Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

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With some short-term relief work in Asia/Africa and long stint in Telecom, Thang also earned a B.A. at Pennsylvania State University. M.A. in Communication at Wheaton Graduate School, M.A. in Cross-Cultural Communication at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Boston. In addition, he earned a CELTA – classes taken in Hanoi for cultural re-immersion.

Author: Thang Nguyen 555

  • Holes and gaps

    By now, we realize we were born incomplete. We need one another, like a team that needs complemeting members. Some lack social skills more than others. Most know by now how set the trajectory of their lives are. No more dreaming, tweaking and improving. Yes, occasionally we indulge in fantasy. But those moments are short-lived. Then back…

  • Eventually

    “If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very brave impartially.…

  • Vibration and sensation

    What do you do when you are awaken in the dark, with trumpet sound out “auld lang sync”? (To te con me danh du). Should we forget the time we picked daisies in the field. Yet that vibration created sensation at the early hour here in Saigon. The departed tried to fight traffic to his/her burial ground.…

  • 1+1=3

    Organizations go through many life cycles before winding down, or absorbed in a M&A. Here in Vietnam, fluidity is the word that describes the dynamics of organization. Like organism that evolves with its environment, organization here often bends and changes beyond recognition. We know the solution is embedded in the problem. Yet we need to…

  • CWO – Chief Worshipping Officer

    On my first week as CEO at UVT – I met an issue none of the Business School in the US had equipped their students for: to bow or not to bow at the Fortune–God altar in the school lobby. It’s hard enough to know where the bathroom is – much less stumbling upon the…

  • Goodbye Saigon

    Last night I said goodbye to a good friend. He was going back to California. We sat and listened to Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World (Vietnamese singer but if you closed your eyes you would think the black legend was there in person). I recalled a scene from Good Morning Vietnam whose subjective shot…

  • My Saigon

    Like Trinh Cong Son‘s Diem Xua, I got my own imprints of what  Saigon was like. Especially on Sundays, like today. Shaded streets, short strolls and sweet smiles. Who needs all the executive shirt with designers’ emblem on it. Instead of shirt, just smile even when you are not on camera. “Cuoi len di em oi” Just…

  • Start acting

    After the trilogy: Start seeing, start hearing and start thinking, I am on the roll. Behaviorists have debated whether action precedes attitude, or vice versa. Nike commands: JUST DO IT. Start acting. Some guy somewhere mustered his courage to ask for a girl’s hand. That girl after much deliberation, accepted. Boom! Action. We are conceived out of…

  • Start thinking

    This is the last of the Trilogy: Start seeing, start hearing and start thinking. It’s the hardest, because the end product of thinking is acting. Acting means change. Change brings dissonance and discomfort. Our faculty is quite limited: we are conditioned to respond in Pavlovian way. Group think. Similar to   Adam Smith’s unseen hand…

  • Motherhood, Madness and Meditation

    Seeing a photo of a grey-hair guy, on bike and  backpack, riding home with bouquet of flowers in the front basket, reminded me of International Day of Women. There is no doubt, according to an Australian’s observer, that women are bosses here in Vietnam. Tiger Mom. To punctuate this point, I was sitting at an outdoor…