I felt a little alone today

I felt a little alone today. 

Maybe it's because I am dining alone, yet again! Unlike the dinner (all by myself) in Sheraton Melbourne on the 18th last month or my lunch (also all by myself) in Seoul Hilton 18 years ago, I felt out of sorts when waiting for my steak despite being in a homely, well attended steakhouse in Ho Chi Minh City.

On all three occasions, I was there for a public sector leadership matter. But today, it just felt like the cogs are not turning properly. 

Maybe it's this feature I read the other day that stated that recent survey showed that those in their 50s are at the most unhappy period in their lives :-(. I sure hope not! 

Maybe it's got to do with the anxieties of the role transitions where there remains much unfinished business.

Maybe it's got a bit to do with the country. It's just not quite there despite its efforts. This is a proud nation, with a people capable of extreme hardship. A legendary tale (relayed to me by Singapore's Perm Sec of Defence more than 20 years ago) about how the local troops defeated the French by dismantling and carrying parts of tanks up the Dien Bien Phu mountains where these were subsequently reassembled and thats how they overcame the last of the enemies holding up there. The world also know that they defeated the Americans who fled the country in dramatic style in 1975. 

The country then got stuck in time (no thanks to the 'sour grapes' US embargo imposed thereafter). Now, more than 40 years later, I wonder if these diehard attitudes are still present. We only need to walk around the city to be reassured that many of its old habits are still there. People (men and women, young and old) are still sitting on road pavements in low chairs in their pajamas with their legs crossed, eating, drinking, chatting, whiling away their time.

It's in their DNA, part of their culture. The perceptive LKY had held this view dearly to his dotage. I understand why. These habits took centuries, even millennia to form. They don't get changed easily. Which then suggests economic development and transformation of a nation, which necessarily rely on the human capital stock available, is proscribed by its culture from the start. 

The only way to accelerate this is immigration (but that comes with all sorts of national social cohesion costs).

Immigrants are by virtue more resilient. Not because they are smarter but because they knew no one else would provide for them and all they had were what their mind and hands could produce. I was sharing the story of the Hakkas to M in our usual weekend rides together. I likened the Hakkas of Asia to the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe, a perspective I had written about in an earlier entry in this blog. She absorbed it as she always does. I was trying to instill in her the spirit of her ancestors. 

Centuries of persection have caused these migrant people to develop a real steely core, able to withstand any hardship. With that in mind, I should not mind my lonely state. That said, I couldn't help it. It was in this city that D & I first lived together. Although the city has developed economically with it's gleaming new infrastructure and narrow streets choked full of cars and motorcycles, the people and their habits remain... Which reminded me of our time here more than 20 years ago. 

I too should live up to the strength and spirit of my ancestors. As I said in my thank you video to my staff, there is only one ingredient for success: ourselves; and when prepared in a recipe that constitutes vision, passion and courage, the result is inevitably the best version of ourselves.

With that thought in mind, I passed this night in Vietnam alone but not lonely: that I am on a journey of continuous learning, improvement and always comforted by the knowledge of the care of loved ones,