Global Traveler, Global Citizen

I don’t know how or when I began to think of myself as a global citizen, but it was long before I had ever left North America. I was 27 when I hitched a ride on a C-130 carrying a Navy SEAL team to Italy. I was fresh out of law school and waiting for the results of the bar exam. I landed in Europe with one suitcase (no backpack) and a guitar. That was 46 years ago.

My parents were stay-at-home types whose idea of travel was a road trip to California or a day trip to Victoria on the Princess line. They were conservative and thrifty and when, at 18, I told them that I was planning a backpacking trip to Europe they threw cold water all over the idea. I needed an education and not a bohemian adventure. End of conversation. It took me 9 more years to get there – two years to finish college, 4 years for the Marine Corps, and 3 years of law school – but I finally got there and I haven’t stopped traveling since. I’ve never really used the education my parents were so concerned about but I honored their wishes. On the other hand, travel has shaped me more than anything except the Marine Corps. I think they have had equal weight in my development as an adult.

What does it mean to be a global citizen? I suppose there are as many definitions as there are people who identify with the label. I certainly don’t think that a strong national pride and identity prevents me from being a global citizen. In fact, participation in the politics and economy of my own country is one way to become a better global person. I’m not a flag waiver. I generally regard flag waivers as the opposite of true patriots. Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin don’t have the dimmest idea of how the world works. They’ve never been anywhere, although Sarah claims to be able to “see” Russia from her front porch or some such lunacy.

No, I think global citizens see the interconnectedness of things on a global scale. What happens in Athens or Berlin, Capetown or Mogadishu, Bogota or Rio, Ottawa or Vancouver has an affect on everyone else. If the stock market in the US tanks the markets tank worldwide. If the markets tank there is less money available to deal with natural and/or manmade disasters. For the last 30 years governments, state, national, and international have been abdicating their responsibilities to provide the planet with disaster relief and safety net solutions. These responsibilities are more and more being taken over by NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and non-profit groups. As a result we, as individuals, are becoming philanthropically exhausted. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan yielded significantly less donations to relief organizations than the tsunami that devastated Thailand and Indonesia in 2004. Donors are exhausted – donor fatigue is having an impact on our ability to respond to natural disaster. Africa is under enormous stress because of drought and political instability, but we are not responding or in some cases being prevented from responding.

I’m not a socialist, but I am willing to spend some of our national treasure to make the world a better place, and I’m also willing to spend a chunk of my own treasure, small as it is. As a global citizen I like to think that we can all be global humanists. I believe that the leaders of a country as fortunate and successful as ours should make a commitment to provide a safety net, a minimum level of care and support, for its citizens and by extension for the planet. We have the resources to provide universal health care for less than we currently spend. Beyond our own borders; if my government (and the governments of other developed countries) can commit billions and billions of dollars to topple the perceived threats of Salvador Allende, Ho Chi Minh or Saddam Hussein why is it so hard to commit to saving the lives of victims of drought or genocide in Darfur, Damascus, Somalia, Kosovo, Rwanda, or the Congo? It would be much less expensive than invading Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya and probably do more to create a “coalition of the willing” to support our effort and build a positive force for good.

I’m proud to be an American although, at the moment, I’m a little embarrassed by our President and his Congress’ inability to make decisions for the good of the country. Our system is on lockdown and held hostage by people who fail to understand that we live in a global world that is totally interconnected. We have squandered our leadership position in the global society and body politic. Yes, it is global – the body politic – in spite of the isolationist politics of the Tea Party and the gutless wonders who are pandering to them. It’s amazing to me that these candidates for the highest office in the world have such limited vision and courage.

Spoiled and Privileged Children

I am appalled and embarrassed by what is happening in the Congress of the United States. I’ve felt this way for more than 10 years, but this past two weeks has been a crushing indictment of how self interest, personal ambition, ideology, and self delusion have taken precedence over the best interests of the people and nation our elected official are sworn to represent.

Governing America has never been a simple task. Democracy is messy but compromise is what has enabled it to deliver balanced solutions to complex problems for more than 200 years. The current “deciders” of our fate are acting like the spoiled and privileged children most of them probably are. They are throwing tantrums, locking themselves in their rooms and refusing to come out until they get their way. Meanwhile, the rest of us are hostages.

Our country has been in decline for more more than a generation. When the Berlin Wall came down we became the single remaining superpower, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. We were rich, envied and smug. Even though we were the most powerful nation in history there were cracks in the edifice. Our education system had been failing the country and its students since the 1960s. Dropout rates were astronomical and high school graduates unqualified for either work or higher education. Our university system was and is the envy of the world, but a quality education is now beyond the means of many Americans. More and more of our successful students are from other countries but unlike previous generations these graduates are going home to work rather than following the dream of success and achievement in America.

After 9/11 we had the world's support and sympathy, a budget surplus, and a clear path to prosperity. Since then we have squandered the first two, started two wars and let Wall Street greed drive us into the financial ditch.

I live and work in Vietnam where hard work, dreams, and sacrifice are the still the elements that lead to a better life. Parents sacrifice and suffer so that their children will have a chance at a better life. When I return to the US I see adult children living with and off their parents and complaining that they can’t find the “right” job while discussing whether Kim Kardashian has butt implants. Let’s get serious. America is becoming a second tier country. We don’t have universal healthcare even though we spend much more than any other country. We have crumbling roads and bridges, inferior mass transit, an overlooked and decrepit rail system. We are fighting two and a half undeclared, expensive wars – one of which was unnecessary and unwise and distracted us from finishing the other. So, what is going on in Congress? Why aren’t the two parties coming together to work out a solution? For some reason these spoiled and privileged children think that they can have it all without working hard or paying for it. I definitely want America to have and be the best of everything, and I think it can if we’re all willing to pay our fair share. With the country teetering on the edge of default and the disparity between rich and poor greater than any time in my lifetime, why is there any question about the responsibility of America’s richest people to pay their fair share to the country that enabled them to become rich. I just don’t get it. Trust me the people holding us hostage are not worried about their pay or retirement checks. They’ll be just fine.

What Immigration Policy?

I know the United States has immigration policies. That's the problem. There are policies that apply to Mexicans. There are policies that apply to Canadians. There are policies that apply to IT workers at Microsoft. There are policies that apply to young foreigners married to older US citizens. There are policies that apply to single women, and policies that apply to Iraqi interpreters.

Dominique Strass-Kahn didn't need a visa but the West African maid he allegedly raped surely did. I have a young friend in Saigon who was turned down for a visa even though she had been accepted to study at a US university, had the money and sponsorship needed, and had the support of her Vietnamese employer. Go figure.

As I listen to the debate I wonder how many of the people arguing so strenuously to tighten immigration and visa requirements have ever been on the other side of the equation? How many of those strident voices have personal experience filling out the forms for another country's visa? How many of them had to disclose details of their net worth? Did they have to produce a marriage certificate, bank statements, airline tickets, and the home addresses of relatives? Have any of them been denied a visa or immigrant status without an explanation? America is the land of entitlement. Americans would be outraged if they were denied a visa - especially if they were not told the reason - but I have Vietnamese friends who have fulfilled all the documentation requirements, described the purpose of their visit, shown the consular officer proof of assets and dates of travel, named a sponsoring organization, shown the intent to return to Vietnam and have then been denied a US visa without being given a reason for the denial.

Have we forgotten that the US is an immigrant nation? What happened to the sentiment memorialized in the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty?

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Now we are building a fence to keep them out. What's with that?

The Insurance Child

No pictures please...

When Westerners spend time in Vietnam there is one subject that almost always comes up - older white males and young Vietnamese women. The streets are full of them. The combinations are limitless and they all generate reactions and speculation. Are these relationships different from other December-May relationships? What are they about? Some of them are about hope. Some are about sexual validation. Some are about romance. Some are depressing. Some seem perfectly normal. Some are disgusting. Some are funny. Some are about predatory sex. Some are sweet. Some go sour. Some are scandalous. Some are about not wanting to age. Some are hard to look at. Some are vets returning with nostalgia for another time. Some are just what you think they are. Some are simply inexplicable. Most of them are about money one way or another.

One of the best places in Saigon for people watching is the square at the top end of Dong Khoi Street where the Cathedral of Notre Dame stands as a reminder that the West has been involved with Vietnam and its people for centuries. Every Saturday and Sunday morning Marilynn and I sit across the square from the cathedral on the terrace of the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Company and watch the human parade. There are brides having their wedding photos taken even though their weddings won't take place until weeks or months later. There are balloon vendors, shoe shine boys, lottery ticket sellers, models, and tourists all milling about. But,inevitably there will also be a number of old white guys with young Vietnamese women. Vietnamese women are exceptionally beautiful. Human traffickers prize them because of their light skin and fine features. It's not a mystery why men are drawn to them or why Western men come all the way to Vietnam to meet them.

When I see an overweight older white man with a tarty looking girl in short shorts I am repulsed, but I remind myself that I have good friends who are CEOs of multi-national companies that go home every night to their lovely and well educated Vietnamese wives. Sometimes I can set the sexual tourists aside in my mind and see the people I know in a different light even though many of them are still mysterious to me.

My friend, James, is a 55 year old businessman from Boston. He's well educated and successful. He seems very straight and normal but he was unmarried in Boston and I imagine that he had trouble attracting good looking, successful women who were his peers. Things changed for him in Vietnam. One night 6 years ago, as a tourist, he and a friend met a couple of Vietnamese girls in an elevator at the Caravelle Hotel. They invited the girls to sit with them in the Saigon - Saigon Bar even though the men didn't speak a word of Vietnamese and the girls did not speak English. A year later after a telephone relationship with an interpreter on the girl's end they were married. Now James is doing business consulting in Vietnam and they have a 3 year old child. The "insurance child." More about that later.

Another 62 year old friend moved to Vietnam after a successful career in telecommunications in Australia. Here he met and married a 28 year old Vietnamese banker. A year later they were the parents of twins - the insurance children. The stories are endless. A friend in Thailand, almost 60 and never married, is now happily married and has a 7 year old insurance child. Another friend, Chairman of one of the Big Five accounting firms, is married to a lovely and talented Vietnamese designer and they have two insurance children.

The insurance child is shorthand for a lifelong commitment. It seals the deal. It is almost a certainty that these women will have a child within a year or two of marriage. Vietnamese women are very smart, and when they talk about relationships they talk about being taken care of. It's all about the money. My 62 year old friend will be in his 80s when his girls graduate from high school. His wife will be in her 40s. When a Western man marries a Vietnamese woman he takes on a lot of responsibility. He gets the girl, but he also gets her family. That generally means he becomes financially responsible for them, all of them - parents, siblings, siblings children, grandparents - and they're not in the background. They are there, in the house, much of the time. As Zorba the Greek says, "the full catastrophe."

For the women the dance leading up to marriage can become a risk management challenge. Most Vietnamese women see the Western man as an insurance policy and they are fully invested in securing their future. But, sometimes it doesn't work out. There are thousands of beautiful girls in Vietnam and they are very available. A Western man can have as many servings as he wants. A particularly beautiful friend of ours has invested 5 years in a relationship with a semi-permanent expat CEO. He was married and she, like her counterparts worldwide, thought he would divorce the wife and marry her. He's got a great deal, but the plan hasn't worked out for her and now she's in her late 30s and other prospects are fading. She never got the insurance child.

Roadside Repair

There are 10,000,000 people living in Saigon and there are 5,000,000 motorbikes that get them where they want to go. There are no Mr. Goodwrench outlets or dealer repair shops in small shopping centers along the main thoroughfares, but the Vietnamese are nothing if not resourceful. This picture shows the Saigon solution. Every morning this guy hauls his toolbox and compressor somehow from someplace and sets up on the corner just down the street from our apartment. I don't know how he hauls his gear. I've looked around his "shop" for a trailer or wheels or some device that would help him move the stuff every day, but I don't see it. I know he doesn't just heft that compressor onto the back of his motorbike. It probably weighs close to 200lbs. Nevertheless, every morning he sets up shop and every evening he breaks it down and hauls it away.

These corner repair shops are scattered all over the city and this is where flat tires get topped up or patched, clogged fuel lines get cleared, and broken brake cables get replaced. There are small vendors and service providers on almost every sidewalk in Saigon. Most of them, whether they are serving snacks or selling sim cards for your mobile phone transport their "business" to their offices in a small aluminum and glass trolley/cart. And many of them are in position and doing business for only a couple of hours a day. My favorite breakfast cart shows up about 6:00am and is gone by 9:30. I think the couple that owns it must go to other jobs after they're through serving breakfast to the regulars. The woman next to them sells Coke and some other soft drinks and she's there until mid-afternoon. These folks know their clientele.

Saigon is a feast for all the senses and a real lesson in entrepreneurial activity.

Why Can't We Do It?

Over the weekend I visited a friend in Bangkok. It's exotic and interesting, but that isn't what I left there thinking about. My real take-away is about transportation. I have two primary points of reference for traffic - one is Seattle and the other is Saigon. Both are traffic nightmares; Bangkok is not.

Bangkok's population is officially listed as 9,100,000, about the same size as Saigon and five times the population of the whole of King County, Seattle's home. The streets of Bangkok are wide and traffic flows normally for a major metropolis. At rush hour things slow down but at other times they flow fairly smoothly. Saigon's 5,000,000 motorbikes make the traffic chaotic, unpredictable and sometimes outright dangerous. Motorbikes share the streets and sidewalks with bicycles, cars, pedestrians, cyclos, and pushcarts. There is some kind of protocol, but it's difficult to figure out. In Bangkok there are only a few bikes and motorbikes. What is the difference?

Here it is: Bangkok has a mass transportation system. That's the difference. The BTS Skytrain and the MRT Underground move huge numbers of people swiftly through the city in comfortable air-conditioned cars at reasonable prices. They also leave the streets free for automobile and bus traffic. Why is it that Thailand, ranked #30 in the world in GDP can move people more efficiently than #1 ranked United States? I don't know the answer, but I think we deserve one.

In 1953 Seattle built a double-decked elevated roadway through downtown, and in 1963 the Evergreen Point floating bridge was built to connect Seattle to the eastern suburbs. Now, 50 years later both of them are falling apart and need to be replaced and there is no mass transit anywhere (Light rail is a very short joke). Seattle is infamous for its "process." Everyone must be heard and heard and heard, but nothing gets done. Seattle has been arguing over both the viaduct and the bridge for more than 10 years. Finally, last year a "consensus" was arrived at and we decided to build a tunnel to replace the crumbling old elevated eyesore through downtown. It was a struggle but the tunnel won out and it was agreed that the solution would also create a beautiful San Francisco-like waterfront that would attract locals and tourists alike as well as move traffic efficiently. But, now the "process" is grinding us down again and someone has collected the required number of signatures to bring the matter to another vote on the ballot in 2011. For some reason it seems more important to stop doing things in Seattle than to do them.

Why can't we have a beautiful waterfront, a functional bridge system and, yes, a mass transit system too? If #30 can do it, why can't #1?

It Was A Big Weekend

Did you get invited to the wedding on Friday? It was a big day for the bride and groom, but we had a great time too. We weren't actually able to get to Westminster Abbey, but we did get to the Snap Cafe in District Two, Ho Chi Minh City. There are a enough British expats working here that the British Business Group Vietnam (BBGV) decided to celebrate the event locally. The Snap was a great choice - no clotted cream and scones but a big open space with a playground for the kids and lots of beer and popcorn.

Attendees were encouraged to dress for the wedding, but with 95F temperatures and a thatched roof hut for the venue there were only a few takers. There was one gent in a morning coat and a few women with large brimmed hats and hankies to mop their brows or dab their tears of joy. Most of us arrived before the TV coverage began and the atmosphere was very festive. There were two big screens (actually sheets hung from the posts and thatch) and bench seating. As opposed to the Abbey, this crowd was up and mingling and the kids were hanging from the monkey bars.

We settled down on a couch in the smaller of the two viewing venues and immediately made friends with the two women on the couch beside us. One of the women was a handsome black woman from Malaysia who came to Vietnam with her husband 20 years ago, divorced him and has been working ever since as a teacher in one of the independent schools. Her friend was a stylish upscale blond of a certain age who was born in North Borneo, raised in Hong Kong and educated in the UK. She's the "girlfriend" of a Frenchman who runs a venture capital firm. As Kate and Will drove to the Abbey and walked down the aisle we introduced ourselves and did running commentary on the crowd, the car, the horses, the dress, the uniforms, the royals, the foliage in the nave, and the voice of the bishop. In the process we learned that North Borneo lady's brother is a world class sailor who has just opened a sailing school in MuiNe and the Malaysian woman has strong opinions about the death of Princess Diana. The incredibly wonderful thing about being an expat in Saigon is that you meet an endless chain of interesting people and these two were no exception.

As I sat down to write about the wedding and our new friends I learned that a Special Forces team raided a compound in Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden. It was a very big weekend. I wonder if Donald Trump will find a way to "be extremely proud" of his role in either event or perhaps question the reality of them.