Rex Chen

Despite my busy schedule these days, I’d manage to squeeze out some free time last night and catch my favorite artist in these days, Vienna Teng at The Hotel Cafe in LA.  My friends and I left Irvine a bit late, and I was concerned actually that we wouldn’t be able to get there in a hour with LA traffic.  Fortunately, though for us, we make it just in time.  It was a very enjoyable evening!  As a fan, I’d hope the evening would have lasted forever, but of course it is not possible.  Vienna Teng and her band Alex Wong were not only awesome on-stage performing, but in our very short conversations, I found them to be very personable, real, and down-to-earth people.  You can just feel it in them…  

Thinking further, what has been a recurring theme that have been confirmed by many now (who I’ve interacted or listened to), is that the path to success really starts first by figuring out what one enjoys to do, whether we’re good at it, and then focusing our efforts to be the best. Being a musical artist is perhaps not the typical path to take in one’s career, similar to say becoming a professional athlete.  However, if only we are passionate, dedicate our time, and willing to take some risks, I do believe something will nurture, and there just might be a path of light in the tunnel.  After all, life is too short to not give ourselves a chance, and especially when sometimes the most rewarding parts of life isn’t about the successes we achieve, but failures along the way that makes other things so much more sweeter.  Vienna and Alex, thanks again for the wonderful evening!

In modern society, I find that many things happen very rapidly. Starting from our daily decision-making process to the various forms of personnel interactions such as face-to-face, phone, emails, online chats, and social networks. And this upcoming “Generation Y” group (which I am borderline for qualification myself) is indeed a very special group of the young generation, with people that are bound to quick grasps, self-teaching students, and fast responses. Gone are the days of reading a book from start to finish (e.g. page 1-400), but in the form of online texts. No longer are people staying 1 or 2 jobs for entire lifetime, but rather a rapid job changing cycle. Our patience, emotions, and thoughts are often short-fused, rather than deep. However, in a nice positive side, these Generation Y are constantly learning new skills and acquiring know-hows.

It was through interaction with a friend talking about skills and interests, that define how my own Gen-Y traits may possibly include:

• the brain of an engineer
• the spirit of an entrepreneur
• the mind of a psychologist

And certainly among my pool of friends, many other categories come up in the list of multi-facet skills:

• the patience of an educator
• the legs of a dancer
• the sound of a musician
• the taste of an iron chef
• the health of a nutritionist
• the strength of an athlete
• the body of a model
• the beauty of a rose
• the leadership of a manager
• the language talent of an interpreter
• the fun of a comedian
• the words of a philosopher
• the knowledge of an encyclopedia
• the energy of a motivational speaker
• the engagement of an effective communicator
• the participation of an activist
• and many others…

I do feel that in order to have a role in the modern and future society, one does need to accumulate a large pool of capacities, expose to a variety of things, and have a “multi-facet” development plan to stay competitive in a society of emerging Generation Y upbringings, globalization, and information traveling at the speed of light.