Tag: Virginia

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.

Holding hands in Saigon

The old couple holding hands walking down the street.

They looked at me, I at them.

What did they see in me? Younger version of themselves? Old man looks at my life? I am a lot more like you? Should it be the other way around?

What did I see in them? Grey and withered, still attached, like glue?

I thought hand-holding was for lovers, young lovers.

Like Virginia‘s motto “Virginia is for lovers”.

Here in Saigon, old couples still hold hands, walking down the street.

It gives me  hope, the public display of affection part.

It is affirming, affectionate the whole way through.

Leo Buscaglia once extolled the virtue of Love.

We have Dr Love and Dr Death (assisted suicide).

Both sides of the same coin.

Then we got Dr Strange Love, about bombing and mutual destruction.

The ultimate scare!

Humanity courting disaster.

He who has the bomb holds the key to life.

Archeological dig found a grave with two people holding each other in life and in death (earthquake victims?).

What motivated them? That force which we all felt at times, and recognized when seeing it.

In business, we shake hands upon conclusion of a deal.

In love, we hold hands walking down the street.

Any place (Valentine in the park).

Old man looks at my life, I am a lot like you.

I need someone to see me the whole way through.

I held my dad’s hand on his death-bed.

I saw him struggle with those last attempts at life.

One more try, one more beat. One more refrain, then fade out.

Rather try and fail, then never at all.

Old man looks at my life.

My turn to look at younger men. I am a lot like you.

First, learn respect!

After transitioning from a French elementary school to a Vietnamese middle-school, on my first day of school,  I saw “First learn respect, then learn literature”.

My brother’s generation at the same school had been from the same mold (his classmates are still staying in touch).

No wonder they showed up at my Mom’s funeral in a cold winter day in Virginia , out of respect.

To see the sight of my brother’s classmates, my upperclassmen (most of whom accomplished MD’s and Pharmacists)  bowing with incense in hand, stirred something up in me .

Inside those “tough” shells were hearts of gold.

It is repeating today with my classmates.

A “party” (memorial) fund for our dear musician friend who had just passed away.

Since he was cremated in a private ceremony, we rally to chip in for his kids, to turn grieving into giving.

Coordination takes place across the Pacific, with the free help of technology (yahoo group).

First, learn respect.

I don’t know how much we will eventually collect, but I know my friend’s kids will grow up knowing that daddy’s friends care.

I know Long’s kids will take on some of his musical legacy.

Someday, if I survive to hear one of them perform, I will once again be reminded that there is no such a thing as “the day the music dies”.

(John Lennon’s kid is now playing, George Harrison‘s kid, the same).

I remember listening to “Your Song” during siesta long ago.

But it’s just a radio.

Now, it’s Spotify.

You can take away the stereo, the juke box and the boombox, but you can’t take away music in man’s heart.

The going might get rough, but then, there is music to soothe the soul (ole time Rock and Roll).

I know my friend would be smiling, displaying his square jaws, when I blog this.

He would have joined in if he could.

Testing, and one, and two.

Every other form of learning is preceded by Respect.

It’s hard to find, as a line by Neil Young “I’ve been to Redwood, I’ve been to Hollywood…looking for a heart of gold, and I’m getting old”.

Hold on to it when you have it.

Have it when you see it.

I wouldn’t think of this blog had I not seen it in action, at my Mom’s funeral, and heard it today from my yahoo group.

I love them dearly, but first, respect.

Thanksgiving, tradition and technology

While almost everyone in the US gathers around the traditional meal, here in Vietnam, some people come up with a way to marry tradition with technology: ancestor worship online.

Its highway to eternity has 10,000 plots, already booked for burial and continued ceremonial service online (to accommodate overseas relatives and those who have resettled to urban centers).

Don’t be surprised to see an emerging generation of ICT engineers who ride the waves, from mobile payment to mobile commerce.

If their counterparts in Israel could come up with heritage.com, they sure can match it with ancestor worship online.

Or English learning to match Khan Academy for math tutoring,

English schools sprung up to meet the growing demand for talent infrastructure.

I-pad, I-phone, I-pod could be found at almost every street corner.

Banks are in a race to compete with traditional merchants of gold and hard currency.

One storefront builds out by adding another floor, its neighbors will one-up it ( even hiring away the neighbor’s security guard).

At lunch time (my version of Thanksgiving), I had to zigzag the busy streets to hunt for food.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my family in Virginia perhaps noticed that I missed the Turkey dinner.

A generation back, we wouldn’t know what a turkey tastes like. But I remember our grandmother staying with us, and not the nursing home. My  mom’s generosity spoke louder than all the lessons she had taught at school, whose  sign has always said “Tien Hoc Le, Hau Hoc Van” (First, learn respect, then literature).

With WordPress, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, I can now connect and be connected to thousands of like-minded professionals. Together we are linked for mutual benefits.

It’s an open race.

Occasionally, we pause to reflect on the past and tradition, like Thanksgiving or ancestor worship.

That too can be accommodated digitally. What can be digitized will be digitized. Except for the plot of land, where my grandmother rested in peace.

I had put down on my must-do list to visit her grave, out in the country side of Hai Duong.

But that too, might be digitally do-able.

Perhaps in the very near future, we in Virginia, can put up on the now-used-for-Karaoke screen, the burning of incense at our grandmother’s grave outside of Hai Duong. Then, it’s only a matter of the will because there already is a way.

Technology and tradition. One ushers you into the future, the other reminds you not to forget the past. Happy Thanksgiving!