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

  • Et pourtant, I think of French bread

    This guy, Thomas Huang, went searching for a chocolate eclaire in Saigon, and ended up having his article in the Dallas Morning News http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/travel/thisweek/stories/DN-vietbread_0711tra.ART.State.Edition1.4fb9c7b.html I sat next to a business man from Dallas on my recent trip to Vietnam. He and his partners were into real estate. And the amazing thing was, while his partner…

  • Happiness all around

    If I were the man who sold my company for almost a Billion dollars, I would go off to Rock concerts around the world, instead of sitting down to write a book. But Zappos former CEO thinks differently. He wants to go on a crusade. That crusade is to “deliver happiness”. Moving people up the…

  • It matters even more

    Michael J Fox was delivering that line, in Red Box re-release of De Palma’s Casualties of War. If we found ourselves living on the edge, it matters even more that we act decently. The role was well-cast. Fox often played moralist role (Family Ties) who got to say the last word. The film could have…

  • Name Change

    It costs about $800 to change one’s name here in the US e.g. on social security , driver’s license and passport. One might prefer something that has global sounding: Villa, Gaga, Shakira. Between YouTube, Facebook and World Cup, we enjoy an unprecedented confluence of technology and globalization. And the common denominators are football scores and…

  • What’s in the name?

    Naming is controlling. Asian parents during agrarian times named their children ugly, in the hope that ghosts will “reject” them, hence letting them live. We have IPO and IP (Intellectual property) wars all the time. It’s mine. I invented it first. You stole my idea, my concept, my naming. So we weed IP law and…

  • No satisfaction

    Mick wasn’t alone. Many ” ain’t get no satisfaction” either, except for the WC Semi-finalists. Argentina, Britain, Italy, Brazil. We are talking about “brands” here. Maybe Hyundai, McDonald, Adidas etc.. are the real winners. Or at least, their brands are getting “emotional” seeing grown-up men break down and cry. We crash when our (rosy) expectations…

  • Cry, my beloved Joe!

    Joe was from Ghana. We met in class, and even had our graduation picture taken together. Then on my summer trip to West Africa, we had our reunion. He took me home for a visit: wife , kid, and hot spicy food. People from Ghana got shiny skin (I knew this because I could compare…

  • I-phone, I-news

    The Death of Mass Media. The Rise of Me-dia (Google News, personalized). Remember My Yahoo page? That is about to follow GeoCities now housed in Digital Museum. At least, it has pointed us in the direction of  personalized content. Since the start, newspapers has served as an expanded version of the telegram (newspaper men were…

  • I don’t do nail either!

    One down (sausage man), another rises up. Jimmy Dean that is. (He could have come back with a better retort, ” No I don’t do sausage” backstage, and “No, I don’t do nail” on stage). http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/07/01/americas-got-talent-jimmy-dean-makes-us-laugh/ Although it’ s America’s Got Talent his routine came across as America Got Burden ” you owe me some…

  • One-click shopping

    It’s going to be here. La-z-boy chairs, la-z clicks (except in China, you have to click to Google Hong Kong. Gee, that’s a lot of work!). Google is coming out with Google Editions, both online and via Independent Agents. At the end of the piece, we found the interviewer hinted at Google music (with YouTube…