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: Ivy League

  • Out of the box

    We are urged to “think out of the box“, be creative etc.. Easier said than done. Having a liberal arts background, and traveled the world, I find it easier just get out of the box, then think from there. Every place has its own charms and setbacks. Every place gets good and bad people. Don’t…

  • Learning as motivator

    From papyrus to paper, from microfiche to microphone, we use technology for knowledge transfer. Learning is a great motivator. Once started it never stops (in my death-bed, I probably still ask the attending nurse what all those charts mean, and why not this and that). Don’t believe in learning curve (as if once you got…

  • Fool’s errand?

    On NYT‘s Op-Ed‘s Pages, I found a piece “Asians are too smart for their own good”. The author brought up a historical parallel between Jews’s admission at Ivy League schools back then, and Asian‘s now. She neglected another important parallel: Japanese-American got put in internment camps not too long ago. With BRIC‘s second generation, growing up in America,…

  • Traffic dance in Saigon

    First-timers to Saigon are shocked on arrival: the dance of two-wheel traffic. Some even had to flag down a cyclo (three-way cycle) to take them across the street. An Ivy-League Math Prof was killed when crossing the street. He was there for a conference on solving traffic problems. I have slowly built up confidence and…

  • Mountains and mole hills

    It’s not that safe at Safeway, if you decided to munch on one of their merchandise (eat-now, pay-later vs pay-now, eat-later), as one pregnant Honolulu tourist found out. http://news.yahoo.com/pregnant-mom-says-sandwich-arrest-horrifying-214407004.html We learned in this AP article that no one stopped to say,” this has been taken far enough” i.e. we have made mountains out of mole hills.…

  • Starting a joke

    50 years ago,  you would have been chased out of the pub had you painted these scenarios: the US can’t wait to open off-shored manufacturing centers, Gaga as a mermaid on wheelchair, and 90% of the population will shop at Wal-Mart, stocked with 99% Made-in-China merchandise. Dude, in the 60’s, we were living the American…

  • Asian self-awareness

    In some cultures, people felt ashamed to put on clothes, or if they dressed at all, they would go to the middle of the house in plain view instead of the far corner (where it would draw more attention to the act of changing). Au contraire, at 24-hr fitness, I notice most of the corner…

  • Time to heal

    Of the 5 stages of grief, the first one goes away the quickest (denial). The last stage, acceptance, takes the longest (not without some relapses). I wass at my parent’s graves this past Thanksgiving. A bit of acceptance there. Trophies, college degrees and even old business cards showed our accomplishments. But they are not indicators…