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Ten years ago today, my mom woke me up early for school. She knocked on my door and told me the news.
We turned on the radio and listened. A day or two before, concerned that my brother was watching too much TV, my parents had unplugged the TV and hid the cables.
At school we listened to the radio too. (Those TVs didn’t work either.) I had just started my senior year of high school and that day showed us new sides of our new teachers.
That afternoon, I called my Uncle Rich with a trite but still time-sensitive question:
“Did the lobsters arrive?”
Yes, they’d landed that morning, before the airspace closed, an overnight delivery from Legal Sea Foods.
My dad is from Boston and Legal Sea Foods lobster-and-clam-chowder dinners have always been a special gift in my family. This meal consisted of four lobsters crawling around in an insulated box, along with four bibs and four cups of clam chowder.
Just a few months before, this nuclear family had tragically shrunken from four eaters to three, and my cousin Scott invited me to share this special meal with him and Uncle Rich and Aunt Jackie.
We carefully boiled the lobsters and heated the chowder, all glued to the TV (which worked properly, unlike the TVs at my house and school.)
We watched George W. Bush solemnly honor the victims and announce the creation of a new government unit, the Department of Homeland Security.
Fast forward ten years.
Now Scott is a lawyer with the Department of Homeland Security. His job description includes protecting the United States of America from very bad people.
I now live in Chile, a country where “September 11″ brings up an entirely different set of memories.
But for me, I’ll think of dysfunctional TVs, live lobster for four, and Alan Jackson’s Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning? which is playing on repeat as I type this post.
Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?
Were you in the yard with your wife and children
Or working on some stage in L.A.?
Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke
Risin’ against that blue sky?
Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor
Or did you just sit down and cry?Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones
And pray for the ones who don’t know?
Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble
And sob for the ones left below?
Did you burst out in pride for the red, white and blue
And the heroes who died just doin’ what they do?
Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer
And look at yourself and what really matters?
So, where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?
Notes on the photos: lobster and chowder photo is from LegalSeaFoods.com (not an affiliate link) and photo of Scott is from of my dad’s digital photo archive, posted with Scott’s permission.
From Google Analytics I’ve learned that lots of readers come to leslieforman.com to learn about Mongolian politics, especially the nature of its democracy, freedom of speech, and relations with the United States. So far, the lone post I have to answer these fascinating questions is this one, about George W. Bush’s visit to Mongolia in 2005.
When I found out that Joe Biden was going to visit Mongolia, as part of an Asian tour featuring far more local color than most diplomatic visits, I immediately set Google Alerts on “Joe Biden Mongolia” to make sure I got a detailed picture of his visit, as well as its broader implications for Mongolia’s position in the world.
I visited Mongolia last September, and my travels really inspired me to write about The Mongolian Ger as a Yanic Symbol and the infamous camel-licking game.
This post is long but hopefully informative.
So, without further due, let me present Vice President of the United States of America, Joseph R. Biden:
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (C) reacts with a wrestler before a Mongolian wrestling performance during his meeting with Mongolian Prime Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold (R) in Ulan Bator August 22, 2011. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden lauded land-locked Mongolia's efforts at democratization on Monday, offering support to a country that is strategically located between China and Russia and sits on vast quantities of untapped mineral wealth. (Source: REUTERS / Zeev Rozenberg Date:08/23/2011)
This is just one of a dozen or so photos of Joe Biden’s trip to Asia that have been dubbed: “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Biden… It’s the greatest collection of photographs…maybe ever.”
This past Monday afternoon, T and I attended a Chinese culture show at the Plaza de Armas here in Santiago. A big crowd watched this group dance and drum with the dragon. Little children jumped up and down, and older men screamed “otra! otra!” and just about everyone had their cell phone out to take photos or videos. I’ve never seen this kind of enthusiasm for this kind of show!
The dancers, both Chinese and Chilean, included employees of the Chinese Embassy here in Chile, and other members of the Chile-China business community.
“Venimos por una causa, la causa de la amistad entre China y Chile!”
said one of the speakers.
Next to the Plaza de Armas stood several shops filled with fake Louis Vuitton and Prada purses, which would have been right at home in the basement at Yashow in Beijing.
In other news on the China-Chile front, I spotted a BYD Taxi in the city center. BYD (which stands for Build Your Dream) is a Chinese car brand, famous worldwide because Warren Buffett has backed its efforts to build hybrids. This morning we did a non-scientific survey and noticed that the majority of the taxis are Nissans, with a handful of Toyotas, Hyundais, and Chevrolets. What does this say about Chile’s position in the world economy? Not sure.
If you’re at all interested in the emerging field of China – Latin America trade, I highly recommend this article from Business Insider, which is based on an interview with Eric Bethel, of Sino-Latin Capital:
… unsurprisingly, he’s got fascinating stories.
Such as how foreign businesses get into trouble in Ecuador because they often don’t realize they need to check to make sure their purchased mine isn’t in a drug-trafficking corridor (drug lords are known to hire protestors to picket sites). Or how most Peruvians have no idea that their traditional Peruvian corner restaurants, named chifas, are actually descendants of Chinese restaurants (chifa is from “chi fan”). Or how California-based environmental groups have become very effective at shutting down Chinese projects in places like Brazil. And so on. Eric has become the guy every Chinese company wants on their team when heading to Latin America.
I decided to delete this post. It’s not really my story to tell. I haphazardly cobbled together photos and ideas from other places, and for that I am very sorry.
Here is a pretty amazing New York Times slideshow showing photos of the protests.
More soon. Happy Monday to you!
Leslie
Last week I gave a speech at la USACH (Universidad de Santiago de Chile), and the university newspaper covered it!
Click the image twice to see it at full size (all in Spanish.)
Here are the slides from my speech. They’re in Spanish, but I think the pictures make them fairly self-explanatory. I spoke about Silicon Valley, how the spirit of Silicon Valley has shaped me and my family, my experiences in China and Chile, Start-Up Chile, and Go To Market.
Leslie Forman’s speech at USACH July 25, 2011
View more presentations from Leslie Forman.
Special thanks to my dad for the photo on slide #3. I must have been 4 or 5 years old, and absolutely delighted to be using our Apple 2!
The overall goal of my speech was to encourage Chilean researchers to apply to Go To Market, a program sponsored by CORFO (Chile’s economic development agency) and SRI (the non-profit technology research institution formerly known as Stanford Research Institute). Go To Market is an opportunity for Chilean researchers to apply to win a 6-week fellowship to visit SRI in Menlo Park, California, and work with world-renowned experts to commercialize their technologies. Everyone who applies will get feedback on their invention and ideas about how to commercialize it. At USACH I met researchers who held patents for technologies to ensure the quality of meat and increase the output of rice.
The professor who invited me asked me to emphasize that Silicon Valley is a place that approaches failure as a necessary part of the innovation process. In Chile, most people are terrified of failure. It is not seen well in this society. People build close, life-long, family-focused networks, and these are the base of most professional opportunities. Also I have heard that bankruptcy laws here serve as a big deterrent against taking risks in business. But this is changing, and several Chilean friends have told me that Start-Up Chile hs helped to catalyze a gradual change in this part of the culture.
This was my first time giving a speech in Spanish, and my first time serving as a representative of Silicon Valley. The 20 or so professors, researchers, and students at the table asked some excellent questions about innovation, China, and more. I look forward to my next opportunity to share my stories (and, ahem, childhood photos) with this type of group.
I'm Leslie and I connect entrepreneurs in Chile, China, California, and beyond — especially through translation, training, and trade. More about me.
