Tag: Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Attending my funeral

The paper announced “a A student committed suicide for not passing Vietnam‘s first IBM-graded SAT“. So, my classmates showed up at my house the next morning for condolences. True story. Not having seen the column the day before, I was completely taken aback.

Hence, my first exposure to bad journalism, and Vietnam’s first trial run with a machine (1974).

The Luddites must have been out for blood.

They wanted to “grade” our essays, in the old Mandarin style whose exams lasted three long days (camping out etc…) (Leu Chong).

We had been anxious leading to exam date e.g. shopping for the right No. 2 pencils, rehearsing multiple choices etc..

Our real first exposure to the “spiritual machine” with its lock-in platform.

In our little minds, machine was God. It could fail you (and in my case, it did). Turned out, they had to manually grade a few hundred of us in between batches.

I never forget the worrisome faces of loyal friends, who had passed but decided to hang out (our version of “funeral wake“).

I told them they should go out and celebrate. Forget about me.

But they insisted “one for all, all for one”.

Then those girls in the class who also showed up expecting to see me in oxygen mask, or in a casket.

The feeling was “out of the body” to say the least.

How often can you afford the opportunity to look at this scene from the outside? (astronauts get a rare glimpse of the Earth from space, but it’s a matter of geography).

That should put materialism in perspective.

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

The story did not end there without a happy ending.

We were sitting around, long faced, when a friend (drummer from the band), rushed in to announce that they had just posted an addendum to the results. So we raced to the school (on scooters, like the new Zappos ads).

And we found my name (as if it were the Vietnam Memorial, except this one was framed in glass).

And we opened the beer (my father paid for it).

And we jammed the guitar.

And we screamed (no karaoke back then, just yet).

Then we went out dancing.

The dead came back from the brink.

The A+ student got his dog day.

And got admitted to Pre-med (I would have entered the tweet contest for U of Iowa MBA scholarship if there had been such a thing).

With confidence and momentum, I helped raise fund for the refugees floating into our city (public speaking in front of a large lecture hall etc..). After all, I could have stood outside of its walls, cursing  the machine? the manufacturer? the IT administrator?

No college, no draft deferment i.e. enlisted and got maimed ( a friend came back from the front with one eye left in him).

For that one day, I had a preview of my funeral. In Amadeus, Mozart used this powerful visualization to finish his Requiem.

In my end, my beginning.

Unless the seed dies, it won’t produce much fruit.

Lose yourself, that you may find it.

This not a suicidal instinct. Just an acknowledgment that the seed of creative destruction was planted in each of us since day one.

Like a tracker, lo-jack.

We will need to be “disassembled” to be “re-assembled” on the other end.

Pride and prejudice, fear and loathing, all nano bots in the wind (Kansas).

Ask any leader about his lessons in success, he will mention failings.

They went together, like two sides of a coin.

That shock has served me well. South Vietnam collapsed that Spring.

And my summer celebration was the last of “Happy Days” with my friends (drummer, dancer, bass player etc….) many of whom I have lost touch (and I don’t believe they are on Facebook).

I just know that friendship is to be cherished, and that true friends forget  their own celebration waiting out for you. Victory for one is victory for all. That’s why, on Spaceship Earth, we need to be concerned about one man whose vegetable cart was taken away unjustly

(not to mention he got slapped by a female inspector in a Muslim society).

To him, death by immolation was better than death by humiliation.

And one man’s death sowed the seed of discontent that sprung up to become what we now coined the Arab Spring. To him, immolation equals cremation.

Moving wall

Vietnam Wall that is. Coming to the square near you.

They did not reconstruct the WWII concentration camps on wheel. But they did it with Vietnam.

And on June 13th, the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda will release the full version of the Pentagon Papers, originally commissioned by then DoD Secretary McNamara. Portion of the “white papers” was leaked to the press, so the Plumbers were formed to stop the leaks (today’s equivalence of Wiki-Plumbing). Later, their side job was to break in the Watergate (of course, where ever there is water, there is leak). I must give it to them. It was the only time in history when we saw such a  well-dressed group of Plumbers. Instead of parading the miniature version of the Watergate building, they chose the Wall instead.

I hope it bring healing to those “deer hunters”, and wipe away tears from Meryl Streep’s types, who must be in their 60’s by now.

Forever scarred and defined by that conflict, which was more internal than external: from school busing to the Great Society and “I Have A Dream” speech. After waving goodbye from Air Force One helicopter, Nixon held up a peace sign (V). Even President Johnson, in his retirement, grew long hair in his Austin ranch. Vietnam brought out the worst in us, in our leaders (a lot of swearing, from “the bitch of the war” (LBJ), to “bastards”(Ford) – after Congress had refused funding for the Vietnam evacuation, per Rumsfeld bio – to the White House wiretaping the Nixon’s campaign promising the Thieu’s government a better deal if elected.

Vietnam still teaches us lessons: Kerry and Cain on the opposing sides of the aisle, Powell’s doctrine (of overwhelming force, entry and exit, or not at all, battle-tested in the first Iraq war), and Senator Jim Webb with his Vietnam’s best writing. Journalists like Woodward and filmmakers like Oliver Stone, all got their baptism by fire.

So the moving wall is coming to town, but don’t expect it to stir up as much as the subject of Vietnam did 40 years ago.

Hell No, we won’t go. Now, living in Canada, these grown men can’t come back.

Ironically, if they decide to backpack to Vietnam from Canada, they can now tour the Cu Chi Tunnel, where their GI counterparts (tunnel rats) barely got out alive.

Vietnam Moving Wall. Haven’t we moved on, from that place of anxiety over Red Scare, to the fear of being overtaken by global competition. It’s a new era defined by creative mind, and entrepreneur, logistic and competitive advantage. It’s soft power and software. Brain over brawn, capital over labor.

It’s so iconic that Michael Jackson’s father came to Vietnam to inaugurate  Happy Land construction. He said, “my son had always wanted people to be happy”. So he pitched in, invested, and stood by it. “I’ll be there”.

During construction, perhaps they will enlist help from a few plumbers.

This time, they are asked to stay within their job description: install and up-keep the flow of water for recreational use. No wiki-plumbing or break-in please. It’s Happy Land, where adults can once again have fun, like children, with flowers in their hair.