Tag: Vietnam

Time, on whose side?

Just like an old-time movie, friends met yesterday to rehash.

We mentioned briefly the passing away of our friend’s brother: nerdy, good old boy and an ATM machine service man and family man. In short, the least likely candidate to die young. Yet, he had been long gone (by now 3 years).

Earth, Wind and Fire used to have a song out called “Time is on your side”.

I don’t think so.

One can conjure up various scenarios for end-of-life, but it will end regardless, without credits roll (perhaps we should get going with our acknowledgement page just in case).

Feature-length movies, by convention, last one hour and a half (same way Twitter limits a tweet to 140 characters).

Except for Costner’s and Cameron’s (Dancing with Wolves and Titanic).

Life happens while we are busy planning it (John Lennon).

It came concurrently and not sequentially:  a brief sunset, a nagging child, a teacher’s stern look.

One can find happiness in confinement (Life is Beautiful) or at the last moment (Mozart’s Requiem).

It’s not over until it is truly over

When I was 4 or 5 years old, I saw neighbors carry out a dead man .

He had lived alone in a house in the alley.

I did not know his name. Only learned later that he had died without any relatives around him.

By all measures (culturally), he died unhappily.

He could have lived twice his age then, but his death was still viewed as an unhappy one. Quality trumps quantity.

Biotech has extended our “feature-length” narrative, from one-hour-and-a-half lifescript to that of Titanic’s and Dancing with Wolves’.

What are we going to do with all those extra hours? Amusing ourselves to death while waiting for death (there hasn’t been a playbook for seniors – Paterno for instance has just passed away at 85 after getting sacked by the BOD at my school).

In Silicon Valley where Steve Jobs started out, the motto was “trust no one above 30”.

Yet, Sculley and other investment banking CEO’s pocketed huge severance despite their poor performance.

Time is on whose side?

Of course not on the side of the poor or the pure of hearts (keep the faith).

Even with director’s cut, a feature-length film still needs to be trimmed down.

As creatures of selective memories, we often edit out and reinvent our past.

Nowhere else can you find serious anticipation of the new and relinquishing of the past than in Vietnam, during Tet.

The Year of the Dragon has finally arrived. It roars, dances and puffs out fire.

We invent myths and matiarials to redefine who we are (he is from a Royal breed, a Lexus owner).

Vietnamese people  are known as descendants of Dragon and Angel. To understand Vietnam, you need to understand its literary life.

Vietnamese  honors duty above death, sacrifice above love. These tales of heroism are the baseline. “Time is on whose side” is an irrelevant question. Happiness defined as personal fulfillment is also out of the question. People here see themselves as in transit, with Earth another station along the way. Home is where ancestors are waiting, provided you had fulfilled your filial obligation and honored them by courageous living. Try to work that in the State of the Union address, and see its impact on American society? (You lied!). On the CEO’s on Wall Street. On the armed men who preyed on US campus.

America needs Vietnam as much as Vietnam needs America, since time is on neither side.

Watching Victor Vu’s film

The Coke, (pop) corn and cinema.

Heroes of Destiny.

Boom, bang! karate kid! Justified violence (revenge).

Boy meets girl, boy almost loses girl, boy gets girl in the end. Happy Ending.

When the bewitched Empress released her grip, she broke the chain of self-perpetuated violence.

It’s like cutting the credit card when you  are a shopaholic.

Blood-thirsting regime shed more blood to solidify power (the East was used to “Chu Di Tam Toc” i.e. wipe out the enemy’s descendants down to the third generation.)

We got some humor and and we got the resolution (breaking the chain).

As Vietnam‘s m0vie-going is improved, so has its film industry.

More investors and actors take a plunge, as barriers to entry are much lower than in Hollywood.

Valentine should see another date movie (the horror genre): House in the Alley.

My cousin used to work in Vietnam’s film industry. We used to get invited to premiers at Rex cinema.

Back then, actors all lined up to greet guests on the red carpet.

We had our own version of Brigitte Bardot (without Jean Paul Belmondo) in Tham Thuy Hang, and many generations of comedian. Still, the industry was in its infancy. By the time it matured, technology has moved on to home theatres and small screens.

It’s an act of love and faith to plunge deep into movie making in Vietnam.

I admire the efforts such as Norwegian Wood.

You can’t get a flatter world than that: Beatles’ title, Japanese novel, Vietnamese mis-en-scene talent.

Victor Vu started out with horror genre, then moved on to action flicks.

He used Matrix and X-men special effects throughout his work.

But definitely, you know it’s a Vietnamese story: Nguyen Trai‘s sole surviving descendant seeking revenge and restoration to the family’s name.

Part philosophy, part action (but not mindless); settling then stirring.

It’s entertaining, but not surprising.

What surprised me was the setting (Parkson) and the friendly greeting when we exited the premise. In the States, you are lucky if they show you out to the right exit.

I hope producers and directors find strong materials and backing to ride the waves of change (low barriers of entry, yet declining ticket sales). I know we have yet told stories like the Fall of Saigon, Last Men Out, and A Day in the life (of successful Vietnamese immigrants). Before you know it, the digital generation is taking over, with fuzzy memories of how they have come to be who they are, with Ipad and Iphone.

No wonder why Steve Jobs commissioned his biography, “so my kids understand what I was doing”. Il’etait une fois……Once upon a time…..Everybody loves a good bed-time story, well-crafted and well- told. Victor Vu’s that I saw today luckily did not put me to sleep.

Yesterday’s Tet

Tonight is New Year‘s Eve (Giao Thua) here in Vietnam.

Senator McCain and Lieberman are also here on their SEA trip.

But many years ago, McCain probably heard the sound of firecrackers. Tonight, there won’t be firecrackers, but everything should happen just as it has for centuries: visit ancestor’s graves or ash stored next to a church or a temple), wash one’s scooter, do one’s  hair and nail, clean the house, and set up the household altar (the Jews could relate to this since they observe Pass Over just as strictly).

Retail stores even gave their mannequins a change of clothes.

Supermarkets cleared out inventories and flower vendors are holding fire sales.

If I can turn back the clock, I would be the one shining the bronze set for the altar, get the confiture tray  and watermelon seeds in the middle of the coffee table.

Red (lucky) envelopes are also stuffed with brand new money.

A friend of my mother, also a teacher, made an indelible impression which has stayed with me for years. Instead of gifting me big denomination paper money, she had me hold out my hands to receive two-handfuls of shiny coins. The act of giving is more important than the gift itself.

Great Uncle, always seen with a beret, would be the first to show up on New Year’s day. His name was Mai, which was the same as our flower of choice.

My brother, a few days before, tried to get a date with his eventual first wife. Two couples and a young boy (me) packed into a Simcar.

At that Flower Festival, we got separated. I immediately with a red balloon, found my way back to and then stood on top of the Simcar.

Needless to say, we are now drifted apart and it would be silly for me to hold up a red balloon every time I want to be found.  To me, Yesterday’s Tet was just as warm and full of memory as it is now.

It’s an occasion to make concessions, to reconcile and to move forward.

New Year’s Eve doesn’t just usher in another calendar year. In fact, the year gets renamed and rebranded (Year of the Dragon).

By the time the next cycle comes around in twelve years, I hope we are all still here, looking back to this one as Yesterday’s Tet.

We will still be laughing, and crying at the same time, for some of us won’t probably be around. Yet Tet goes on, like a line in Reflections of my Life “the changing, of moon light, to sun light, reflections of my life”.

That song was played while Senator McCain was in Hanoi Hilton.

It is no longer known among the next generation of music lovers.

But to those who paid a dear price during the time when Vietnam was synonymous to war, the line between life and death was undeniably thin.

I hope the Senator find a new Vietnam, full of noise, except for firecrackers and firearms. It’s more peaceful now, and just as joyous as ever.

With Tet, I don’t have to exercise selective memory that much. It is happening again, just like a long-lost friend, showing up predictably with set habits and hobbies. Yesterday’s Tet or tomorrow’s: same.

Saigon rocks!

The night before New Year’s Eve (year of the Dragon), Saigonese and expats got a choice to watch the rehearsal at formerly known as Independence Palace, or nurse a beer at Acoustic.

Years ago, this neighborhood was a hang-out place for privileged kids who attended nearby French lycee. Today, at least in this den-like corner, privileged kids shifted their interests to Punk and Hard Rock: we got graced with expat singers’ numbers mixing with local rockers.

At Independence Palace, the rehearsed dance filled the large stage with flags and poles, movement and au parleur, lighting and majestic surrounding.

At Acoustic, it’s the sound, the up-close vibe and all hair.

Collectivity vs Individuality, co-exist and share the same space.

Groupies, bartenders, and some expats who I.D. themselves as being from Portland, OR.

Our mean-looking Black rapper singer turned out to be the mushiest of all with his “Tears in Heaven” number.

Then, of course, “I hate myself for loving you“.

I on the other hand did not hate myself for being there.

I enjoyed it as much as I did years ago, on or off stage.

I am glad the spirit and essence of Rock has found new expressions and entertainers.

Still against the wind, without flag, but gotta to have hair.

I missed my dying friend who belonged to Saigon Rock generation 1.0.

He would agree with me it’s time for a new wave to emerge, even with glowing bass-guitar strings. Those Portlanders kept shouting “One more” because the booze must be accompanied by the band. I bet for a moment however short, they immersed themselves in the company of young and eager music fan, forgetting where one was from, and heck, even where one was going!

Unbundled incense

In his year-end Opinion, David Brooks of the NYTimes recited a story about people in Louisiana who had lighted a candle for neighbor’s graves.

This year-end here in Vietnam, I saw just that and more…incense, flowers and fruit.

People are either already home or on the way. They cook, clean and cater to many needs, among them, lighting neighbor’s graves.

A girl still in helmet, with parked scooter by her side, spent a silent moment praying, Then she would visit nearby lots, perhaps people she used to know from her village church.

In life and in death. You are not forgotten. A form of social immortality.

I read about a sinking commercial cruise, with captain and his crew escaped first to safety.

Would you want to ever step on one of those “luxury” cruises?

Living in style, dying solo.

I tried to nap today when neighbor knocked on my door to see if I were OK

(perhaps he was “xin” – beer + heat exhaustion). Then the Lion dance team went around the entire block reminding us this is their year, the year of the Dragon.

Flower Festival proudly displays mighty Dragon in all shapes and sizes, Vietnam’s version of Rose Parade.

Young girls pose for photo-ops, maybe later seen on Facebook or scrap-book.

The Earth seems to rumble.

People chat up with “natives”, knowing that whoever is left in Saigon, is from there (as opposed to workers, students and relatives who have gone home to their respective villages in the countryside).

City folks or country folks, everyone is gearing up to give and receive.

The gift baskets, the flower bouquets and the sticky “banh chung” (rice cake) have been delivered. Water melon (whose inside is red, signifying good luck), blossomed Hoa Mai and kumquat trees are on firesales.

Vietnamese talk about “khong khi Tet” – the taste, texture and ambience of Tet.

A sense of utter confidence that Heaven and Earth are in alignment and agreement to bless the pure of heart.

I can’t find no further evidence than someone who stood silently at an isolated grave, then lighted up incense for neighbor’s graves. Candles or incense, US or VN, we all long to live the rest of our lives the best way we know how and periodically to celebrate it the best way we can. Here, this way, is  familiar to most, but somehow, vaguely strange to me. I, however, found one constant: ABBA‘s Happy New Year played over and over to welcome the  Year of the Dragon. Tung Cheng! Tung Cheng! Tung Cheng!

One-legged work-out

Most people are out to celebrate the upcoming New Year (Tet). Dzzzzzzzzzzzzo!

Heineken toast!

Except for one young man, crutches aside, lifted his body (one leg dangling, the other with flipping blue jeans) up to train his upper-body. Now, that got my attention. I complimented him on finding out the right angle to wrap his hands around the bar. I mentioned there was a glove with an iron middle finger to protect one’s wrists ,  giving them more support and strength.

That young man could have stayed home, feeling sorry for himself.

Yet, that’s not what happened. He did with what’s left on him.

I had a mild scooter accident the other day (people just washed the sidewalk with soapy water to rinse out grease dripped from barbecue grills. Together, this made for potent slip-slide formula).

On my first few trips back to Vietnam, I saw fatal accidents.

Now, it’s “helmet nation”. This alone must have saved thousands of lives.

Most accidents happened over the holidays in the US (DUI).

It shouldn’t be any different here.

I did not know what had caused his leg to be amputated.

I dared not ask.

All I know was he was cool in my book.

After all, the current leg still needs to be toned up.

He just have to put on half the weight.

Unexploded land mines could have been the cause.

Recently there was a successful operation at Franco-Vietnamese hospital.

http://m.timeslive.co.za/?name=timeslive&i=11263/1/0&artId=6283

The patient’s thigh just grew to become a huge chunk of tissues after a failed amputation. A chief surgeon from where I used to live (Palm Beach) flew over with fund raised by the American Cancer Society to conduct surgery to remove the gigantic tumor.  Happy Tet!

Perhaps our patient from DaLat can someday  join a gym like my cool amputee.

Eventually, we will be confident enough to hold Special  Olympics for the disabled.

That would please Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She must be smiling from above.

Flowers on concrete

It’s time to celebrate. Harvest time.

City folks here in Vietnam go home where beer and Banh Chung (Bean Cake) are waiting, while country folks truck in their flowers and fruits in the opposite direction to sell in the city.

This year, we don’t see the return of H5N1. So eat on. Chicken and ducks.

A friend of mine has an orchid farm in Da Lat. He could hardly come down for a visit . Too busy.

I am glad for him. Harvest time. The dead even got their joss paper money burned by the living as Holiday spending spree.

We chatted about cemetery in the States vs here in Vietnam. People did not know that in New Orleans, LA ; people were buried in stack-up tombs (below sea level, which occasionally broke the dyke as happened during Katrina).

The French left their architectural signatures both here in Vietnam and elsewhere like in New Orleans, Montreal and Cote d’Ivoire.

In Paris, they managed to keep traffic out of the city.

Here in Saigon, people  build out which means more congestion even when commercial trucks are restricted to off-peak hours).

Young students are eager to go home. This will ease traffic for a few weeks.

Perhaps there will be enough space for flowers to be sold on concrete sidewalks.

Flowers remind city folks of “Green Field”, lush country as seen in “Good Morning Vietnam” (soundtrack by  Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World). Those green fields got sprayed years ago with Agent Orange, whose long-term destructive consequences are still being sorted out.

Yet, lovers still “parking” in the parks, vendors still selling bouquets (for households to decorate their shrines).

A Vietnamese New Year song aptly says it all “Wishing the farmers with great harvest and young lovers their love nests. So let’s toast” (notice the imagery : harvest and nest etc..). Tet is inclusive, not just for city folks, or just the living. It’s democratized to include the afterlife population.

With the dead and undead join in, concrete or chemical can’t stop the sprouting of flowers on concrete.

un film de Coppola

I heard “Bonjour Vietnam” again last night…”un film de Coppola…”

http://stanmark.multiply.com/reviews/item/9?&show_interstitial=1&u=%2Freviews%2Fitem

It evoked psychedelic images and texture of horror (adapted from  Conrad’s Heart of  Darkness.) Yet we were sitting in a boutique studio, with aged ladies sang along to Le Uyen Phuong’ s Last Word to You , equivalent of Bono and Cher: “let’s lay down one last time, kissing and caressing as primates in the wild.”

To top it all, we were introduced to an Anglo singer who performed three numbers, two of which by Trinh Cong Son, Bob Dylan’s equivalent of Vietnam (Ha Trang and Diem Xua).

For a moment, I was unsure of where I was: America? Vietnam? What time zone was it? Good Morning America or Bonjour Vietnam?

Both sides have paid a hefty price for the conflict that tore both nations apart: the anti-war movement in the States and the still-have-work-to-do integration of  the new Vietnam. Unlike in “un film de Coppola”, Vietnam Today has to manage the ever rising expectations in a flat world.

“Just want to overtake Thailand” commented an engineering department head at a Community College. Well, at least on two occasions that I knew of, Vietnam did just that: SEA games, and rice exporting.

Tourism is still up for grab for both countries.

The upcoming two-week break will see a lot of domestic touring.

Vietnam will see an exodus of its people taking buses, trains, planes and automobiles, just as  American comedian  John Candy and Steve Martin portrayed two strangers met in a snow-stranded airport.  In Apocalypse Now, our main character also came home, with chopper roar in the background overlayed Sheen’s narration ” I have found the enemy and the enemy is us”.

Coppola ran over budget multiple times (Dennis Hopper was half-stoned during the entire shoot).  But somehow, it turned out to be one defining movie of that decade.  To juxtapose 2012  (with dooomsday written all over) with the images of Apocalypse Now is to be redundant.

Vietnamese growing up all over the world can relate to “Bonjour Vietnam” who was sung by a Vietnamese-French girl.  They are curious, but have no context for their immigrant legacy. To self-protect in our age of data deluge, they partitioned their hyphenated existence from their parent’s experience. But the more they try, the stronger the grip (which according to sociologists, will manifest fully in the third generation). Eventually, both generations will have to reconcile and negotiate a truce. In Vietnam, it’s peace time. It’s America who is still in the state of war or readiness for war.

Bonjour Vietnam. Happy New Year. Let my people go.. home. Let them read from the tablet. Hopefully on it we will find:  love God and your neighbors (far and near) as you would yourself i.e. fight not without , for the enemy,  as found in un film de Coppola, is us.

Neither East Nor West

Orhan Pamuk must be born of “Other Colors” and in the “Snow” who later built his “Museum of Innocence“.

He got the Nobel Prize for his unique perspective and perception on being in the middle of things: Istanbul.

Pamuk invited us back to his childhood, to view changes through a child’s eyes “when we watched the film, up to the part where

Abraham loved God so much without expecting anything in return, we all cried…then when the lamb suddenly appeared out of nowhere to stand in for his only son, …we busted out in tears” (Museum of Innocence).

In Snow, his character was a journalist who investigated why veiled women went on a suicide binge.

We were invited into the inner sanctum of a mysterious culture, an exclusive club.

There, we learned that they laughed, cried, went to theatre or appeared in play.

The West can learn something and so does the East.

Pamuk truly serves as a hyphen to both worlds.

He inadvertently takes up an ambassadorial role for our new globalized world.

In our broadband world, the speed and spread of information has no longer been an issue.

But information often times don’t equate with knowledge or cross-cultural sensitivity.

Until we enter our customer’s world, with all its habits and behavior.

When Vietnam was partitioned back in 1954, 2 Million North Vietnamese migrated South in “tau ha mom” (French carriers left over from D-day). The majority of them settled near Vung Tau, Bien Hoa and Ban Co.

I was born there at the last stop. Being Northerner inside the house, and Southerner outside, I grew up aware of the subtlety of sub-cultures as they came into contact or even collision.

Later, in America, I seeked out classmates from Ghana, Singapore, Taiwan, Netherland, Argentina …to ask questions, to hear their world views.

Thirty years ago, the issues were information flow (North-South).  Now that Korea and to a certain extent, Vietnam, all got access to broadband and I-phones. The results: South-South lateral flow e.g. Korean soap programing.

Vietnamese companies, meanwhile, are trying to export themselves, from tangible products (rice, garment, cashews and coffee) to intangible products (outsourcing and software testing service.)

Those who enter and embrace customers’ world will win the day.

Those who don’t, won’t.

It took me a while to register Pamuk’s name, the same way North American did with names like “Nguyen”.

But once the lights are dimmed, and you took on the character’s role (suspension of disbelief), you became a “universal” Turk with his hopes, fears and dreams.

Pamuk’s signature is his remembrance of childhood in all its particularity and his negotiating/reconciling East-West identities.

He did not floss over the details. He paid attention to them.

Because of this, he earned our trust and established himself as an observer and author.

He made the mundane his most cherished.

Because of Pamuk, I will never look at the Turks the same way (as friends rather than foreigners).

It’s as if I got new lenses to view the world, from his point of view,  as neither East nor West; just global citizenry who struggle and savor their dreams, exterior and interior.

The problem with our material-centered world is that we focus on the outside and observable at the expense of the inner beauty.

He is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. This is true from Abraham on down to today.

Vietnam’s outsourcing factory

I have heard about TMA Solutions new building in Quang Trung Software Park, but I have never got a chance to stop by, until yesterday.

1,200-strong, TMA begins to look like an army of engineers (my friend and guide showed me a beehive behind the building, after we had toured their lobby where Vietnam‘s historical artifacts were on display, next to the museum of telephony).

“It is to show the stream of history, culturally and technologically, so our engineers could get a sense of where things might be going” said my friend.

I could relate to that.

Users and programmers don’t exist in a vacuum.

We live and breathe the same air as everyone else.

Honda got hit not once but twice last year, both in Fukushima and in Thailand.

While incubators and laboratories are necessary for concentration and collaboration, they still function within a larger ecosystem.

Users tend to move on to the next big thing more quickly than companies.

Two great benefits TMA could offer to prospective clients:

– its time-tested know-how

– young work force who can stay on for however long the project requires (end-to-end outsourcing).

Yes, we had a sort of working lunch and then marketing presentation.

But it’s the spirit of the group, the speed of execution and the spread of product (cloud computing) that will work in TMA’s favor.

If they grew  (at least no lay-off)  in hard times, how much more in good times.

I am afraid this is counter-intuitive. But organizations need to secure talent just as much as they secure property and product.

When all boats rise, talent can then command higher salary leveraging supply vs demand.

As engineers huddle in conference rooms and cubicles,  consumers are shopping for the greatest and latest.

In turn, these technologies (cloud, social media apps) enable new applications (e.g. Google + Search) which in turn reshape consumer expectations.

It’s the loop, of empathy, of hits and misses (Betamax) and the drive for perfection (Apple).

Outsourcing is just a phenomenon, but man’s search for meaning and connection has been around much longer.

Get to the bottom of this, you will get to the bottom line.

I like my guide’s side comment “look at Napoleon! he was so short, yet so imperial”.

I just know from seeing the beehives behind the building that worker bees are busy at work, coding and collaborating, and  in the process saving tons of money for clients. Clients who now can sit back and choose from a score of outsourcing factories. Let the game begin. Stay hungry, stay curious (Jobs’ commencement address at Standford).  Vietnamese engineers at TMA can discount the first advice and focus on being curious. This, their shrewd leader had already anticipated. He wanted to leave his legacy via the museum of  ethnology (past), and technology  (future).