Alpha Asian

These kids put me to shame. While in high school, I actually got a "D" in Mandarin. I switched to Spanish after that.

By Mojo Rider The last installment of Lt. Col. Guy LoFaro's speech: LEADERSHIP And then it's months later and you're still recovering. Most of the tubes are gone but it's time for another round of major surgeries. And you go into one of the last, this one about 9 hours long. And they put you back together. And you wake up in the ICU one more time. Only one IV this time. And when you open your eyes, there's a huge figure standing over your bed. BDUs. Green beret in his hand. Bigger than God. And he's smiling. "It's about damn time you woke up you lazy bastard" he says. And you know it's your friend and former commander and you've got to come back with something quick - something good. He's the deputy Delta Force commander, soon to be the commander. And you say "Don't you have someplace else to be? Don't you have something more important to do?" And without skipping a beat, without losing that smile he says "Right n...

By Mojo Rider Another installment of Lt. Col. Guy LoFaro's speech at the US Military Academy: The VALUE OF A CREED Lesson Four And then you're a major and you're back in the 82d - your home. And one day some SOB having a bad week decides it's time to take it out on the world and he shoots up a PT formation. Takes out 20 guys. You're one of them. A 5.56 tracer round right to the gut. Range about 10 meters. And you're dead for a little while, but it's not your time yet - there are still too many lessons to learn. And you wake up after five surgeries and 45 days in a coma. And you look down at your body and you don't recognize it - it has become a receptacle for hospital tubing and electronic monitoring devices. You have a tracheotomy, so there's a huge tube going down your throat and you can't talk, but that thing is making sure you breathe. And there's a tube in your nose that goes down into your stomach - that's how you eat. And there are...

This is part three of Lt. Col. Guy LoFaro's speech at the US Military Academy. GRIEF It's a few years later and you've already had your company command. You're in grad school, studying at Michigan. You get a phone call one night, one of the sergeants from your company. He tells you Harvey Moore is dead, killed in a training accident when his Blackhawk flew into the ground. Harvey Moore. Two-time winner of the Best Ranger Competition. Great soldier. Got drunk one night after his wife left him and took his son. You see, staff sergeants don't make as much money as lawyers, so she left with the lawyer. He got stinking drunk, though it didn't take much since he didn't drink at all before this, and got into his car. Then had an accident. Then got a DUI. He was an E-6 promotable when this happened, and the SOP was a general-officer Article 15 and a reduction one grade, which would really be two for him because he was on the promotion list. But Harvey Moore i...

I once had an email correspondence with Will of Better Asian Man . I told him how I enjoyed the Fallout Central podcasts and that I was sad to see Fallout Central go. For those of you who don't know, Fallout Central was a site that featured podcasts on Asian American issues, current events and interviews with AA celebs and activists. They were a crew of four that came out with a professional and informative series of podcasts during their site's 2-3 year period. Here's what Will had to say about the demise of Fallout: I hear what you're saying regarding the void on the internet, and I believe that this has to do with the CNN-style of news reporting that we did with regards to Asian American news. We have an assortment of blogs that report on what each respective blog author thinks is important, but none of them have quite the same edge. For example, Angry Asian Man doesn't really report on news, his take is basically "here's something that happ...

By Mojo Rider What follows is part two of life lessons and the shared experiences of Lt. Col. Guy Lofaro who gave this speech at the US Military Academy. THE BURDEN OF COMMAND, COURAGE, FRIENDSHIP, CAMRADERIE It's a few months later, and you are one of two soldiers left on a hot PZ (pick up zone) on some Caribbean island. There's been another foul up - not yours this time, but you're going to pay for it. It's you and your RTO (radio telephone operator), a nineteen-year-old surfer from Florida who can quote Shakespeare, because his Mom was a high school literature teacher, and who joined the Army because his Dad was a World War II Ranger. The last UH-60 has taken off on an air assault and someone is supposed to come back and get you guys. But the fire is getting heavy, and you're not sure anything can get down there without getting shot up. You're taking fire from some heavily forested hills. At least two machineguns, maybe three, maybe more, and quite a few AK...

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By Mojo Rider I received an email from someone that included a transcript from a speech given by Lt. Colonel Guy Lofaro who has taught at West Point. I liked it a lot and thought I should share it for those in management positions or for those who might benefit from it in an overall life lesson. The text of this speech is taken from an address he gave to a dining-in at the U.S. Military Academy. There are some interesting lessons learned from a life spent in a military career that I think can be applied by everyone. The qualities that the military can cultivate in their forces can also be a guide for everyone in determining what really matters in life, what one should aspire to be in terms of leadership and doing the right things in your own workplace. Here is part one of his speech: LOYALTY What can I say that will stay with you? And as I reflected on this I turned it on myself - what stays with me? What makes a mark on me? What do I remember, and why? How have I learned the higher le...

By the Better Asian Man I was once emotionally non-expressive. I was a master of what the Asian Playboy likes to call "the Asian Poker Face." My life before the Transition Period My mom raised me with very traditional Asian values-- values that she learned from her parents. These values stuck with her from her formative years (somewhere around 1965). Even though Taiwan has evolved far beyond the ways of that time period, my mom's values were still stuck in a time-warp; the die-hard conservatism from that time period remained in her, and was my model of behavior to follow for most of my life. The mid 60's was a complex time for people in Taiwan. There were lots of things going on at that time, and there was plenty of good reason to have lots and lots of conservatism in all areas of life-- academics, government, personal finance, individual thought, and of course, romance. The society that my mom came from placed an extremely high value on: (1) Emotional non-...