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

  • Imagine, again

    By now, we all have seen the picture of Congresswoman Giffords, in glasses, recovering from a near fatal shooting. Let’s rewind to 1980, and imagine John Lennon with that same  “luck”. I can only see Lennon as the nemesis during the 80’s, if not again during the Iraq war. We would have been stronger, not…

  • An act of self-reinvention

    The New Jersey blond lost her apartment, moved West, went to Planet Hollywood to have the crown place on her now-red-hair. Our Miss USA, from California. Down turn happened for a reason. It forces us to take stocks, to reinvent and innovate. A lot of people would rather move to try new places and opportunities,…

  • East-West shopping

    Retailers in Europe figured out a way to push merchandise in this time of austerity: shop in your underwear, leave fully clothed. Meanwhile, a reporter from the BBC went to Hanoi to learn about another way of shopping: buying paper clothing for the dead (old Hanoi, pho “hang ma”). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00h35lv That’s how different East and West…

  • Ole friends as mirrors

    We finally met, at Starbucks. 3 classmates. 39 years and a huge ocean in between. We could have just waited. Starbucks is opening up in Vietnam soon. But there we were: the skinny, the fat and the ugly (me). Past, present, past. Time interlacing. No preset agenda. No chronological order, or Robert’s rules of order.…

  • Bumpy boat ride

    Stories of tourist boats that capsized, ship builder that went default on loan payment, and fishing boats got intimidated by a gigantic neighbor, kept coming out of Vietnam recently. When you live along a coast that spans from San Diego to North of Vancouver, sea-related incidents are bound to happen. The latest dispute centered in the…

  • Life’s soundtrack

    I have just received a photo showing a hot-air balloon over Seattle, with me and Geoffrey in the basket. We just need a soundtrack to add to it. The puffy hot air, the wind which carried us over the lush-green scenery with Bill Gates himself living on the ground. If given a choice, I choose “Theme…

  • Conversant program

    If it weren’t for people like Shawn, I wouldn’t be where I am today. You see, Shawn was a shy Penn State student of  the Horticulture department who wanted to volunteer his time. It turned out that the Foreign Student Conversant Program matched us together in our first year of college. That year as it…

  • Trading down: Gap to Goodwill

    You know how good the economy is by seeing how many Hummers are on the street. But we 2.5 per cent growth 1Q 2013, we go from Hummers to Hyundai, from Gap to Goodwill. With 90% debt level, half-a-million debt per man woman and child, trading down is the least of our worries (Patriotic millionaires asked to pay more tax,…

  • Losing one’s self

    In a recent NYT op-ed, David Brooks summed up prevailing graduation themes: find yourself, live to the fullest, be passion-focused etc.. instead of losing yourself in solving others’ problem. Even my kid knows that time passes more quickly when you are absorbed in a task. When you lose yourself, you end up finding it. Before graduating, I…

  • Fallible leadership

    Former Google CEO, in a recent interview, admitted that he was too busy to see Social Network coming. Former Microsoft CEO, at the turn of the century, admitted he too missed the significance of the Internet. The Vatican, after years of floundering, decided to settle sexual abuse cases ( as of this edit, Pope Francis…