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: Pope

  • The racist that is us

    The world mourns for a beacon that was Mendela. It rains in the stadium and inside the heart. Racism was an ingrained system up to the Civil War, fought in World War, struggled in the 60’s and onto the 90’s in Apartheid. We simply don’t like color folks, first in speech, than in hush-hush, now only…

  • Simplicity and humility

    I saw on the  news that the new Pope inspires a group of high school students to reenact “feet washing“. Now, that’s refreshing (no punt intended!) to find news (besides kids shooting other kids, bullying them, DUI, Springfield groper etc…) with some positive twists. I have read about the Jesuits, Alexandre de Rhodes in particular, who worked from a…

  • No Spring attached

    Having lived in coastal cities for quite some time, I forgot what’s like to wait for Spring. We need Winter as a set up for Spring.  Winter-Spring contrast is more striking than that of Summer-Fall. We also anticipated Spring more than Fall (some even wish for endless summers). Vietnamese literature and lyrics (Gold music) nevertheless, serenade Fall and…

  • Forwarding

    Tonight we turn the clock forward. Day light saving time. At least, for once, we can advance time, unlike other occasions when waiting for a test result might seem like an eternity. From Ulysses we found this timeless advice: “Hold on to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past”. It matters that we exist and…

  • Most spoken “Hello”

    We will have said that word, Hello, for the millionth time before quietly slipping into the night. When the telephone was first used, Alexander Graham Bell suggested “What is asked?” for greetings. Finally, we settled for Hello. It acknowledges the other, and ourselves. Greetings as bridges, not barriers. And not just word. We look the…

  • 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…