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: BBC

  • Lost art of typing

    The BBC has a piece on Japan Love Affair with the Fax Machine. Older population has gotten used to that technology (which allows for hand-writing). For years, I have used email except for  Thank-you notes in writing. I can reasonably predict that even typing (as we know it) will be a lost art (speech recognition will…

  • Imagine, again

    By now, we all have seen the picture of Congresswoman Giffords, in glasses, recovering from a near fatal shooting. Let’s rewind to 1980, and imagine John Lennon with that same  “luck”. I can only see Lennon as the nemesis during the 80’s, if not again during the Iraq war. We would have been stronger, not…

  • East-West shopping

    Retailers in Europe figured out a way to push merchandise in this time of austerity: shop in your underwear, leave fully clothed. Meanwhile, a reporter from the BBC went to Hanoi to learn about another way of shopping: buying paper clothing for the dead (old Hanoi, pho “hang ma”). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00h35lv That’s how different East and West…

  • flat “pyramid”

    Viewed from above, the Pyramid in Egypt looks flat,  almost origami-like. And viewed from where I am sitting, the 18-day Revolution looks protean: leaderless, collaborative and spontaneous. Although not the first to use Twitter ( Iranian post-election was), last week’s protesters showcased coordination and team work only digital natives can pull off. First, they understood…

  • Where have they gone?

    Subtitle “Time to remember”. When I was in high school, the consumer society began to take shape in Vietnam: beer, cheese, cigarettes, toothpaste and vinyl music albums. Then we moved on to AKAI tape. By the time I got to the US, the first item I purchased was a portable cassette recorder (to record music…

  • Boiling point

    I was often jolted by the two popping pieces of toast, or when my coffee started to boil. That last degree in Celsius makes a difference. Conversely, a frog in slow warming water loses its reflex. The consequences of an over-industrialized world are over-production, and surplus labor/consumers who can’t afford or absorb excess production. “Boiling”…