Tag: Vietnam

Saigon Central (Ga Saigon)

The track is still there. So is the prominent display of coal locomotive.

Hard to get there though, tuck in the back of winding District 3 streets.

I checked out the logistic and lay-out: upstairs for ticketing, and downstairs with hamburger stores.

My sister loves to take train to Hanoi. She grew up reading the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dr Zhivago etc…

Northerners like herself left for Southern cities Bien Hoa and Saigon, the train’s last stop.

A few European backpackers were seen walking about, awaiting departure.

But Saigonese are more inclined to taking scooters and buses.

Train, cinema and snail mail are now things of the past.

I used to hear ” Biet Ly” play in my home.

Biet Ly, nho nhung tu day…..oi coi tau nhu xet nat tam hon (Adieu, start missing from here on….the train whistles through the heart leaving deep cuts)_

I want to feel their pain. Evacuation and separation.

Even when you can come back, the place has changed.  So have you.

Saigon Central itself has changed: from running on coal to diesel or mixture.

Old movies love train scenes: the long coat, the longing, then the steps, the suitcases before the reunioin embrace.

Reunion and Au revoir. Embrace moi.

Saigon Central got its shares of tearful goodbyes.

Perhaps from more previous generations than mine.

Today’s airport with added security after 9/11 takes romance out of the equation.

People kiss goodbye nevertheless.  When will I see you again?

Only the longing hearts in synch know.

Here, there or in the air.

Saigon Central is just a destination. Last stop in the line.

But it has served its time, blowing up some steam and dropping off millions.

Perhaps my families as well. I can feel it in my bones. Can’t prove it. Just took in the scene today and knew that it was a dying breed. Like the cinema. Like the snail mail.  A la recherche du temps perdu.

The 11th law

Forbes ran a piece on the 10 laws for our century i.e. Metcalfe, Moore etc…

Encompassed above should be the Golden Rule, the 11th law.

Committed to communicate and collaborate. Contribution.

Do unto others.

Racing to the top, but also helping others to get there.

I experimented with the Asian model of running a sales team back at MCI.

My boss gave me freedom to try it. We shared and split regional sales.

Results: team cohesiveness despite the big difference among us.

Not to mention we all reaped huge rewards.

Today, speed trumps sharing, which often slows down progress.

In the six months I have been in Vietnam, I learned this lesson: consensus leadership.

Don’t upset the system. What you give up (Western notion of personal achievement) you gain back in cooperation and collaboration.

When you crossed the Pacific, you entered a bubble, a fish bowl, where everyone sees and rates you with new lenses and new games, three moves ahead.

Perhaps Drucker knew it well after all. Forget “achievement”. Just “contribution”.

Chip in.

Larger pot. Pour in more water. My best meal here was “chao suon” after 40 years.

Just rice pudding, with one or two small ribs. But when you got to those rare bony ribs, you savor them. Eat them slowly.

Large pot, few meat.

Lost weight. But feeling happy. Sharing the pot with many, on a rainy night. Sitting on baby stools, watching scooters zip by.

Welcome to the fish bowl.

Where the 11th law rules.

Got to have that down, or else, it’s all high-tech, without high-touch.

Take it up one notch

I am all for PE (Physical Education).

This trend has picked up in Vietnam; all the powers to young people.

Gold gym, Cali gym, NVK gym, Nhat Dang Nhi Da etc…. Let’s go. One and two.

Lift those arms, kick those legs.

Be healthy and be green.

(I have blogged too much about death and caskets, since I live near a funeral parlor).

This morning I saw a tennis tournament take place at Lan Anh Club.

To be fair, Vietnam’s young demographics are ensuring their fighting chance.

Vietnam got Talent. Got health and ambition.

Pressures from below and pressures from above.

Between the rock and a hard place. You are in between hot oil and the frying pan.

Find the optimal medium.

Work hard and work smart.

Spend wisely, and invest heavily (in people and connection).

Meanwhile, lift those muscles, not letting the scooters and machinery do all the lifting.

Industrialization and its discontent.

Coming to the machine near you.

Soon, Vietnam will get over its first love with smokestacks.

It will step back and look at its polluted landscape (Dong Nai, Binh Duong).

And ask itself, is this worth it all, our health and our grandchildren’s health!

Nguoi Viet Khoe. NVK.

A gym near you.

It doesn’t cost much to join. But it takes pain to tone those unused muscles.

Then the alteration folks are standing by to hem those lines and fit those loosed shirts.

Have a great work-out. You will definitely break some sweats here in Vietnam. The weather will always cooperate to make that happen.

House of Rising Sun

One of my first guitar solos was House of Rising Sun.

Chu Van An High School music room, with two electric guitars, one bass guitar and a drum set.

Long was on bass, Son counted the beat and Hung, son of a dancing instructor, played rhythm. And one, and two: Am, C …. And so we went on. Practice, practice and practice.

We not only developed our musical ability, we melted into a band, a team.

Do not play too loud. Let me lead.

Long’s smile will always stay with me. He often sat down (perhaps because we did not have enough guitar straps). Long is now dead.

The House of Rising Sun still sees the sun rising every morning. So is Long’s smile. Memories of yesterday are wired permanently in my brain. Nothing gonna change my world.

Yesterday. Imagine. How Can I Tell Her (when is it easy, telling someone that we’re through).

I visited New Orleans a couple of times, tried out Cafe Du Monde, even ate an allegator burger.

I tried to check out the neighborhood, to see which one best represent House of Rising Sun.

Last night, my date said when she first listened to this song, she had cried.

I figured, that’s why you were here with me over dinner. Got to have shared interests and shared emotions. House of Rising Sun, and Don’t let the sun go down on me…(E John).

Music evokes not only a time. It triggers and resonates long hidden emotions.

Where was that and when was it that we first heard that song. “The first time, I ever saw your face”.

And because Rock came to Vietnam during the war, Rock and anti-war sentiment seemed to be cousins.

To hear it those tunes again is to open up unprocessed pain.

Until one finds it “once again, in Green Fields”.

I know. It’s not “the end of the world” just yet, but it sure seems to be ended ‘when you said ‘goodbye'”.

House of Rising Sun. I miss you Long, guitarist, pianist, friend, teacher, husband and father. RIP. We soon will join you in that House of Rising Sun.

To bring the band back.

Place of Death

Patricia Conwell has made a chunk of change with her Medical Examiner (Kate) character. Manner of death .

In Vietnam, it’s the place of death that matters.

If one dies in a street accident, the casket will be placed out on the sidewalk for the three-day mourning.

You can always learn something new here.

Meals are served hot, way hot (hot-pot). Fish in clay pot, also hot.

The weather is also hot. If you added spices like “ot hiem” (baby hot pepper), you might as well take a steam bath.

Back to highway of hell.

Highway 1A, the main road that connects North-South (like Hwy 5 and 95 in the States) see traffic at all hours: containers, scooters and buses.

Choke point and flash point.

Don’t cross the river if you can’t swim the tide.

Don’t cross that highway if you want to be buried indoors.

The Medical Examiner offices here are sure busier than Conwell’s Richmond’s morgue.

I told myself  I prefer cremation, then have ashes scattered into the seven seas.

That way, I am a world traveler, in life or in death.

In giving up my comfort, I find my living.

In perpetual motion, I find my balance.

Life itself is in motion, especially for those whose last minutes were spent on the highway.

May they rest in peace, while their bodies are on display on the sidewalk, outside their houses for the last glimpse at traffic, their Place of Death.

Mobile books

I was waiting for my scooter ride outside Cho Ray Hospital when a peddler approached me. “Want to pick something to read?”. Turned out, she was selling used books, in a box: Cu Chi Tunnel, My Lai Massacre, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Sorrows of War, Understanding Vietnam…

Those subjects are now as old as the war itself. All healed and pealed, just scars.

When I was in high school, I went up the gang-plank to tour the Logos ship.

This ship carried books and Bibles across the ocean to far-away lands (of heathen). Later, to reciprocate, I volunteered one summer aboard the Doulos (Logos 2.0) ship to W  Africa.  I saw the longing for a better life in those dark eyes. The instant bonding of men in different skin colors. And the no-way-out trajectory of Liberia in the mid-80’s.

Mobile books.

But not up-ward mobile lives.

Now, we have e-books and e-learning.

Open U and open source. I wonder how many of us are taking advantage of free access to advance ourselves.

I wonder how many sales the peddler made yesterday outside the hospital?

I wonder how many patients bought and read about Man’s Fate .

I read so I won’t be alone.

I am reading “Love and Garbage”.

And I appreciate your reading this, so you and I are not alone.

Love, death and garbage will always be with us. It’s an unmovable law. The consolation is, we are not alone in this. Want to pick something to read?

instant noodles, orange and sandwich

38 years ago I ate those three items not in one day, not in one vessel, and not in one country.

Instant noodles out in International Waters under firing rockets, oranges aboard a USS vessel and finally, a sandwich in Subic Bay, Philippines.

After that hellish trip, plane foods, hotel foods, cafeteria foods all taste better.

Now, I just want a bowl of oatmeal with raisins.

Any day and everyday.

Foods were supposed to nourish and nurture us.

It binds us and bonds us together (Thanksgiving dinner).

Yet for years, in my family, plates got tossed in fits.

Made food fighting on campus looks like child play.

My experience with foods hence has been associated with negative context: chaos and loneliness (I once saw an asleep lady in my mom’s nursing home, with a glass of milk that had almost spilled out).

By the way, the instant noodles on my way out of Saigon was consumed without hot water and was split among the nine of us.

The orange aboard the USS was eaten with peel.

And the sandwich was handed out by a nun in Subic Bay. I should have kept the wrapping for souvenir.

Just a ham sandwich, but it tasted as close to heaven.

And the coke that went with it, to this day, still fizzles and fires a rush up my nose.

The sound of one coke popping (courtesy of  “the sound of one hand clapping”).

Together, those three items: noodles, orange and sandwich are vended on any California campus.

But back then, I had to risk my life, changed the trajectory of fate in three countries (Vietnam, US sovereignty and the Philippines).

What others call hell, I call home.

Chu Tu, our famous writer, was blown apart at a nearby boat, perhaps right after I had my noodle part.

So five cheers to writers who create the eternal out of the ordinary.

In his case, the temporal (his death) has served up as memory for the eternal.

Instant noodles, instant death, yet enduring legacy.

In my mind, his name and his writing (Yeu, Song etc.. Love, Live ..) are still alive.

To this day, my brother still mentioned the heavenly taste of that Pentagon-supplied sandwich.

There is a Vietnamese saying “mot mieng khi doi bang mot goi khi no” (a bite in need is a meal indeed).

Supply and demand. Scarcity and abundance.

Then I found myself lately avoiding those instant noodles, and opt for a hot bowl of Pho. Forced choice architecture has changed for me.

OK, maybe oatmeal and raisins to ride out this Recession. I hope I don’t have to resort to ramen for daily staples. I saw the photo of a girl who subsists solely on ramen. It’s not a pretty sight. I don’t want to let my life-and-death journey be in vain. Could have stayed home for that to begin with. Instant noodles, orange and sandwich. Stay hungry, stay curious. And no OFF button, says Jobs.

Leaving your heart behind

Home for the holidays. For my students at least.

For me, 37 years ago, I was feeling on edge. One-way with no return.

Yet, it has been possible for me to return and work here in Vietnam. To see students prepared for studying abroad. But their leaving has a promise of a return (two-way).

Many are leaving for home on this long holiday. Home where we all leave 0ur hearts behind.

If I had known there would someday be a return, I wouldn’t have cried so much. I wouldn’t have turned my back on mother’s land and mother’s tongue.

I wouldn’t have wasted my time taking classes on tangent subjects such as Buddhism in America (Summer) or Radio production (required).

My degree in media was hardly put to use. Now Social Media is taking over.

New generation, new ways to connect.

Oh well. I wouldn’t have taken my heart with me on that fateful trip to America aboard the USS ship.

I would have left my heart behind.

I wouldn’t have short-changed my heritage for bad attitude under the euphemism called assertiveness training.

I would have preserved my core values e.g. filial son of Vietnam. Ironically, I can now reclaim this, only after my parents were buried in Virginia and I, am still alive, in Vietnam. Should have been the other way around. They would have preferred it that way. So while in Vietnam, I miss Virginia. And vice versa. It is to show that the heart is least understood and most abused.

How do I know this? Seeing young people rushing home, while I as an expat got no place to go.

That’s why I know. That’s how I feel. Odd ball on the dance floor. You can travel the thousands miles, but can’t do much with the heart with a fix on a certain place, person and period. That’s what makes us human. That we  miss something or someone. To the point of dying for it. Or feel like it in its absence. I guess that’s what I did some three and a half decade ago: leaving my heart behind on that dock no 5 of the Saigon River.

I love

Our own Duc Huy has sung “Toi yeu…nhung loi noi thanh that, toi yeu ly ca-phe buoi sang” (I love sincere comments, .. morning cup of coffee). So do I. Especially when it’s cappuccino prepared with care and passion by our UVT Hospitality students. They even brought it up to my office (perk!).

I love “the dog says Good-night” in Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong.

I love Shubert whom my Dad adored. I love “Ao Dai” my mom used to wear.

I love Good Morning Vietnam with the aerial shot of the chopper leaving the lush-green rice field.

I love little children with innocent eyes, arms wide-spread in front of mom’s Vespa (thinking it’s they who “fly” the vehicles).

I love the man- on the balcony across the alley- who squats and spreads his arms as if he were a Master of ancient martial arts.

I love Au Marche (Cho Hoa Hung) with “le poisson glisse” (fish that glow in the sun ).

I love grandma types who think her savings would make a difference in the clan’s future.

I love Security Guards (in Vietnam, it’s big business) who know everything that happens in the company.

I love back-stage Rockers who can’t wait for their set.

I love Accountants and HR, who feel important and needed when others are hired and fired.

I love people, places and purposes.

Let’s do it.

It’s a wonderful world.

The coffee by the way is cappuccino.

Can you imagine if I had had something else this morning.

TGIF.

Unlikely place

Ugliness and evil exist in unlikely places.

So are beauty and goodness. A vulnerable butterfly dancing in rush-hour traffic, an innocent child on the way home from periodic check-ups.

Life offers us not an a-la-cart menu, but a buffet.

Fill up not with french fries and jello.

Yet at the same time, eat not in full the dry roast beef.

Instead, try to sprinkle some ground beacons and top everything with raisins and sunflower seeds.

Who knows.

The beauty is in the combo.

Your combined choices make up life tapestry.

Mine has certainly been an interesting one: like a bouncing billiard ball, I went from boy-to-man, from being a Vietnamese college freshman, to an US graduate, then back to living and working in Vietnam.

I have built and burned bridges, and I have seen both beauty and beast.

Ugliness and evil co-exist with beauty and goodness.

Life buffet.

Choose wisely.

And make your combination a great one, uniquely yours.

Life is so boring with a bunch of automatons, all cut from the same cloth.

Campbell soup cans.

15-minutes of fame.

Go for it. Live a little and slow to die.

Assert, charge and fire (then aim).

While at it, don’t forget to notice the dancing butterfly in traffic, free of worry and free of self-sabotage. If  human, you and I, cannot live as free as those lower-species, then why bother at all. I learn this in the most unlikely place: while crossing Saigon traffic. Call me lunatic, call me poetic and romantic. Whatever you can label me with, just try it out for yourself: start flapping your wings. P.S. a friend mentioned that while jumping to their deaths, some 9/11 jumpers tried to fight gravity even for a few last seconds. This graphic scene wells up tears in me as I am sure it will in yours. I believe I can fly.