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.

Tag: Arts

  • The-Man Band

    He is the man. My man. Summer night 40 some years ago, he practiced his guitar on the roof behind my house (like a line in Your Song). Today he is still playing, whistling and singing. On previous trips, I watched him perform along with two other members in an outdoor cafe. Slowly, it winded…

  • Voice & Video

    Via camera phone, satellite uplink and YouTube upload, we got pictures and sound of the upheaval in Libya up to the minute. The golden gun (its now-deceased owner must have watched James Bond’s Gold Finger), the Club Car and female bodyguards. When I was growing up, we were cooped up inside the house (curfew) while news of…

  • Au cinema

    When Facebook profile (soon to be called Timeline) needs me to complete my favorite movie section, I put down Cinema Paradiso. It’s in Blu-ray now (Oscar-winning, well-preserved quality). It’s about growing up in an Italian village, with the cinema , Cinema Paradiso, as central theme. It was later demolished to make room for a parking lot.…

  • Twice the romance

    For almost a century, we have gotten used to Hollywood‘s sunset scenes of the Pacific (they could even make Skid Row desirable). Now, fiction is trumped by recent discovery of a two-sun planet. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/215013/20110916/planet-two-suns-star-wars-kepler-16-b-tatooine-seti.htm Sunset scenes will need to be re-cut. Twice the work. But also, twice the romance. As evolving species, we will adapt,…

  • Never let them go!

    B3, CVA Black and White. Grainy. Shirts and Skins. Friends from junior-high , whom I shared the ping-pong tables and school canteen. We sat through civic lessons, English lessons, Math tests and Lab tests. The photo must have been taken at one of those off-site PE classes. I learned about honor, honesty and history; the…

  • Dressing up for online presence

    The author of “the everyday presentation of self” will need to completely rewrite his book for 21st-century readership. For instance, what is the equivalence of holding the door online? (Leave a larger space for Comment ?) Business and communication are out of breath, trying to catch up with network effect and the ProAm movement. How…

  • C’est moi

    Obviously French. Not too obvious that the “tutoye” is permeating a culture predominantly focused on the collective Nous. Weeknight, karaoke with live accompaniment. Weekends, professional singers, one of whom singer/owner I heard came back from France (probably under dual citizenship). This is a hybrid of crowd-sourcing and the old Command-control stage craft. It seems to work.…