August 24, 2004

(not) thinking big

i was going to talk about the nytmes article on how taiwan is trying to commoditize the orchid industry, much like it mass produced low-end electronics:

Rising from what was once a muddy expanse of sugar cane fields here are huge greenhouses and the concrete shells of what will soon be a flower exposition hall, a genetic modification laboratory and more - the first steps in Taiwan’s plan to dominate the world’s $2 billion orchid industry.

If the Taiwan effort is successful, orchids could lose their image as the high-priced but finicky princes of the floral world and become lesser nobility, almost as inexpensive as poinsettias. The favored flower for debutantes’ corsages a generation ago, orchids are already starting to appear in rows of $15 potted specimens at mass merchandisers like Home Depot, and seem poised to become even cheaper.
…
Large commercial greenhouses have robbed orchids of some of their elite cachet since then. Now, if Taiwan is successful, there could be orchids for the masses. Seeking a cash crop to replace sugar, which is plagued by falling prices, Taiwan is hoping to double its orchid business, and the government plans to bring heavy public spending into the previously private world of growing orchids.
…
Nearly a quarter of the world’s orchids now spend at least part of their lives in Taiwanese greenhouses.
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The government of Taiwan is paying $65 million to cover the construction costs of everything except the greenhouses - and is offering government-backed, 10-year loans at 2 percent interest to help farmers build those.
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When finished, the Taiwan Orchid Plantation will have not only an exposition hall and genetics laboratory, but also a quarantine site, shipping and packing areas, a grid of new roads edged by tidy brick sidewalks and water and electrical hookups for more than 200 industrial-size greenhouses. It will create 1,500 jobs.

alas, if it takes so much effort for me to even post about it, do you really want to read about it?

maybe i should instead talk about olympic beach volleyball. and how much more exciting it is to watch women’s beach volleyball than any other sport. i mean, really. do i even need to go into details about this? if nothing else, let me visually reiterate. even if that doubles badminton final was maybe the most exciting thing i’ve seen during the olympics, and the gymnastics trampoline was the craziest, women’s beach volleyball is still the best. it’s not rocket science, people.

ok, so what’s really been on my mind today is the thought that maybe i’m not thinking BIG enough. specifically relating to work, but who knows, maybe in general? something happened at work last week, relating to me starting to move up into this promotion deal, and without going into any detail (zero’s got me all paranoid now about talking about work, even though i’m pretty sure i’m clean and certainly google-anonymous), it really made me question whether i could do this, and if i had the ability to think at a higher level. and so i’ve been wondering, how do you know if you’re thinking big enough? if i was thinking big enough, would i be richer? would i have a better career? would we own a home? or a plantation? or a whole string of firetrap slumlord properties?

maybe i would have done things by now. maybe i could have helped hmc done things by now. maybe there wouldn’t be the feeling that, who knows, soon you’ll just be old and you might have missed it all?

hell, going back to the orchids, it’s clear that taiwan president chen shui-bian doesn’t have this problem:

Like Taipei 101, which will become the world’s tallest building by most measures when it opens in December, the Taiwan Orchid Plantation here is a monument to the vaulting ambitions of Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s president for the last four years. It also is a physical reminder to everyone in Tainan County that a hometown boy did well: President Chen was born and raised in a small farming village a dozen miles away.

i find that i have a fairly low retention period for gloom and guilt and regret. while this tends to keep me sane and less neurotic, maybe this is keeping me from the big-thinking that could lead to success!

then again, what would lao-tzu say?

Posted at August 24, 2004 10:38 PM
Comments

he would say:

“and whether a man passionately sees to the core of life, or passionately sees the surface, they are essentially the same.”

he would also say, “people who think big don’t work on perfecting last decade’s trends. orchids? they don’t smell good and they’re hell to keep alive. big buildings? small is the new big. big now just means easier target. i think you should develop teleportation instead, ed.”

but i’m just guessing.

Posted by: xz at August 25, 2004 10:32 AM

i, on the other hand, have a very high retention rate for guilt, gloom and regret and that fact certainly hasn’t helped propel me to do anything big yet.

have you seen garden state yet? this guy invents silent velcro. and so he and his friends are so bored that they shoot flaming arrows into the sky on the giant lawn of his estate (which is as big as a park) and then they cower and run around to avoid becoming impaled by the incoming firebombs. it’s not like thinking small to get big helped allay his existential dilemmas either.

Posted by: roo at August 25, 2004 2:08 PM

hmm. no, i xz asked me to go see garden state, but i chose wifey-stuff instead. because i am pussy-whipped. maybe if someone asks me again i will go, since the whipper is back in lost angels.

but the real question is, “has lao-tzu seen garden state yet”?

Posted by: e at August 25, 2004 6:42 PM

yes. he thought it was good and that natalie portman was very very cute but that everything after one weird cut on the steps at the end (you’ll see) was shot much later and by people who needed to sleep more.

i give it a thumbs up your nose.

Posted by: xz at August 27, 2004 10:04 AM

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