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.

  • Madonna and child

    Not the Seine in Paris. But Rach Nhieu Loc in Saigon. She wore a cone hat. Baby tanning in the morning sun, resting in her bosom. The other hand, she checked her messages from a mobile phone.

    It’s  Thanksgiving in Vietnam. People  have a lot to be thankful for. It’s now ranked second on Happy Country Index (the US 25th on infrastructure).

    Infrastructure and Index of Happiness. By all counts, the canal stings. But people as a whole are considered happy. Many would care less for the Mayan calendar and its doom prediction.

    When it gets too hot, it rains. Nature idea of  a “smart” grid. GE is investing heavily in “industrial internet” (the way Bill Gates referred to in his “at the speed of thoughts”.)

    People here move about at the speed of motorbikes. It barely rains and people are already in ponchos and helmets , zooming by non-stop. No delay, no second thought.

    Moving forward. Day after day. Only the future. When school is out, kids pour out into the concrete sidewalks, like a disturbed  beehive.

    High-margin items are on display, all mobile related (I phone casing, eye glasses and sun glasses, helmets of all stripes, pull-overs and book bags).

    Students from the country side try hard to accommodate themselves off campus by working at odd jobs.

    I found an eatery with decent meals. Sharing a round table with strangers: meat, rice, soup and iced tea.

    French-style cafes are extremely popular, serving cafe-sua-da at all times of the day.

    007 is shown here too, interlaced with Twilight.

    I wonder if the life style depicted in those movies ignite young people’s aspiration.  The Twilight cast, red-eye aside, all look perfect when they don’t go “hunting”.

    Books are confined in a dozen outlets, scattered around the city, still priced themselves out of reach of the average wage earner.

    The publisher I am in talk with has a branch office behind a huge pagoda, which is located across from Vietnam’s famous Vinh Nghiem pagoda. So, it’s not just KFC and Burger King who stake out prime locations. Religious outfits do so as well.

    Meanwhile, the population understands health and fitness, how they relate to happiness. A nation ranked second after only Costa Rica in Happiness can surely connect the dots.

    Their diet is healthy and their movement swift.

    It starts early in the morning and early in life.

    I saw the evidence this morning. Mother and child. Sun bathing.

    Texting and tanning.

    All contribute to the formula of healthiness besides discarded Vinamilk pouches on the street.

    Perhaps technology has contributed much to Vietnam’s progress. Today, if you found a bicycle moving about, it’s a rare sight.  You can’t reverse history (especially in China, where automobiles are now as common as bicycles three decades ago).

    You can only move forward with industrialization.

    You read these lines. You know I am at an internet cafe next to my cafe-sua-da.

    I do have something to be thankful for. I found a high-speed internet location.

  • The normalization of the abnormal

    Some of us who still remember the Cold War remember how easy things were: black and white.

    Everything else “Third World.”

    Now, the Third World has emerged. Hence, we live in a multi-polar world.

    More complicated world. More are at stake.

    People wheel and deal.

    Purchasing parity has become less of a parity.

    Trading up and trading down. Things and places are interchangeable (Banana Republic , despite its name, used to carry made-in-India or the Philippines – no banana republic there).

    Marijuana used to be a taboo. Now it’s legal in some states.

    I am confused. My moral sense (put there by my parents who were born early in the 20th century) has been challenged and put to question.

    Those foundations are constantly revised and compromised.

    First by others, then myself (or else, I am looked at as a loser or an outsider).

    Sounds like a teenage phenomenon. But it’s real. Flight or fight.

    Cavemen syndrome still.

    With technology moving so fast, energy consumed at break-neck speed, our sense of the world and how it should operate needs a relook.

    The enemy is now our friend ( for example, Russia as supplier of oil and arms).

    Our friend has become enemy (by abandonning us when the coalition calls for joint troops in the Gulf Wars).

    What was abnormal has become normal.

    In this multi-polar world, China, now the largest automobile market in the world,

    doesn’t discriminate imported products, but its export ones are.

    For the right reason (unsafe, copy cat etc…).

    We have an image problem.

    We need to improve our relations with others (who have also changed).

    We need new friendnemies.

    We need to normalize that which was considered abnormal.

    Gay is the new straight , the pheripherals have gone mainstream.

    It’s late-stage now for a lot of things such as globalization and world trade (finished products get shipped back to the US and Western countries, turning the US standing into a Third World status by definition).

    I am glad we still agree on grammar points and earning points.

    Do unto others as we would like to be done onto.

    The only thing that is constant is change itself. Grow up!

  • End options

    There are not many options at the top. There are even fewer at the bottom.

    Earth soon will be home to 9 billion by 2050. What do we have to do to accommodate “incoming freshmen?”. Plan, plan, plan. At planet level.

    Some want wine. Others beers. But they all come to the party.

    Barbecue smoke or smoke stack?

    We all breathe in and breathe out.

    Same stuffy air.

    Green-house effect, white-house policy.

    Be kind, rewind.

    Be nice, recycle.

    When we love something or someone, we want to make it last.

    Yet, we pay lip service to the only home we know: trashing it, logging it, polluting it.

    Worse yet, we look down on those who attempt to do the right thing.

    (Most solar companies, EV batteries companies all got battered and bruised).

    Tesla S got Motor Trend‘s Car of the Year Award, however.

    But will the public give it attention or even consider buyeing the 6-figure car?

    Still chasing those status symbols: the Lamborghini‘s of the world.

    We are just passing through.

    Earth in the balance.

    Just kick the can down the road.

    Leaving even fewer options for next generations.

    As if when it comes to the environment, we had a lot of choices (to live in another planet). Mars colony anyone?

    Yes, the task is huge. The energy crisis is enormous.

    And because of those reasons, we need to tackle them together, longer term.

    When we keep leaving it to others, that’s when we are at their mercy.

    Here in Vietnam, people and businesses experience frequent black-outs.

    Middle of the day. Go and sit in coffee houses across the street.

    Tell your customers to go away. Hope they will come back. Not your fault.

    What a way to do business.

    Especially when the membership fees had been collected.

    Not a lot of options when it comes to end options. The only thing that is in the balance is Mother Earth herself. Conserve. Less is more. The economy of well-chosen activities. Massive mobilization of the intellect and the collective will. Yes, we can.

  • Love sees differently

    It’s half past five AM. Outside the Women Association of Ho Chi Minh City, I heard music. Not hip hop, not trance. Jut Gold music “Gui Gio Cho May Ngan Bay”, blasted from a boom box . It’s dark, but the sidewalk hosted a group of women practicing Tai-Chi.  The music was about acceptance, about one wing drops after another. But here they stood, with graceful moves and fateful lives.

    Their counterparts meanwhile distribute magazines, newspapers, meat, seafood etc.. for the city of 10 million. I struggled to find room on the sidewalk for the run, before hordes of scooters claiming their right of way.

    Common city dwellers don’t seem to be able to afford living space. NUSKIN and new Life Insurance, big-box Fast Food and sugar-drink companies such as Coca Cola drove up commercial real estate prices.

    As a result, the face of the city has changed, over the last six months (faster than in the US).

    One can spot the need for women gyms, for skin care and cosmetic products.

    But then, love sees it differently. Here were mothers of revolution . Of future leaders.

    and of past glory. Still out there before dawn. Still guarding the age of romanticism (w/out make-ups or cosmetic surgery).

    Still staying fit for the fight. Vietnam is synonymous with war. War against Chinese invaders, French colonialists,  American reluctant Imperialists, Cambodian “cap-duon” and now, in full circle, back to the Islands against the Chinese  industrialists.

    Still “Gui Gio Cho May Ngan Bay”, still with that cigarette-hoarse voice of Khanh Ly, the exile folk singer, muse of Trinh Cong Son (and Trinh Nam Son will be here for just one night) known as Vietnamese Bob Dylan.

    Love sees it differently. The same song could be used to soothe the soul, comfort the afflicted, or to motivate the team . At any age, at any time.

    I blogged about the resilience of the Vietnamese women (Mom’s Ao Dai).

    Now I realized I did not know what I was talking about. I barely scratched the surface .

    The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram spoke of a woman doctor who walked the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just to be near the war front where her lover had gone before. It spoke of the diary with “fire”. To others, war was hell. Love sees it differently (she died a martyr’s death, never to be reunited with her lover).

    The irony did not escape me that, in contrast to Western sense of appropriateness,

    here women could be warriors, housewives and heads of  firms, with no conflict.

    Their ability to synthesize and compromise says a lot about how this society manage to gloss over enormous challenge.(see After Sorrow).

    A city of 10 million or 1 million, it doesn’t matter.  What matter was how those women have taken over the education in public, and the management of the household in private. It’s they who make it happen. Just show up and see at 5 AM, the music and movement. Then you will see the tip of the iceberg. Often we don’t see those undercurrents. But love sees it differently. It got you up early and forced you to notice. I noticed. I learned.

  • (You) Tube and Toast

    The English had their toasts (toasters) thanks to electricity. I’ve got my music thanks to Youtube. Each generation tries to outdo the previous one. My daughters would read about Mars, not Moon (I blogged about the excitement of waiting in line for hours to see that rock brought back from the Moon).

    Thanks YouTube. The three founders I believe who invented this medium.

    It brought together a platform made possible by broadband and algorithm (perhaps you might like to listen to this…..).

    Don’t give up on us baby, then If you leave me now, or Adieu Sois Heureuse.

    “Lord knows we’ve come this far”

    “We went too far to leave it all behind”.

    Innovators, don’t give up. Lord knows we have gone this far. We can’t change the way we are.

    Push forward.

    Science at the forefront of change.

    Let’s tweet again.

    Politician and musician will follow suit.

    As long as scientists and technologists don’t give up.

    I know you are more intimate with your sleeping bags than your spouses.

    But for generations to come, you have us forever grateful to your “prototypes”.

    A VoIP call, a clip we share, a link we paste.

    How can this be?

    I started out my Telecom career throwing a tin can with string attached across the alley to my neighbor’s house.

    Despite the heavy rain, we communicated without shouting.

    But it was “wire line” then. It’s wireless now. And not just voice. It’s the apps era.

    Here or To Go?

    When we grew up in Vietnam, at the height of the war, we stuck our noses into our neighbor’s window to catch a glimpse of Vic Morrow‘s Combat, or Wild Wild West. Large crowd, small screen.

    Now I see small kids, watching large screens.

    The time, they are a’changin, as Dylan would say.

    To close this blog, I want to draw our attention to a very controversial character: Insull, who died in a Paris metro with a ticket in his hand.

    Insull would make the Ebbers of the world look like they are from Junior League.

    Insull left behind the electricity meters and business model we see today.

    It made possible the electrifying of the English toasters and todays’ Youtube.

    Insull rode the ups and downs of an entrepreneur life. And he died riding the subway in Paris a homeless and wretched man. But Don’t give up on us Baby.

    We have come thus far, can’t we stay the way we are.

    We have come too far to leave all this behind.

    I enjoyed my toast and tube this morning. Feel like a million-dollars.

    Thanks to those guys that went before me. On shoulders of giants we stand, we sing and we soar.

    (You)tube and toast. Let’s toast to the spirit of innovation and creativity.

    Think of something new and bigger than yourself today. Even the moonlight.

    Before the ground claims us all to itself. Vic Morrow has died, in accident, and not in Combat. The  point is, fight for every inch against complacency. Read Ron Paul‘s parting message. Appreciate the liberty we are given to pursue dreams and discovery. I have blogged about the payload. All into it, except for those outliers. Then the world will join you .. the way they are hunting for an I-phone 5. VoIP, data and video, on the go. Beautiful apps, wonderful world we are living in.

  • 2012? Almost

    For those who are now living in Tent City due to Sandy, 2012 does seem like a doom-prophecy year i.e. INVOLUNTARY departure from their homes. Others in 20 States, mostly Red, willingly sign a petition to secede (VOLUNTARY departure from the Federade).  Essentially, they want to vote again.

    Grow up.

    We do have to zoom out and see where we are: globally and ecologically.

    A warmer temperature means melting snow for the penguins. A butterfly in the Amazon still has that connection to Sandy, however small. (In the US, one can drive out of any house, to arrive at any person’s driveway; the power of inter-connectedness).

    I was walking into a restaurant last night when the power  was suddenlyy out. For a quick moment, I knew how  people affected by Sandy must have felt.

    To us, 2012 is just another calendar year.

    To them, it’s dooms day.

    Once again, the nation is showing its solidarity as in the days following 9/11.

    Governor Chris and Cuomo, of Garden State and Empire State, were seen touring alongside the President.

    A show of unity and solidarity.

    People are hurting.

    Groping in the dark.

    Tested and bewildered

    It happened before in Florida, then down in the Gulf with Isaac and Katrina.

    People moved on, but those regions bore the marks of being whipped.

    Bent out of shape (tourists would conveniently cherry pick the best spots in the world to spend their hard-earned dollars).

    The hypocrisy of pleasure-seeking.

    Since when do you hear a doctor take his/her vacation to give vaccine to an emerging nation? I only read about Melinda Gates Foundation doing this.

    Meanwhile, we are in wait for another round of doomsday prophecy, often comes at year-end.

    Futuristic stuff that may or may not fan out.

    Yet we believe. We want an edge, to position ourselves for profit, or to hedge our bets.

    Good luck with the rest of 2012. We have yet seen the end of it.

    Still with a good two months to go.

    I would line up my all-star team right around this time.

    To charge out of the gate. To win. To seize the day, the year.

    To plan that next play. Winning is easy when planning was hard.

    2012 is not over until the planning for 2013 is complete.

  • Spending spree

    Right about now. If the economy is going to pick up, authorities should push spending. Credit card spending.

    Gadgets are out. Electronic devices miniaturized. Skirts cut shorter even when it says Winter Clothes. Victoria Secret pulled Native American outfit from broadcast. Planned controversy or not, we don’t know. We just know that things are back to its normal pace.g. Windows 8,  I-phone 5 release etc…

    With Halloween behind us, Veteran Day being celebrated, what else to look forward to besides Turkey and Tree.

    We got the calendar seasons, then we got shopping seasons, but for centuries we live with only a few seasons (until they made up Fall and Autumn).

    Seasons are good for the Soul. They roll in cyclically, to remind us there is a rhythm of life: hard times and good times.

    Unlike compound-interests chart and monthly bills. These come in under a different chart and graph.

    We still respond to seasons in awe: autumn foliage, first snow etc..

    When something like Sandy screw up our lives, we are at a loss (blaming it on those new voiture in China and Brazil?)

    Meanwhile, those with or without money still have to spend. For loved ones and for oneself.

    Gotta get those midget gadgets: i-pod and tri-pod.

    Who would find out that our taste for music has been the same for decades? or what content women read on airplanes (E-readers).

    Something strange has happened  lately, but then nothing strange has happened lately (covert ops but overt affairs etc…)

    Banks and retail stores are still into collecting ROI perentages. And we consumers still fall for it, willingly.

    We are creatures of habit and of harmony. We put on warm clothes and winter clothes. We feel a warmth in our hearts when we see Christmas decoration  all around us. We  miss that fireplace scene and the gathering of the faithful. We long to belong and to be home (Train, plane and automobile) . We long for rest and comfort.  The world knows this. It will offer a different version of our hopes and dreams. It will instead offer false hope and unreachable dreams. It will in fact give us the opposite of what we hope for. In the race to embrace our dreams, often times, we have to outsmart those who claim themselves to be dream providers, of essentials that we need like homes, health and happiness. We gotta to own the process of attaining them ourselves. When we do, we will be rooted firmly in that which we can call home, that which anchors our restless feet and soul. True happiness lies in the heart of those who feel content and are not in denial of death, the only reality that matters most. So spend, spend, spend. But keep in mind that those gadgets will be obsolete next year. In their places, are successive versions and newer generations. That’s what keeps us awake at night.

    Progress has its pain and price to pay. To stay in the game, one needs to constantly pedal forward and uphill.

    Again, I admire people who stay up all night out in the cold for a shopping spree phenomenon we call Black Friday.

    Just remember to leave those pepper sprays at home this year. Walmart is trying to outsmart the competitors by opening early. Thanksgiving night as a matter of fact, for your 24/7 shopping need.

  • Hyphenated Identity

    Last month, during the height of the election campaign, I saw plenty of signage for local board seats. Many hybrid names (Vietnamese-American) which tell me two things: second-generation immigrants are now politically active, yet they still want to keep those last names, to serve as bridges to the old world.

    Old World–New World.

    I know both very well. I travel back and forth lately, observing, taking it all in.

    The good, the bad and the ugly. Both sides now.

    For example: here in the US, I drive by 24-hr Emergency Pet Clinic every day.

    But I also know that a lot of people, not pets, are homeless (including the newly added Post-Sandy Tent City). The best piece on the American Dream went awry was already portrayed by Ben Kingsley in The House of Sand and Fog (Iranian big-shot bought an illegally repossessed house, just to end up losing his life along with it).

    Meanwhile, in VN, everybody tries to move to the city centre, where there hardly are any space left unless a storm, almost as strong as Sandy, knocked down a few more trees.

    The US got junk yards (industrial waste). Vietnam got grave yards (Agent Orange). Both got people “mooning” although for a very different reason.

    Back to hybrid identity. So we came, we saw, and we campaign (not conquer).

    Good for them.

    John Nguyen, Joseph Cao etc…

    May their descendants prosper in this land of milk and honey. When elected, don’t forget to put people above pet. I fear that by the time they drop those last names for let’s say Joseph Smith,  they will also have acquired a taste for fast cars and fast food.

    And perhaps 24-hr gym, 24-hr Donut  Town and 24-hr Emergency Pet Clinic.

    It all makes sense after living here for a while. But to any foreigner who has just arrived, America certainly is a peculiar place, worthy of year-long culture shock (this was verbatim from a Filippino immigrant whose lingerie line finally distributed by Target, making her a millionaire).

    Before you know it, they pledge Allegiance to the Flag, and drop those hard-to-pronounce first names. Voila! We are all American. One Nation under God, withstand against all enemies, foreign or domestic (mostly foreign, so watch out. Adapt quickly and just say “to go” when asked: FOR HERE OR TO GO?).

  • Becoming yourself

    Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize Winner, told a story (in the Black Book) about a writer

    whose wife left him for no reason at all. Restless and sleepless (and perhaps facing writer’s block) he imagined living out his former single self ( the status he now found himself in ). After a while, the mind played trick and he got used to being single. Until one day, his wife returned to him for no particular reason at all. He again found himself in a situation precaire.  Would you once again imagine yourself  being married so you can get used to it?

    I am not sure what the moral of the story is, except that we are not  content with who we are. I guess once we figured out our boundaries, our strengths and weaknesses (painful), we are on the way of becoming ourselves.

    Not the kind of person our families wish us to be, nor who we thought we were.

    Just is.

    After millions of encounters, negotiating and coordinating, including navigating the Wild Wild West  (wow! they did that) and World Wide Web (wow! they are doing that?)  we are on the way to becoming.

    With one new revelation, one turn of event, one special encounter, our lives take on a new shape and contour. Dramatic events tend to dominate and serve as bookends to our otherwise uneventful lives. But most lives are lived in “quiet desperation”.  Having said that, what looks like boring to us might be very peculiar and interesting to others (if not for people in other place and time). From future vantage point, our action and inaction during this Housing Bubble  make interesting historical studies (the same as we study the Dutch Tulip Bubble – now with hindsight, we can see it as bubble. But to them, at the time, not jumping in was akin to suicide. The same with the Chicago World Fair, and how for the first time, attendees saw electricity. They simply thought they were in Heaven).

    I guess part of the fun in living is discovering. Not so much about places and people, but about how we give and take, turned on and off by a certain place or people. Then we learn about our chemistry as well as our social identity.

    Orhan Pamuk moves back and forth on the East-West continuum, so he is more attuned on the subject of identity e.g. women who put on veil or unveiled in Snow, his other novel.

    We too in some small way, assumed multiple identities every day. Even if we don’t want to, people still put us in a box, a number and a place in line. NEXT.

    Now serving G24 at window number 9.

    Please punch in your last 4 digits.

    Don’t stand too close to the vehicle etc….

    So many web sites, so many log on ID‘s.

    Avatars and photos. Inner and outer circles.

    No wonder at times, we feel neurotic.

    Split identities. Being one thing online and another off-line.

    And yet another when we are utterly alone, with a clock or a cross on the wall.

    Who are you? Who am I? The color of my skin? The pronunciation of my name?

    Or the size of my bank account? If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad (sings Cheryl Crow). I hope tonight I don’t have to wish I were my former self. It had its own set of problems back then. Just as now. So just live out the present self. I like it. I like my becoming self. Who else can put up with me besides myself? Wife comes and goes, for no reason at all. It’s me who has to negotiate with my restless self (and muscles) to get some sleep. In restless dream I walk alone,..

  • Bleed purple!

    Red States Blue States United. Bleed purple.

    Gotta to reach across the aisles.

    Gotta to overcome complacency and condescending.

    The time it takes to come up with a retort could be spent for constructive use.

    Nobody has the right to the last word.

    History is dynamic and constantly being re-written.

    (If you read Church History you get one version, and in Howard Zinn‘s, you get a different one).

    Your ex’s might say nasty things about you, but your kids might not.

    Some high school buddies remember me for appearing on TV as part of the school’s dance group (incidentally, my daughter has been in the US number 1 hip hop team as well).

    Back to Bleed Purple.

    The nation and the world have waited.

    For action, not talks.

    For remedy, not diagnose.

    We are all grown-ups caught in dire circumstance. Tonight, as I was leaving the gym, I saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart full of garbage bags, all black, except for a guitar on top. He was pushing it up hill, but to nowhere in particular. Just keep moving.

    Einstein says life is like riding a bicycle. You just have to keep pedaling.

    When I jog in the park, I keep one foot in front of the other. And before I knew it, I was jogging.

    I don’t understand bureaucracy, red tape and the politics of politics.

    (Heard somewhere that it costs about a couple of hundred thousands for the government to create one job).

    That money could raise a whole child in the US, put him/her through college and become an active participant in society (virtuous cycle).

    Think purple.

    Back to basics.

    I heard the re-elected President recap on what made America great.

    Among the core values was tolerance.

    Bleed purple.

    No more campaign after the election.

    Now is the time to carry out those promises, those cheap sound bites wrapped in expensive ads.

    Now is the time to reach out across the aisle and make those compromises.

    Start early, like Walmart shoppers, if you want something badly.

    The only time I saw the spirit of America was in the darkness of  morning (we call it Black Friday), yet the place was ransacked, with nothing left to buy except for Halloween candies (post season) and school supplies (also off-season).

    Wonder if by the time politics is set aside there will be anything worthwhile to discuss or carry out. Or people simply got fed up, and dropped out altogether. Bleed purple. The sum of our strength is stronger than our personal weakness. Red or Blue, we got your Achille’s heels covered. No easy day.