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: The New York Times

  • Crying girl

    I walked by a shop today and I saw a girl holding a knife, crying. She was peeling onion for the restaurant. Artificially induced tears. Not triggered by sad emotion. Real, nevertheless. It made me appreciate behind-the-scene people (since I happened to have breakfast with real onion, the same kind this girl was peeling). Nickel-and-dime…

  • 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…

  • Vietnam, next Hong Kong?

    On my first trip to Hong Kong summer 1981, I was taken in by the energy and entrepreneurial spirit there. A camera shop (pre-Iphone era) next to a watch shop (again, pre-Ipad era) next to an electronics store.  Shoppers from India, Europe, Australia were all there, bustling about. Double-deck buses (still under British colonial rule) moved…

  • Technology doesn’t sleep, but we do.

    I had my share of empty TV studio, that is, between broadcasts (6PM and 10PM). Now, there is no recoup time. We have evolved to Office 365, with servers resided in the “cloud” instead of the (telco) closets. Mobile working has evolved from CB radio, to Motorola brick phones, from Skypage to Skype chat. Cryptography moved from…

  • Long tail

    2,000 cars (Nano, by Tata) and $20 per gallon of gas? HP printer and ink model. Thin client, thick server. I got it, I got it! In the same vein, they should subsidize “Blu-ray” disc player, that way, more of us (late adopters) will get onboard quicker. Mid-summer! Beach time. But not innocence time. I…