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: Business

  • Out with the self check-out!

    Albertson is your store. No wonder you just walked in, took the items, and walked out (after paying the machines). http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/officehours/2011/jul/12/albertsons-will-take-self-checkout-lanes-out-stores-doesnt-affect-area-albertsons-stores/ I still remember having lunch at Woolworth, or stopping at full-serve  stations back East. “coffee refill?” ” oil check?” We are heading toward a self-serve nation (or as in a recent feature in the WSJ,…

  • Mom’s Poinsettia

    It’s that time of the year again, when Poinsettia are everywhere, from Walgreen to Walmart. I saw it in my Mom’s assisted living back when she was still alive. That pair-association stuck with me: Mama-Poinsettia. We have buried in our CPUs millions of those pairings: white-blue/school uniform, fruit-cake/Christmas,  peanut butter/GI ration …( in Vietnam, it’s…

  • Against the tide of commoditization

    In Selling Professional Services to the Fortune 500, Gary Luefschuetz warns against mix and match people and rates of various service tiers, which will compromise the rate structure. In short, swim against the tide. IBM got it. Cisco follows suit. And HP is moving in that direction. The Economist takes an in-depth look at IT…

  • Here’s my card

    You have heard that line in movies, at the bar, or convention hall. The Post had an article about the survival of the card in our digital age. Maybe because it’s so small, so humble, and so obvious. Google was thinking big i.e. “organize the world’s information”, thus, overlooked the tiny card in our wallet.…

  • Human ingenuity

    When you see population growth which doesn’t equate with starvation, it’s a testimony to our human ingenuity. The US has less than 2 percent of its labor force in agriculture, yet no one is without a hamburger (even when it’s thrown out by McDonald). From Malthus to Moore, we have moved up the value chain.…

  • Wash away

    Rain pours so hard here in Saigon. It feels like a city wash. Yet bike traffic never ceases. Wet city streets didn’t stop weekend spontaneous racing. Hard-earned money got washed away just as quickly as it is earned, mostly at beer stalls. People press RESET and go on. It’s not too different elsewhere. Just differs in intensity…

  • On self-repackaging

    The age of frozen self has finally arrived i.e. you either update your web presence, or remain “frozen” in cyber space. Years from now, people remotely connected to you will Google you  and mine all the intimate data about you or written by you. Personal digital archive. At the turn of our century, Command-and-Control model dominated…

  • Reflections on connections

    The medium (social network) resembles Amazon software source code (we recommend to you these people, read their profiles). You have to open a personal account like you would at Harmony.com, and boom, you start the handshakes : “Hello, my name is…”. Personal branding 2.0. Except, when it comes to cross-cultural connection, the First and Last…

  • Machine and Me

    Sir Chaplin showed it best in “Modern Times”. Jacques Ellul took a step further to analyze all things “technique”. The 70’s OPEC oil embargo triggered  cost-cutting craze, starting with the elimination of gas station full-service to Smart cars and EVs. I took a trip this past Thanksgiving. At rest area, the vending machine took my…

  • Nano in the wind

    Kansas didn’t expect its slow number to be a hit, but there it was: Dust in the Wind. I am privy to have met three gentlemen, all Vietnamese nano technology scientists. Through them, I learn about our next frontier, not out there, but right here e.g. coconut shells from which carbon nano tubes can be…