Thang Nguyen 555
Cultures on Collision Course
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Tag: tech and multi-cultural marketing
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Here in Vietnam, I have to remind myself I am back to a world where you cannot simply meet an individual, as understood in Western sense. An example of this was in Good Morning Vietnam. Robin William, the DJ, was asking a Vietnamese school teacher out on a movie date. Guess who showed up? Yes,…
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Local singers here command higher caches seven nights a week by bar hopping. But occasionally, like last night, they showed up at an open-air concert to entertain the mass. Sandwiched between numbers were the Viet-Kieu comedian couple as special guests. They talked about how the US economy barely stayed out of the red. And of…
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By now, you can still see a few weather-beaten cyclos around albeit restricted to tourist quarters. I still remember the sound of horse carriage in the streets of old Saigon. My kid will be lucky if she knows what a cyclo is. She knows Google though. Paperless and painless search. Now with semantic search. My…
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Obviously French. Not too obvious that the “tutoye” is permeating a culture predominantly focused on the collective Nous. Weeknight, karaoke with live accompaniment. Weekends, professional singers, one of whom singer/owner I heard came back from France (probably under dual citizenship). This is a hybrid of crowd-sourcing and the old Command-control stage craft. It seems to work.…
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Working for the man, every night and day… big wheel keeps on turnin, River boat dining provides another view of Saigon Water front. Hotel Majestic, Sheraton and Sun Wah guests look at you (dining on the river boat), while you look at them. Tourists are still coming in drove and enjoying a night out. From…
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You have to try it. It’s has Vietnamese spelling all over it. Relics of Colonial France adopted as national past time. I have seen coffee stand pop up in most unlikely places: Palawan, Bataan, Cote d’Ivoire, Virginia, Lousiana and of course, California. The ice are crushed. And somehow the condensed milk and dark coffee created…
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It started with Gucci and LV. More will be coming to test the warers, from McDonald to KFC , from Starbucks to Burger King. Everybody is into location, location, location. I look at the city as if it were a big fairground, where interested parties are staking out their prime real estate. Flag and flip. Both…
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Tocqueville saw in America a country full of contradictions. He could say the same with Vietnam: people are moving up the Maslow scale, but some want to leap-frog security step i.e. basic needs to self-esteem need. Nouveau riches switch companions like Hollywood celebs. Forbes or Swiss bank lists almost 200 Millionaires (USD). Everything is bought…
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People like myself are trickling back. Few are famous (singers, politicians). Others aren’t. First we played tourist. Then entrepreneur. And finally worker bees. Success stories are far and few in between. But the Heineken are popped open. And the show must go on. No turning back. The engine of consumerism. The Genie is officially out…
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It’s in a park. Penguin, Cambridge, and Oxford titles were available. And the English schools. Lots of them. Young Saigonese read and buy everything in print: Korean-Vietnamese dictionaries, and Almanach (French spelling) of Vietnamese Women History. It’s the 6th Annual Book Fair in Vietnam. I don’t feel much different from the UCLA book fair I frequently attended.…
Thang Nguyen 555 