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

  • our team always wins

    In three hours, Penn State is going up against Ohio State. We are…. I have had a down morning, until I remember what’s like at tail gate parties: blue-and-white everywhere, strangers cheering you up  and Joe P our god eternal. My spirit is always lifted when the marching band runs into the stadium to lead…

  • The P in Panera

    Stay the course. Best time to invest is during the Recession. Those are Panera secret sauce: persistence and perseverance. I first noticed Panera on my way back from San Jose. It’s either a Starbuck stop or Panera stop. But Panera has a fireplace. The place feels like home, smells like home-baked bread. Panera won me…

  • Boiling point

    I was often jolted by the two popping pieces of toast, or when my coffee started to boil. That last degree in Celsius makes a difference. Conversely, a frog in slow warming water loses its reflex. The consequences of an over-industrialized world are over-production, and surplus labor/consumers who can’t afford or absorb excess production. “Boiling”…

  • Here they come!

    Chinese buyers, that is. Not a bid for 76 gas station, or IBM hardware (now Lenovo). A GM unit then Symentech. On seeing David Stockman on TV. I thought I were back to the early 80’s. This time, just one just needs to replace the word Japanese, for Chinese (remember Michael Keaton and his gold fish?).…

  • Contagious innovation

    Last week, I installed a new Search engine (w/ a slash). Today, there is a whole new browser altogether. Rockmelt. It does improve Facebook quite a bit. Steven Johnson calls this phenomenon (of one bright idea led to another), the adjacent possible. It’s like my New Year resolution of hanging out with positive people to…

  • Listening across the cultures

    Listening is hard to begin with (just ask a psychiatrist). Listening across the cultures is doubly hard. It requires an extensive grasp of the others’ frame of reference. As technology enables the world to shrink, more groups join the globalized market. (The PM of Malaysia was on GPS telling Fareed that in the 60’s, Malaysia…

  • Forgetfulness is necessary

    In clinical terms: selective memory. Speak ill not of the dead, for instance. Auto-biography is another version of selective memory (before actual amnesia). For me, to see Dow Chemical opens a polymer and acrylic factory in Vietnam, roughly 40 years after Agent Orange got sprayed over the same landscape, is a great example of collective…

  • Against the tide of commoditization

    In Selling Professional Services to the Fortune 500, Gary Luefschuetz warns against mix and match people and rates of various service tiers, which will compromise the rate structure. In short, swim against the tide. IBM got it. Cisco follows suit. And HP is moving in that direction. The Economist takes an in-depth look at IT…

  • Powerful women

    World’s oldest woman. 115 years old. Oldest man, from Japan, 116 years old. Life expectancy in 1900 was 47. World population has increased drastically. (Bio tech century). At the nano level, we can detect early symptoms of all sorts of disease (nano pharma). Ironically, as the West is more aware of health issues and is taking…