Tag: Vietnam

Traffic turns attraction

Crunch time in Ho chi Minh City. A nuisance for many yet a photo-op for tourists.

Millions in ponchos, helmets, dust masks, sunglasses fighting for every inch (centimeter here) to get  home in the pouring rain, while tourists leisurely strolled the colonial side walks in shorts, sandals and Sony cameras trying to record their trips. Who is looking at whom?

These skinny people all wrapped up to protect their skin?

Or these fat people are not afraid of getting sun-burn?

Three years ago, I switched role by playing expat in Hanoi, studying among other expats

from US, UK, Canada, Australia and Ireland. I got a glimpse of how the natives were viewed, perceived and more often than not, judged: English school across from a dog-meat stance, ballroom-dancing in the park and to top it all, a 60’s Berkeley-style stripper family on the streets begging for money to cover health care costs (per recent Yahoo news).

One of our lessons for teachers of English as a foreign language that morning happened to be “soliciting money online from friends to cover shopping debt”.

It struck me that the Western girl in the lesson and the lady out there on the street were doing the same, one with wireless, the other voiceless.

Three years have passed since that morning.

A lot of bank bail outs are now behind us.

Bank buildings got renamed, CEO’s booted.

During the upturn,  people drink and smoke their lives away.

During the downturn, people drink and smoke their lives away even faster.

Always a vicious cycle, a race to the bottom. Vietnam spends 38% of its income on food, Mexico 23%, France 13% while the US a mere 7% (subsidized infrastructure).

I found myself in sudden tears at lunch. This was after I had heard that a friend with cancer would have only six months to live.

What would I do in his shoes?

Dzo (down) the Ken (Heineken)? Visit Yellow Stone Park? Eiffel tower?

My grandmother’s grave? (we’ll meet again soon anyway).

What would you do?

Fighting for another inch in traffic?

Every moment is precious especially towards the end .

“There is a pause in between life and death,” said my friend.

I saw it once with the burning monk. The rising flame was both his baptism by fire and his cremation.

To enter that next ring of eternity, he must and did leave all things behind.

To dance to another drummer’s beat.

After two weeks in country, I have learned to cross the streets without the usual reflex which I found counter-productive. And I definitely resist any impulse to take pictures, because someone else’s stress was not going to be my sensation. Not just Vegas, but also Vietnam, where what happened here, stays here. Traffic is to me, a distraction not attraction.

Thu Thiem and Cu Chi

Both have tunnels, but Thu Thiem‘s has just been built and visited mostly by Viet natives.

Cu Chi tunnels however is a backpackers’ must-see.

Going through Thu Thiem Tunnel, you feel like you were in Louisiana or Baltimore.

It unveils the future of  Vietnam, where ferry workers now work as toll booth collectors.

District 2 is the place to watch.

Just as the old Las Vegas strip that gave ways to the Strip, or Sands imploded to hand over to Wynn.

(Maybe surviving “tunnel rats” can find work with companies specializing in collapsing old buildings.)

I am engrossed in “the Devil in the White City“, which recounts the masterminding and building of the Chicago World Fair.

“Landscape does tricks to the mind,” the proposal said (given its time frame of 1890, this was prescient enough).

Competing high rises are being erected along the main highway leading to Ho Chi Minh City.

Meanwhile, inside the alleys, people blast their karaoke systems to “torture” their neighbors.

When I grew up, only the weeks leading to Christmas that loud speakers were in full blast. Now the commoditization of music finds many outlets:  Bose speakers, mobile phones, computers and lap tops

The pull of glitzy city.

You have to have thick skin to survive daily commute and even thicker skin to survive your weeKENd (notice KEN, as in HEINEKEN). Beers are delivered in the back of scooters to the back doors of open-air pubs. Baby stools are placed onto the side walks: voila! open-air party. During the day, it’s the administrative Ho Chi Minh City, but at night, it’s Saigon side-walk.

The museum of wartime remnants now claims several prevalent locations.

The locals want to see new things like Thu Thiem Tunnel and Bana (bananas) Peak near China Beach.

Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie were here two weeks ago visiting the French equivalent of Alcatraz (Con Dao).

So foreign visitors want to see the esoteric, the locals exotic.

It’s a matter of taste.

Supply and demand.

The economics of travel and leisure.

Still hats off to those who were drafted to die as “tunnel rats”.

To both sides, what a way to die.

Not too long from now, the new Thu Thiem tunnel will be old hat.

By then, their children back from overseas with acquired new taste, will prefer  Cu Chi (the American part of being Vietnamese-American).

Thu Thiem or Cu Chi? It depends on how old and where you are born.

Anchor kids

Although “Last Men Out” tells a story about the last Marines on the last day of Vietnam, readers still learn a great deal about the Vietnamese “group culture”. Many workers of the former US  embassy were on the list to be “chopper” out (Operation Frequent Wind). It just so happened that the gardener of the embassy came in the back gate (his work place) with a long rope that tied all his relatives so they wouldn’t be cut off. The marine could only authorize those on the list. The gardener’s reply: you chose for me.

Story like that repeats itself on Pan Am last flights (three-fold increase) as well.

Later, we saw the waves of Boat People in 1980-1990.

And finally, just an “anchor kid” here and there to send home money.

I did not think of my now divorced wife as an “anchor kid” until it dawn on me, that’s what happened.

Inadvertently, I was pushed into playing the benevolent, guilt-ridden 7th fleet which I had once been on.

We have come in full circle.

Now, she is free to go “black friday” shopping (for an I-pad).

I meant to title this blog as “I hate Steve Jobs“, but in the Vietnamese tradition, we try not to speak ill of the dead.

So, here I am, on the clock at a neighborhood Internet gaming center, next to rowdy kids, while my wife, having spent ten years in the US, called to ask how she could get wi-fi in our home in Palm Beach, FL.

Again, I have to play the role of an remote IT administrator.

In the tradition of “tech and multi-cultural marketing”, this blog is both personal and reflective of a larger trend: people will do what is necessary to rise to the next level on the Maslow scale. Next year, there will be another version of the “Ipad” probably in a Palo Alto garage, in time for Black Friday.

Being savvy and quick to adapt, Vietnamese families barely finish wiping their tears at the airport before sending their next “anchor kid”. It’s both a burden and a badge (of honor).  Escalade, Lexus, and Camry will be bought on installment, not to interfere with set allowance for families back home.

Mexican, Filippino and Chinese workers in the US follow the same immigration pattern (wage arbitrage). The US costs of service and goods are subsidized by millions of personal stories like my cousin’s.

She saved up to send her oldest boy to America.

I first met him back in 1990, as a bus boy in Orange County.

Next thing I heard, he already turned manicurist, then he and his wife, owned a nail shop in Chicago.

Later, his wife died, left him with a pair of twin daughters, and a life insurance compensation. He then upgraded to a plush salon in Dallas, TX (and remarried, perhaps to another “anchor kid”).

With his income, he sent home to bring his youngest brother to the US to complete his PhD in mathematics.

Next thing I know, his youngest brother is now full professor at a Vietnam’s private University (all in English, I believe).

Anchor kids. Lifting one boat at a time. Some want I-pad, others PhD.

Unstoppable.

Same people who pulled the heavy canons up the hill of Dien Bien Phu.

Same people who would not leave any relative behind at the back door of the US embassy.

Same people who fended off not two but three wars with next to nothing to eat.

The US has bogged down in two wars at the tune of Trillion Dollars. Maybe there are some take-aways here.s Just imagine how humiliated for privileged boy to start as a bus boy and nail boy. Then, the anchor kid serves as a monkey bridge for next kids to cross. To their credits they don’t burn the bridge. As of latest figure, Vietnam now ranks 8th highest number of students attending US colleges and universities. The line for foreign students’ visas now stretches long and winding at the same spot where  “Last Men Out” was depicted. At least, this time, they are not tied together by the gardener’s rope. But still with the same script “You choose for us”. Anchor kids.

Vietnam, next Hong Kong?

On my first trip to Hong Kong summer 1981, I was taken in by the energy and entrepreneurial spirit there.

A camera shop (pre-Iphone era) next to a watch shop (again, pre-Ipad era) next to an electronics store.  Shoppers from India, Europe, Australia were all there, bustling about. Double-deck buses (still under British colonial rule) moved to and fro from Kowloon to Sham Shui Po.

China‘s Champs ELysees.

And that’s 30 years ago.

Now, boarding a bus in Saigon, full of college students from the University of Industry, I saw Vietnam‘s future 30 years from now.

Every kids on that bus ( with Samsung phones) will start a business or work for MNC companies, which will surely be coming (when wage pressures increase in China and water level rises again in Thailand).

In fact, Quang Trung Software Park is holding a conference on that very same topic (Human resources, mostly ICT, in a flat world).

Thailand wants to play a lead role in connecting and collaborating at this gathering.

Alliances for a planned and collaborative future (who is going to be the next Hong Kong or Singapore?)  Indeed, Manpower and other HR agencies have sprung up all over town. With hard and soft skills, one can command a decent wage here.

The living condition leaves much to be desired however : supermarket is located next to a dry dirty river, for instance. But all that can and will be fixed in time. Right now, younger learners are enrolled in foreign-own classes, picking up an expression here and a tune there.

My relative sent his daughter to the US to complete high school, Singapore to finish college and now to Australia for graduate school.

Stories like this put Vietnam on the path toward becoming another Hong Kong , while Hong Kong itself has moved up the value chain (per NYT Friedman) to full service economy, “off-shoring” its manufacturing further up North.

In other words, if those “Boat People” were to arrive today and be allowed to go off camp to work, they would be at a total loss, as opposed to work off-book in the garment industry as back then (“tailored in Hong Kong”).

Back to ICT as a way out

Young people naturally pick up new skills faster than older workers.

This is especially true for language-acquisition.

Once we can integrate the two camps (business savvy vs tech savvy) we are on our way to a promising future.

I notice primary schools and Universities here have started an all-English curriculum,  Vietnam’s latest attempt to copy the Asian Tiger miracle. Private universities are busy constructing “campuses” modeled after counterparts overseas (Hoa Sen, Tan Tao ), still have to shuttle students to and fro on chartered buses to city’s outskirts.

Countries like Taiwan, Singapore and S Korea have all traveled that road.

The raw materials are present, as evident from my bus ride which was all of a sudden empty after the drop off  at the main campus. Franchise concept has taken hold here: sticky rice chain, sugarcane juice chain, KFC chain, Lotteria chain and Tous Les Jours.

Being a “virgin” market has some pluses. Investors can’t wait to stake out location, location, location and brand positioning.

But the locals will learn the ins and outs of good and bad use of capitals.

(23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism by Chang).

The solution: go ahead with caution, but still move ahead speedily when  opportunity presents itself.

Just the way heavy traffic is here . Just the way people are moving about in Vietnam now. Just the way I saw in Hong Kong then.

Modernity and memory

A “xe om” (scooter taxi) guy mentioned a city (Lai Thieu?) where one can find all the abandoned carriages (horse or cow).

Hearing that, I flashed back to those early days when I accompanied my grandmother on her monthly trip to receive pension.

We took a bus, and Lambretta . I always got treated to a good lunch, a special bonding. It made me feel needed albeit just a kid.

At Ben Thanh Central Market, we could still find horse carriages leisurely move about in sparse traffic.

Speaking of the here and now. Vietnam finished some “white elephant” projects recently (Can Tho Bridge, Thu Thiem underwater bridge, Da nang Dragon bridge).

For those people whose livelihood depended on ferrying passengers, modern bridges spelled the end of their earnings.

When Henry Ford tied together two motorbikes to make a four-wheeler, horse carriage operators assumed that his invention would fail (too much smoke and noise, a disruption and distraction).

Yet we all know what has happened since.

A whole industry went down the tube: saddle makers, horse shoes, horse breeding and carriage builders.

In fact, in England, taxis still keep the old sitting arrangement (where two rows of passengers facing each other).

Nostalgia.

Lost cause and lost era.

Many residents of Thu Thiem perhaps feel elated but also puzzled by this change.

People stopped in the middle of the tunnel to take souvenir photos???

Modern memory.

We leave behind our digital fingerprints and carbon footprints.

Future archivists will excavate and learn about our “elementary” approaches to using the Web.

Our kids will look back to find our social graphs quite rudimentary.

What do you mean you only post a class picture on Facebook?

Video chat that can only see your face under poor lighting condition?

Families living across the continent can’t get together over Thanksgiving dinner online?

(MCI commercial was about just that, back in 1993).

Modernity, by definition, never stops reinventing itself.

I will never find horse carriages in the city, but out in the country, cities like Da Lat , tourists can still ride a horse carriage as they do with cyclo today in District 1. Modernity or memory? I miss my grandma already despite the age gap and generational gap.

Still inflamed

When I witnessed the monk set fire on himself some forty years ago, the streets of Saigon had less traffic than it does now.

An American photographer got words that there might be something happening’.  By day’s end, morning in Washington,

his shot sent shock waves over the wire, as flammable as the content it carried: a monk set fire on himself in protest against the iron grips of the Diem’s brothers.

My understanding of Buddhism, at least in theory, was that the monks were not supposed to act that aggressively or with open hostility

against the authority, in this case, a very repressive regime (whose leaders were later taken out).

Now, at that same street corner I found an old version and a newer memorial worthy of his protest.

Rage against the machine.

Burning napalm and burning monk.

Ambassador Lodge then must have pulled out his hair.

It’s a long way from his Republican roots, and Wenham, MA home.

I have been at both places to envision how big a PR disaster it must have (nearby Salem, MA was known for burning gothic witches, but that’s a different Puritanical story).

(AP) Wire went wild.

The younger monks and nuns were all chanting, songs for the living and the dead (and in between –  while waiting for the kerosene to soak up his cloak). As soon as the younger monk walked away, barely a few feet, flame started to rise.

The photo captured a young bystander leaning against his bicycle, unable to register the significance of the moment.

Stillness. Heaven and Earth froze.

No survival instinct.

No kicking or screaming.

One way ticket.

Aller sans retour.

Religion against regime.

Turn of event and of public opinion.

How can a just war gave full support to an unjust dictatorship?

It will take a lot more than PR to “spin” this.

We all know the ending to the story, from our vantage point.

The vantage point that has Vietnam on HD.

No matter what kind of technology or lenses viewers can now afford to replay the past, what’s ugly remains ugly.

To view the Vietnam conflict in all its blood and gores on HD lends new meaning to the term ” irony”.

At the memorial for the monk, as soon as I flipped the match to light an incense, I felt chill down my spine.

Someone, perhaps the younger monk, did the same on that fateful day.

After all, it’s just fire and flame.

But this one was for keeps.

It must have crossed the minds of the Diem’s brothers, before they went down, how quickly things had spiraled out of control. Perhaps as quickly as that combustible  flame I saw nearly four decades ago. Time stood still that day, yet its impact reverberates for eternity.

The General Temple

When my mom, a teacher, took me there, I was 5.

This time, I  went there by myself.

Happy Teacher’s Day!

The Temple has always opened to seekers .

On New Year‘s Eve, it’s the equivalent of Times Square .

The crowd, the smell of incense burning and the long line at fortune teller’s dispensary.

It could last till morning.

But then, it’s not surprising to see less traffic here on New Year’s day.

People hesitate to be the first visitor (uninvited) for fear of initiating a chain of  bad luck.

I noticed how spacious the court-yard was, as compared to New Year’s day in my memory.

It’s a 20/80 use of space: 20 percent of the Temple were occupied by 80 percent of worshippers.

According to history, the General went down, like a Captain of the ship, after having set the castle on fire instead of letting it fall into the hands of  advancing French army.

Where once a ruin now an attraction at a busy intersection.

Art students whose school was nearby, sat in groups, in front of their canvasses, and sketched.

Upon entering its gate, I felt small again as memories of boyhood rushing back.

“Hang close to Mom, you don’t want to get lost”.

If I had a wish here at the General Temple, it would be to do my mom proud.

It is undisputed here in Vietnam that education is a lever to a better future.

Unfortunately for many, time in the classroom is perceived as time away from earnings.

Worse off, educational loan has reached 1 Trillion dollars in the US.

With no end in sight.

No one wants to Occupy the school.

Although their parent’s couch is still available, no one wants to occupy it either.

Although the lack of education limits one’s career choices , too much educational debt leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Not until their golden years will students come to appreciate the value of education (life enrichment, art appreciation, in-depth sense of history and personal fulfillment).

For now, what society wants is productivity at the least cost.

In short, harnessed knowledge and repetitive actions (to the point of auto-piloting) are preferred over a contemplative mind.

Charlie Chaplin all over (Un temp modern).

Think not of tomorrow.

Spin the wheel today.

Worry not about the past.

What is the value of a heroic figure who went down for his nation and neighborhood?

What is the value of human intervention and interaction?

What is the value of an educator, a trainer, a mother?

What can’t be monetized, quantified and duplicated , is set aside. Park it.

In Seven Habits of Effective People, we learn that our society values quadrant number 1 (Urgent and unimportant) over quadrant number 2 (Urgent and Important) e.g. environment, worker’s training, infrastructure investment and community development. In short, no commons. Just Ego over Eco.

No wonder on Teacher’s Day, I found the Temple absolutely quiet except for those Art Students.

Outside, the city was bustling with commerce. Perhaps quadrant 1 will continue to occupy everyone’s mind , until New Year’s Eve.

That’s when the wheel pauses, the workers (cogs) can then get off. The soul gets tended to. Incense burned next to fruit offerings on the altar. Just in those few days, the General spirit will be extolled, his legacy affirmed. I can’t even image being there on New Year’s Day. I hope his spirit doesn’t discriminate any one or any day, like today, Teacher’s Day. Seek not the crowd, for they know not what they are doing. At a fork in the wood, I chose the road less travel. Quiet and safe, though not popular or prosperous. Sometimes you have to let the soul have its quiet whispers. Mine got a small dose of stimuli at Lang Ong (the General Temple) and a flashback to those moments with Mom, a dedicated teacher and educator of Vietnam‘s previous generation. Happy Teacher’s Day.

Gloria Gaynor survives in Vietnam

When I visited the neighborhood gym, and heard “I will survive” over the speaker, I knew I was back in full swing.

Scooters weaved in and out, backpackers with signature sandals (footwear was an important identifier here) and fake Heineken bootlegged in from our neighbor in the North.

I will survive (recycled cook oil, recycled land mine, and recycled text books).

Over lunch with some classmates whom I hadn’t met in 40 years, I learned that two of them got sent to war in Cambodia.

My recollection and collection of old friends included veterans of two wars, yet “I will survive.”

At the gym, they wanted me to take off my sneakers (I thought they only did that at the temple).

My bare feet will have to survive all the added weights in a crammed but carpeted space. I will survive.

The guy at the barber shop sharpened his blade and I hesitated to let him shave me (an act which I hadn’t braved in years).

I will survive.

Then friends told me about people they knew who couldn’t wait to emigrate to America.

I thought only the nouveau riches in China are doing this.

How can I tell them about Occupy?

About Penn State?

About fiscal cliff?

About entitlement at home (US) and enforcement at the borders?

America, land of the free, but people there have stopped listening to Gloria Gaynor.

Only here that I found Gloria the priestess whose chant was still on everyone’s lips (although not everyone understood what “petrified” meant).

But survival is prerequisite to glory.

Two wars (the American War and Cambodian), just like the US with Iraq and Afghanistan.

But war fatigue in the US is quite different from Vietnam‘s.

In Vietnam, bouncing back from war has been national sport (Chinese and French).

The US will have to dig deep into its memory (WW II) to find ways to reintegrate its veterans.

I am giving it a try as I sit listen how those combat moments had never left my friends.

Understand and to be understood.

That’s how I will survive.

Re-occupy yourself!

When I boarded my flight to Vietnam, Penn State was losing to Nebraska.

And after I landed in Vietnam, I read about New York “tent city” had been re-occupied by the Mayor.

Here in the land of motor scooters, and kids try to conjugate in English, I can put those problems  in perspective. It’s true that I have felt shaken that my University’s reputation was now tarnished.

But the moment I sat down with my Cafe Sua Da, and the first lady who walked around selling lottery tickets (the equivalent of Mexican child peddlers selling “Chicklets) approached me, I knew I was home.

I learned a hard lesson: it’s not the place. It’s the time and how mature we are at handling those curved balls life throws at you.

If Nelson Mandela can rise above the hatred, Khan can get out of jail to restore a nation, and Churchill never gives up, so can we. Those giants weren’t giants as we now know.  They were dirty (in detention), desperate (isolation) and constricted (as in London bombing). But they rose to the occasion, and never lost hope.

Vietnam is playing catch-up (its President thanked President Obama at recent APEC meeting for siding with Vietnam when China acted up on territorial dispute) starting with early school age (mandatory English).

I remembered how my mother, a school teacher herself, paid out a large chunk of her meager salary to send me to English classes. My first lesson “It is raining, isn’t it”. It will soon stop raining here, but the flood water in Thailand has yet to recede.

MNC’s are rethinking where they should place their manufacturing facilities to avoid similar occurrences (delay in part shipment). Perhaps Vietnam could be a viable alternative, provided that its workers are up to task. I know they already are resilient, heroic and resourceful. Now the hard part: get trained up in soft skills and softwares or risk becoming Asian sub-contracting factory due to skill gap.

That easy way out has with it myriads of unintended consequences such as pollution, traffic congestion and wage pressures as happening in China.

The other alternative has long-term benefits but also has its price: invest in its work force and young population.

It’s not just English. They will need a whole new mindset, one which is complimentary to their built-in advantages. Instructors will need to equip students to think, to respect quality (the Japanese way) and not to rely on the flow of FDI with its own unintended consequences.

Right now, its neighbor Korea has just entered WTO. I stopped in Korea for a flight change, and couldn’t help notice the wealth and inflationary level those folks are experiencing (Starbucks and Tiffany). I got a book “23 things they wouldn’t tell you about capitalism” in paper back (it costs me $31.00).  I hope I got a good lesson out of it from this Korean author. But more than that, I wanted to thank my mom for sending me to French school, Vietnamese school and English school. It’s been a long road since “it’s raining , isn’t it” to “23 things they won’t tell you”.

The only thing I have left to tell you is, “re-occupy yourself”. It’s not the park or the campus, New York or Happy Valley.

It’s in your mind. I am sure Mandela and Khan both learned that while in the can.

They didn’t let the outside walls occupy their inner liberated self.

A Jewish author says it best ” they can take my body, but not me who occupies it – I paraphrase”.

Yes, my body as of yesterday’s reading, requires Lipitor. I am not a young English student who can eat any junk food outside the school yard. But inside, I plan to “re-occupy” that 140 lbs of me for the long haul. Don’t even think of trespassing it.

Faith in humanity

A graduate of Penn State, I related well to the scenes from the Deer Hunter, set in an industrial town of Pennsylvanian.

Smokestacks on the slope, familiar faces and friends and the “Welcome Home” sign for returning soldiers from a distant war.

But unlike other wars before and since, this one was controversial.  It showed when the main character, portrayed by DeNiro, ducked behind a taxi driver and asked to be driven pass his own Welcoming party.

Out of three “deer hunters”, one came back without injury to the mind or the body. Am I thy brothers’ keeper?

In CBS  Vietnam‘s documentaries, soldiers were shown sitting in the shade, smoking and listening to transistor radio which was playing “Oh, I don’t want to die”  (Reflections of my life).

Yet decades later, land mines still exploded claiming many more limps and lives.

The late Princess Diana was advocating the elimination of land mines.

At long last, the largest nuclear bomb in TX is being disassembled (the article said engineers have since died off, so it’s hard to locate the blue prints).

Farewell to arms.

Hemingway, go home.

All we need is love.

Faith in humanity. Speaking of humanity. We saw quake in Turkey and flood in Thailand.

The heavy rain and flood forced Thailand to close its airport and evacuate parts of its capital (the toll: 506 deaths).

When it rains it pours there in South East Asia.

I was in Vietnam last year. All of a sudden, it poured really hard.

From a sidewalk cafe, I saw a middle-age lady in cone hat tried to push a scrap metal cart whose wheels were half buried in water-covered pot holes.

Now, the UN is advocating Environmental sustainability, with 7 Billion people sharing Earth’s limited resources, foremost is clean water.

China was quick to beef up R&D in solar and desalinated water.

We can not pretend we live in complete isolation. Debris from Fukushima quake drifted to California.

Flood in Thailand slow down server production, which pushes companies to the Cloud.

First wave: Main Frame, second wave: personal computer and third wave: cloud, which brings us in full circle.

Talking about automation, and unemployment. Stats shows high unemployment among returning veterans of the two wars. It’s time for that Welcome-Home sign again.

Hope they find a job and not wait too long for to receive those benefits.

Hope they won’t  have to duck behind the taxi driver.

Farewell to arms, to guilt and to self-recrimination.

All we need is love and a little faith in humanity. Princess Diana would have been proud to see a female film Director received an Oscar for Hurt Locker. The subject: land mine.