Tag: Twentieth Century

Human spirit as Motivator

Papillon is a real-life recount of  an undefeated spirit. Viktor Frankl talks about “they can take my body but not the spirit that is in me”.

In war, down the trenches, with bullets zipping by, what causes a man to stay put?

No greater love than a man who lays down his life for a friend. Comradeship.

Mike Murphy, a SEAL, a Penn Stater, went out in the clear for better wireless signals, knowingly sacrificed his life to save his troop.

Human spirits.

Higher purpose.

Maslow perhaps touched on this by naming it “self-actualization“.

In War and Peace, we read about the Russian army defended Motherland after Napoleon had burned down Moscow.

Wounded bodies, but not spirits.

United Flight 93 passengers decided in split seconds to go down in style.

In 300, the movie, their leader retorts that (when aides brought up bad news that the enemies’ arrows would rain down and cover the sky) “good, we will fight in the shade then”.

Human spirits.

Each man’s history tends to condense in those few decisive turns.

Shun not the confluence of events.

In crisis, show confidence and judgement. When it’s 50-50 split, throw in the human spirit. The tie-breaker.

The quant could never factor this quality on their spread sheets.

They aren’t trained to identify much less put a dollar value on it.

But since time began, we know it exists. One more (aerobic) step, one more cold call (Colonel Sanders), one more pregnancy unaborted.

The Vietnamese eat from a common rice pot. There is always one extra bowl and a pair of chopsticks just in case.

I was at RockStorm last night (stadium concert). The other numbers were OK.

But when Noi Vong Tay Lon (Let’s join hands) was up, I heard a loud chorus “the wild is calling us to rejoin disparaged shores”. Old wine in new skins. The spirit of unity expressed in new genre (rock was first associated with individuality and independence).

In Hotel California, we hear that “we haven’t had that spirit since 1969”.

Human spirit.

Tell me it did not exist, too intangible, hard to pin down.

I will tell you history is made of exactly that, whether or not historians could pin it down. That which is unseen is stronger than that which is seen.

Romancing Saigon

Good luck! Bit it’s better  for you to wait until the scorching heat subsides, before you have a chance.

There are layers to Saigon, like you would peeling an onion.

Cafe Sua Da prices fluctuate from one street corner to the next.

On the main tourist strip, you still find Zippo lighters and even dog tags next to pirated copies of Vietnam War classics.

In fact, you don’t need to visit the museum of war (atrocities) to turn the clock back. The whole city could be viewed as a museum of war. The battle of ideology 1963, battle of Tet 1968 all took place here . Just walk the streets, you can relive the intensity of those struggles. Yet, in danger, there are romances. People live faster lives (translated to shorter ones). Self-immolated monk wasn’t the only one who burned himself to nirvana. Privileged youth are fast-tracking there as well, a phenomenon familiar to US “urban youth” (whose life expectation has  been rumored to be just above the legal drinking age.) Here, it’s already an improvement as compared to back then when widows and orphans were common.

A plane load of orphans took off and crashed just before the city itself “fell” to the hands of victors.

Now, you find bars. reincarnated versions of what used to be night clubs, hang-out places for GI‘s and their unspent payrolls. Today, beers popped open. Conversation started, most of which like two ships passing in the night. And young backpackers, many of  whom with Lonely planet’s guide, searching frantically to geo-ID themselves.

Oh well, drop those guides. Follow your instincts. Live a little. risk a little. Romance it. Don’t expect everything is set.

But then, what do you expect. War time might be over, but it’s still a “war zone”.

Can’t miss that tank on permanent display at Independent Palace.

Yes, you will find romance, but the price is to drop your guards, your expectations and prejudices. Saigon and Vietnam always reward seekers. But serious inquirers only. And the down payment is stiff, once paid in blood during the conflict.

And pain lingers on. Someone has to pay for reparation. It might as well be you. And you, and you. Sorry to pass on the virus which I myself have contracted while romancing Saigon.

Eventually

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry” p.249 A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway was lucid about war and the tolls it exacts at a personal level. We are in a hurry, but death isn’t. We could have been dead at birth.  Why be in a hurry?

I closed the book feeling so empty. Especially when it ends with THE END in caps.

Is this how my world and yours will end? IN CAPS? in the rain?

Why are we still hurting each other? To what end?

Greed has no end. I know that.

Jealousy as well.

But goodness and kindness ? Are they in short supply?

If we weren’t around at all – what opportunities have we lost? gained? missed?

Life saga doesn’t just happen in movies. It happens in real life. Another day at work, another child is born into this pain-filled world. A funeral (a good sight, since it marks THE END of a hopefully good life).

What about hope?

Have we lost the ability to dream?

Fire, Ready, Aim.,

I love the Romantics yet I ended up being a Realist.

Many of my age already turned cynical.

I haven’t heard joy and laughter from people of my age for a while.

What happened to those baby-faces? Lost innocence?

Don’t cave in.

It will get you eventually. Hence buying for time. Enjoy the ride.

Be not in any special hurry!

Rain and tears

In the three months that I was in Vietnam, I have seen more rain and tears than 3 years in the US.

When it rains, it pours. Then, it all of a sudden clears up. Branches and trees start to breathe and “branch out”.

The tears’ part came from funerals that have a way to announce themselves, some even hired gay performers to lament on the bereaved’s behalf.

But not all are rain and tears here in the city.

I just viewed a clip taped at ICT conference last year,  showing pole dancers (w/out the poles) in between general sessions.

The entertainment agents here are also busy at events all over the city.

Things are looking up even as rain and tears flow down.

What is down will sow the seeds for what is up.

Environmental and social ecosystem: learn from others’ mistakes,

stay in the forefront of change and surf the waves.

We still see Monkey Bridge outside the city.  Other bridges are more modern, but shared by bikes, buses and trains.

During my time away, I guess there were enough rain and tears to overflow city rivers and canals.

Younger generations just take things at face values. Besides, why ponder and bewildered by things one cannot change. Just be on the move, constantly. People in motion. Fingers in motion (playing games). Products and services in motion (KFC and pizza delivered on bikes).

I heard that catering is an emerging business. Why not “in-home” cuisine as prelude to in-home care. Enough rain and tears. Now is the time for laughing and not lamenting, joy and not sorrow.  Enough rain and tears to last a life time. From here on, update that software version in the head to enjoy Peace Time Vietnam.

Heterogeneous country, homogeneous thought

Google CEO blurted out what we all know (that tech moves at 3 times faster than other business sectors, who in turn, are 3X than the government). We are analog-built e.g. eating,  buying and thinking habits, while techies thought processing power is on a different plane e.g. Cold-War B53 bomb in TX is finally being disassembled and junked.

A Swedish public health expert gave a TEDx talk some years ago. He put up some slides which span 200 years just to show how entrenched we are in yesterday’s thinking (e.g. that women in emerging nations have a lot of children while the opposite is now true). In short, formative years continue to cloud our lenses (or our teachers’ who got their data from post- War textbooks). Another stat: more deaths from suicide in the US (mostly men in their mid-50’s) than from automobile accidents. Or more Christian in China, than the membership of the Communist Party.

Or  thanks to rural broadband, the creative class in the US can finally afford housing and pursuit their passion, let’s say in software programming, in 2nd-tier cities like Seattle, Austin (as opposed to New York and San Francisco).

One more thing. Back in the days when America found it hard to accept a President who was Catholic

and the only “Muslim” brother who left his last name blank (X). The Big Three in Detroit, Big Three in Broadcasting, and a healthy middle class, with Union wages. Now, things get splintered of, with MNC’s paying zero domestic tax (GE), and CDO peddlers paying no COD (it’s still a mystery that Madoff was the only fall guy – whose rehearsed bio was …”I was an underdog when I started in brokerage, so I got to have my revenge at ‘them'” ” we contemplated suicide but it’s our son that followed it through). The same tax codes hasn’t been 21st-century compliant enough to catch clever white-collar looters.

Meanwhile, across the pond, it will take another three decades for China’s branding to rise (The Chinese Dream) just as it has taken them 3 decades to ramp up manufacturing and exports. Reverse engineering will be followed by reverse branding. Their state machinery will be hard at work to take apart every element that make Cola and IBM global brands.

(try to top Steve Jobs, the marketer who still got marketed in his death: simple and elegant cover featuring his signature stare).

First wave will be tourists. Second wave, engineering students . Third wave, marketing catalysts, Huawei and Haier, try to pry open the US-EU domestic markets (foreign in their perspective). At today’s speed, even Toyota with its continuous improvement still can’t compete with revived brands like VW.  It seems that John Le Carre is not the only one whose career and mindset are stuck in Cold War era. Cuba still has 1950’s automobiles crowding the streets. At least, we must admit they don’t make things like that any more. Should have kept jobs in Indiana, and not India.

Things were moving quite rapidly at the bottom line, and slow at topline.