Tag: Vietnam War

To beat a dead horse

Even to this day, people still using the Vietnam War as a figure of speech: “Syria will be another US‘ Vietnam” etc…

It was meant to be the new Boogeyman. To scare off the children. To conjure bad imagery and bring back nightmares.

In Rambo, Stallone’s rare line was “where they call Hell, I call Home”.

Occasionally, we read about the Powell Doctrine (purportedly derived from Vietnam War) i.e. if engaged at all, finish it quickly.

Not to beat a dead horse, Vietnam War has been like the Wave, in a football stadium. After a while, it dies down. Don’t try to start one yourself, without feeling silly. It’s like the Bee Gees “I started a joke”.

The irony is, both Kerry and Hagel were by-products of US involvement in Vietnam (not to mention McCain).

A generation comes of age in “Hell”. Trial by fire, baptized by fire.

Hot war on cool medium. America first Television War (pre-CNN era).

Now we got Al Jazeera, whose host died yesterday (David Frost – so, tell me, Mr Nixon, when a president does something, it’s not illegal?). It’s like the Vietnam War got covered by South East Asian News Network. “Unbias” and In-depth coverage.

After all, it’s their region and they know the conflicts as the back of their hands.

With that kind of money buying out Current TV, A J Network is poised for the new theater of war.

The gods of vengeance has moved from Europe to Asia, and now onto the Middle East. I don’t smell the smell of jasmine.

Nor do I smell napalm. This time, you can’t see nor can you smell anything.. Just drone and precision striking.

Powell doctrine + powerful broadband. Yet they still use Vietnam as a figure of speech. For fear of being dragged in.

For fear of war fatigue. I hear the other side saying “So what you’re gonna do about it” ( I used chemical weapon, so what?).

Go ahead, and call 911. It will be another Vietnam for you e.g. quagmire, divided nation, deficit, and post-traumatic disorder.

Where they call “Hell” you shouldn’t call “Home”. But then, can you sit still when your neighbors keep beating the kids, not with stick, but by spraying deadly poison. Wouldn’t you call 911 and to Hell with it. Another Vietnam? So what! Let it be.

Number is up!

Mr Tarr, head of the Vietnam draft lottery, has died at age of 88 in Walnut Creek, CA.

A Nixon appointee, he headed Selective Service in 1970. He heard a lot of “Hell No, We Won’t Go”.

And now, his number is up.

I wonder how those who survive him, still lingering in the Canadian woods, think.

(Read “the things they carry”, the chapter about Tim O’ Brien got near the shore, and turned around to face the draft).

It’s been 50 years since that fateful 1963 year. It marked the assassination of practically everybody, from Kennedy to Diem, from Thich Quang Duc self-immolation to the exile of Madam Nhu.

Back then, my big brother got drafted too, out of pharmacy school. His baby died after having lived for a few days in the battle zone of Qui Nhon. So my mom and I flew up to be with them. Not a Bob Hope and Susie Q type of landing at the front. But at night, the two sides were at it (bullets flying everywhere).

My first taste of a real hot war.

Meanwhile, a little girl, our own flesh and blood, was buried somewhere out there, unvisited and untraceable.

Her number was up.

Saw Gatsby this week.

The writer’s comment “of all of New York, the multitude who crashed Gatsby’s great party, not a single soul showed up for his funeral”.

Thought you would like me to quote that as it relates to “Number is up” type of blog.

This morning, over coffee, a friend joked that he would like to have his ashes scattered. I said I would do it, if he stated it in his will (who wants to fight with his families as to his future whereabouts).

I know one thing: my niece is out there somewhere in Qui Nhon. Among many whose numbers were also up.

Selective service or not. I still held that draft deferred card. It says ” Draft deferred. Reason, sole male in a family whose  other son(s) was already active in duty”. Like it or not, my pharmacist brother number was up during that time.

Mine wasn’t. And we were interlinked, by DNA and draft numbering system. I attended my niece’s funeral. I hope to be there when it’s her father’s turn to join her. My brother deserves more than what Gatsby gets at the end of life.

Make your end, a standing-room only type of funeral. I will request to have “Whiter Shade of Gray” play at mine.

RIP Mr Tarr.

Isolation, interaction and interpretation

One person to himself.

One or more chatting, arguing, agreeing.

Then, a multi-lingual gathering, with or without a headset, with a bilingual person in the middle, trying to transport the weight behind loaded words. In Chinese Zodiac, Jackie Chan tried to smooth out intercultural tension by giving an opposite translation from the intended message.

We also remember the scene from The Great Escape, where after each failed attempt, Steve McQueen, the King of cool, would be put back in isolation (at least fellow inmates still keep his glove and baseball for him).

When you send out a signal, a text or any form of communication without getting any feedback, you are in isolation. It could drive one into despair.

Marconi kept building taller towers near the seas, and sending out ship-to-shore signals in the hope that he could compensate for the curvy horizon.

In Cast Away, Tom Hanks couldn’t deliver his message in the box (fed ex), or the bottle.

Somewhere out there, there is someone waiting to receive your signals.

Blogging has started to fill this empty space.

A guy posted a picture of the Northeast, the gathering storm, or a nice trail.

I share his cold, and his wintry isolation.

Tet in Vietnam is warmer and with a lot more activities.

Tet in Orange County Little Saigon is wet and isolating.

And far away in Vietnamese communities such as Louisiana, Washington DC or Washington State, I suspect it’s even wetter and more isolating.

Yet people send out messages, through Mai branches (equivalence of Christmas pine trees) and red-lucky envelopes (equivalence of red stockings). It says “we are here, the new American with our tradition very much like the early Americans with theirs”.

So there are some interaction between the two cultures, East and West, the Lunar calendar vs the Solar.

Those who live and breathe between two worlds are lucky.

It is as though we barely cleaned up after one celebration before we start another. Once the cat is out of the bag, there is no end to it.

Now it’s no longer the turkey and carvings, it’s the Green bean cake and pickled onion.

The only shared sweet element between the old American native and the Vietnamese is sweet potatoes and boiled corn.

I start getting mouth-watered. So counting down to Tet 2013, 45 years since Tet 68.

The American public was more familiar with that shocking turn of event, and perhaps, decisive turning point of the war. You won’t find army flak jackets on the streets of Saigon as back then. You will find something very similar to the Rose Parade, except it’s stationary on blocked streets. And music is in the air, with ao dai floating and flirting . Take a picture, take a look. Be not isolated. Come out and interact, even if you need help from an interpreter.

Isolation, interaction and interpretation.

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.

Reflections of my life

” I am changing everything” …Like Holden Caulfield, catcher in the Rye.

“Oh I don’t want to die..”. The future that I once fret is my current present.

“All my sorrows”….were for nothing. They said 90% of our worries didn’t materialize.  Yet we keep worrying. Like a plague. Dec 21st or 23rd (Mayan Calendar).

Just shop til we drop ( even right after 9/11).

The world is, a bad place, a terrible place to live (lyrics).

The hardest part is to face and live with one’s self.

Tend not to those urges ( self-sabotage and self-destruction.)

Who planted them there? Those seeds? So the Earth would be less populated?

Take me back, to my own home (Lyrics).

Those GI‘s who listened to this song from a transistor radio, deep in the thick jungle of Vietnam. Have they often reflected on that experience? The Amerasian children they left behind? The bodies and chemical agents?

Who won that war? Or any war for that matter!

Perhaps both sides have lost.

Lives destroyed, and environment contaminated .

Bombs and napalms have fallen here when “Reflections of My Life” was at the top of the chart.

A generation of young people were forced to grow up really fast, to reflect on death and dying, to ask hard questions.

All my crying (lyrics)

It hurts to face separation, from neighbors and friends. The comfort zone.

Gone forever. Like a movie reel that got torn at one of the splices.

Tran Hung Dao, the Sea General, was back to sea (his imprint was on the then currency). Dust comes to dust.

In Vietnam, it’s considered “luck” to run into a funeral, not a wedding.

Yet, with Christmas season in tow, I saw 2 weddings this morning.

It’s peace-time Vietnam. The Wedding Hall is named “FOREVER“.

More optimistic in outlook now.

Fewer funerals, more weddings.

Less “reflections  of my life”, and more “accumulation of stuff”.

One thing is missing here: Black Friday shopping. That was because, American landed here back in 1965, Pleiku and not Plymouth. Hence  there was no Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. No turkey dinner. Just another weekend of laundry, coffee and a rare treat from the band. You can guess what they played here.

Yes, Reflections of My Life.  Take me to my own home (lyrics). Holden Caulfield got expelled from school. Not wanting to go back home just yet. Just ride the rail, the taxi, and anything that moves, with no particular stop in mind. The journey is the reward.

Repo and Retro

We don’t want the former, and wish to collect the latter.

In our age of mass production, supplysiders push consumption to the  point of writing up bad loans, hence Repo.

Then, and this happened to me once, products came out of the assembly line all look alike: I once mistakenly opened an identical rental car (Taurus) and it even started until I found out my laptop wasn’t in the back seat.  Now, we want Retro because of its obvious scarcity.

On weekend, we see different lifestyles at play: Harley fans, sport cyclists, families on outing, baseball league and of course, retro car owners, parking their souped-up automobiles in Main Street Old Town. Onlookers must have felt a mix of envy and admiration. Nothing feels better than a waxed-up oldie.

In contrast, miles and miles of repo cars are found next to “salvaged” cars in our industrial wasteland. Repo men branded them with chalk. Same steel. But the retros are well-kept while the repos are sold for parts.

What a difference in attitude and emotional investment.

This unchecked attitude can get carried over to how we treat people.

When we love someone or think positively about that person, we treat them (even if they are old or have passed their useful phase) as “retro”.  In contrast, when we found no utility value out of them, they are essentially, in our eyes, repos.

Their values are now up to the bean counters to decide. Fair market value for repo and increased value over time for retro.

We need to retrain and keep that child-like innocence, to look at life anew. To see people’s value and worth. In the age of mass production, we push consumption and adoption (I-phone 5 and new markets like China). But have we developed the ability to tell the difference between people and product? (to make things worse, career coaches often recommend us to “package” ourselves and “reinvent” ourselves, just as they had once failed with the New Coke. Or that discarding habit has spilled over to the inner sanctum of our hearts? The way McNamara used to crunch the numbers during the Vietnam War (ROI means how many casualties on each side etc..).

I will never forget the characters in “Never Let Me Go” by Ishiguro. They were “created” to serve as industrial organ donors (Repo) to preserve Retro (rich people who can afford surgery to replace their failed organs). While waiting to “donate” their body parts, the main character, Ruth, asked “Why did you collect our art works then”. “Just to see you got soul at all” replied the Principal.  There is a line to be crossed over from Retro to Repo. Then the issue looms larger than just a misspell. It’s a cancer growing undetected in our post-industrial society on steroid.

On being a sidekick

I was born late into the fold. My brother and sister had already been in college when I arrived.

So I grew up watching “chinese fire drill” around the dinner table: Dad chasing brother, mom trying to intervene and my sister, w/nothing to do, joining the commotion. It’s like Chevy Chase‘s National Lampoon Vacation in Europe, caught on the inside ring of a Paris turn-about.

Later, when my brother picked up his date for an evening stroll at Flower Street Fest (Tous les garcons et les filles de mon age se promene dans la rue), two couples lost me in the crowd (but I found my way back to the car, stood on the hood, and raised the balloon up high for SOS).

Sidekick!

Born into a wrong decade. Too young to be drafted, but too old to pretend I am “Tommy this, Tommy that” in America.

My generation was a hybrid one: grew up in war time (Vietnam), but reaped not the benefits of peace time.

I am aware of the legacy, the hidden tolls (the Wall and all the wasted lives).

But because of ill-timing, I end up assuming the role of a memory keeper  (of dramatic events).

Sidekicks aren’t those who impact or influence an event. They just remember and recall it.

Hence, I stand on the sideline, watching dramas in my family, dramas in my neighborhood (monk burning), and dramas in the US  like  Happy Valley (see other blogs on VN evacuation, Three-Mile-Island, Monk Burning,  Boat People exodus, LA Riot, LA Earthquake, 9/11 and Katrina…)

I am not addicted to hype nor am I a thrill seeker.  But, I begin to notice my penchant for witnessing more than a fair share of disasters. They take a toll on my personal life. A sidekick wasn’t supposed to be impacted by the events he/she observed. I should have maintained that journalistic objectivity instead of being affected by events. Who wouldn’t; seeing all those suffering, striving and struggling?

My siblings seem to be coping much better, partly because they are much older (thicker skin) and have a better support system: they blocked out memories of the separation between North and South Vietnam (which had uprooted them even before I came into the picture). BTW, I did not intend for this blog to commemorate the division of North and South due to some Indochina agreement among the post WW II Colonial forces. I think it’s the 20th of July, 1954).

Here is how I see it: you can live life on the surface, skimming just the cream on top.

Or you can dig deep, to see the rottenness at the core. Or somewhere in the middle.

As a sidekick, if I end up digging, it’s because I can’t seem to erase the tape (like they did in Watergate or White House tape which lately have been declassified).

At Penn State, they were hoping for the problem to resolve itself by kicking the can down the road.

But we are not National Lampoon vacationing in Europe, to drive in circle as time lapses.

We live our lives forward, with memories as our guide and the future, our anchor.

Someday, I will pass these memories on. Because one cannot just get “shipped” to another place,

like they do with jobs and merchandise bought via e-commerce. Logistically, the US pulled it off really well during Operation Frequent Wind. But the long-term consequences and unintended consequences are there, ever-present, and creep up when least expected.

Yes, it’s hard to play sidekick. It’s not an option for me. Hence, it’s pre-ordained that I keep on retelling personal and social history as I remember it.

Is it painful? Yes. Is it dramatic? Yes. But not that different from other US immigrant stories, of leaving behind the known for the unknown. I still remember that veil of rain and tears the day I left Vietnam. I don’t know if my brother and sister could even recall their first trip leaving North Vietnam, let alone the second one leaving the South.

To judge them as heartless is premature. Perhaps they have used to blocking out painful past.

Now it’s my turn, to do the same, to move on while playing a perfect sidekick i.e. standing on the sideline of history and recalling snipets of memories which hurt every time, though not as much as those who had invested in much more than I.

Closure

Fact 1: I went to Penn State.

Fact 2: I felt ashamed and defensive (no punt intended) at the same time

Fact 3: I am not alone in this.

There are more stuff to be worried about these days: immediate and long-term future.

Already a book was out (at 50% off) about Penn State and the culture of silence.

Collective amnesia.

Just like Vietnam War aftermath.

Or Watergate aftermath.

We move on. Have to.

It takes time discounting some relapses.

We are not therapists, much less self-therapists.

And we men don’t talk it out over coffee. Ain’t cool.

Let’s hit the gym.

Put some more weight on the bench press. Could you spot me!

Let pain reign.

It ain’t hurt.

Psycho-somatic syndrome.

What’s outside should not be let in, to infect and destroy what’s inside.

We last longer than the storm.

We survive disaster after disaster.

Only to get to the best part: closure.

By then, we have turned semi-experts on the subject of recovery.

Survivors and strivers. Long-distance runners and deep thinkers.

Conversation with myself while running, for instance.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance.

Each generation is tossed a curved ball. Up to us to catch it, spin it and develop new coping strategies.

Ours faces threats that we have never seen before.

Sometimes, from within. From the defense line. From the top whom we respect.

The day the music dies. Sometimes, I think it’s best for the candle to go out at peak.

Like James Dean, M. Monroe, J. Lennon and M. Jackson. At least, they are icons frozen in time.

A sense of permanence and immortality. For now, being human, I got to deal with stages of grief. I got to get to closure, to acceptance. Got to look at myself in the mirror and smile reluctant.

Saigon’s nearest beach

From Saigon, with Russian-made fast boat, you can be in Vung Tau (literally Ship Harbor) in an hour and a half. I made that trip yesterday. Poor man’s vacation. Peace-time R&R. The neighborhood used to be a hang-out place for GI’s, Australian, and every major news agents and double agents. Now the fight has moved on to other theaters. Still I couldn’t help superimpose the scene of Vietnam War last day on it

I even memorized “Toi Di Giua Hoang Hon” (I walk right into dusk). My first trip to Vung Tau as a five-year-old was with my cousin, sister and her husband in a voiture (albeit small one). My Walden.

Then later, our 9th-grade gang went camping by scooters. All  went well on the Western Front . My Eden.

Until we left on a barge, destination US 7th Fleet out in International Waters, also the command center of Operation Frequent Wind.

We were at their mercy :  they would return to complete the task (we were left drifted in the middle of the trip on Saigon’s hottest night in the dark while the city was under siege). My purgatory.

Ships changed flags, copters abandoned, armies turned civies, worthless money tossed out as atonement, while guns dropped by the buckets in lieu of boarding passes.

Random rockets, meant to deter, ended up destroying fishing boats which dotted the sea.You gotta to have amnesia to forget what had happened.

Yesterday, I traveled in the same old river but with a few differences: A/C, faster boat and a flying Vietnam‘s Communist flag at a river outpost . I also noted more highrises dotted Saigon skyline .

When I got to Vung Tau, I ran right into my buddy Ben, whom I know from TEFL school. So we hung out at the expat enclave (the CleverLearn and ILA crew). Ben seemed to know everyone in town, foreigners that was.

Back to Vung Tau, a beach town. It’s now upscale, slightly over-developed , at least on the surface. It could not however accommodate the influx of Saigonese on major holidays. But on stormy nights like last night, even the hottest bar girls would find it hard to get by.

We got Irish pub, Italian pizza and Indian cuisine.

Ben wanted to open an oyster bar, Beach Boys style. All the powers to  him. Maybe he can teach patron a new English word in Today’s special.

I couldn’t help reflect on Vung Tau as my launching pad to the US.

The place has changed over the years. So have I.

But suppose that I decided to stay, as Ben did, I would not get out of it as much as Ben.

He came with no legacy “can you see Saigon from here? I don’t” .  He only saw VT potential.

I, on the other hand, see VT as past and pain, not potential.

Vung Tau, Saigon‘s nearest beach, extends from my past all the way to the future.

Just like life itself, a series of flashbacks and future projections.

It’s good to decide on the fly to have that poor man’s R&R. During war-time, Ben and I would have communicated non-verbally (with a lot of gestures).

He got TESOL, I CELTA. We are like apples and oranges. And we converged on that same old beach. He is staying, and getting married. I am leaving.

Its water is still mercilessly unclean, unless you swim way far out (I am referring to Bai Dau, where there hardly was any wave).

Still a ship harbor. Still raking in the cash and churning out the pain.

Toi van di giua hoang hon, long thuong nho (equivalent of : Hello Darkness my old friend).

This side of the curtain

It would have been stuff taken from” The spy who came in from the cold.”

For three months now, I have lived in the alley behind the local police station.

My big brother would have fainted just to learn about it.

He is a pharmacist, retiring, but still goes to work per diem.

He was drafted during the Vietnam War, like everyone else. But he only stationed in town, to teach a class in Medical Tech (X ray machines etc..)

He would never come back, would never hang out in the alley.

I even wanted to trade place with one of the guys in passing. Would you let me have your place, with you going to CA, and me staying here.

The guy politely declined, or brushed it off.

Times has changed!

This side of the curtain has mostly old files, not yet digitized.

People are in a hurry to consume and to spend.

It has been mild lately. Some people caught a cold.

It would be a funny movie to show a spy who caught a cold, instead of coming from the cold.

Now, we got virus, but from Iran, as they attack data centers.

Try to wake up to a different world. A connected one. And in it, most of the truths and threats we once held as absolutes, have become irrelevant. Yesterday’s fear should not hold us hostage today. I am just holding up the mirror : modernity infects everyone on both sides.

Technology is agnostic. Now, instead of iron curtain, we got firewalls.

Instead of flu virus, we got Iran-originated virus.

John Le Carre or James Bond, all need to update their software version.

Sometimes the virus is in us. Our James Bond character finds himself recede into the dark corner of his own.

We are the bad guys as well. Just didn’t realize it.

Until someone  shows us who we truly are. Mr Bond, tear down that curtain.