Watched the Friends Reunion today and it was so nice and so emotional to see those faces and scenes again! Seventeen years have passed and the cast in general aged well, perhaps with some makeups but not too much. The design of the event was well thought off, with the whole thing unscripted to make it natural and real. It was also good to see so many people all over the world telling us how much the show touched, inspired and transformed their lives.
Talking about the soft power, it is safe to say the US has the most of that in the world, no other country comes close.
I also learned for the first time that the show’s creators had created the stories based on the responses of the live audience on the scene where the show was filmed. A good example was that they made Chandler and Monika married because the live audience loved the one-night stand the two had in London. That’s creativity on the fly that is connected to reality.
Perhaps the only exception was with Joey — the baby-faced character in the show has now turned himself into someone with all grey hairs plus a big belly.
Joey’s much older image reminds me of the senior-care business that I was preparing myself for last week. For two days last week I had online training from 7am to 1:30pm and learned the fact that now it is hard to find caregivers for senior clients. Apparently after almost one year off work during the pandemic many people lost interest or appetite for working, and the cash payments from the Uncle Sam do not help, either.
My thinking is to get the students at UC Berkeley involved in senior care. Taking care of seniors is more meaningful than flipping burgers at McDonalds, because you are directly helping someone to improve the quality of his or her lives. The job is not physically demanding but mostly mental challenge, especially for seniors with dementia or Alzheimer’s. With a pool of student caregivers the schedule can be flexible and adapted to school schedule.
The biggest value arises from learning to help someone who is weaker and /or more vulnerable than you. Both children and seniors fall into that category, but just like China, in this country I feel seniors have been more or less ignored while the kids get all the attention from parents and society in general.
I completely agree with this essay by Washington Post that had more kids sickened by the Covid-19, there would be far fewer deaths in the US, simply because people think kids are adorable and their deaths are more a tragedy than that of older people. I have my sympathy to the seniors, which is why I picked up the senior care business to work on. Such an experience cannot be purchased from anywhere else, one must invest in to get it.
The trainer had pretty bad experiences with young caregivers, but college students, especially those from an elite college like Berkeley, are not just someone who is young. They tend to be motivated and driven by missions and purposes. Apparently not everyone would be interested in doing it, but some would.