Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

Tag: Japan

  • Cast away. Sending an SOS. an SMS. I hope that someone will get my message. We are born to connect (our belly button testifies to this) with nature and others. Yet marketers are telling us that in Retirement Ville, cruise ship (with sauna sound that reminds us of incubator) and virtual existence can substitute for the…

  • If you want to set the tone for the whole day, pop in Rare Earth collection which opens with a 22-minute long Get Ready followed by I Just Want to Celebrate. The name has nothing to do with current dispute between China and Japan for those planned-scarcity elements. Get ready to celebrate. Dream, dream, dream.…

  • When Henry Ford put together two motor cycles side by side to invent the automobile, he wasn’t interested in pleasing his customers, “you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black”.  Now, car turns commodity, the Chinese came up with Cherry, the pink car designed to please its female customers  Bye bye…

  • Amidst traffic and smog, a black/yellow butterfly dances its way through the intersection, bouncing from motor bike to motor bike. I shouldn’t have paid too much attention to the creature. I need to worry about my safety. But it struck me as odd. All concrete in the city with only few trees left in old…

  • I would hold the door for the person behind me as always. I would call people whom I have avoided and face those dark alleys once petrified. I would lay down my guards, strip off my veneers, and empathize with others. I would clean up my desk, make my bed and re-arrange my shoes. One…

  • In the 80’s, we saw many books about Japan e.g. Rising Sun, The Japan That Can Say NO. Now, the Most Admired Country list seems to say NO to Japan, and places it at number 5. Versace closed its door there after having sold to all the old people of the laggard group. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e5e6a886-b325-11de-ac13-00144feab49a.html (in…

  • http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/477965/Lotto-winner-Callie-Rogers-reveals-hell-her-pound19m-fortune-brought.html You can’t handle the truth! Or blew 3 million dollars of lottery winning on booze, boobs and bags of white powder. What a boyfriend the 16-year-old lottery winner hangs out with. Meanwhile, another couple from Tokyo win the Tango contest, leaving the Argentinians in the dust (another couple from Colombia win Second place). Now,…

  • FIOS in Triple Play, for $79.00 for the first six months. The last time I looked, it was $100 for the Triple Play package: phone, TV and broadband. In China, kids played until they dropped dead (unwilling to lose their seats at the Internet cafe and online, where supposedly, they were up against competitors from…

  • We got some footage about those Japanese astronauts now. This brings me back to those endless summers when I watched all sorts of movies: French, American, Chinese and Japanese. Among the Japanese ones, the most memorable is the “blind Samurai”, who exemplifies the spirit of quiet strength. We self-project, so our heroes tend to reflect…