Tag: Vietnam

Adventure in my homeland

One of my earliest  collections was the Adventure of Tin-Tin.

It was a roadmap for my adventure later in life, which took me to ten countries and roughly fifty cities in North America. But nothing had prepared me for an adventure in my homeland. Certain familiar elements still exist: Chemin de Fer, Ben Thanh Market and the noodle stand in my old neighborhood. But new elements have emerged as well: I-Pho T-shirts, I-Center and Steve Jobs biography in Vietnamese.

At rush hour, thousands of helmets compete for pavement and sidewalk. Call it “Helmet Nation”. But at night, when the heat subsides, tables and chairs sprout up on the very sidewalks commuters had just fought for the right of way earlier.

People are getting married (young demographic), are into fashion and style and going to school at ALL hours of the day ALL WEEK LONG.

I heard that Koreans work  the longest hours (55) and the French shortest (35).

Maybe Vietnam should be ranked at the top for classroom hours vs free time.

(This study load perhaps did not scare off the only Korean student enrolled in Vietnam University to study MBA out of a few thousand foreign students in Vietnam, most taking Vietnamese lessons).

During my “re-entry” I could pass as a “pure” native, until  my slightly red-hue hair gave me away

“Good morning Sir, would you like to see the menu?” one vendor approached me at Ben Thanh Market.

And before I knew it, I purchased a Steve Jobs biography by TIME’s former Editor (in Vietnamese, by Alpha Book) instead.

After all, Steve was born Syrian. And his idea of “think different” would fit here where “Sorrows of War” copies are sold along with I-Pho T-shrits.

On my way home, I stopped by the I-Center in District 3 to see how closely this “reseller” reflects Steve’s original and obsessive control of  every Retail  detail (inadvertently, I acted as an unsolicited mystery shopper).

The rep asked “what would you like to buy”?

In the States, his counterparts would have left me alone to play with the I-products, until I became so engaged and enthralled that I wouldn’t need to be asked (puppy-dog sales).

The strangest feeling was to walk out of Mission Impossible (which took the audience to the Kremlin, Dubai and Mumbai) and emerged into the sunlight of my old neighborhood in District 3. For a moment, life seemed to be  a continuous loop, from Adventure of Tin Tin, to Tom Cruise, to Tommy (me), as one  writer put it, ” return to the same place, and see it for the first time”.

I finally understood the expression “the eyes of one’s heart”. Perhaps we will reach the Empathic Civilization sooner than thought: understand others and be understood. Full circle. Adventure that started at my doorstep ended there as you may have guessed. Ecole L’Aurore. District 3.

Blind in wilderness

Years ago, I took a course in Wilderness Survival.

One of the classmates was a blind Korean guy.  The others all white males.

We were to spend the entire five days in the White Mountain of New Hampshire,

with one solo day. Our “final” was rock repelling.

I kept looking in my teammate’s eyes and wondered how in the world he could survive the course, its obstacles and the rest of his life in urban jungle.

To make a long story short. We all passed eventually, but not without a hitch.

That hitch happened to be me. I repelled down straying from everyone else’s path (of least resistance). My instructor leaned down and gave me personal feedback while I was dangling in mid-air.  This wasn’t  my first time. Later, at an MCI white-water rafting trip, I got bumped out of the inflated raft into the gushing icy-cold Colorado waters. Luckily, my teammates circled the raft and pulled me back in.

Every once in a while, when facing seemingly insurmountable  challenges, I tap into that dormant strength to overcome fear. We all learned about our inner strength from that course, including our blind teammate who said “I see” a lot.

He was an inspiration to us all (at least, he wasn’t afraid of the pitch-dark solo).

People without sight, without limp remind us that fear is an emotion to co-exist with hope.

The fear of losing face is big in societies like Vietnam‘s.

Here it is common that a company employs mostly relatives.

Or vice versa, long-time employees are regarded as families.

Your identity is that of so and so’s cousin, aunt, uncle or nephew.

The  relationship web got more entangled when your ancestors had multiple marriages. Vietnamese language has precise naming for older/younger brothers and sisters (Anh/Em).

And to be on the safe side, just address everyone as if he/she were older.

What does this have to do with wilderness survival?

I am reentering a society built on collective identity.

My atomized self needs some attitude adjustment.

Instinctively, I weighed the way I address people, reading their non-verbal responses.

To survive here, I have to flash back to that “solo”night in the mountain, without light and without human interaction. Just inner noise and inner voice.

In Vietnam, self-mastery is hailed as a core virtue and a corner-stone for leadership (Tu Than, Te Gia, Bnh Quoc, Tri Thien Ha). Super-imposing this on Western leaders today (for instance my Penn State Defense Coach, who decided to go on the offense with young boys), we probably can narrow the field quite a bit.

Every culture has its gem. But if one is blind, it doesn’t matter  wilderness or waterfront, one still can’t see.

I know one thing from that wilderness survival class: my Korean teammate did not judge me by sight e.g the color of my skin or any other outward factors.

Death-affirming culture

During lunch time at my first job (Child Welfare Bureau at Indian Town Gap, PA), we threw a football, my first.

That was supposed to be my induction into the Penn State culture the following Fall.

Here in Vietnam, at lunch time, I walk by a casket store. As equally shocking for foreigners as my first introduction to the football back then.

One culture fights every inch toward touchdown (winning is the only thing) while  the other prepared to accept human fate.

In the country side people even pre-purchase caskets to be stored  in the house like furniture, very much like Pre-paid Legal in the US (just in case).

I know this barely scratches the surface of a culture, because cosmetic-surgery is on the rise here (death denying), as modernity starts to eclipse Vietnam’s tradition( age = respect). In addition to this, people also fight for every centimeter in the street and  on the side-walk. There lies the paradox of  resigning to fate and fighting for the future. No offense, but I happened to read an USA Today Blog this morning, describing the author’s arrival to Ho Chi Minh City, and checking in to the Hyatt downtown.  She promised more adventure in Vietnam, but her first installment did not entice me . Too insulated (we checked in, traffic in all directions – has she watched the time-lapse video of traffic here before coming).

I might have noticed the same thing from that vantage point on my first trip (having lunched with a Hyatt’s Boardman out in the terrace), but now that I decide to zoom in, to satisfy my cultural curiosity .

Death is big business here: casket, candle and cremation.

(The other night, I saw a traffic accident  which confirmed this observation besides huge percentage of  male smokers). Most families have ancestor’s photos on the altar (my parents used to have theirs on the altar and now I have my parents’ on mine).

Insurance companies are prospering here. It’s interesting to see the objections people raise when buying life insurance.

Will it cover my casket?

Enough for cremation or a plot of land near the border of Cambodia?

How do my kids prove that I was dead by accident?

At lunch, I also saw a baby napping on a hammock near the casket store.

Life flows continuously here, just like anywhere else.

Except that, at lunch time, I can hardly find anyone to throw a football with. Back then, the sight of co-workers opted for sweats over siesta was a culture shock to me. Just as scooter traffic must be to the USA Today blogger.

Welcome to Vietnam. Cross the street safely. And write something worthy of your stay and your Gold-Card Reward!

Customarily Bad Luck

It’s known urban legend here in Vietnam that you do not take a photo with three people. Someone will need to stand in to defy the odds (of bad luck).

It is also bad luck that a person in the photo but was cut out.

I once saw a family picture which had a missing member. Apparently two sisters were either in love or married to the same man. So out of madness and jealousy, one cut out the other’s image from that photo.

Some ancient cultures refused to have their photos taken, for fear that their souls would be captured.

Imprints of expressions.

Frozen moment in time.

Together then separated.

I still remember one elementary classmate whom I later met in Santa Ana.

He must be the oldest friend of my early memory.

Very special indeed.

His face, his smile and his wagging ears.

Another friend who is now dying, also has an unmistakable square jaw.

Later he went on to play “pro” Rock and Roll (wearing a wig).

Another friend/neighbor with pony tail, still playing 8 shows a week.

I just got back from hearing him. His closing number was requested .

“When mama died, Pappa broke out and cried”

A person is nothing but the sum of his memories.

Conversely, a person with complete dementia is just a walking zombie.

Images and music carry us back in time.

Christopher Reeves used to star in “Somewhere in time“, a very soulful and un-American type of movie, which was quite unlike “Back to the Future“, although both centered on time traveling theme.

Last week, I ran into a childhood friend once again.

After the brief chat, I walked away, still couldn’t shake off  the way I had remembered him: the 7th or 8th grade friend I strummed the guitar with (Something in the way, she moves….).

Soon, we will be able to upload our entire history with Facebook‘s Timeline.

The “me” will be among the “we” as we progress through time.

Sharing intimate moments, leaving them in the “cloud”  till infinity.

An insurance against flood and fire, dementia and destruction.

This Christmas will be one of the most memorable ones for me: I get to share it with a cousin whose husband has been missing in action for more than 36 years.  It took her a long time to place his picture on the family altar (reserved for the dead).  When or if we are having our souvenir photo taken, I probably will ask someone to stand in the photo. You see, we could not discount her husband, whose photo is now sitting on the altar, to belong there or not.

Puzzling indeed, and heartbroken in fact.

Par Avion

I almost stepped on an envelope with imprint of an airplane on the cover.

It’s been a while since I saw that design. We used to write intimate letters, telling in detail what had happened in our lives, then “seal with a kiss” an envelope which had “Par Avion” on it.

In fact, when Vietnam was still North and South the way Korea now is, we were allowed to mail only post cards across the DMZ. So and so just had a third baby, the youngest finally got married and moved out etc….(Good news!:)

We lived with what was available at the time:  American cars for wedding rental, Pan Am flights, and Vespas (Roman Holiday without Gregory Peck).

Now I heard of $3,000 Chinese-made cars.

No thanks.

I’d rather get married and chauffeured away in a ferry or a bus, slowly but surely.

Best off is to take pictures in front of Notre Dame De Saigon and walk across the colonial boulevard to a Bowling Party at nearby Diamond Plaza.

Speaking of Malls.

Shoppers in the US are anticipating Black Friday shopaholic reunion.

“My name is Tommy, and I am a shopaholic”.

The prayer of serenity will be recited in unison.

Friendship fosters via common interests. And what is more popular than the love for shopping?

I used to be into ties and books.

Now, if given a choice, I still am into books, and you can keep the ties.

Except for when I attend a wedding. Like yesterday, of all places, in Cu Chi

(No, I did not wear a tie to crawl into one of those war-time tourist “traps”).

Still, a wedding in the country, especially in Vietnam, brought out major “players”.

I got to meet a very important man in the vice squad.

Go clubbing safely my friend, from here on.

It’s important who you know, not what you know.

Back to modern mode of communication.

Vinaphone and Vietel will offer 4-G.

Who is going to write letters and “seal with a kiss” before sending them via PAR AVION letters any more?

Even fax, chat and e-mail will soon be obsolete.

When I saw the young groom, tall and slick, I know time has moved on.

His kids will be of the 4-G + generation.

Text, voice and video, simultaneously.

No more Concorde or Cu Chi.

Messages will be instantaneously delivered.

As we think, shall others know.

Par Avion will be too slow (turn of 20th century not 21st).

My parents did not think so at the time.

To them, buying a stamp that had “Par Avion” meant having less meat for the meal.

Faster mail= leaner meat.Perhaps the same is still true today with many families in emerging economies (I-phone 5 = less milk).

One will have to grow stronger, swifter and smarter. Welcome to an increasingly flat world, at the speed of light (fiber optic).  But that envelope on the street did trigger this lengthy flash back to the past.

Proust would be proud! After all, I did not title this “Air Mail“. It’s Par Avion.

Slippery Saigon

Someone told me that the rainy season here would end soon.

Yet it is raining still. Outdoor activities like kung-fu class, xe-om, beer stalls all ceased.

I seeked shelters .

The trick to walk safely here is to step firmly with one foot into the sidewalk, not at its edge (which slopes down to facilitate water draining).

Yet the middle of the sidewalk  was often “occupied” by street vendors most evenings.

The last choice is to walk in the street where scooters in all directions fighting for right of way.

Rain or shine, the internet cafe are full: kids playing Chinese chess , soccer and Thumbelina online.

I found a restaurant that caters to Northern taste: boiled pork, shrimp sauce and stuffed tofu.

I miss mom’s cooking.

The owner paced back and forth trying to put his grandson to sleep (on his shoulder).

I remember my old baby sitter, who let me piggyback to and from kindergarten.

I wonder how many favors one accumulated in a lifetime.

And how many favors one gives back ( Karma currency imbalance).

We all need bail-outs at times and we all “occupy” at some point.

Meanwhile, I  read about the Obama’s latest injunction to use foreign aid resources to further human rights’ causes e.g. gay rights around the world.

It’s one thing to finally “don’t ask don’t tell” in the US.

It’s quite another to open US embassies and USAID facilities to be “gay sanctuaries” around the world.

Tall order indeed!

Has anyone briefed him about cross-cultural differences? about Cultural Relativity and Taboos around the world?

People barely got used to using “OK” (condoms) here, much less advancing “don’t ask don’t tell”.

For more than three weeks now, I have been out of one bubble just to enter another.

Here, in Vietnam, people are in constant motion; multi-taskers in the US would feel right at home (people riding scooters in busy traffic with one hand while talking on the phone and smoking).

On my first few trips here, I saw accidents that claimed lives. Lately, it has been less frequent.

Infact, phones are no longer the most sought after, nor are English classes (which are increasingly commoditized ).

Home Karaoke systems perhaps reach saturation point, just like chat room at internet cafes.

Indeed my IT guy and I couldn’t find phone cables (for fax and wireline phones).

Apparently telecom VN has gone completely mobile.

The working class meanwhile are trying to stretch their hard-earned money

(get paid, get a few dresses).

With holidays fast approaching, workers in China and Vietnam are scrambling for the last train home.

Saigon, though still slippery, will then be emptied of migrant workers.

“The Sad Hymn” (Bai Thanh Ca Buon) will be played way past Christmas.

Booze and beer will be consumed till the last drop. Caution: slippery when wet.

Nobody discussed “Occupy” here. We are 100 percenters, sharing the burden and hopefully the beer.

Why not while it lasts! Its famous movie star has just died of a stroke at age 54. His declared wish: someday to return to Vietnam,

and find acting gig among his peers. He has just felt short of that last wish. One of his screen appearances was in “We were soldiers“.

It’s slippery still in Saigon. I will sign off now before treading carefully home, or else, I end up in “We were alive”.

Art expressions in most unlikely places

You would have never thought of running into people ballroom-dancing in the park. But here in GoVap new park, where the young trees are still being nursed, and the lights barely lit up, people came out and did just that. Young and old, male and female, they came out when the heat started to ease. Reminds me of a line in Saturday in the Park, by Chicago (people dancing, people talking, a man selling ice-cream).

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister said 42,000 people still died from unexploded land mines (see Huffington Post).

Perhaps the late Princess Diana would have grieved in her grave.

That’s amount to a lot of dancing feet, had they remained above ground.

Someone was practicing the violin tonight . Last night, I heard a flute (which reminded me of my daughter). It’s soon be time for me to pick up the guitar again.

Survival instruments.

When it’s hot, crowded and polluted, you just don’t go out and buy Friedman’s book.  You learn how to cope with realities.

Young students got used to taking the bus. It saves time and money, although in this culture, or even in the US, when you wait for the bus, you are either homeless or down-and-out on your luck.

Public transit somehow was played down by the likes of Ford and GM, when gas was still cheap and the streets spare of traffic.

Those dynamics have now changed, especially here in Asia.

People had resisted the helmet law for a while, until they became convinced by the saved lives. Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie were here to adopt their Vietnamese child.

They had ridden the streets of Ho Chi Minh City right before the law took effect.

The last of the Mohicans.

f it weren’t for the computers, we would see more youth troubles on the street. As it turns out, they are sitting right next to me, and behind me.

I am staying out of trouble too, even at my age.

Social media, blogging, and gaming.

Some companies (French ones) went ahead and forbade employees from using email. They prefer instant messaging for quick results.

Facebook was prescient on this, when its CEO announced the death of email as we knew it.

Young people communicate instantly without format and formality.

Just a quick question.

Here is a quick answer.

Boom!

Hurry up and get to the park, where people are talking, people are dancing, a man selling ice-cream.

Any day in the park.

A platform, a boombox, a partner and there we go.

One and two, one and two.

Dancing under the stars.

The good Lord rains on the field of both the good and the evil.

He gave each a longing for beauty that transcends place, politics and power of the purse.

Who says poor people are boring? I think the opposite is true.

How can I tell her

Lobo was hot in Vietnam during the 70’s.

Decades later, on an American stage, his Vietnamese fans even invited him to perform live for music video.

Just a simple man.

“I love you too much to ever start liking you, so let’s just let the story kind an end…”

The contradiction and dialectic – friend and lover.

How can I  tell people about Vietnam.

Its soul, its sentiment, its sorrow (of war).

People on both sides don’t talk about it.

Nobody wants to talk about it.

In Matterhorn,  we got a glimpse of what it was like back then by a Yale scholar. It took him more than 30 years to pen his experience.

In Bao Ninh‘s Sorrows of War, it took him less time, but painful nevertheless.

It eats you up from the inside.

You can’t forget it.

Everyone was affected by it.

The younger generation only heard about it.

The older buried it.

But it grows inside, like a cancer.

Sudden loss, separation and interruption.

One cannot swim in the same river twice.

Maybe you can go back in place, but not in time.

First cut is the deepest.

Now you hear only sentimental songs whose lyricst barely scratch the surface.

Who will speak for them?

Who can understand them?

Betrayal and bewilderment.

How can I tell her about you.

I am just a simple man.

I love you too much to ever start liking you.

So Lobo incidentally touched the nerves (top of the chart in US as well).

Just you and me and the dog named Boo.

Rhyme and rhythm.

Chorus and replay.

It gets right under your skin.

And stays there.

The artist has moved on.

But his fans are still lingering.

Like the smell of napalm.

The taste of Pall Mall, among other PX supplies: peanut butter and jelly,

cheese and fruit cake.

Go go girls in leather boots and mini-skirts.

Bob Hope and the choppers’ drops.

When I saw you standing there, I felt the blood goes to my feet.

Baby, I love you to want me.

Unassuming, unpretentious.

Pure longing and pure loss.

Fleeting flirt and life-time sorrow.

On top of the sorrows of war.

On top of post-war reconstruction.

There is still a glimpse of hope, of finding love once again.

Maybe this time, it’s different.

Maybe, when I saw you standing there, I once again, felt the blood goes to my feet.

Nobody cares if Lobo no longer stays at the top of the chart.

To the Vietnamese heart which he once conquered, Lobo occupied a well-deserving spot. I once felt ashamed that I had liked him. Now I no longer want to please what’s trendy. Just stay there, my simple man, because “everything seems right, whenever I am with you”……..

Crossed markets

Forbes kept praising the success of luxury brands in China while web sites in Vietnam and China mentioned “Pepper Spray on Black Friday”. Chinese-made goods, sold as lost leaders, to the first 100-early-bird shoppers.

Planned scarcity.

Hype-creation.

Sensational, sizzling headline-grabbing video op for YouTube.

We need attention. The media need it even more. (For some counter-intuitive reasons, Warren Buffet just spent a chunk of change buying his hometown newspaper, which was bleeding financially).

Maybe he knew something we didn’t.

Here in Vietnam, I found shopkeepers, “loss prevention” guards, and people at the coffee shops all trying to read something.

Literacy rates are high (low 90’s),  perhaps higher than a lot of their counterparts in Asia.

People in motion here at night market in Hanh Thong Tay (budget shoppers for style).

The demographic (mostly young) definitely is an advantage (they won’t die half way through your projects).

Young people here are very assertive in expressing their ideas and opinions.

If you can ride the scooters to and from work, you can definitely work.

And if you can ride to work, on an empty stomach, you definitely need to work hard.

And if you can ride to work on an empty stomach, while at home, there are more empty stomachs, you have no choice but to work and study hard.

What do young people do with their leisure time? That’s right, computer gaming.

Next thing you know, they upgrade to mobile gaming, the same way they have grown up wanting  to get behind the scooters.

Nation in motion.

Back to China with luxury goods and 200 million people moved out of poverty to the middle class.

In those same thirty years, we saw the decline of the West.

Next thirty years, the rise of the Rest.

Stock up on your pepper spray. Stock up on Christmas decoration.

Stockpiling your weapons of mass consumption.

Shopping has always been a patriotic act in the US.

Shop to save: what a contradiction in terms.

Meanwhile, people in China are putting away money for their “only child’s” wedding.

There will be a lot of empty-nesters in China.

There will then be a lot of old tourists from China.

They got tired of their own Great Wall (of China).

They want to take photo standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, built for the first World’s Fair.

They want to experience Paris of the 50-60’s, where “tous leas garcons et les filles de mon age se promaine, dans la rue…”

Everyone is entitled to their 15-min of fame.

To the childhood’s dream.

Of  strange shores and leaving the familiar behind.

Materialism trumps sentimentalism any day, any time.

That’s how the world is flat: consumers are kings and queens, on Black Friday and any Friday.

ICT talent in a flat world –

re-post from 2011. This past year, things are getting heated up with “friend-shoring” chip manufacturing with Biden’s visit.

________________________________________________________________________________

If it hadn’t been for the slightly warm temperature, the water bottle that bore “QTSP” (Quang Trung Software Park) and the simulcast headsets, I would have thought I was back in 2005 at  a similar conference in Palo Alto. But this was Vietnam.  With speakers and delegates from Malaysia, Thailand, India trying to organize into a ICT block. “We competed with one another too much, selling to each other too much”, said a Thai delegate.

Instead, SEA ICT parks were urged to organize and synergize.

A message well worth noting and worthy of praise.

Except, Thailand just went through a century flood (at the tune of 46 Billion)

and Vietnam ICT college enrolment grew at meager pace of 2% (demands are calling for 12 times that).

I kept hearing the word “disconnect”.

Schools weren’t up to task for mobile, gaming and cloud computing.

Consumers just wanted to “use” technology, no matter where it’s from (mostly likely the West, but outsourced to the East and then repackaged and rebranded).

I worked the crowd, and walked the hallway.

I shook hands and met people at the booths.

I was behind those booths many times while at MCI and Teleglobe.

Now, it’s their turns.

Eye contacts, business cards in hand, and promise to keep in touch.

Right!

I said I was into softskills, not softwares.

They understood immediately.

Quid pro quo.

You teach me some, I teach you some.

We can send foreign teachers of every shade of accent for you to be exposed to.

Of course, at a very low price.

Accents are cheap.

Words are cheap.

Human connection: invaluable.

I lifted one guy’s spirit when I mentioned that companies like RightNow could still command a very high price, having been bought by cash-rich Oracle.

So the young and the younger got along, hand shakes without high fives.

Welcome to Vietnam, Welcome to the flat world.

Let the game begin. Somehow I know those guys behind the booths will turn out very OK, more than they now realize.

I have been there and I know.

They will hit singles and one of them will hit a ball way out of the park.

Just a numbers game.

Just a right mix of pressures, opportunities, collaboration and market demand.

Keep pitching

Keep selling.

Keep inventing.

They’ll come, even if it takes a huge flood to “flush” them out.

Currently wages pressure has turned to demonstration in China.

What are we waiting for? Someone else’s crisis, our opportunity.

Ironically, that double-meaning character was originally Chinese, now came in full circle there.

ICT talent in the flat world. ICT talent in Vietnam. I like it.