Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

recent posts

about

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: Turkey

  • Spending spree

    Right about now. If the economy is going to pick up, authorities should push spending. Credit card spending. Gadgets are out. Electronic devices miniaturized. Skirts cut shorter even when it says Winter Clothes. Victoria Secret pulled Native American outfit from broadcast. Planned controversy or not, we don’t know. We just know that things are back…

  • Becoming yourself

    Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize Winner, told a story (in the Black Book) about a writer whose wife left him for no reason at all. Restless and sleepless (and perhaps facing writer’s block) he imagined living out his former single self ( the status he now found himself in ). After a while, the mind played trick…

  • Neither East Nor West

    Orhan Pamuk must be born of “Other Colors” and in the “Snow” who later built his “Museum of Innocence“. He got the Nobel Prize for his unique perspective and perception on being in the middle of things: Istanbul. Pamuk invited us back to his childhood, to view changes through a child’s eyes “when we watched the…

  • Thanksgiving, tradition and technology

    While almost everyone in the US gathers around the traditional meal, here in Vietnam, some people come up with a way to marry tradition with technology: ancestor worship online. Its highway to eternity has 10,000 plots, already booked for burial and continued ceremonial service online (to accommodate overseas relatives and those who have resettled to urban…

  • On becoming

    We are diamond in rough cuts. 7 billion of  us. The stats show the costs of raising a child in the US at roughly $200,000.  With educational score cards showing flat line, while other countries are on the up tick (albeit Shanghai focused on rote learning and test preparation), policy makers might have to offshore…

  • transitory stage

    I once got a 12-hour lay over in S Korea. The airport boasts itself as ” a world best airport hub”, w/ picture of a janitor-on-duty in men’s bathroom. Every hour, there were a  procession of some sort, complete with traditional gowns and ceremonial hats. Passengers-turn-shoppers (the airport was designed as a Mall) paused and…