Tag: United States

Heroes in our eyes

We got some footage about those Japanese astronauts now.

This brings me back to those endless summers when I watched all sorts of movies: French, American, Chinese and Japanese. Among the Japanese ones, the most memorable is the “blind Samurai”, who exemplifies the spirit of quiet strength.

We self-project, so our heroes tend to reflect our inner psychological make-ups. And of course, the spirit of the time

has something to do with it: Bogart’s line “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” probably propelled him to the all-time

Hollywood endearment (but he smokes). While our Stallone of the Rocky series could barely utter a few lines, most memorable was his Rambo’s line “where they call Hell, I call Home”.

Another mesmerized experience was the Who in Woodstock concert film, where at the end of their performance, Pete Townsend, the lead guitarist, smashed his instrument to get the reverberation from the speakers (must be quite a buzz for those who were on drug at the scene).  The Japanese Samurai do more with less, while his Western counterparts do less with more ( over consumption and property destruction).

No wonder I was made to read those “Small is beautiful” titles when in college. It was right after the Oil embargo, and the social critics were having a field day. Some scholars even predicted the end of cheap oil as imminent, and this was in later part of the 70’s (I was more inclined to revisit their premises last summer when oil was up around the $150 mark).

Back to our heroes. To the millennial generation, those two guys at Google who rolled out their G Phones on roller blades, or the Facebook founder who refused to sell. These are today’s heroes: working from dorm rooms, and piggyback the University backbones. The next generation of heroes will be more likely to wear a turban or glasses

(slanted eyes). Mine, I must admit, are more feminine (my mother for one): O, J.K Rowling, Hillary and Swimsuit models (must be hard to keep up with the appearance for the shoot). See, I happen to be entrepreneurial, sociable and creative. My heroes got to possess all three attributes to make the list. Branson of the Virgin group made the profile also.

In seeking your heroes, you found your very self. We all live in a cave, and look up to our own shadows on the wall, that is, if we can make a fire. Sadly, I don’t find that many heroes in today’s business world . That is why they make the graduating class of MBA to take the oath (before they turn Wolves on Wall Street). At least, the biz schools finally own a bible or two, just for ceremonial reason.

 

New voice new vision

I browsed the DVD shelves at my local library (North Palm Beach) the other day, and saw Buffalo Boy next to Brokeback Mountain and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid.  It is by fate that the Cowboy and the Buffalo(boy) found themselves on the same DVD shelf, just like those black and white GI’s names are alphabetically listed on the same Wall (Vietnam Memorial Wall).

It was the intention of movies like  Apocalypse Now and Rambo series to move the American public forward to the next stage of grief. Yet, American are still in denial about Vietnam, thus forfeiting many valuable lessons otherwise applicable to today’s conflicts,  Iraq and Afghanistan e.g. tribal loyalty, theocracy and regional politics.

Of late, emerged a new generation of Overseas Vietnamese filmmakers with bold vision and audacious voice. I saw Powder Blue directed by a Vietnamese film maker. Or Norwegian Wood, a Beatles title, yet  screenplay is adapted from a Japanese novel.

I can’t wait to see it: Beatles’ song, Japanese story and Vietnamese film directing. What a collaboration!

(Just like  Ang Lee directed Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi).

Cowboy or Buffalo(boy), we are all on our epistemological quest (why are we here, where are we going, and how do we get there). With one exception: we are going to get there on horseback or buffalo back, not gas-guzzling Hummer.

That’s for the Chinese upper class. Weaving their Bentley’s in dense pollution.

Buffalo Boy and Cowboy don’t cause further environmental damage: they earn their living on nature and have a certain

reverence for it. Maybe the old way can teach us a thing or two. Plain old truth (have reverence for the things that feed you), just needs a new voice and new vision. Ironically the vehicle (technology) to reach and persuade us (like I Phone and broadband) themselves consume too much energy, creating a cycle of creative destruction. I have pondered about our “disposable society” for quite sometime now. How many automobiles, electronic devices, books and clothes, shoes and ties we have trashed or given to Goodwill on our lifetime! Yet Mother Earth mysteriously heals itself, like recent appearance of an Island after Japan’s Tsunami.

New world needs new worldview and other ways to lend expressions to it.

 

Long tail

2,000 cars (Nano, by Tata) and $20 per gallon of gas?

HP printer and ink model.

Thin client, thick server.

I got it, I got it!

In the same vein, they should subsidize “Blu-ray” disc player, that way, more of us (late adopters) will get onboard quicker.

Mid-summer! Beach time. But not innocence time.

I notice some teenagers stopped by the Barnes and Nobles Woodstock display table.

To these folks, the Flower generation must have the same appeal as the Amish, i.e. the sub cultures America tolerates.

I notice two Op Ed pieces in NYT recently, which speak about “Meaning of Life”  (Richard Cohen) and “NASA 4 lost decades” by Tom Wolf.

The first piece was about an experiment on life prolonging (by curtailing your diet intake), but the other monkey which ate all he could appear to be happier and more vibrant (who wouldn’t show survivor’s guilt when all your party friends already dead, leaving you the dieting nerd as the last man standing). Joie de vivre!

I struggle a little bit when trying to make sense of the Race in Space. I remember the Regan’s Star War shield.

But as far as trying to “conquer” Space, it’s the stuff for Trekkie.

I can barely be a techie (being in technical sales).

However Wolf’s observation makes sense: if the Sun is to be blowing up at some point, at least for the human species to survive, we need to work on some contingencies, however costly and enduring those commitments might involve.

Maybe the premise isn’t strong enough to sustain itself through various administrations, with their own juxtaposing and opposing priorities.

Right now it’s health care (after the environment whose legislation got through last month).

All of the sudden, nobody seem to remember many of us still suffer the economic downturn, as Paulson put it,

“could have been worse”.  The stimulus itself has disbursed about 10+% as of this writing. Maybe it has a long tail too.

Why don’t GM consider using its bail out money to purchase Tata or Chery (Chinese auto company). We can always get it back in the long run with $20 per gallon of gas. HP did it with its printer sitting next to me as I write this.

 

//

 

Free but not cheap

People have paid lips service to freedom, the defense of freedom, and the exercise of free speech.

But few put any thought on the price of freedom. Freedom somehow is perceived as being free

(i.e. you don’t have to pay anything, in economic terms). Actually, freedom costs a lot.

Many lives have been laid down in service of freedom, many limps cut off to defend it.

The opposite of freedom is not tyranny: it’s the illusion that one is free when actually not.

Have you ever been in a situation where you need to have a drink, or a puff of cigarette

(or worse). Those were occasions when you were not being free. Then, at the political level, you defend your personal position, and your philosophy/faith.

But at what price? And do you truly know yourself and your belief? Have you been tested or truly challenged?

Many psychological studies (Standford was one of them) proved that people were often “anchored” to some previous position (a low price for instance), just to later make impulse decision based on the anchor which had been previously planted prior to the actual experiment.

So, make sure at the core, you have  a value system (cleanliness, decency, trustworthiness etc…) and be flexible about them, to adapt to the situation (survival).

I have read Victor Frankl, and his famous line ” you can take away the body, but not the me which resides in this body”.

He made a distinction between personhood and our physical embodiment . If you had a chance to visit Dr Death’s exhibition (of the bodies)

you will realize as I did, that at the physiological level, we are no different from one another, especially after we are all dead. But while alive, we do exhibit

personalities and preferences (case in point, there are a set of  twin sisters who recently married a set of twin brothers in England). One of the brides said she had been waiting for this moment her whole life. And that they can tell each other apart (being twins and all, they have more exposure to IDing twins).

Or, take a look at America’s Got Talent. You see people are quite unique, although every one held dear to their dream of becoming a celebrity.

I skimmed the Forbes 100 celebrities. And I don’t remember seeing a Teacher in there.

I noticed that they were all movie stars, singers, and sport figures. No wonder it’s hard to tell ourselves, much less our kids that education

is noble and rewarding. We need role models. And society tells us one thing while the school tells us another.

Which way to go? We spend an average 4-6 hours a day in front of a screen of some kind . The internet feeds of the media,

and now the media feeds itself of the internet. Media appeals to our lowest common denominator to homogenize us.

Marketers used to have it easy (3 TV networks, and the 30-second spot).  Now each medium seeks to cater to a different demographic segments not unlike magazine print venue.

And the language of different generations, different point of views and different interests don’t seem to converge. No wonder the concept of freedom itself is in danger. I am not advocating “cultural literacy” type of definition of freedom.

I just want to reflect on how costly freedom has been and will always be : man facing oncoming tanks in Beijing, election opposition demonstrating  in Tehran, Buddhist monk pouring gasoline on himself in Saigon.

Those people are on my Forbes list of Freedom celebrities. I emulate and want to be them. After all, for whom the bell toll. Taking away one man’s freedom is taking away freedom itself. It might not happen to me, but someday, my kids and grand kids might not have a chance to see the movie I now enjoy (they might not chose to watch it, but at least, if they wanted to research it for a class project, they can) or the lyrics I hum along. Not to mention the comedian I watch. Man, have you seen CR’s Kill The messenger? I thought it was a spy comedy. Turned out it’s his stand-up tour. And Chris Rock ran his mouth. I was watching it at home, alone. But I was paranoid as if I were watching a porno.

I know someone can always find out that I watched the tape, because of my credit card charge. But who cares? If they had issues with some of the things CR said, they should go after the comedian himself, not his accidental audience. After all, I paid my dear price for freedom in the first place when I left Saigon years ago, not knowing where and if I would arrive safely. Freedom, yes, I know a thing or two about this abstract notion that others often mistook it as being free. Even if it’s free, it still is not cheap (I heard that admission tickets to Michael Jackson memorial is free, but event organizers still have to pay for the lights at Staple center on Tuesday).

Or the fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

 

Asian drivers

It’s been a long way since Sixteen Candles.

In it, we found Long Duk Dong, the male Asian actor, portrayed a Japanese exchange student who wrecked the host family car on a night out

“what auto-mobile?” he asked laying on the front lawn at mid morning the next day.

Fast forward to today and the sentence of Madoff.

We found judge Denny Chin, arrived from Hong Kong at age 2 and lived in Hell Kitchen in Times Square, to rise to a federal judgeship. His high-profile case today provides a catharsis for the blood-thirsting public.

There have been a slew of Asian men moving into the lime light: Ang Lee (BrokeBack Mountain),

Ray Young (GM’s CFO) and David Li (Recipe for disaster, wired magazine) who came up with the formula to slice and dice CDO’s (should have been COD’s).

Sociologists have noticed an interesting pattern in interracial marriages: White male-Asian female, Black male-White female, but not Asian male-Black female (some how it’s at the opposite ends of the spectrum).

But the American racial landscape has evolved a bit, since the Japanese internment during WWII to today’s sentencing.

It’s a white-collar crime, and the country origin of the judge has not been an issue. During this Recession, we find

Ling (now working for a private equity company in China), Chin and Young all came across as

“could hold the water”, a long way since the days of  Sixteen Candles’ “what auto-mobile??”

I forgot if it were a GM car or not, but it certainly was a Detroit huge car given the early 80’s time-frame.

Time has changed. Hyundai and Fiat will soon be as popular as the 90’s SUV’s. Wait until the QQMe arrives from China.  At least, marketers should know enough to avoid pushing  pink cars to Asian men or any male.

A girl walks into a bar…

We all need a “third place” (neither home nor office) to let our hair down.

It used to be Cheers-like place “where everybody knows your name“.

And lately, it’s been Starbucks, which struck a yuppie nerve (male and female).

With the lingering recession, I suspect that jokes will have to start with “a girl walks into a Starbucks…” or

“a Mr Mom walks into a MacDonald…”

for both men and women share equal stress load during hard times. Except that women are more prone to explore

and share with one another their feelings, much more than men. I noticed a string of suicide by men, taking with them

their families, children included. The American dream had turned nightmare for some. We were more confident

to overspend money which was not ours than we do this side of “green sprouts” with money which is ours.  There lies the paradox:

economic activities are powered by collective trust and confidence, and slow down in their absence.

I saw the Verizon‘s CEO interview on Charlie Rose last night. He came across  astute and ambassadorial: “it’s getting back to the quality of the network”…(can you hear me now?).  I came away with higher appreciation for the smart phone category. And I couldn’t help agree more with Charlie’s last word ” wonder if the US will put more emphasis on tech adoption as some other countries did , so its citizens can take advantage of the network effect“.

We will learn to communicate in ways we have yet known how (from the early days of gossip news at the boat docks, and in the bars, to today’s instant tweet). I told you, we all need a third place, the place where everybody knows your name, where they can see what you are up to and maybe, share a laugh: “a girl walks into a bar, she demands to buy that TV behind the bar. Bartender replies, “No, can’t sell”. She asks “why not” Then the next day, same thing, except this time, she brings cash, lots of them. “I still want to buy that TV there behind the bar” Mam, can’t sell it to you. Why not? Well, for one, it’s not a TV. It’s a microwave.”

 

First love

First day of  my kid’s summer. First day of  being a FT Mr Mom.

It happens! I reflect on Summer 75 when I was looking forward to resettling in Central Pennsylvania.

America, Land of the Free. Back then, I was sure the nation was still in a state of shock, and perhaps was relieved that

I wish I could hang on to that  first-love moment for this country.

Everything at the time smelled strange and was hard to categorize: from the Pennsylvania meadow to Fall foliage, and onto snow flakes and snow frosts,

the perpetuating soft rock music on the radio. American should learn to love its land and ideals all over again.

From the kindness of strangers for a foreign student potluck dinner to a  coffee refill at the Corner Room.

How about just a “hello”, because we are all here today, gone tomorrow: American or Amish.

Let’s make this ride a memorable one. Long or short, it matters who you are riding with and how you enjoy his/her presence. Even the De Niro character  (a bounty hunter) could finally appreciate his apprehended accountant at the end of Midnight Train. First love was special because it came around once, and graced us with lasting memories. BTW, the perpetual song on the radio those days that sticks out was “I will never fall in love again.”