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.

  • The build-up

    It’s like a can of worms, once opened, can never be put back.

    Yet, that’s what makes us human: from A to B, we insist that a straight line is not the shortest. We have to factor in free will.

    Even God respects that (by not forcing us to move quickly through Foxconn-like assembly line).

    Our current network has also been designed that way: cache, redundancy, self-healing and load-balancing just to process data from point A to point B.

    Our neuro-plasticity performs millions of calculation in milliseconds. “If you can read my mind”, “you won’t read that novel again because the ending is too hard to take”. Most recent finding tells us that we change more than we would admit (evolution in personalities). NYT 01-04-2013.

    Seek those who bring the best version out of us.

    Schools have done us disservice. Instead of ” edu-care” (bring out of us that which were already there), they try to put in and force fit the curriculum (which purportedly were carefully and thoughtfully designed by those who themselves had been force-fed).

    Hence, we perpetuate and produce a planned society of “cogs” in the wheel whose heads are full of doctrine and dogma (stove pipes). No wonder we have problems communicating.

    When something is introduced into the “system” (such as Free Will) with no scripted response, chaos and confusion are inevitable.

    Like it or not, we are all in perpetual motion, but mostly in maintenance mode. Like an automobile, with engine revving and wheels churning, but is all jacked up, hence staying put.

    Frustration leads to lack of confidence and enthusiasm.

    Lack of  enthusiasm and lack of  passion give way to compliance. Dead men walking.

    The build-up that eventually blows up.

    Those who plan well factor this into the system. Controlled release.

    Call it vacation, sabbath. Whatever. But  in a grandeur scale, individuals and institutions need periodical audit. How are we doing? Making any progress?

    You look pale. Where is the fire? the light in your eyes. What has put it out?

    “If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad?”

    Get off the line. Go off grid. Go native. Go nature. Go free.

    At the very least, be Live Man Walking, and not Dead Man Walking.

    Do us and yourself a favor. Let not the build up blow you up. Man’s free will and God‘s (or Government’s) pre-determination. A tug of war for the soul, survivingg and not stifling.

  • Signs and signals

    Jackie Chan delivered again in Chinese Zodiac. The 12 Animals.

    The East learn to tell fortune from symbols. The West teach others to “read” people. Animals or People. We all want the advantage of foresight the next outcome.

    People commit to New-Year resolutions: lose weight, take up lessons in this and that, get off a bad habit like smoking, shopping and swapping old wives’ tales.

    Others use the turn of the calendar as a bookend to their failed relationship or business attempt (valley of death).

    Good idea. It’s about time. Turn out the lights.

    Something never meant to last forever.

    Mismatched personalities, mismatched commitments.

    The usual: people hurting people in a chain of downward spiral, of self-sabotage.

    Those who last are those who never went in deep and are quick at damage control.

    Pull out while you still can. Salvage and survive.

    As long as you can read the signs and detect the signals.

    People and events do send signals (favorable or unfavorable). Semiotics.

    We need to know ourselves, when to hold, when to fold.

    Enough hurt, enough loss, enough bad tastes in the mouth.

    Unfortunately we can only “see” in looking backward.

    That’s why people would rather invest in pre-mortem than post-mortem analysis.

    That’s why people tell fortune by reading those zodiac, the Twelve.

    With Jackie Chan, rumor has it that this was going to be his last picture (at least one which he did all the stunts himself).

    For us, we still miss a sign here, a signal there.

    Those who are skilled and savvy to detect them will reap a windfall. Others are still in denial even after the facts (that it’s over).

    Welcome to the New Year, a bookend to all those missed signs and signals of year past.

  • Unfinished business

    Program lingers on linearly while project has its own bell-shaped form.

    Beginning and ending.

    Life is constituted of both programs and projects.

    Child-rearing is not a project. Schooling them is (until they come back and take over the couch).

    Warring is a project.  At least when we could get out and not sink deeper into the quagmire.

    When I finished Assassin Gate, I felt a striking resemblance to what the US had encountered in Vietnam (not knowing who the enemy was – the Perfect Spy – as case in point).

    People form interesting alliances in war.

    For now, world attention has shifted else where e.g. Syria, Iran and Israel.

    Should they be classified as programs or projects?

    We would hope for the latter.

    If we take a zoom-out view of  history, we will find that one man’s failure is another’s victory. Innovation came about in clusters, in Europe during the Industrial Revolution. Scientists competed to file patents and announced findings.

    Medical and mechanical surprises ( Marie Curie and Marconi).

    Which leads to our present dilemma: we are more aware of vaccine and virus, wireless and wire line technologies. Since those are money-making business, we  give them more street’s cred and credits over low ROI projects.

    Our life style has evolved to the point where we express ourselves in terms of technology (I am low on bandwidth, I need to be reboot, I can’t copy you, I am unable to process what you have just said).

    We keep tweaking and tuning. To stumble upon that optimal-efficiency point.

    When we left our phone (hardware) at home, we feel “naked”.

    Out of the blue, we got “Drop Box” (the equivalent of train-station locker).

    So on and so forth. Keep id the problems, we got the solutions. As long as we can monetize it. If not, we drop it (Blue tooth).

    It’s not too long ago that Facebook was an unknown “face”.

    Then everyone knows Mark (as if he were our son-in-law). Not sure between him and Justin Bieber, who is more  popular.

    I am sure of the difference: Mark , in the language of this blog, is a program, a work still in progress. Justin would be a project, whose stardom has hockey-stick beginning and definite ending. That’s how the world works. I know this. I have just finished listening to “I’ll Be There” and remember how we all loved Michael and the Jackson 5. Then I realise we all were babies in our families. What has happened? (Babies turned burden).

    The flow of life floats away relationships. Then what yesterday’s program has become today’s project (papa turns patient).

    First we use relationship language to address one another (uncle, brother). Then we use machine language (leaving me a message on my answering machine).

    Finally, we call them “patient”, “pupil” “inmate”. Institutional language that dehumanizes people. Turning them from “program” to “project”. My friend, you will forever remain my life-long program. Unfinished business. Work in progress. Not just a Contact, or Data Point.

  • 2012 Bookmarking

    I used to rely on researchers like the Tofflers (Future Shock) to “see” into the future.

    For instance, the pro-sumer trend, the mismatching speeds among various sectors ( IT, Financial, Educational, Governmental…in that order).

    Lately, all I came across in Futurism was 2012 prophecy .

    Like it or not, this year will have come down as a special year, if not, end of an era.

    Let me explain.

    We had a bloody closure on a terrible event which Tom Wolfe ably put “New York got knocked out of its two front teeth”. Then, Sandy rinsed through the Big Apple as if to complete this dental procedure.

    Up North, we buried school kids died not of their own choices.

    In today’s NYT Op-Ed, Father Kevin was quoted as saying “we are God’s presence to extend Mercy incarnate to one another”.

    2012 marked a year full of flood and blood.

    Dark Night Rises, while  we hardly hear George Harrison‘s Heres Comes the Sun.

    I wish I can still rely on the likes of Tofflers to point out where our technological society is heading.

    But then, while focusing on I-phone, I-pad and I-pod, we forgot the I-ndividual.

    Consumer or Prosumer, the individual loves, laughs and learns.

    When the power is out, and the water level keeps rising, people suffer.

    Don’t tell me it’s war time (which somehow makes suffering a matter of fate).

    It’s peace time. And we can’t handle the truth, still.

    The truth is: we are victims of our own progress. We live too long, consume too much and complain far too little (venting does not affect change)

    I love technology when it humanizes our society. It carries us to far-away places. But technology makes it too easy for kids to take down kids (compare to No Easy Day – set in Pakistan – Newtown shooting was far too Easy a day).

    I know we will soon rid of the keyboard, mouse and monitor. The technology has already been beta-tested. Those are good stuff.

    Softwares continue to rule the day.

    James Bond already paired up with a much younger whiz, while his boss is nearing retirement. Signs of the time.

    What it is ain’t exactly clear.

    But if we don’t hear Here Comes the Sun, at least I suggest we click on “It don’t come easy“. Always with a price. Insurance companies are quick to spread the liabilities and costs, but slow to recompense.

    Same with everything else. Statement comes due. Rent is up. It don’t come easy. But somehow, being “mercy incarnate” to one another doesn’t come at all. We barely grasp the concept much less putting it into practice. Yet other “right” such as the right to bear arms, has been built-in as second nature. I propose another amendment: next to the right to bear arms is the responsibility to pay for the victims killed by arms.

    No Farewell to Arms. Own them, but just realize, like other technologies, everything comes with a price. Why should someone’s kids be your target practice. And why should civilized society be forced to make an U-turn back to Pre-Khan Mongolian era to pamper the rights of a few (9 guns out of every ten Americans). 2012. Something about that number.

    Hate it or like it, we still have a few more days before Count Down. Have a “closure” weekend. Remember to plug-in your electronic devices, and while at it, plug yourself in as well. We need to be recharged as much as those things we have created.

  • Winner takes all

    We will hear a lot of ABBA‘s Happy New Year this week. But “the Winner Takes It All” speaks directly to our zeo-sum society.

    You lose, I win.

    There are only limited “chips” on the table. Scarcity causes rising values. Hot air also rises. Like New Year’s champagne bubbles.

    It’s time for a 2012 wrap up. To tabulate and look at the bottom line while drinking bottom-up. Swallow the strong drink and let go of the past.

    Time flows only one way.

    And the winner takes all. It’s the name of the game.

    People and companies are urged to give and give to anyone, any cause, except to Uncle Sam.

    Budget short fall.

    Remember that one year when the IRS actually refunded the extra tax?

    Fair game.

    It’s only numbers. And it’s pure math.

    As if numbers exist in thin air, unrelated to society and people (who are hurting).

    There have been a lot of discussions in academic circle to “humanize” the business schools (courses on ethics, communication and inter-cultural communication) after what happened four years ago. Even Medical schools realise their future doctors need some human skills when interacting with patients in the real world.

    In short, those who earn the most feel the least for their clients.

    By now, even the least sensitive of them should realise that when people are hurting, they don’t make for good clients, if they still show up at all to use their services.

    Politicians ironically are aware of their shrinking tax base, at least every four years.

    That leaves the job (of drawing our attention to society’s weakest link) to priests and pastors, who, couldn’t tell one acronym from the other. The cultural divide. Work and Life, faith and science.

    It’s another bookend, year-end. We have survived a couple of perfect storms that knocked down the house of cards. The winner did take all. That leaves us, losers.

    Be not sore. Lick not those wounds, and give them not the satisfaction. Instead, look forward to a future where all are winners. It’s possible. As long as we take turn, or else, it’s another version of Utopia. Yesterday’s winners might very well be tomorrow’s losers (the Innovator’s Dilemma). That’s why VC‘s keep hunting for new and upcoming talent.

    That’s why we expect the next big thing around the bend. Keep our blood pumping. “If we don’t, we might as well lay down and die”. Champagne anyone?

  • World on wheels

    You want to see wheels at work, you come to Saigon.

    (Baby) strollers, scooters, (food) stalls, all on wheels.

    But instead of having you walk up to a vending machine, here the merchandise come to you. Ladies in cone hats would walk about with all sorts of knickknacks on their shoulders: toe clippers, wallets, key chains etc….

    At night, snack vendors come around the neighborhood, waking everyone up.

    “Banh gio”.  KFC, Pizza, Hot noodle bowls all delivered on wheels.

    It’s a 24/7 world on wheels. Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.

    They finally put the canal fences up, but the “river doesn’t flow through it”.

    Saigon used to be known as the Pearl of the Orient.

    Neither Paris nor London, Saigon is a synthesis of every strand and shape. Young people from the country side pour in and mix in to form a kaleidoscope. It is as if the old energy from a mix of Cambodian and Chinese were not enough. Now with young and old, East and West, it is transformed into something unrecognizable. Perhaps a Singapore of the next century.

    I live next door to a young couple. Their son is just one year old, barely taking baby steps. In the morning, mom would be walking vending machine. In the afternoon, Dad would walk around shoe-shining. The boy is well cared for. The boy has just got a toy automobile for Christmas. The young couple were discussing about buying a Nokia phone.

    The future of Saigon. Of Vietnam. Soon they would save up enough for a scooter. Nuclear family on wheels. The kid after all had already got his wheels.

    World on wheels.

  • Reading People

    I was approached by a guy wearing an FBI cap, asking me to buy lottery tickets.

    It’s hot in Vietnam this time of the year. Almost everyone wears some sorts of caps with USA on them,  helmets with the Nike vectors or a hybrid version: helmets shaped like caps.

    From top to toe, we send out signals and messages. Call it Non-Verbal language.

    2/3 of our communication are not verbal (in Without You, there is a line “you always smile, but in your eyes, your sorrow shows, yes it shows”).

    Yet few of us were schooled, trained or able to detect these hidden codes: I am cool. I don’t give a damn. I am somebody. I am everybody. I am nobody. Try me…..

    Conversely, people receive unintended messages we did not know we  send.

    I’ve got money. I don’ t respect you enough (clothing mismatched). I am carefree. I am careful. Don’t mess with me (tatoo and black T’s).

    In the States, cars make statements. Here, it’s the scooters.

    A guitar as backpack (musician) a rolled-up mat (yoga) a cone hat (urban migrant) a kid with balloon (mom has a night out and spends guilt money).

    Every stripe and strand co-exist and negotiate limited space.

    The upper crust has already left town to exclusive and elite resorts, leaving behind the “mass who live in quiet desperation” in the tourist district, where people lean against fake trees and work up a fake smile for photo ops.

    If you stood and watched people, you are not sure between background and foreground, which one is more on display.

    Wait until 4-G is here.

    Then we will have completed our evolutionary cycle (self-expression with a cost).

    When those sport cars came out, they were intended to say: I own this toy, reserved for me and my girlfriend (parents and entourage are not welcome).

    So will it be with the I’s family of products (unless you share the listening device  with one significant other). The I-pod Shuffle was meant for one, jogger preferably.

    Not the boombox that blasts out Christmas music for the whole neighborhood.

    Yes, in our technological society, the clear message (which happens to be the medium, according to McLuhan) is that, I finally am. Arrived. Leave me alone. Leave your old world behind (communal and village-bound). I am OK, you are OK or not, it’s irrelevant. When the playing field is leveled (by us duck-sitting as advertising headcounts), they will upgrade to some other games which will require premium fees.

    So we celebrate the upcoming New Year, with ” a will to try” so as not to be left out or behind.

    My New Year resolution is to read people better, however subtle the intended messages might be. Often times, it’s mixed message. After all, the world is our non-verbal bookstore. Just  hope I don’t run into a real FBI agent, undercover as a lottery-ticket pusher.

  • Life as Unfinished Book

    I brave heavy traffic to get to the book store on Nguyen Hue again.

    Just to find out if Murukami’s 1Q84 part II in Vietnamese was available.

    It hadn’t. Back and forth for nothing. But the two interwoven stories must have that crisscrossing point, a happy ending.

    Can’t wait to find out.

    And that was just a novel.  With its dream-like quality.

    How about our own lives?

    It’s Christmas in Vietnam. The lottery-ticket peddlers are still out pushing luck. The dumpster divers are still after a lucky find. Children are in school, workers at work just to improve their lots.

    Nothing unusual, except for the concentration of tourists and picture takers at Saigon tourist quarter, where hotels put up Vegas-style Christmas display.

    Noel, as it is called here, is a convergence of realities, now as it has always: manger and Magi, homeless and Honda.

    People here don’t believe in magic. Just money.

    Isn’t everywhere else?

    Cash or credit?

    The tree can be fake or real, but the cash has to be cold and hard cash.

    Will your life and mine have a happy ending? or like the story of Christmas, it started with birth and ended with burial. The Resurrection sounds like it was added on to give the movement some momentum (Like the Mayan believers after Dec 21st).

    For now, the story got another reading. Baby and bath water.

    Don’t throw both out. Just believe. Finish the first part of the book.

    Just like your lives and mine: beginning, middle and ending.

    Can someone tell me what happens to Aomame and Tengo in 1Q84. Will they meet again and have a happy ending. I can’t wait to find out.

  • Fool’s errand?

    On NYT‘s Op-Ed‘s Pages, I found a piece “Asians are too smart for their own good”.

    The author brought up a historical parallel between Jews’s admission at Ivy League schools back then, and Asian‘s now.

    She neglected another important parallel: Japanese-American got put in internment camps not too long ago. With BRIC‘s second generation, growing up in America, demographic make up will once again be more diverse.

    By 2050, Asia will have stepped up to claim its top spot. By then, demand will outweigh supply of needed talent.

    White Ivy League students are more than welcome to prepare themselves for the day, same way I was sent to French school, then to EFL schools, then to State School, then to Private schools etc…. Gotta to pay the price of admission.

    Not just the tuition.

    Besides, with global communication and global commerce, Ivy League Institutions themselves are facing crisis. High-valued professors from these places are moon-lighting and contracted out to the highest bidders in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and India anyway.

    I am not sure who has done more learning: professors or students in these regions.

    America is still a magnet and market for the likes of Google’s founders, for now.

    But the jury is still out for the next big thing. Cisco , Google and GE are agressive in talent acquisition.

    A degree from an Ivy League school might get you into the door, but does not ensure your staying there, much less rising.

    I am not naive about the climb from within, with glass ceiling and all.

    But give society and corporations some time.  First women, then minority. (at this edit, Lean In has just come out – giving modern women something to discuss).

    There are no rush to judgment. I understand the timeliness of this issue (admission to college. It’s called Senior panic). But one needs to take a long view back (to WW II at the very least) and forward (2050).

    It’s a wonderful and widely connected world. There is no need to play the victim card. Just the value card. After all, the genes and genius cannot be hidden for long. We got Youtube, Twitter and Linkedin. If those platforms are not enough, invent your own “religion”. There is no need to be a follower. Asian families are better at making followers than leaders out of their children.

    The weakness lies in its strength: Tiger Mom reproduces Tiger mindset. On that note, Jewish mothers can agree with Asian mothers: “They” are after us. So unfair! Personally, I don’t think it will ever be a fool’s errand for anyone (Asian are a subset) to be overly educated and enlightened. It’s our mission in life.

  • Omega

    Since her debut, Skeeter Davis with her hit “The End of the World” has etched in our collective memory.

    Since then, we have gone through a series of doomsday threats: ICBM‘s, fate of the Earth, hot and Cold War, now Doomsday 2012). In Murakami’s latest 1Q84, our principal female character, who once was a Personal Trainer, learned that when male offenders got kicked in the balls, it felt like “end of the world”. Parents in Newtown felt like End of the World a week before Christmas. Doomsday came early for them.

    I am afraid the Omega point doesn’t come as swiftly and decisively, but more evolutionarily until “mankind for the second time will have discovered fire”. We will face our own “Dec 21st”, with or without regret, individually. But in my end, my beginning.

    More empathy. More humane.

    That said. I have come across disturbing news here in Vietnam Yahoo page lately: college student got stabbed right on campus, 4 young-female gang stabbed strangers in Binh Duong etc…  I notice a lot of machetes and ice cubes. One was for chopping coconuts and sugar cane, the other for cooling the drinks.

    Rage and rampage are everywhere, North and South,  East and West.

    Don’t think worldwide Recession have nothing to do with “Back to Blood“.

    I hope judges in New York think of global consequences, the ripple effect. Instead of just “securing” Madoff in a comfortable A/C North Carolina prison with visitation rights.

    White-collar crime got white-collar sentences.

    Blue-collar folks with or without committing a crime, have already been condemned to a low- brow life.

    But then, Omega comes. The end point. The equalizer of all sentences. Justice is served. Poetically. One stanza and one standard for all.

    For now,we still have to finish our given “sentence”. Just do time.

    An act of kindness here, a condolence there. (A colleague from MCI is among the Newtown parents whose kids were shot down, point-blank).

    Doomsday for him? No, he refused to let the tragedy define them. People are posting and wearing Purple, the color his late daughter used to love.

    Go Purple! Bleed Orange (MCI classic color).

    Til the day we all bleed red. Individualized Omega point “when mankind will have discovered fire”.

    In my end, my beginning. Go ahead, make my day (Dec 21st, 2012). Either way, just don’t kick me in the balls.