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: Far East

  • Moon Cake

    You can’t possibly finish one all by yourself. In fact, when I was a kid, I remembered it got cut up not into four but eight pieces, like we would with a Costco pizza. Slices of sweet moon cake, in all varieties. Big confectionary  revenue every year in China and Vietnam. Although it’s a Children…

  • Nature as reminder

    Scientists just found out that Earth is much older than previously thought. It certainly has a way to maintain itself.  Remember Tsunami and Fukushima? or the Louisiana oil spill and Katrina? At the time, we thought we couldn’t bear the grunt, but one by one, they are now behind us. Same thing with this summer ‘s drought and…

  • Traffic turns attraction

    Crunch time in Ho chi Minh City. A nuisance for many yet a photo-op for tourists. Millions in ponchos, helmets, dust masks, sunglasses fighting for every inch (centimeter here) to get  home in the pouring rain, while tourists leisurely strolled the colonial side walks in shorts, sandals and Sony cameras trying to record their trips.…

  • Faustian bargain

    Most of us don’t face life-and-death decision everyday (gaining the world but losing our soul). Leave that to Caligula or Gaddafi. Yet, a less wealthy Syrian, whose background had been oblivious even to himself, still got some press. Steve Jobs can still sell some books. Like you, I was curious. So I browsed his biography. One snippet about Steve: he…

  • colonize, globalize and localize

    In that order. Just like Guns, Germs and Steel. Natural, then with pesticides and back to organic. First, Mattel outsourced toy manufacturing to Hong Kong (ironically, G.I. Joe , the real one, first saw the larger horizon including the Far East due to the two World Wars) , then every company considers “if it can be outsourced, it must”. In military term,…

  • Mars or marble

    Have you submitted your name to be shuttled up to Mars?  Space and sea travel or your names on Mars and not marble. This is to show our preference for progress over permanence  – technology over religion. While it’s good to sit on one of the benches with our parent’s names “in memory of…”, it’s…