Wal-Mart
-
Another friend flew out for Thanksgiving. There is no such a thing here in Saigon: oven-roasted turkey, croton and mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce , yam and apple pie. Mouth-watering! children running around and old folks reminiscing the good old days. Yes, his destination has a few hallmarks of the American Dream. Here in old Saigon,…
-
We are urged to “think out of the box“, be creative etc.. Easier said than done. Having a liberal arts background, and traveled the world, I find it easier just get out of the box, then think from there. Every place has its own charms and setbacks. Every place gets good and bad people. Don’t…
-
When Facebook profile (soon to be called Timeline) needs me to complete my favorite movie section, I put down Cinema Paradiso. It’s in Blu-ray now (Oscar-winning, well-preserved quality). It’s about growing up in an Italian village, with the cinema , Cinema Paradiso, as central theme. It was later demolished to make room for a parking lot.…
-
50 years ago, you would have been chased out of the pub had you painted these scenarios: the US can’t wait to open off-shored manufacturing centers, Gaga as a mermaid on wheelchair, and 90% of the population will shop at Wal-Mart, stocked with 99% Made-in-China merchandise. Dude, in the 60’s, we were living the American…
-
Retailers in Europe figured out a way to push merchandise in this time of austerity: shop in your underwear, leave fully clothed. Meanwhile, a reporter from the BBC went to Hanoi to learn about another way of shopping: buying paper clothing for the dead (old Hanoi, pho “hang ma”). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00h35lv That’s how different East and West…
-
At the most elementary level, we got the chip set. That is about to change, from “flat like a sheet of paper”” to 3D chip, announced Intel (which made Applied Materials jump to its 3.9 Billion acquisition of Varian Semiconductor to keep pace). Our world is about to change once again, not to the tune…
-
MSNBC interviews a blogger from Good magazine on automation nation. The take away: automation is moving beyond manufacturing sector (e.g. Google test drove an unmanned vehicle in California, or Italian researchers tested a driver-less van, from Italy to China) to service sectors, such as health care . Japan has been deep into robotic technology, a national policy…
-
Infrastructure improvement could cost billions. Kids need to drive someday. And as Mr Buffet wisely put his investment dollars into railways since containers need to be offloaded to the Wal-Mart near you. Those who travel recently can recall “boarding by zone”, “e-ticketing”, etc.. All sorts of gimmicks , except for the limited runways and slots allowed…
-
The age of frozen self has finally arrived i.e. you either update your web presence, or remain “frozen” in cyber space. Years from now, people remotely connected to you will Google you and mine all the intimate data about you or written by you. Personal digital archive. At the turn of our century, Command-and-Control model dominated…
Thang Nguyen 555 