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: Facebook

  • Movements

    In the latest  issue of the New Yorker we find a cartoon, showing two women with huge brand-name shopping bags, blurting out “I am going to start my own Occupy movement on 57th St”. Scott Peck, on Organization, observes that organisations go through phases: honeymoon , chaos then, compromise before reaching full functioning. Movements however are little bit different…

  • Sur le pont

    Oakland Bridge that is. The one got fixed by a China-based sub-contractor. Now, down the dock and downtown, Occupy pledges to stay for the long haul. Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland: “there is no there, there” (hence, no center to be occupied.) When crossing that bridge, I thought of New York City (sprawling California only…

  • Clothes and costumes

    Just about now, we start thinking Halloween costumes. We have tried on cotton, polyester, paper, fur, animal skin (leather) and raw meat. At work, the dress code has changed as well since IBM went “soft” (ware). Gone are the blue suit, white shirt and red tie. Who wants to upstage their CEO’s at Facebook, Google, and…

  • Au cinema

    When Facebook profile (soon to be called Timeline) needs me to complete my favorite movie section, I put down Cinema Paradiso. It’s in Blu-ray now (Oscar-winning, well-preserved quality). It’s about growing up in an Italian village, with the cinema , Cinema Paradiso, as central theme. It was later demolished to make room for a parking lot.…

  • In the mirror

    Among Dylan’s many memorable lines is “you don’t need the weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blow-in”. Even without the weatherman, we can feel that things are at a boiling point. Like in the movie “the Network”, people start to open their windows and bell out “I am mad like Hell, and…

  • Neon God

    ” People bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made” (Sound of Silence now inducted to the American Museum as Classic American Sound to be preserved). Meanwhile, we spend an average 8 hours per month on Facebook, “the cathedral they made” (same amount of time people attend church services). Twitter is not addictive. Facebook is.…

  • My 555 plan

    Get back to your roots. Eliminate waste and accessories. Differentiate and make it relevant. Actually, 555 is just a self-branding attempt, after a cigarette a friend of mine used to smoke. I had to attach a numeric code to differentiate (sticky and trans-cultural)  my Yahoo log-on ID. Now we hear of 999 plan etc… It’s hard…

  • Ads during downturn

    You might think that business are spending less on advertising during the down turn. Think again. Financial, insurance and banking, all pumped more ad dollars into the system. Meanwhile, more VC‘s are of “angel” nature (this explains why Facebook can afford taking its time before next year’s IPO), the 21st century version of Independent Film…

  • Twice the romance

    For almost a century, we have gotten used to Hollywood‘s sunset scenes of the Pacific (they could even make Skid Row desirable). Now, fiction is trumped by recent discovery of a two-sun planet. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/215013/20110916/planet-two-suns-star-wars-kepler-16-b-tatooine-seti.htm Sunset scenes will need to be re-cut. Twice the work. But also, twice the romance. As evolving species, we will adapt,…

  • The future, never in past tense

    Peter Jennings took a smoke break, his first in years, from 9/11 live coverage. It was the beginning of his end. The Canadian co-author of “The Century” must have studied the Wright brothers, whose invention could lift itself up into thin air albeit for just a few blocks. But he had never seen anything like the two planes…