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

  • churning, down the river

    The foreclosure process has still been at work, churning homes back on the market in CA or FL. Behind the statistics are people bewildered and shattered. As a nation and the world, we are faced with two choices: – pretend it never happened, and rush out to shop – acknowledge that it happened, and rush…

  • Short-tail product pool

    Muzak pipes out “Beautiful stranger” by Madonna. Yahoo celebs still carries head-shots of Paris Hilton. And Vanity Fair features Cher-is-back.  Holiday best-seller list shows John Grisham and Harry Potter. Across the pond, we are refreshed with royal wedding. I know 20 per cent of celebrities dictate 80 per cent of what we see or hear.…

  • Kindness of strangers

    Years ago, my roommate invited me over for Thanksgiving. The ride from Penn State to Lancaster was a long but memorable one. It’s predominantly Amish there. And I remember discussing with his Dad about “Turning East” by Harvey Cox (the subject I took that summer). Years have gone by. While Western consciousness has yet turned…

  • Food for families, toys for tots

    How about jobs-for-Joe? Even with improved SEO algorithm we still can’t type into a Search engine for jobs, and find one for 9.6% of us. During the hunter-and-gatherer phase, we hunted in pack, and moved on. (There are more of us now, so 10% of a huge population equates to a lot of people). Hence,…

  • Robotic EFL teacher

    First, we picked up listening and speaking skills in the lab (prosumerism and outsourcing). Now, the Lab comes walking into the classroom, in S Korea (in-sourcing). Voila! The age of full automation finally arrived at a country near you. Parents have long complained that showing kids DVD’s on the last day of class is a…

  • My Person of the Year

    Guess who, behind the bandage? It’s my Person of the Year. A patient recovering from full-body burn. Bandage off tomorrow. It’s a metaphor, or more correctly, personification of an ailing economy. We have all been affected. But kids need shoes and toys. So Toy R Us is hiring temps for the season. GM starts its…

  • Thought acquisition

    Chinese shoppers and students are coming. Here is the list of top 10 countries whose students are enrolling in the US. http://www.saigon-gpdaily.com.vn/Education/2010/11/87223/ The stats also shows Mexico at number 9 (CIVET’s countries predominantly present). Rodeo Drive and Las Vegas aside, I want to play campus tour guide. First, the weather. Deal with it. It is…

  • message in the bottle

    Cast away. Sending an SOS. an SMS. I hope that someone will get my message. We are born to connect (our belly button testifies to this) with nature and others. Yet marketers are telling us that in Retirement Ville, cruise ship (with sauna sound that reminds us of incubator) and virtual existence can substitute for the…

  • The vase and the Beast

    One is auctioned for 85 million (with tax and fee), while the other merged with Newsweek after it was sold for $1.00 After a lifetime of standardization and automation, something is still of value. Nobody had appreciated Van Goh’s self-portrait or any of his pieces until after he was long gone. Still, we want maximization,…

  • half-life happiness

    The concept of half-life (radioactive) , if could be applied to soft sciences e.g. happiness, can go on to infinity. In today’s term, it’s called austerity: scaled-down cars, DVD nights, and local trips. During the Clinton years, we had a good run. The Japanese had theirs in the 80’s. Now, it’s the Pacific Century. Chinese students…