Sad decline of a legend?

A story was told of a Japanese lad who read about a faraway land of opportunities and later brought his wife there for their honeymoon. There he saw an "iron horse" for the first time and quickly learned how it worked and how to take it apart and put it back together. He bought one and tried to check it in at Los Angeles airport. He was refused. He threw away his clothes, tore the bicycle apart and crammed all the pieces into his suitcase. Everyone at the airport laughed at him.

Pretty soon they laughed no more; the boy's name was Soichiro Honda. From mini moped to big bikes to velocious vehicles, they lived up to the "Power of Dreams".

Yesterday, Honda projected a dramatic drop in sales for 2009 and that they will be cutting back on production, and their stocks took a hit (so did the Nikkei). Today they are about to announce that Jenson Button and Reubens Barrichello will not be driving any F1 car next year. For a tier 1 car manufacturer, that is almost sacrilegious. Oh, how quickly the mighty has fallen.

It reminds me of another giant I am familiar with, whose decline was so quick I wondered how could anything have gone so horribly wrong. While packing last night, I stumbled upon a magazine-like book, "1995 Worldwide TCS Orlando, Florida". I thumbed through the pages reminiscently as I saw myself in an Indian garb and my friends in Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian gears - the world was at our feet, there was no problem too big and Mickey Mouse was beside us.

Well, it's time to move on....