Tag: United States

the Nguyen

In college, I could just tell when teachers got to my name: they couldn’t pronounce it. To save time, I just said “here”.

This was Penn State, late 70’s, when a name like Carter from Georgia could barely register in Washington Belt Way.

Now a random walk on the web tells me the Nguyen have finally gained some noteriety (not as popular as the Smith or Cosby but familiarity bred comfort).

If you were to google “Nguyen”, you would get Dat Nguyen (used to play the NFL for the Cowboys), Tila (Nguyen) Tequila (every other pictures) and Betty Nguyen (weekend anchor of CNN).  But you will also get Scotty Nguyen (poker face) and one-eye Nguyen (Agent Orange piece disguised under Nguyen),

Lee Nguyen (guitar player) and Colonel Loan’s war-cruelty photo.

The Nguyen dynasty has scattered to the four corners of the earth, evolving and adapting to opportunities and obstacles, not unlike Venture Capitalists, whose few bets made it while many didn’t.

Being in communication, I try to  ” see ourselves as others see us” .  And the best place to start is to Google for this sort of thing. Let’s take Tila to start our “beer summit”.

She was getting into fights while in school. Got put in “Buddhist shut-in” and from there (Texas) went to Hollywood (hopefully not on a Greyhound bus) to realize her American dream.  MTV gave her a contract, and the rest was history. She was quoted at one point saying she would want to be the US ambassador to Vietnam.

Vietnam watch out! Tila is coming (if history repeats itself, this is not the first time a well-known Hollywood actress wanted to grace Hanoi playground. Jane Fonda beat her to the punch). Or in Second Life, Tila will actually become the virtual ambassador if e-citizens elected her using their tokens.

VP Nguyen Cao Ky once said that he wanted to keep his last name so he could come back to Vietnam without sounding like a foreigner. Well, he did.

His daughter took that to the next level: keeping her father’s name in its entirety, while adding and ending it with her  first name (Nguyen Cao Ky + Duyen). She made it as a co-host of Paris By Night video series (celeb life style: got to change who you hang out with, and while at it, reinvent yourself). If history repeats itself, Brad and Angelina beat her to the punch as well (they rode in a scooter before the helmet law came into effect a while back).

So back to our Google search for the Nguyen. Back then, our ancestors weren’t originally Nguyen. The sad truth was, we adapted to the King’s demand and command (conformity and allegiance).  Nguyen has morphed into a generic code,

with mixed connotations: part Chinese, part French, part US, and now the Seven Seas.

The Nguyen are now inter-marrying (as in my families), and the third generation of Nguyen might still bear the name, but the gene mutation has morphed beyond recognition (unless kids wear “ao dai”  during Tet). My nephew and niece inter-married

and produced offerings of mixed heritage. Our Thanksgiving at times, looks like a UN Security Council, deciding on the fate

of Syrian Chemical Weapon Disposal.

Maybe someday, they will put a Nguyen in the White House. One term would be fine. Let’s see if he/she can do better than his/her predecessors.

Or the system (which according to the latest CNN poll, 86% said the government is broken) itself not only helps this future Nguyen look Presidential, but also renders him/her ineffectual. I broke my arm on my first month learning Kung-Fu. It hurt like hell. Took a long time to heal. Perhaps something broken can be healed. First: recognition of the pain. Second: be patient. Third: put on a cast to speed up recovery. In my case, it was a long summer staying indoors.

We won’t hear much about  US might or Exceptionalism in near term.

Friedman (of the Flat World) beat me to it in his op-ed “fat years, lean years”. Or like Chairman of HSBC is coming out with “Good values”, a call for reflections. It would be interesting to see the turn-out in Las Vegas Caesars (Coliseum  built for Celine Dion, whose Roman original motif was blood sports) to hear Former President Bill Clinton (who charged for a talk about “global interdependence” themes).

That broken arm the summer of my Junior High (while “tous les garcons et les filles de mon age, …se promene dans la rue) set me on a different course ever since: pause to think and be reflective . The US and the Nguyen got something in common: we both had been very ambitious to the point of having an illusion of grandeur until the crash. I and many other Nguyen knew it well: even in and through a worst-case scenario, we have managed to get PhD’s, started companies, invented products and run for office.

I still know when that slight pause came during roll call. But these days, it just my first name that they had trouble pronouncing. If only they knew that it meant “win”, as in win-win solution. At least, we got pass the Nguyen part. Just Google them, and find out for yourselves. It’s the same story you would find in NYT today about a Hasidic matriarch who came and had 2000 descendants. It’s the story that repeats itself time and time again here in America. It’s your story. It’s our story.

 

Traditions: collide and compromise

East meets West. New Year and Valentine’s. Families vs lovers.

In Vietnam, with a strong Confucian foundation, filial quality stands above all else.

So on that first day of this year of the Tiger, sons and daughters are expected to show up first thing at the parents’ door steps.

Then, in the evening, this year only, they can sneak out to rendezvous with their sweethearts on Valentines Day.

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/lifestyle/201002/Tet-trumps-Valentine%E2%80%99s-Day-in-Vietnam-894718/

If you took the fireworks in major cities into the mix, we are talking about Western traditions wrapping around Eastern culture.

Today, it’s President Day in the US. And President Obama will face tough choices: to meet with the Dalai Lama, risking to alienate a huge bond holder.

We expect Presidents to take a stand at the crossroad: Kennedy facing up to the Cuban invasion, Johnson choosing between the Great Society or inheriting French Vietnam, and now Obama electing to have government intervention and involvement in financial institutions.

Values often collide and force a compromise.

You can measure a man’s maturity by seeing how many of those compromises he has made. (And his integrity by how few).

By design, we are made of “opposites attract” from a set of parents. No wonder we walk that tight rope our whole life (at least I have) with the creative tension of push and pull.

The only way to keep the balance is to move forward, inadvertently, creating a Third force, a synthesis. Einstein once said life was like riding a bicycle, you needed to keep paddling forward to stay in balance.

Those in sales can recognize this dynamic: corporate expectation versus market reality. Customers expectations ride on top of lab engineers’ vision.

(Google video store had been a flop before the YouTube acquisition).

So, red lucky envelope or heart-shape chocolate? Just one day, but an important one, we saw a rare eclipse. In Vietnam, young lovers have never celebrated  New Year this eagerly. They have their own agenda. And sneaking out will only make forbidden fruit taste all the more sweeter. And years from now, it will be their turn to scold their young ones for not showing up first thing (with a mischievous smile of course). This generation wants it both ways, without compromise. Text and talk.

globalize, empathize and digitize

It’s Kitchen God day in Asia.

Super Bowl weekend here in Miami.

And the DOW is down across the board.

Oh when the Saints oh marching in….

People were guessing, just like Mr Watson, that maybe the world can make use of a few computers, or move to digitization perhaps 15-20% of current load. Well “you’ve got news”: when e-government and e-MR digitization finished their conversion, we will be in for a surprise: perhaps more than 50%-80% current work load will get digitized (the more service-oriented the economy, the higher the percentage).

At this rate, we will be tutored by online English and Math in-pat teachers (as opposed to expats).

Pepsi decided against participating in the Super Bowl, a move which signifies the fork on the road: the online world now commands huge Corporate dollars traditionally allocated to the big Three over the past six decades.

New Orléans will celebrate, no matter what. Just showing up this Sunday has already been more than a boost for this Katrina-ridden town.

Next weekend, more than a billion and a half will celebrate the year of the Tiger.

On top of that, we got Valentine and President Day here in the US.

A warm spot in the midst of uncertain news and unwelcome weather.

Hold it: Defense, defense, defense.

For three hours this Sunday, I will join in and try to forget all bad news.

And I trust that our Kitchen God will bring full report Upstairs.

In Asia, we got our priorities right: food comes first. It brings harmony and social cohesiveness.

You eat soup, not Campbell, but from a huge common broth (Pho).  It’s up to you to throw in your basil leaves.

But on a cold evening, the context which gave rise to the Noodle King in Japan, there is nothing comes close to a shared bowl of Pho with friends.

New Orleans also knows how to celebrate, to put emphasis on food and drink (French Quarter). No wonder the Colonial theme pervades, both Hanoi and New Orleans : the coffee and pastries. Bon Vivant. After all, the French are now factoring in Happiness into their GDP equation, to count what really counts, according to their worldview.

I can empathize with that. After all, I learned my conjugation charts and early childhood songs, deciphering on the map where Lyons,  and Marseilles were. I know in this globalized world, we evolve, and borrow brilliance. We might try to solve one problem and end up generating a host of others.

The French got their shares. So have we. But this Sunday, some of their descendants will march and cheer. And I “want to be in that number, Oh when the Saints are marching in.” Today and tomorrow, Best Buy will sell a lot of HDTV‘s. Build it (digitizing), they will come. Still cheaper than going down there (or stuck in a snow storm with canceled flights), secure tail-gate parking, get to the stadium and not even sure you could get that kind of close-up views.

If you put TV and computer screen time together, we are on the way to be couch-potato nation. That’s one thing the world has in common, World Cup or Super Bowl, besides Katrina-size disasters.

 

Amuse ourselves to the next level

Neil Postman didn’t see the rise of game online when he penned “Amuse ourselves to death”.

But he was on to something worth discussing: we are heading toward becoming a couch-potato nation

or in China, Internet-addict camp.

When Chinese kids get sent to these internet addict camps, we witness another unintended consequence of our high-tech living.

This puts Mr Watson in the early days of IBM to shame. He said the world market could use a few, but no more than a dozen machines.

Nobody could foresee the fall-below-the-line price of the chip, maybe except for Gordon Moore who predicted the doubling of chip speed every 18 months.

My kid watches her cartoon on Hulu. Asked why she didn’t want to watch it on TV. She said on broadband, she could watch it when she wanted it.

This kid even wants control, and not waits for a scheduled time by the network.

I will have to put a cooking alarm clock next to her desk just to limit her screen time.

Or let her “amuse herself to the next level”, the highest of which is at the Internet addict camp. Long way from Florida. And she will have to speak Chinese to

understand guard’s command. Maybe it’s not a bad idea, the unintended consequence of it all: internet addicts from the West get sent to Chinese internet-addict camps,

thus picking up a foreign language.

Neil Postman built his premise on the 4-hour average  (TV watching). Now it’s 5 hours, not counting the many hours online.

No wonder advertising appears in most unlikely places: pop up (download wait), stand-on (beer aisle), stare at while in a moving elevator or taxi cab.

We are living on New York minutes, even if we are  not physically there. Because New York is now more than a New Year countdown. It’s every day’s ticking, a state of mind. No more Crocodile Dundee coming to New York.

New York is now in Dundee’ Australian back waters. Hello, hello, hello…..

Luckily, we have a built-in alarm clock : it’s our bladder. Nature break. Machines will have to wait. Human will survive and be adaptive. Continuous re-invention.

To the next level of distraction and anesthesia.

Our dichotomy

Abundance or shortage? Keynes or Milton Friedman? The quants rule? Human beings are selfish or empathic? what is the optimal point for happiness?

Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the Union, yet ranked the Happiest. New York City crime rates are at the lowest in decades.

South Korea, always at war, yet always connected.

And forget what you think you know about China i.e. traditional, passive-aggressive (all these may still be true with interior China). At least, their nouveaux riche haven’t behaved as counterparts in the US (Vegas limo and strip club): they bought Lenovo and Hummers.

Since the New Year, we heard that celebrities have been arrested almost every other week (Denver, West Virginia).

Fear of success.

And then, the real 17+% unemployed in the US, fear of failure? Sedated and in need of Shock treatments.

The age of adjusted expectations. Self-correcting amidst progress and plenty.

Fast toaster (Subway). Bullet train. Slow bureaucracy.

One advertising slogan “I hate to wait” came to mind.

Cultures and companies proceed at different speeds.

Search and rescue teams are now leaving Haiti. Their time and mission has come to an end.

Mid-term relief organizations now take ober. Then long-term sustained development NGOs will stay the course

piling on top of the 10,000 counterparts who had already been there before the quake.

News organizations such as CNN and CBS have stepped up to the plate, proving themselves worthy of our attention.

But then, where were they during the Iranian post-election showdown? Twitter ruled back then and there.

So we go back to our dichotomy of Command/control vs consumer/citizenry movement, Keynesian vs Milton, and

whether human nature are empathic or dog-eat-dog ? The Net is neutral. It blinks and waits for our clicks.

No wonder teens are into Vampires, a state of not living, yet not vanishing. Perfect commentary about our current state of ambivalence.

Poor surviving but wounded Haitians! I could not finish the evening news yesterday. Maybe we are empathic creatures after all.

 

tale of a survivor

A Canadian lady, back from visiting her family in India, was aboard the flight to Detroit on Christmas day.http://www.thecanadianpress.com/english/online/OnlineFullStory.aspx?filename=p122649A&newsitemid=27268234&languageid=1

She recalled vivid details of near-miss explosion, the terror and the bravery of passengers and crews.

We cannot control some events, but we can control our reaction (10/90 rule).

As far as stats , the chance for us to get hit by a car is much higher (1/80) vs (1/800,000 by a terrorist) in our life time.

But, for those of us on business frequent flying list, bump that up a bit.

These past few years, American stay put more, move less. Many just want to stay in their house, without it being foreclosed.

We are dealing with an atmosphere of insecurity more than fear. Insecurity makes us loose sleep, fear helps us prepared.

The perpetrator was known as son of a banker, sent to first-rate school in England (I had some Nigerian graduate school classmates whose intellectual mind I admired).  In contrast, Prince William, born of royalty, decided to pursue and focus on a S & R military career. One intends to destroy and take people with him, the other, saves lives.

Same age group, different sets of orientation.

What I detest are people who expound a certain view, and urge the restless and radical to go out and “just do it”.

N American kids would take that as a “call of the mall” and go out to buy a pair of Nike.

These days I can’t avoid hearing about the “marketing” damage Tiger’s downfall wrought.

This holiday could have been much gloomier but thank God, it’s behind us.

Four young men: the Prince who slept a homeless night in the street of London, a banker’s son who should have traveled with his underwear inside out (like Madonna), Tiger who no longer acts his name, and the Dutch producer enjoys his well-deserving sunshine in Miami after a brief stop in Detroit.

Come on boys! Let’s act like men. Had it still been “hunter and gatherer society”, we would have marched you deep into the trail

and had you haul wild animals back for supper. Life has been hard, digital or analog, even without fanatics.

The Canadian lady said she threw up when finally safe inside the passenger lounge.  Asked if she would fly again, the answer was , perhaps not American. We need some brand reinvigorating here.

 

Decoding America

It’s a grand title. But the intention is put up some guide posts to mark the new (Lonely) American trail

Or else, new comers to America, reading Orientation web sites only, would end up like the Oregon couple who trusted solely on GPS readout, without consulting paper maps.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100102/ap_on_hi_te/us_stranded_motorists

We learn and continue to refine our learning by decoding the multiple stimuli and messages thrown at us.

America is turning into a giant swap meet, and price doesn’t matter much. It’s our time, attention and labor.

If I were to advise incoming students, from China, India or Vietnam, I would point out that:

– In America, neighbors while living close by, are really far from you (proximity has nothing to do with social grouping)

– Inter-racial relations have improved a bit, but precisely in the cities, where one finds a higher concentration of people from various ethnic origins, that a higher rule takes over: survival in the urban jungle.

(Vietnamese students abroad, like in Russia, and recently America, should be vigilant about their own safety).

– clothing has been defining people since the beginning of time. Now, more than ever with cheaper imports (I spent more money on suits/ties but wore them the least. Invest on your informal clothing, which got more wear per dollar spent : 80/20 rule).

– when they start addressing you by your last name, watch out for the pitch. Not all sales pitches are bad. Just bad salesmen.

– American love their gadgets: it started out with horseshoes, guns and knives. Now everyone’s garage is like a pawn shop.

– People are always searching for another Gold Rush. But it’s those who sell picks and shovels who end up reaping the windfall.

Buffet is investing in railroad again, because of the high price of oil. Tools=treasures.

– Company’s parties are controlled environment. So are all parties, including the ones in your house. Neighbors love to dial 911.

– Cooking is not cool. Cleaning is.(German influence: efficiency. Cleanliness is next to godliness). Huge grills, small hamburgers and hot dogs. (once again, tool rules).  No place to buy your meals on New Year Day or Christmas Day. Be prepared.

– Respect your prospect’s time by being over-prepared. Remember the tip of the iceberg: every day is presentation day. And this means controlling your weight, your appearance, your speech and your up-to-date knowledge.  America has been and will always be a Revolution-in-origin, Evolution-in-progress Nation, where the best of everyone is expected. It’s a society with built-in obsolescence. Today’s best invention is tomorrow’s laughing-stock (Boom Box, VHS, IBM, MS, Kodak).

– Nobody seems to take anything personally. They can disagree all night and then achieve consensus in the morning. Unlike other countries (Korea or Italy) where disagreement led to violence in the legislative chamber. (J Kerry is now Head of State).

– And finally, America values your contribution: the President said he opened to all ideas, big or small, to help create jobs. Hope he doesn’t drop the ball, just because of one Nigerian brat trying to put something in his underwear in flight. American leaders are so secure that they are willing to have those “teachable moments”. They know that pride (know-it-all) comes before the fall.

Good luck with your visa application to come to the US to study. Your future is bright, because you don’t get in your own way. So will everyone else, who is busy with their social network, and backyard grills. Remember, virtual neighbors are the best. They can’t knock on your door and borrow some tools, albeit you only use it occasionally (80/20 rule).

On being a foreigner

Train, plane or automobile, we all try to get somewhere, point A to point B.

Far enough to be looked at as “foreigner”.

The Economist has a piece on this subject to highlight the decade of globalization.

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15108690&source=hptextfeature

I was surprised to find Vietnam, especially in HCMC and Hanoi, to be very cosmopolitan i.e. a large body of expats and international tourists. Meanwhile, young Vietnamese themselves travel overseas for educational and occupational opportunities.

Recent news showed violent incidents among the Vietnamese expat workers in Eastern Europe and Vietnamese students in Taiwan.

This is a withdrawal syndrome of a minority group (cocoon) when facing the “threat” of a larger majority, the Others.

And while regrouping, they turn onto each other, love or hate. It happened in Paris with the Russian immigrants, Little Italy in the US etc..

In the 1920’s, Americans found Paris, its cuisine and culture (as Parisians perhaps now discovering Big Mac and small Mickey) fascinating. Hemingway and Maugham all had memorable recollection on this era.

Something about greeting the New Year in a foreign land, far away from home.

The balloons, the balls and booze are the same, yet in the company of strangers, one experiences “lonely crowd” syndrome.

And everybody is aware that while it is New Year there, it’s not yet New Year else where (a testimony to our globalized world) e.g. Russian New Year lands on the 13th, Chinese a month later etc….

The Greek have two different words to express this sense of time: kairos and chronos.

Kairos is the fullness of time, while chronos is just the ticking of time (like 60 minutes on CBS, or 24 hours with Jack Bauer). In Kairos, one can greet the New Year with a sense of awe and anxiety e.g. a decade ago with the Y2K scare. Kairos brings about convergence of chances and choices. Cultivation and harvest time.

Other time zones will have to endure the chonos, to take their turn at counting down. Ten, nine, ….

Everybody sings Abba’s “Happy New Year“. Cheap champagne was passed around. Balloons were popped. Kessler described this experience of Russian celebrating their expat New Year in lowly quarter of Paris (The Night of the Emperors).

It is only to show that we have no control over the passing of time, and the changing of places.

More and more cities are being transformed to accommodate population growth. And real estate are in demand, driving the poor to the outer edges. Dark side of change.

The hard part is to get pass that denial: the more things stay the same, the more they have to change.

Thatcher was found to be utterly against the influx of Boat People into former British Hong Kong.

And look at where things are now . The economy in Asia is resilient, just as its people.

In this 21st century, the real foreigness perhaps lies within ourselves: that ardent refusal to admit that the world had moved on, and that it will be easier to be Margaret Mead than Margaret Thatcher. Not with the broadband penetration, not with the mobility of smart phones, and not with supersonic boom in E commerce and global commerce. If Made-In-China is no longer foreign, then nothing is foreign today. Just a hop on the plane, you will be from point A getting to point B.

Global shuttle and reshuffling of the card deck. An illness or blessing? All in the eyes of the beholder. But no longer a foreigner in 20th-century sense. Not with I-pod, I-phone and I-nternet.

BYOD

The Economist Christmas Special was about America, a Ponzi scheme that works.

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15108634&source=hptextfeature

It projects 1 Billion Americans by 2100.

With its many niches, America seems to offer a bit of everything, for everybody: hunting, boozing, gambling, church-going and freedom to protest.

I remember my first Christmas, living humbly in a cold basement. But I created my version of America by inviting Vietnamese Students at Penn State to come over for a party, albeit makeshift. We dimmed out the lights and had a disco party (mid-70’s).

My America.

No eggnog, fruit cake or tinsel. Just foreign students away from home, sharing a common bond of humanity and most pressingly, in need of  heat (it was cold in Winter 76).

People who wouldn’t otherwise have been friends: a hippie guy with hair down to his knees, a short guy majoring in Agronomy and a French-major gal with a condescending air about her.  Yet, they came, at my invitation. First Christmas in America was our common denominator. It could have been a Roger Altman‘s movie: post-card X-mas outside, Saigon-like inside.

With sweaters over shiny shirts, every guy in the room had hair down to his neck.

Winter in cold Pennsylvania. Stores were closed and foreign students had no place to go.

With plenty of snow outside (by then, our early fascination with the white stuff had been melted away), and over hot chocolate, I remember quoting Shakespeare, that “life is just a stage, and we are here to play out our role -“.

We were joined by a throng of immigrants, before and after us, to becoming American.

The language and culture part came later (naturalized).

The lingering part was hard: neither here nor there.

(like the shopper gauging which cashier to line up behind just to end up in the longest line).

Back then, we couldn’t use the phone, since it was very expensive if possible at all.

Some people even had their calls patched through Canada. Now, even the I-phone got de-commoditized via I phone 5c.

To me, it was a one-way journey (25 years later, I found I had been wrong then).

Whatever America has to offer:  from McCafe to McAfee, Morse code to Moore’s Law, it wasn’t without a price :”ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”.

And church services would close with “who among you would stand up and give your life for the mission”, F/T or P/T”

(silence, organ music, and peer pressure to solicit your time or donation to the cause).

The Ponzi scheme that works. More will join us here in America, and it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy: your wish will come through, because America is not a place. It’s a platform, where you can launch your dream. America is Cape Canaveral, a dream launching pad. Be prepared and fasten your seat belt, It’s not a walk in the park.

By the time you land, you will wonder where the heck you have been, and most of all, who you have become.

American? That’s the answer from German, Italian, Irish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Serbian, Somalian and soon Syrian, who have arrived and bought into the scheme. BYOD (Bring your own dream), the sign says at the door. Not “Welcome to America.”  The Native Americans perhaps never put any sign up in the first place. The best you can get for free here is workplace frozen turkey (pre-recession years).

And that takes some cooking. And with that kind of party, I would put BYOB in the invitation, just to make it clear: it’s a potluck dinner, because, Ponzi, by definition, manufactures nothing except for a dream of getting rich, but never something for nothing. Buy now, pay later (either by us or our descendants, but pay we will).  It has worked so far.

But we need more MLM recruits for it to work. The new sign will have to say “BYOD”, bring as many dreams as you’d like, but no preexisting condition preferred.

 

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.