Tag: Vietnam

the Nguyen

In college, I could just tell when teachers got to my name: they couldn’t pronounce it. To save time, I just said “here”.

This was Penn State, late 70’s, when a name like Carter from Georgia could barely register in Washington Belt Way.

Now a random walk on the web tells me the Nguyen have finally gained some noteriety (not as popular as the Smith or Cosby but familiarity bred comfort).

If you were to google “Nguyen”, you would get Dat Nguyen (used to play the NFL for the Cowboys), Tila (Nguyen) Tequila (every other pictures) and Betty Nguyen (weekend anchor of CNN).  But you will also get Scotty Nguyen (poker face) and one-eye Nguyen (Agent Orange piece disguised under Nguyen),

Lee Nguyen (guitar player) and Colonel Loan’s war-cruelty photo.

The Nguyen dynasty has scattered to the four corners of the earth, evolving and adapting to opportunities and obstacles, not unlike Venture Capitalists, whose few bets made it while many didn’t.

Being in communication, I try to  ” see ourselves as others see us” .  And the best place to start is to Google for this sort of thing. Let’s take Tila to start our “beer summit”.

She was getting into fights while in school. Got put in “Buddhist shut-in” and from there (Texas) went to Hollywood (hopefully not on a Greyhound bus) to realize her American dream.  MTV gave her a contract, and the rest was history. She was quoted at one point saying she would want to be the US ambassador to Vietnam.

Vietnam watch out! Tila is coming (if history repeats itself, this is not the first time a well-known Hollywood actress wanted to grace Hanoi playground. Jane Fonda beat her to the punch). Or in Second Life, Tila will actually become the virtual ambassador if e-citizens elected her using their tokens.

VP Nguyen Cao Ky once said that he wanted to keep his last name so he could come back to Vietnam without sounding like a foreigner. Well, he did.

His daughter took that to the next level: keeping her father’s name in its entirety, while adding and ending it with her  first name (Nguyen Cao Ky + Duyen). She made it as a co-host of Paris By Night video series (celeb life style: got to change who you hang out with, and while at it, reinvent yourself). If history repeats itself, Brad and Angelina beat her to the punch as well (they rode in a scooter before the helmet law came into effect a while back).

So back to our Google search for the Nguyen. Back then, our ancestors weren’t originally Nguyen. The sad truth was, we adapted to the King’s demand and command (conformity and allegiance).  Nguyen has morphed into a generic code,

with mixed connotations: part Chinese, part French, part US, and now the Seven Seas.

The Nguyen are now inter-marrying (as in my families), and the third generation of Nguyen might still bear the name, but the gene mutation has morphed beyond recognition (unless kids wear “ao dai”  during Tet). My nephew and niece inter-married

and produced offerings of mixed heritage. Our Thanksgiving at times, looks like a UN Security Council, deciding on the fate

of Syrian Chemical Weapon Disposal.

Maybe someday, they will put a Nguyen in the White House. One term would be fine. Let’s see if he/she can do better than his/her predecessors.

Or the system (which according to the latest CNN poll, 86% said the government is broken) itself not only helps this future Nguyen look Presidential, but also renders him/her ineffectual. I broke my arm on my first month learning Kung-Fu. It hurt like hell. Took a long time to heal. Perhaps something broken can be healed. First: recognition of the pain. Second: be patient. Third: put on a cast to speed up recovery. In my case, it was a long summer staying indoors.

We won’t hear much about  US might or Exceptionalism in near term.

Friedman (of the Flat World) beat me to it in his op-ed “fat years, lean years”. Or like Chairman of HSBC is coming out with “Good values”, a call for reflections. It would be interesting to see the turn-out in Las Vegas Caesars (Coliseum  built for Celine Dion, whose Roman original motif was blood sports) to hear Former President Bill Clinton (who charged for a talk about “global interdependence” themes).

That broken arm the summer of my Junior High (while “tous les garcons et les filles de mon age, …se promene dans la rue) set me on a different course ever since: pause to think and be reflective . The US and the Nguyen got something in common: we both had been very ambitious to the point of having an illusion of grandeur until the crash. I and many other Nguyen knew it well: even in and through a worst-case scenario, we have managed to get PhD’s, started companies, invented products and run for office.

I still know when that slight pause came during roll call. But these days, it just my first name that they had trouble pronouncing. If only they knew that it meant “win”, as in win-win solution. At least, we got pass the Nguyen part. Just Google them, and find out for yourselves. It’s the same story you would find in NYT today about a Hasidic matriarch who came and had 2000 descendants. It’s the story that repeats itself time and time again here in America. It’s your story. It’s our story.

 

Tales of a Recession

Two men were caught on surveillance camera for stealing $2000 worth of Victoria Secret panties.

http://www.wpbf.com/news/22568081/detail.html

73-year-old Tampa man was arrested last week for robbing a bank to pay his mortgage.

In California, a unionized plumber got laid off, now sleeps in his truck.

When the city of Tustin laid off people, an employee, a Vietnamese man, jumped from the municipal building to his death.

Meanwhile, Congress is doing business as usual (filibustering), among other things, a compromised job bill.

As of this edit, it is shut down (first in 17 years).

A bunch of people are selling their memoirs (“On the Brink”, “Too Big To Fail“, “the Quants“) for fear that a recovery will mean a faded public memory of the fiasco.

At least, there has been a face and a name that went down in history with this uncertain time: Madoff.

Every civilization manages to “crucify” someone for the collective sin we all committed.

With that behind us (Ash Wed is coming up, so it’s fitting to contemplate this morbid human tendency to scapegoat), we can go on pretending life is beautiful.

I could not let news like “students in Central Vietnam got scarred when long-buried bomb exploded” slip by without reflecting on what has been done to that country.

In “Good Morning Vietnam“, we were shown a lush-green rice field shot from a moving helicopter, and the voice track was “It’s a wonderful world” just to underline it with a sense of irony.

I guess during this Recession, a lot of us (1 million Telecom veterans) will never find a job in our field (which no longer exists in the traditional sense- unless we acted young and zany, with a frequent commute between “campuses” by bike like googlers”), job bill or not.

Maybe we should start thinking out-of-the-box. Some men in Florida did. The older one got caught. The other two got away. I bet their adrenaline level was pumping high when finally safe inside their get-away vehicle. Try to recover those V-Secrets loot as “untainted” evidence of a crime.

 

Traditions: collide and compromise

East meets West. New Year and Valentine’s. Families vs lovers.

In Vietnam, with a strong Confucian foundation, filial quality stands above all else.

So on that first day of this year of the Tiger, sons and daughters are expected to show up first thing at the parents’ door steps.

Then, in the evening, this year only, they can sneak out to rendezvous with their sweethearts on Valentines Day.

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/lifestyle/201002/Tet-trumps-Valentine%E2%80%99s-Day-in-Vietnam-894718/

If you took the fireworks in major cities into the mix, we are talking about Western traditions wrapping around Eastern culture.

Today, it’s President Day in the US. And President Obama will face tough choices: to meet with the Dalai Lama, risking to alienate a huge bond holder.

We expect Presidents to take a stand at the crossroad: Kennedy facing up to the Cuban invasion, Johnson choosing between the Great Society or inheriting French Vietnam, and now Obama electing to have government intervention and involvement in financial institutions.

Values often collide and force a compromise.

You can measure a man’s maturity by seeing how many of those compromises he has made. (And his integrity by how few).

By design, we are made of “opposites attract” from a set of parents. No wonder we walk that tight rope our whole life (at least I have) with the creative tension of push and pull.

The only way to keep the balance is to move forward, inadvertently, creating a Third force, a synthesis. Einstein once said life was like riding a bicycle, you needed to keep paddling forward to stay in balance.

Those in sales can recognize this dynamic: corporate expectation versus market reality. Customers expectations ride on top of lab engineers’ vision.

(Google video store had been a flop before the YouTube acquisition).

So, red lucky envelope or heart-shape chocolate? Just one day, but an important one, we saw a rare eclipse. In Vietnam, young lovers have never celebrated  New Year this eagerly. They have their own agenda. And sneaking out will only make forbidden fruit taste all the more sweeter. And years from now, it will be their turn to scold their young ones for not showing up first thing (with a mischievous smile of course). This generation wants it both ways, without compromise. Text and talk.

Decoding America

It’s a grand title. But the intention is put up some guide posts to mark the new (Lonely) American trail

Or else, new comers to America, reading Orientation web sites only, would end up like the Oregon couple who trusted solely on GPS readout, without consulting paper maps.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100102/ap_on_hi_te/us_stranded_motorists

We learn and continue to refine our learning by decoding the multiple stimuli and messages thrown at us.

America is turning into a giant swap meet, and price doesn’t matter much. It’s our time, attention and labor.

If I were to advise incoming students, from China, India or Vietnam, I would point out that:

– In America, neighbors while living close by, are really far from you (proximity has nothing to do with social grouping)

– Inter-racial relations have improved a bit, but precisely in the cities, where one finds a higher concentration of people from various ethnic origins, that a higher rule takes over: survival in the urban jungle.

(Vietnamese students abroad, like in Russia, and recently America, should be vigilant about their own safety).

– clothing has been defining people since the beginning of time. Now, more than ever with cheaper imports (I spent more money on suits/ties but wore them the least. Invest on your informal clothing, which got more wear per dollar spent : 80/20 rule).

– when they start addressing you by your last name, watch out for the pitch. Not all sales pitches are bad. Just bad salesmen.

– American love their gadgets: it started out with horseshoes, guns and knives. Now everyone’s garage is like a pawn shop.

– People are always searching for another Gold Rush. But it’s those who sell picks and shovels who end up reaping the windfall.

Buffet is investing in railroad again, because of the high price of oil. Tools=treasures.

– Company’s parties are controlled environment. So are all parties, including the ones in your house. Neighbors love to dial 911.

– Cooking is not cool. Cleaning is.(German influence: efficiency. Cleanliness is next to godliness). Huge grills, small hamburgers and hot dogs. (once again, tool rules).  No place to buy your meals on New Year Day or Christmas Day. Be prepared.

– Respect your prospect’s time by being over-prepared. Remember the tip of the iceberg: every day is presentation day. And this means controlling your weight, your appearance, your speech and your up-to-date knowledge.  America has been and will always be a Revolution-in-origin, Evolution-in-progress Nation, where the best of everyone is expected. It’s a society with built-in obsolescence. Today’s best invention is tomorrow’s laughing-stock (Boom Box, VHS, IBM, MS, Kodak).

– Nobody seems to take anything personally. They can disagree all night and then achieve consensus in the morning. Unlike other countries (Korea or Italy) where disagreement led to violence in the legislative chamber. (J Kerry is now Head of State).

– And finally, America values your contribution: the President said he opened to all ideas, big or small, to help create jobs. Hope he doesn’t drop the ball, just because of one Nigerian brat trying to put something in his underwear in flight. American leaders are so secure that they are willing to have those “teachable moments”. They know that pride (know-it-all) comes before the fall.

Good luck with your visa application to come to the US to study. Your future is bright, because you don’t get in your own way. So will everyone else, who is busy with their social network, and backyard grills. Remember, virtual neighbors are the best. They can’t knock on your door and borrow some tools, albeit you only use it occasionally (80/20 rule).

Forced realities

“the Network Effect of Nations”.

Brazil, the “B” in BRIC, is on course to be number 5 by 2014 according to the Economist.

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14845197&source=most_commented

So, it’s not just the International Olympic Committee which noticed Brazil Rising. Nor is it seen only as the  corn basket of the world (When I hear Brazil, immediately popped to mind is “energy”, long before the Ethanol craze). In fact, Brazil doesn’t rely solely on energy exports as Russia or Venezuela. It also caters to tourism, commercialism and world-class sports (in 2016).

With EU and Emerging economies out of the Recession, we will see Network Effect mesh of G-20 : more multi-lateral trading, traveling and telephoning.

One example. What does Banco De Chile have to do with Vietnam? Yet, it has a presence there, and tries to secure markets for its agricultural products (as if Vietnam were not agrarian enough). Nations crisscross exponentially.

The US Navy Commander is visiting his relatives (see Gatsby in China Beach).  President Carter is coming to build

houses  for the Mekong poor (Habitat for Humanity, an organization I support). And French Prime Minister is touring Hue (probably putting 2 and 2 together: Colonial past and Commercial present). And Meet Vietnam will feature Vietnam Minister of Education in San Francisco. And let’s not forget Obama visiting China, where his half-brother was launching a book, having stayed there and married local for quite some time. The Network Effect of Nations!

Technology and people are always ahead of the political process. Deng was seen wearing a cowboy hat when visiting Texas in the late 70’s ( He just reciprocated Nixon’s trip to China where 3000-course meal had been served) . “To get rich is glorious” . Subsequently, we heard similar echo on Wall Street in the 80’s: “Greed is good” .

Information flow used to go from North to South. Now, the global picture has completely changed.

No longer do we see a bi-polar world. And while changes are taking place on the global stage,  “groundswell” is detected online (kids joined in to play games, but pretty soon, will be glancing at headline news, and shopping for “early Black Friday” deals on peer’s recommendation. No wonder Dell cannot sit still, waiting to take “just-in-time” orders.

After all the shopping at the urging of President Bush right after 9/11, Americans are now penny-pinching.  So, it’s President Obama’s turn to give the same speech, this time, to the Chinese, with a BTW,  try our Made-in-USA stuff (SPAM?).

It’s tough to be a Recommender-In-Chief . Even the Vatican can’t seem to get a handle on the new Social media that seem to grow their flocks much faster than Christendom’s. So the Pope invites in the paupers, out of the dorm to the Dome for a  (face-2-face) chat. Where do you click? You mean one doesn’t have to sit down in front of a monitor? Mobile Apps?

At the Olympic in Rio, with a Smart phone, you won’t miss a single soccer score . Are you game? One will never know where the putt is going to be . And it makes the journey all the more exciting. Stay “eyes wide opened” for forced realities. The future doesn’t sleep: it is on steroid. No wonder Emerging economies, especially Brazil, seem to get out from under much more quickly than the rest. Fareed Zakarai coins this “the rise of the rest” in Post American World. He certainly has Brazil in mind.

Gatsby in China Beach

I thought the USS New York was cool until I read about ex-refugee came back as US Naval Commander in China Beach.

http://www.omantribune.com/index.php?page=news&id=58579&heading=Asia

Same waters, similar vessels, but context and crew have changed.

Just like what we read today about a school teacher walking students on a day field trip to former East Germany.

What used to shed blood is now a no-sweat endeavor.

All you need is Love (Beatles) and the rest will take care of itself.

As of this edit, I would like to congratulate House Representative Joseph Cao on his historic Health Care vote.

I would love to project this good will into the future, and see if we can visualize pass Future Shock.

Year 2020. Open source and open collaboration will have been the norm (just like Open border in Berlin or Open Seas in China Beach).

EU-N-America-Asia will already have been the new pipeline of talent infrastructure, NAFTA gone horizontal, with combined resource and market.

Many N American professors (many of them had their origins somewhere else to begin with) will hold online classes for Chinese students via Tele-lectures.

(Back in 1981, my Marketing professor, Jim Engel, kept hopping on the plane to go teach in Singapore. I should have seen it coming).

Movies get watched on watches (Spectator Gadgets).

20/20, the TV magazine show, will be accessible in the USC Film School Archive by robot. My two daughters, Aimy and Maily, will be dropping  off their Amerasian or South Amerasian children for me to baby sit.

2020, the year Re-globalization takes off: trains, planes, automobiles, and of course, ships (for supply chain containers to be loaded at the Alameda Corridor). While proponents and opponents of re-globalization continue their debates, companies which try to evade the health care mandate will continue to seek off-shored “health havens”, just as they did with tax havens.

Companies like Lifan, maker of motorbikes, will outsource more of its manufacturing to secondary markets such as Vietnam (already did). Vietnamese diaspora will supply the talent and know-how. Like their Chinese-American counterparts, they will serve as bridges, not in terms of culture and language, but in challenging us with a different mindset and thought leadership (Net Neutrality). And they will in turn uphold and sustain new benchmarks in social concerns and environmental concerns e.g. bamboo housing, solar energy, nano materials.

One thing I am sure is that the USS New York will still proudly chart the heroic waters, and many more Vietnamese Americans will try out  various roles, beyond the traditional “model minorities” fields such as pharmacy, engineering and accounting. More will be in TV announcing, film directing (Powder Blue), US House Representative, and even US Navy. See, it’s not an individualistic culture .The community just wait for one early adopter to test the waters, than the rest will join in. I . I am sure the Commander did his dad proud. Who wouldn’t? Journey at seas is exhaustive. But when it exhibits the best of humanity and good will, it makes the traveling worthwhile. The Navy certainly earns points these days and that’s the best PR one can buy (It’s on NPR and ABC Person of the Week).

Gatsby is back in China Beach, just a ship hop away from his former home in Hue, in daddy’s navy-white.

The Tale of Kieu couldn’t find a better contemporary equivalent.

//

 

New voice new vision

I browsed the DVD shelves at my local library (North Palm Beach) the other day, and saw Buffalo Boy next to Brokeback Mountain and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid.  It is by fate that the Cowboy and the Buffalo(boy) found themselves on the same DVD shelf, just like those black and white GI’s names are alphabetically listed on the same Wall (Vietnam Memorial Wall).

It was the intention of movies like  Apocalypse Now and Rambo series to move the American public forward to the next stage of grief. Yet, American are still in denial about Vietnam, thus forfeiting many valuable lessons otherwise applicable to today’s conflicts,  Iraq and Afghanistan e.g. tribal loyalty, theocracy and regional politics.

Of late, emerged a new generation of Overseas Vietnamese filmmakers with bold vision and audacious voice. I saw Powder Blue directed by a Vietnamese film maker. Or Norwegian Wood, a Beatles title, yet  screenplay is adapted from a Japanese novel.

I can’t wait to see it: Beatles’ song, Japanese story and Vietnamese film directing. What a collaboration!

(Just like  Ang Lee directed Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi).

Cowboy or Buffalo(boy), we are all on our epistemological quest (why are we here, where are we going, and how do we get there). With one exception: we are going to get there on horseback or buffalo back, not gas-guzzling Hummer.

That’s for the Chinese upper class. Weaving their Bentley’s in dense pollution.

Buffalo Boy and Cowboy don’t cause further environmental damage: they earn their living on nature and have a certain

reverence for it. Maybe the old way can teach us a thing or two. Plain old truth (have reverence for the things that feed you), just needs a new voice and new vision. Ironically the vehicle (technology) to reach and persuade us (like I Phone and broadband) themselves consume too much energy, creating a cycle of creative destruction. I have pondered about our “disposable society” for quite sometime now. How many automobiles, electronic devices, books and clothes, shoes and ties we have trashed or given to Goodwill on our lifetime! Yet Mother Earth mysteriously heals itself, like recent appearance of an Island after Japan’s Tsunami.

New world needs new worldview and other ways to lend expressions to it.

 

deja vu

Yesterday I reposted “Invisible Man“.  Today, it’s about “invisible hand“. There is an invisible hand that definitely plays with events in history, and this Adam-Smith-like hand seems to run out of tricks every 40 years or so, so it seems.

In Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley Press), we learn that history seems to recycle itself every 40 years also

(29-69-09).  First the French romantic/liberty movement, then the generation gap movement, and now the consumer movement.

This time, with the confluence of technological shift, policy shift and evolutionary shift, we  see Vietnam emerge

and leap-frog (it now exports more handsets than garment) into the world scene. After all, it has

survived quarrels with three of the UN Security Council members and emerged unscathed (France, US and China).

Saigon Tourist (a Vietnamese consortium in VN) once acquired a SF hotel in Fisherman Wharf  for $44 million (as of this edit, a Chinese consortium has just acquired a development around the Staples Center in the Southland).

It’s like a bi-coastal mirror image of another Vietnamese hotel owner from New York (who by the way donated a lot of money to the victims of disasters in New York).

It’s about time Vietnamese philanthropy plays catch up. The Viet Kieu (Viet expats) community has another 2 years to  face its American version of 40-year cycle. At that point, there will be a hand-over of the torch to the second generation, whom , as studies often confirm, wants nothing to do with their first-generation immigrant parents.

Many FDI projects have been abandoned here in VN. Banks are stuck with bad debts. And companies pick up the tab to retrain their workforce, whose education ill-prepares them for the work world. The only sure thing here are young people getting married in drove over the holidays.

I have seen it before: the rush to spend, then withdraw syndrome to survive, then spend again as if there is no tomorrow, much less next year.

If any indication at all, the young demographics will take up on Western counterparts, from online gaming to online music, from lifestyle consumption to hopefully, a respect for the fragile environment. It’s deja vu all over again here Vietnam: eat, drink and be merry. They did that in war time, now they do it in peace time. 40 years is a long time, but then, 40 years seems like just a blink of an eye. Just try to hear the prelude to some songs you once loved, and tell me you don’t react on reflex as if you had done not so long ago, when you first heard it and felt it resonated.

I hope you love the “invisible hand” better than being the “invisible man”. At least, that hand might give you a chance, another dance.