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

  • Growing pain

    Tragedy and triumph seem to go hand in hand. Past pain could be paralysing yet addictive. Those who couldn’t get over it end up going back to it. Not for the broken experience but for the context where pain first occurred. When shattered, we threw the baby out with the bath water. In coming back, with time…

  • Stories of Suffering

    Unlike America where suffering is well hidden behind locked doors, here in Vietnam, it is in your face: lottery ticket sellers. They could be an under-age child, a blind man, or the worst case, a young man who dragged himself (both feet paralyzed) along an extremely crowded street peddling tickets. Even the Cu Chi tunnel,…

  • Crying girl

    I walked by a shop today and I saw a girl holding a knife, crying. She was peeling onion for the restaurant. Artificially induced tears. Not triggered by sad emotion. Real, nevertheless. It made me appreciate behind-the-scene people (since I happened to have breakfast with real onion, the same kind this girl was peeling). Nickel-and-dime…

  • Tears for Connecticut

    If this blog were written in ink, it would be blotted with tears. The photo of a school parent on cell  phone crying says it all. Tears over wireless. Tears over space. Heck, I am in Vietnam, and won’t be back after Christmas. But I feel the pinch, the lump in the throat (try to…

  • How do they know?

    Have you ever wondered how some songs deliver just the right emotion? How do they know what’s relevant and resonating? Chicago‘s If You Leave Me Now, for instance. On these blogs, we often mentioned the eccentric, the peculiar and oddities. Rarely do we put much effort articulating those feelings and God forbid, meltdown or breakdown (Newtown,…

  • Traffic dance in Saigon

    First-timers to Saigon are shocked on arrival: the dance of two-wheel traffic. Some even had to flag down a cyclo (three-way cycle) to take them across the street. An Ivy-League Math Prof was killed when crossing the street. He was there for a conference on solving traffic problems. I have slowly built up confidence and…

  • Marconi and Marcom

    In the late 80’s, PacTel Cellular boasted seamless connection from San Francisco to San Diego. That is, if you had a battery pack to power the wireless devices (MicroTac? Motorola). Remember this was pre-Twitter days. Now it’s 12/12/12 and the Mayan’s calendar is soon running out. Back when Marconi was experimenting with sending signals across the…

  • On “Fraction of a Whole”

    We are not invited into this dysfunctional family of three generations, all 750 pages of it. Crime fiction, social commentary and extremely hilarious saga. I stayed up late last night for its racing conclusion. A year and a half ago, I read Freedom by Franzen. As engrossing as Fraction of a Whole. This family questioned everything, but centrally,…

  • When dreams are gone!

    A few blogs ago, I wrote about Noel Decoration in Saigon. A few weeks from now, the glitters will have been all gone. Party is over. Then, it’s a long grind. 2013. The quants have already crunchedl year-end data: sunk costs, margin, consumer behavior (irrational at times – hint: sell spirits over the holidays). The monks look on…

  • From Mandarin to Model (Lung Dai-Chan Dai)

    My generation have been a betweener one: from Mandarin to Mobile phone system, from French Colonial to Fashion TV (with Asia Next Top Model). The saying goes like this “Vong Anh di truoc, Vong Nang theo sau” i.e. when a man passed the King’s exam, he went home to the village , with his lady in tow. Now, it’s the Model who get…