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.

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  • Strange shores

    I reward myself with strong coffee after my morning exercise. It had been a month before I found out that Cam Ly, a Vietnamese famous singer – with her signature song “Bo Ben La’ (strange shores) live in the house next to the alley where I had my coffee. Strange shores, strange circumstances. When in…

  • Something in the way.. of Vietnam

    I just viewed a clip about Vietnam during the 40-50’s (French lady riding and reading the papers on a moving cyclo, newspaper boy wearing beret…). Something in the way, she moves… attract me like no other lover… A North Carolinian I picked up yesterday from the airport (for TESOL course) said “there is something about Vietnam I can’t…

  • Thanksgiving, tradition and technology

    While almost everyone in the US gathers around the traditional meal, here in Vietnam, some people come up with a way to marry tradition with technology: ancestor worship online. Its highway to eternity has 10,000 plots, already booked for burial and continued ceremonial service online (to accommodate overseas relatives and those who have resettled to urban…

  • 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…

  • Voice & Video

    Via camera phone, satellite uplink and YouTube upload, we got pictures and sound of the upheaval in Libya up to the minute. The golden gun (its now-deceased owner must have watched James Bond’s Gold Finger), the Club Car and female bodyguards. When I was growing up, we were cooped up inside the house (curfew) while news of…

  • 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…

  • Inching back to life

    When we face a critical juncture on the road, we need to be decisive. A liberal arts training doesn’t hurt either. Even when two people arrived at the same conclusion, liberal art thinkers insist that between A and B, a straight line might not be the best alternative. Just the shortest. As nature would agree, it favors…

  • Web and Cable experience

    In the early days of the Web,  I asked my friend what he did online. The answer: ” I just browse from one magazine to the next (static), and listen to ethnic radio channels “. This was pre-YouTube era. We have spent an enormous amount of time curating content that is put out there: radio signals,…

  • Xerox, Yahoo and Google

    With the exception of Yahoo, we can pretty much use the other two as verbs i.e. to Xerox s/t or to Google it. When your company is a household “action” verb, you have it made. Yahoo got a head start, with strong brand recognition. But it flounders (even MySpace, as cool as it once was, couldn’t escape this…

  • the acceleration of nearly everything

    Time heals, slowly. It makes for better wine. But it also shuts the window of opportunity. The moment we leap (even before we look), we defy fate. No regrets. In “Blink”, the author presents a clear case for intuition and conclusion. It’s the opposite of SWOT with no action =  slow-burn effect that kills the frog (paralysis…