Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

recent posts

about

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: CNN

  • To beat a dead horse

    Even to this day, people still using the Vietnam War as a figure of speech: “Syria will be another US‘ Vietnam” etc… It was meant to be the new Boogeyman. To scare off the children. To conjure bad imagery and bring back nightmares. In Rambo, Stallone’s rare line was “where they call Hell, I call…

  • The Remains of Print

    The Post is now under new ownership. So is the iconic Newsweek. Both incidentally got taken over by jungle-like entities like Amazon and the Beast, respectively. New world order (or jungle order). The “barbarians” are once again at the gate. New totem pole. New titanic shift, from analog to digital, from print to online. I…

  • What’s eating the man up inside

    Instead of more career choices, he now faces 20 choices of jeans. People are debating about a gender-free society (painting nail polish on his son’s toes). When he finally got his tie collection under control, they went “business casual” on him (Steve Ballmer couldn’t cope with this). Even though it says “Facebook”, most people just…

  • 3D and 4G

    At the most elementary level, we got the chip set. That is about to change, from “flat like a sheet of paper”” to 3D chip, announced Intel (which made Applied Materials jump to its 3.9 Billion acquisition of Varian Semiconductor to keep pace). Our world is about to change once again, not to the tune…

  • Unsung Peacemakers

    In the wake of a huge catastrophe, we tend to rely on experts, in this case, geologists to lecture us on aftershocks, fault line, Pacific Ring of Fire etc… We tend to miss the human dimension of unsung heroes, the peacemakers. There were a Japanese crew, earthquake experts, in New Zealand trying to help out in…

  • Oil and Water

    Oil price backed down as tsunami water gushed up to Japanese shores. The two shall never mix. Middle East rising. Pacific falling. News of a thousand deaths abroad eclipsed news of petty thefts at home. Statistically, street crime is down while cyber-crime up. I admire Net Gen’s speed to mobilize relief efforts e.g. People Finder by…

  • 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…

  • Vantage point

    The cut-aways (filmed after the interviewed subject had left), the backstage steady cam sneak peeks, the studio bird-eye-view shot showing anchors walk away from the set while credits roll and music fade out…. We are a society privileged with multiple vantage points , given us the illusion of omnipresence. When film and television cameras were fighting…

  • 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…

  • Our VHS future

    Beta was more superior. Yet VHS won out. The market (in this case, movies on tape) dictates the terms. At the present time, it wants all things mobile. In other words, our knowledge and skill set need an upgrade (But I thought technologically, Beta gave crisper resolution!?!! Sorry Sony.) While on tour for his book…