made the Federal Reserves frown.

They should send us money, hence turning jobless folks into active shoppers

(by sending vouchers good only for shopping, similar to cash-4-clunkler). The Korean airport certainly did this by having it built into their architectural design. People were crowding at the tobacco and malt counters. I remember that Korean’s GDP growth, the last time I looked, was somewhere positively .01 percent. At least, in this part of the world, one can find some positive signs, besides the janitorial logo which boasts  “a world best airport hub”. I concurred, since I took a nap undisturbed (unlike chairs that were designed to deter such activity in Miami airport or others). In marketing, it’s called differentiation and late mover’s advantage. You can change marketing practices, but you cannot change the man and his habits. Much less 7 habits of ineffective people.