Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

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With relief work in Asia/Africa in and after graduate school, Thang’s 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 has been certified with a CELTA – classes taken in Hanoi for cultural re-immersion.

Tag: China

  • South-South emergence

    A Vietnamese film director, a Japanese novelist, a Beatles title (which I read the Vietnamese translation bought in Hanoi)= Norwegian Wood. http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/film/norwegian-wood-film-a-labour-of-love Indian telecom companies bought out Middle Eastern counterparts to target mobile market in Africa. China beefs up its investment in construction and rare earth mining in S America, Australia and Africa. These are…

  • supply chain dilemma

    First they outsourced to lower the cost of, let’s say, an I phone. The guy (Chinese farm-to-factory worker) if not jumped out of the window from a Foxconn‘s dorm, wished he had because there was no way he could afford one. Even his counterparts in NYC had to get in line just to hand carry the same…

  • churning, down the river

    The foreclosure process has still been at work, churning homes back on the market in CA or FL. Behind the statistics are people bewildered and shattered. As a nation and the world, we are faced with two choices: – pretend it never happened, and rush out to shop – acknowledge that it happened, and rush…

  • Kindness of strangers

    Years ago, my roommate invited me over for Thanksgiving. The ride from Penn State to Lancaster was a long but memorable one. It’s predominantly Amish there. And I remember discussing with his Dad about “Turning East” by Harvey Cox (the subject I took that summer). Years have gone by. While Western consciousness has yet turned…

  • The vase and the Beast

    One is auctioned for 85 million (with tax and fee), while the other merged with Newsweek after it was sold for $1.00 After a lifetime of standardization and automation, something is still of value. Nobody had appreciated Van Goh’s self-portrait or any of his pieces until after he was long gone. Still, we want maximization,…

  • half-life happiness

    The concept of half-life (radioactive) , if could be applied to soft sciences e.g. happiness, can go on to infinity. In today’s term, it’s called austerity: scaled-down cars, DVD nights, and local trips. During the Clinton years, we had a good run. The Japanese had theirs in the 80’s. Now, it’s the Pacific Century. Chinese students…

  • Here they come!

    Chinese buyers, that is. Not a bid for 76 gas station, or IBM hardware (now Lenovo). A GM unit then Symentech. On seeing David Stockman on TV. I thought I were back to the early 80’s. This time, just one just needs to replace the word Japanese, for Chinese (remember Michael Keaton and his gold fish?).…

  • Powerful women

    World’s oldest woman. 115 years old. Oldest man, from Japan, 116 years old. Life expectancy in 1900 was 47. World population has increased drastically. (Bio tech century). At the nano level, we can detect early symptoms of all sorts of disease (nano pharma). Ironically, as the West is more aware of health issues and is taking…

  • Forced leisure

    MSNBC  interviews a blogger from Good magazine on automation nation. The take away: automation is moving beyond manufacturing sector (e.g. Google test drove an unmanned vehicle in California, or Italian researchers tested a driver-less van, from Italy to China) to service sectors, such as health care . Japan has been deep into robotic technology, a national policy…

  • Rare Earth beats

    If you want to set the tone for the whole day, pop in Rare Earth collection which opens with a 22-minute long Get Ready followed by I Just Want to Celebrate. The name has nothing to do with current dispute between China and Japan for those planned-scarcity elements. Get ready to celebrate. Dream, dream, dream.…