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: New York City

  • Re-occupy yourself!

    When I boarded my flight to Vietnam, Penn State was losing to Nebraska. And after I landed in Vietnam, I read about New York “tent city” had been re-occupied by the Mayor. Here in the land of motor scooters, and kids try to conjugate in English, I can put those problems  in perspective. It’s true…

  • 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…

  • Simon’s Sound of Silence

    “In restless dream I walked alone” this time, w/ out Garfunkel. Two moments of silence descended upon two reflecting pools. It was so eerie that ten years ago, of all things, Matt Lauer was interviewing a Howard Hughes biographer when the TODAY show got interrupted. I don’t think viewers ever follow up on the bio after…

  • 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…

  • creatures of information

    “We are ‘creatures of information’”, “in the library of Babel, seeking information past and future”, says James Gleick in the Information. We might look in hardback and paperback, print books and e-books, newspaper and news broadcast, but we are still after the information. It reminds me of a line by St Paul “though now we see…

  • Imagine, again

    By now, we all have seen the picture of Congresswoman Giffords, in glasses, recovering from a near fatal shooting. Let’s rewind to 1980, and imagine John Lennon with that same  “luck”. I can only see Lennon as the nemesis during the 80’s, if not again during the Iraq war. We would have been stronger, not…

  • This side of doom

    Doomsday prediction did not materiale. On this side of doomsday, Southeast Asia is no longer a war zone. It’s the new fun zone (with young and upcoming demographics). LinkedIn IPO gone through the roof while IMF Chief couldn’t check in at any hostel in NY (I did not mis-spell “hostel”). Whether you live in flood zone or…

  • Census in our mind

    1976. Washington D.C. Belt-bottom pants and boom-boxes. The city was predominantly black. 2011 Washington D.C. Gentrified, half-black and half others.And that’s just one stat in the 2010 data. Asian population in Arizona, Texas and elsewhere like Philadelphia should surprise any demographer. While America went to war in Europe, European ended up at America’s shores. Then…

  • Growing old in post 9/11 era

    Younger generations are growing up digital. I grow old in post 9/11. We were bumping along, thinking the dot.com burst was the story of the Century. Then, the unthinkable happened. Brave were the men on United Flight 93. Our lives have never been the same since (collective survivor’s guilt).  An act of outright violence needed to…

  • Heterogeneous country, homogeneous thought

    Google CEO blurted out what we all know (that tech moves at 3 times faster than other business sectors, who in turn, are 3X than the government). We are analog-built e.g. eating,  buying and thinking habits, while techies thought processing power is on a different plane e.g. Cold-War B53 bomb in TX is finally being disassembled and junked. A…