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: Pentagon Papers

  • Ole friends as mirrors

    We finally met, at Starbucks. 3 classmates. 39 years and a huge ocean in between. We could have just waited. Starbucks is opening up in Vietnam soon. But there we were: the skinny, the fat and the ugly (me). Past, present, past. Time interlacing. No preset agenda. No chronological order, or Robert’s rules of order.…

  • Bumpy boat ride

    Stories of tourist boats that capsized, ship builder that went default on loan payment, and fishing boats got intimidated by a gigantic neighbor, kept coming out of Vietnam recently. When you live along a coast that spans from San Diego to North of Vancouver, sea-related incidents are bound to happen. The latest dispute centered in the…

  • Conversant program

    If it weren’t for people like Shawn, I wouldn’t be where I am today. You see, Shawn was a shy Penn State student of  the Horticulture department who wanted to volunteer his time. It turned out that the Foreign Student Conversant Program matched us together in our first year of college. That year as it…

  • Moving wall

    Vietnam Wall that is. Coming to the square near you. They did not reconstruct the WWII concentration camps on wheel. But they did it with Vietnam. And on June 13th, the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda will release the full version of the Pentagon Papers, originally commissioned by then DoD Secretary McNamara. Portion of the “white…

  • Recession consolidation

    As soon as I got a copy of Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report from Amazon, I put it away, for closure. We got similar “reports” such as the Pentagon Papers, the 9/11 Commission Report etc…just for record keeping There have been many levels of coping with this financial tsunami: million-dollar homes selling for half-price, giant…

  • Being Here-Being There

    “Being There” was first released years ago. Peter Sellers portrayed an illiterate gardener who had been walled in all his adult life. His only window to the world was through the TV screen. Hence his speech and demeanor replicated sound bites and screen gestures (awaiting for a “cut” to commercials). Shirley McClain played a society…

  • Human ingenuity

    When you see population growth which doesn’t equate with starvation, it’s a testimony to our human ingenuity. The US has less than 2 percent of its labor force in agriculture, yet no one is without a hamburger (even when it’s thrown out by McDonald). From Malthus to Moore, we have moved up the value chain.…