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 Times

  • Switching the script

    On film set, writer is often called out on short notice to fix the dialogue. Something is better left unsaid or sounded odd when in “live” context. In life, we can’t retrace our steps to switch the script. It’s live, and happened once only. There lies the importance of getting the right words first time around. Another…

  • 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…

  • Personality as motivator

    Besides fun, fear and need for recognition, each of us is motivated by an unique set of triggers. Some are expressive e.g. talk it out to then realize what they think. Analytical people, however, weigh the pros and cons before opening their mouths. Amiable people just empathize, feely-touchy and are good listeners Social folks love…

  • Self-decoding

    Our gene distribution and mutation have a lot in common (survival instinct, reproduction, empathy etc…). But from there, each of us is different and unique: some poets, others warriors or both. Haruki Murakami is both a writer and a runner (100 km race).  Richard Blanco, who will recite at Obama’s Inauguration, is both an engineer and…

  • 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,…

  • Crying girl

    I walked by a shop today and I saw a girl holding a knife, crying. She was peeling onion for the restaurant. Artificially induced tears. Not triggered by sad emotion. Real, nevertheless. It made me appreciate behind-the-scene people (since I happened to have breakfast with real onion, the same kind this girl was peeling). Nickel-and-dime…

  • Least resistance

    Organizations and people in them tend to take this path. Status quo. Business as usual. The comfort of routine. The predictable, mechanical rhythm. Makes the world go round. Until we drop out. One person at a time. Dust comes to dust. But the morgue still sends the bills. Please pay by a certain date, or else,…

  • Learning by failing

    NYT Opinion Page wants to debate about being informed vs being educated. With the dcline of Newsweek, readers have moved on to Google News (ironically, today celebrates National Print Day) and other mobile content. Short bursts: Obama won the debate. The Giants got chemistry. We will someday think that a tweet, 140 characters, is too long. Just like the…

  • Tech talk

    NYT‘s David Brooks zoomed out to reveal the evolution of our social philosophy, from care for the Soul, to Personality then eventually to Decision-making (data deluge). This is the age of the intelligent machine. Massaging data. Algorithm and Analytic. No wonder, machine language also creeps into our daily speech. Let’s try to pin them down. First we google…

  • Imponderables

    Dead Valley is known to be the hottest place on Earth. Yet millions have traveled pass there on their way to Las Vegas. Venture Capitalists are also well versed in what’s so called “valley of death” i.e. when a start-up moved pass its honey-moon stage, and simply cannot sustain the burnt rate. Yet people keep trying. Then,…