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: Asia

  • No pure love

    I am half way through In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. The book was set in the time of Hitler as viewed by an American ambassador’s daughter. She seemed to have a grand time: dating all sorts of men , even of at opposite end of the political spectrum; shifting and evaluating them…

  • 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…

  • Expired Empires

    The Distributed Model has enabled the Rise of the Rest. Capital, talent and market flow where the chips may fall. Apple courting China, China Africa, Japan Rest of Asia etc… Everyone is out on the dancing floor. Dance anyone? The combinations are endless. Permutation and exponential. Hard and soft powers, hard and soft currencies. Exert that…

  • Perfection and Permanence

    Right! We are wired to look for those two qualities in others, but we know it’s in vain. Buddha realizes that by stop wanting, we found. Gandhi won by being after the path of  non-violence. Yet, we keep slaughtering each other, hurting people and writing them off . In business, we took calculated risks, optimal…

  • the right screen

    Smart phones got computer, TV and phone screens, all in once. The combined screen. I was sitting in front of a lap top and an attached large screen. For a moment, I looked at one screen while the action took place at the other. To catch on, I  need to follow the cursor to know where the…

  • Shore this!

    It’s not good enough with automation. They need to combine that with outsourcing, off-shoring, in-shoring and now, near-shoring.  The idea is to line up the  Filippino call-center workers at mid-night (to go to work, not in line for next-day Black Friday sales) to make a go at scripted greetings like “Have I done everything to your satisfaction”.…

  • Use it

    Hard times push people to diversify, retrench or change. My friends turn organic farmers. I have tried the road less traveled (although there were many scooters on it) and early morning gym (also less popular).  Honing and toning. Just another way to react to hard times. It will make us stronger, wiser and more creative. I…

  • Social dynamics

    Like aerodynamics,  social dynamics involve working with conflicts, not avoiding them. Since we are all made differently, we accept change at various speed. That’s why some ideas are voted down immediately. Others might take some arm-twisting. For instance, it took a while for some emerging countries to introduce the condoms. Used to be a cultural taboo to mention…

  • Saigon siesta

    We used to lie on the floor (absorbing the coolness from the tiles) and listen to “Y0ur Song” , theme of that time’s radio broadcast. That’s my siesta as I can recall. Older brother used Hit Parade, with Elvis Presley  on the cover. My friend, meanwhile, laminated his vinyl album (James Taylor). We have just met over…

  • Saigon alley

    I left W Palm Beach where some called “paradise” for Saigon alley. Going from beach to bunker, I got a bump up in  the Happiness index. Costa Rica for example has led this chart for quite sometime. Vietnam, according to latest survey, ranked behind Costa Rica. In fact, having moved up on the Happiness  Index, it is de-listed…