Tag: Washington D.C.

Music as Motivator

Old Time Rock and Roll, Get Ready, I Just Want to Celebrate etc.. will “soothe your soul”.

Take time out to massage the affective part of yourself.

Ancient culture or atomized culture, we all need to gather around the “fire”, to warm up, to celebrate and to belong.

Music as equalizer, as motivator. A call to march forward.

At Inauguration, Presidents hold concerts, to celebrate. Good for the top brass, good for us commoners.

In college, students played in marching band (at Penn State, they travel a lot and play a lot at home games). Even at corporate events , we hear music which can really kick start an evening.

Work hard and play hard culture.

Fun, fast and flavourful.

Something about those beats that awake and arouse ancient genes.

We are meant to live in herd and hunt in packs.

No way around it but marching to the same drum beat.

(Incidentally, I found financial guys have the most fun at parties, even though it’s them who will process those payments a few weeks later).

Of course we need rah-rah sessions.

We need to be recognized, to be motivated. It’s not for the winners. It is to draw out the best from the laggers.

A few days ago, Thomas Friedman had a piece about the cultural differences between Washington and Silicon Valley. His central theme was Collaboration.

And how different the concept was perceived and processed in those two places.

I would add creativity and imagination to the mix.

What could be a better source to inspire and jump-start “out of the box” thinking than to turn on those good old-time Rock and Roll, theme songs and marching tunes of the Valley. I have run into a bunch of old acquaintances. The secret sauce has always been music.

Of course, exercise and diet are top of the list. But musicians tend to maintain that care-free, let’s-see-what-happens attitude. It keeps them young and fit. It keeps them upbeat (notice the positive term). At the very least, it draws out the inner child that refuses to grow up in this pain-filled world.

When in doubt, in stress, in trouble, just know You’ve Got A Friend.

Summer in mind

Coming of age. Summer 42. Sandy beach.

Surf. Dream. Instant memories.

Something humbling about the vast expanse.

Men  and women, hard and soft bodies, clothed and nude.

All have walked those beaches.

All have pondered and projected toward the unknown.

Will i turn out alright!

How much time do I have left to live?

What then should be on the must-do list?

Summer time.

It draws out the soft side of a person.

Past relationships. Faces that we once thought we could never live without.

Then those camping trips. Beach volleyball.

Rarely worn and loosely fit bathing suit.

Those extra pounds from those extra cheese.

Summer time.

Transition.

New role, new relationship.

Students upon graduation now return home.

Might as well sleep on the beach, surfing the wave during the day, and surfing the net at night.

Japan-style “no sun” generation. They came of age during the Recession there, and rose with the Digital era.

Something to learn from.

Nothing is new under the Sun.

Just new actors for the same script.

So it’s Summer time.

When we appreciate its breeze.

and record its memories.

Hope yours are as warm as mine.

Summer in itself can do no wrong.

1942 forever, even if the calendar says its 2012.

OPP (other people’s problems)

We live in a world full of acronyms e.g. PPO, OPM (Other People’s Money), SOP, CDO, COD etc..

In big companies, Customer Service reps just get through their day, throwing around acronyms to feel they are on the inside, without thinking about “touchpoints” (problems as opportunities to upsell).

My cable acted up two days ago.  The CS rep on the phone failed to help, so I had to take the box to the local center for an exchange.

The reception area was tiny, the guard imposing and customers, many were old men, holding the box with no place to sit. The rep first wanted me to drop my ticket in a pencil holder (her makeshift trash bin), then proceeded to check my ID. If it weren’t for the sign that says “Comcast” , I would have thought I had been at a DMV (whose seating area was more comfortable. In fact, the DMV in Stuart, FL was excellent at being “civil servant”.  Comcast reps should come over to learn a few things).

Take away: we are born naked and will die rotten. What we have now is all derivative (from our lineage, our society and our global links). Customers will always vote with their feet and they don’t wait until November. No contract could lock anyone in. Companies should periodically audit employees’ “attitude” (Sales should pick up Service skills, and vice versa). Gone are the days of “yesterday we were nice because you were a prospect”.

In its place should be the kind of enchantment Guy Kawasaki was referring in his book.

There is a reason Nordstrom and Four Seasons got their J.D. Power awards even in tough times.

(Recent USA Today poll features a large percentage of consumers cutting the chords with their long-time Hairdressers, Personal Trainers, landscapers etc..).

The trickle down economy.

Even China is growing only at 8% (down from earlier 10%) while the US teetering over the red line. Not all emerging countries are doing well. Thailand got a centennial flood. Like global recession, global warming is not OPP. A UN expert on Natural Disasters opined on the Newshour that it’s 50-50 natural/man-made split, let’s say, in the Mekong River (logging, upstream dam overstretched…) or a Honda plant in Thailand was submerged while Toyota parts couldn’t get to us from Fukushima.

Jasmine rice from Thailand (with Elephant brand) will be in short supply next year.

Tomorrow we will enjoy Bill Clinton’s birthday concert, brought to us by Yahoo.

But we can not just download the good stuff (democratized technology) while ignoring our carbon footprints.

Technology and globalization are the two sides of the same coin.

A manufacturing plant cannot move overseas without dumping toxic waste into someone else’s stream and water supply.

Again, early civic lessons came to mind (a neighbor found a dead rat in his yard. He decided to toss it over the fence to his neighbor. The next day, the whole neighborhood, his house included, smelled dead-rat). Or as in a story about living down-hill from someone else’s farm. The act of helping to water a neighbor’s farm uphill,  ended up with the benefit of having part of the water flow down hill anyway. In doing good, we are also doing well (Henry Ford knew this when he decided on paying high manufacturing wages “so my workers can afford to buy my model T’s – in any color they want, as long as it’s black”. We will all need to relearn the concept of service in today’s hyper competitiveness yet globally connectedness (and not letting the machine-generated “Now, serving number B-52 at window number 3” announcement put us in a trance, or worse off, become machine-like ourselves.) Want another acronym? It’s called living in the age of AI (Artificial Intelligence).

Life’s soundtrack

I have just received a photo showing a hot-air balloon over Seattle, with me and Geoffrey in the basket. We just need a soundtrack to add to it. The puffy hot air, the wind which carried us over the lush-green scenery with Bill Gates himself living on the ground. If given a choice, I choose “Theme from Woodstock”, since we were kidding ourselves that we were “stock East” and “stock West”.

The same lay of the land, without the housing bubble (Seattle and Washington D.C. exempted).

Home to MSC, Amazon and Starbucks.

My cousin used to live there until he died. A former Red Beret and a school teacher.

The last time we spoke was when he wished me a happy marriage. In hindsight, I wished I had made the journey to visit him up there instead of Nova Scotia. By the time I was in that company-sponsored hot-air balloon, my Seattle-based cousin had already died.

Given that context, I would lay down the music track “theme from the deer hunter” (Cavatina) instead for that hot-air balloon trip. Same visual, different feel to it when you lay a different soundtrack underneath.

The difference between the soup lines from the Recession of 1930 and this one, was in how we recorded history: one in Black-and-White grainy photos, and one in crisp digital copies.

Men who carry themselves with whatever dignity left inside of them (even when the fire went out).

President Obama is urging the nation to go back to Community College to get manufacturing certificate. He did not mention that we are living in a disposable society, where the manufacturing sector (which used to produce disposable goods like Campbell soup) is itself disposable, outsourced to lower-wage countries (and downward spiraled from there).

We are lucky now if we can view Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin and laugh.

If he were alive, he wouldn’t think it’s funny at all. He meant to be prophetic, not to produce a documentary about globalization of the manufacturing sector. He wanted to humanize the workers, just to see his audience now sidelined, watching the process repeat itself overseas (with Asian actors).

If I were to lay a soundtrack to these “silent” movies, I would put Theme from the Exodus

(during the Tet massacre of 1968, they laid this soundtrack to show mass graves in Hue).

As in any movie, I need to zoom out now. Back to my hot-air balloon trip with Geoffrey in Seattle.

We saw the lush green, other teams’ balloons, and finally landed safely to the gathering place where we congratulated ourselves for being Ovation winners. Let the bonding continue. Soundtrack “theme from Chariots of Fire“.