Tag: United Airlines Flight 93

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.

If you could read me

You would find that I am surprised by the number of employees Google and Apple employed only 75,000 combined (compared that with HP, GM or US Government‘s).

You would find that I still remember “the jumpers” on 9/11, and that we lost good men and women on United Flight 93, as well as Peter Jennings of ABC News.

You would find that after the ATT and T-Mobile proposed merger (or blocked, if DOJ won), I would be at a total loss in a post-telecom world (now they call it Information Technology, once convergence is completed). if Bill Gates, then, at the top of his form, couldn’t see the relevance of the Internet, then who would? Now, people are rolling out 3-D TV‘s and Google glasses.

Speaking of which, the price of contact lenses never dropped in the 30 years.

If you could read my mind, you would say I am crazy to be bothered with world events.

With technology and its ever-shortened cycles (Editor of Techcrunch even stepped down to handle CrunchFund), we need algorithms like Summl to sort out relevance for us.

I forgot to plug-in the landline wire after the Cable guy had installed my video, broadband and phone. It’s a sign that I am so used to wireless devices.

If you could read my  mind, you would know I long for “Yesterday” , not so much for the brick phone (Motorola) with accompanied battery pack. A lot of people still enjoy having their 2500 phone set, with its loud and reliable ring tone for incoming calls (for outgoing calls, the ringing  was “manufactured” by the phone company while waiting for the call to be connected). BTW, a friend noticed that in the US , graves sites are often hidden among well-manicured lawn. Yes, it’s a country that looks forward to  the future, unlike in Italy, where there is a profession called Restoration (Art).

If you could read my mind, you would know that I respect my colleagues who day-in-and-day-out , post relevant and professional tips that pay-forward.

If you could read my mind, you would know that I have never been good at being a fake, so I might as well be authentic.

If you could read my mind, you would know that you and I have been bystanders watching systemic and structural changes (outsourcing and automation).

It happened even when we were asleep. It’s like when your kids all of a sudden need new uniforms, a set of bras, a larger pair of shoes. Before you know it, the frog could no longer flex its muscles having enjoyed a slow-heated bath for too long.

If you could read my mind, you would know I dread the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

I can’t explain to my kids what Post-traumatic stress is e.g. exiling from home, a marriage break-up, a job disappearance etc….  I might be over-protective, but I know they grow up with situation awareness, limited options, forced choice, like the jumpers’ on 9/11 as they escaped the towering inferno, even for a brief few seconds of free-falling.

Wonder if we could read their minds on that fateful  day!

Men on the verge of nervous break-down

Here comes the beaver or the beer. Whatever handy to help men cope with his “manpression”.

It is common knowledge that men hardly ask for directions when lost, much less share their problems. Women fare better, whether it’s over sweet, or sweat.

Jodi Foster, most admired for being an accomplished Yale actress-director, has had frequent run-ins with the types: from Taxi Driver (are you talking to me?), to Hannibal the Cannibal (I will tell you if you tell me) to Mel Gibson (Please tell it to the Beaver).

21st-century men are on the verge of a nervous breakdown (unless they belong to the superclass who got together to “discuss” wealth-sharing): warfare almost got outsourced completely to drones, customer service to foreigners, and child care to the state/single-parents.

This recession brought to surface a protracted problem: there are no more Happy Days of lunch-box toting through the gates of smokestacks workplace (see “the Deer Hunter” and the camaraderie of men).

I haven’t added another layer of culture on top of that: that of machismo men (South America, Middle-East), or penchant for face-saving (from Samurai to Confucius social order and harmony).

Think about the Tunisian vegetable vendor. In a NYT op-ed, Cohen penned “people (in the Middle East) with a job and prospect, don’t need virgins in heaven”.

We have had 8% unemployment, most likely men (like in the Shining “I am so bored, I am so bored …”)  join day-time TV  audience (who BTW, haven’t been catered to due to their huge lack in purchasing power). So, Ellen and Oprah just have to follow the money. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/america-middle-class-crisis-sobering-facts-141947274.html

Meanwhile, our men, many in construction and financial, are on the verge of nervous break down (not all can travel to Australia or Japan to help rebuild). The President Council for Economic Advisors is cautioned to come up with construction projects  such as safety bunkers, to prevent massive death tolls caused by twisters and tornadoes.

It’s so fitting that BL’s raid still involved human.

Rainbow Six and an army of stay-at-home dads should both be honored. After all, when push comes to shove, as in United Flight 93, it’s men on the verge of nervous break-down who decided to lay down their lives for others. Men may seek help (from beer or beaver), but never for directions. There simply are no substitute for courage and survival instinct. Last Sunday’s event (the getting of Bin Laden) was cause for celebration: the human race is still in tact, male and female, together subdue the Earth (or the enemies, our thorns in the flesh).

Growing old in post 9/11 era

Younger generations are growing up digital. I grow old in post 9/11. We were bumping along, thinking the dot.com burst was the story of the Century. Then, the unthinkable happened. Brave were the men on United Flight 93. Our lives have never been the same since (collective survivor’s guilt).  An act of outright violence needed to be dealt with. It was one thing for the French to vent about McDonalisation or Disneylandisation in Paris. But it’s quite another to plot and plan an attack on American soil to bring about caliphate.

Now they know. Now we know. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

The journey is still a reward. But on that journey, we bumped into all sorts of people (brave and abhorrable) . Quite an inconvenient truth. Bin Laden wasn’t the only one who got grey hair (or beard). This son of a construction tycoon would rather live in concrete than cave, not unlike other 21st-century men who now frequent spa and salon. A journalist teacher said it aptly, if only we had someone to blame for Vietnam as we had for Afghanistan.

On Sunday night, we forgot the financial bubble, the rising gas price and the drought in credits and jobs.

We got some closure, at least for the families of victims and heroes on United 93 (although dead, but they took matters into their own hands, hence, the term “victims” were deemed inappropriate).

George Harrison sang about “What is life” while his more influential band mate, died of senseless violence, “Imagine there’s no religion”. He must have seen the devastation done in the name of this God and that God, so his vision (often times through a pair of sunglasses) was without heaven (and certainly no virgins in neverland).

For me, with no sunglasses, I see life through that gaping hole of NYC ‘s two missing front teeth (courtesy of Tom Wolfe).

I see life from both sides now, from dot.com boom to housing burst.

I am growing old digitally in post 9/11 era.