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: tech and multi-cultural marketing

  • Both sides now

    ABC News last broadcast of 2009 featured some celebrities we have lost, among them, one of its own: Peter Jennings. Peter’s most memorable quote:: “when I look at a coin, instinctively, I want to flip it to see the other side”. He used to take a bunch of books to read on plane rides, according…

  • On being a foreigner

    Train, plane or automobile, we all try to get somewhere, point A to point B. Far enough to be looked at as “foreigner”. The Economist has a piece on this subject to highlight the decade of globalization. http://www.economist.com/world/international/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15108690&source=hptextfeature I was surprised to find Vietnam, especially in HCMC and Hanoi, to be very cosmopolitan i.e. a…

  • less goods 4 laggards

    The radio is urging late shoppers to get to the stores “because there might not be much inventory to choose from”. Attention “laggard” shoppers! Those 5AM “running of the bulls” Black Fridays left behind only returned merchandise i.e. odd-size or irregular. Good news for merchants! Bad news for shoppers. With average birth rate down from…

  • creative disruption

    Innovator’s Dilemma is when incumbents grow complacent and are challenged by emerging forces that disrupt and destroy them. Gary Hamel in The Future of Management urges constant reinvention of management principles e.g. decision-making be pushed to the outer edges.  The point is, leaders are listeners, not lecturers. That’s hard! For centuries, we are conditioned to sit passively, and take…

  • 2010, nice ring to it!

    Next week, we will pause each time we write 01/01/10. 2010 has a nice ring to it.  Rounding out the decade, a turbulent one. For those in Tech, such as Amazon, what a decade it was: boom-to-bust-to-branch out. If I had magic, I would reset the clock. That way, we can charge out of the…

  • BYOD

    The Economist Christmas Special was about America, a Ponzi scheme that works. http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15108634&source=hptextfeature It projects 1 Billion Americans by 2100. With its many niches, America seems to offer a bit of everything, for everybody: hunting, boozing, gambling, church-going and freedom to protest. I remember my first Christmas, living humbly in a cold basement. But I…

  • Box, bin or Bart

    People who have a home to get to are trying every which way: train, plane, and automobile (Remember John Candy and Steve Martin?). For those who are homeless to begin with (and Thanksgiving dinner at the Mission was already behind us): box, bin or Bart will do. Prince William wants to “rough” it, to develop…

  • Discounting Decade

    Let’s just pretend for a moment we are teleported back to Y2K. We would be so preoccupied by the 00 (stock up on water bottles and duck tapes). And we would rationalize that’s it was going to be doomsday anyway, so let’s charge up for Christmas shopping, drive those SUV’s and envy Hummers (that, I…

  • My SAAB story

    OK, I took a picture standing next to the convertible SAAB I won, but I took the cash option ( for grad student loan). Now, this brand, along with Pontiac and Saturn, will soon be relics of the past. We have a lot of In’s/Out’s at the end of this decade: ABC new anchor, BoA…

  • Bakersfield!?!

    Neither flower field nor strawberry field, just oil field. Bakersfield is left of I-5N which I have always paid extra attention not to veer the car to, on my way to San Jose. Recent stats found it among the top cities which have pay increase for college grads (El Paso, Omaha, Des Moines are also…