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: Thailand

  • disposable people

    Industrial society once allowed to run its full course leaves behind many casualties: pollution, typhoons, unemployment and crime. Kids with early exposure to the I pad and I phone, turn near-sighted if not bi-focal. Adults with easy access to porn (free or paid) found real organic relationship something of a burden if not boredom. Back…

  • On “Fraction of a Whole”

    We are not invited into this dysfunctional family of three generations, all 750 pages of it. Crime fiction, social commentary and extremely hilarious saga. I stayed up late last night for its racing conclusion. A year and a half ago, I read Freedom by Franzen. As engrossing as Fraction of a Whole. This family questioned everything, but centrally,…

  • Joy of randomness

    We move between chaos and control. For those who experience Saigon traffic, the dance takes it to another level: randomness. A tour bus made its final stop in front of a hotel. Tourists stepped down, immediately, with cameras (little did they know, traffic like this is all too common). Rain and randomness. Control and chaos, coexist. That’s just one aspect…

  • Museum of Loss

    If you sneaked in the back street of Independence Palace here in Saigon, you would find  Cafe 30-4, named after that fateful day. Most of us have seen that 1975 tank-crashing-gate photo. But from the vantage point of the Cafe where I sat yesterday, I could only see people playing tennis and tourists walking about trying…

  • Vietnam’s outsourcing factory

    I have heard about TMA Solutions new building in Quang Trung Software Park, but I have never got a chance to stop by, until yesterday. 1,200-strong, TMA begins to look like an army of engineers (my friend and guide showed me a beehive behind the building, after we had toured their lobby where Vietnam‘s historical artifacts…

  • Oil-and-water economies

    David Brooks of the NYTimes had a piece about the US economy which he coined as “mid-life-crisis economy that needs  to be rejuvenated”. That’s oil. Here in Vietnam, I found quite a contrast. Young demographic, young economy that goes no where but up. Community Colleges, Trade and Vocational schools, English classes. One by one, they…

  • ICT talent in a flat world –

    re-post from 2011. This past year, things are getting heated up with “friend-shoring” chip manufacturing with Biden’s visit. ________________________________________________________________________________ If it hadn’t been for the slightly warm temperature, the water bottle that bore “QTSP” (Quang Trung Software Park) and the simulcast headsets, I would have thought I was back in 2005 at  a similar conference in…

  • Still inflamed

    When I witnessed the monk set fire on himself some forty years ago, the streets of Saigon had less traffic than it does now. An American photographer got words that there might be something happening’.  By day’s end, morning in Washington, his shot sent shock waves over the wire, as flammable as the content it…

  • Faith in humanity

    A graduate of Penn State, I related well to the scenes from the Deer Hunter, set in an industrial town of Pennsylvanian. Smokestacks on the slope, familiar faces and friends and the “Welcome Home” sign for returning soldiers from a distant war. But unlike other wars before and since, this one was controversial.  It showed when the main character,…

  • Sand bag Body bag

    A Thai monk needs to lay more sandbags to stem the flow of water, while Libyan fighters can now lay down their guns since the Colonel was finally in the bag, body bag. One country exports rice, the other oil. Back in 1997, Thailand’s rising real estate bubble nearly took down neighboring Asian Tigers with it. This time, its rising waters will surely drive…