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: United States

  • Losing one’s self

    In a recent NYT op-ed, David Brooks summed up prevailing graduation themes: find yourself, live to the fullest, be passion-focused etc.. instead of losing yourself in solving others’ problem. Even my kid knows that time passes more quickly when you are absorbed in a task. When you lose yourself, you end up finding it. Before graduating, I…

  • Fallible leadership

    Former Google CEO, in a recent interview, admitted that he was too busy to see Social Network coming. Former Microsoft CEO, at the turn of the century, admitted he too missed the significance of the Internet. The Vatican, after years of floundering, decided to settle sexual abuse cases ( as of this edit, Pope Francis…

  • Moving wall

    Vietnam Wall that is. Coming to the square near you. They did not reconstruct the WWII concentration camps on wheel. But they did it with Vietnam. And on June 13th, the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda will release the full version of the Pentagon Papers, originally commissioned by then DoD Secretary McNamara. Portion of the “white…

  • What’s eating the man up inside

    Instead of more career choices, he now faces 20 choices of jeans. People are debating about a gender-free society (painting nail polish on his son’s toes). When he finally got his tie collection under control, they went “business casual” on him (Steve Ballmer couldn’t cope with this). Even though it says “Facebook”, most people just…

  • Paradox, dilemma and irony

    Paradox: doomsday for all is not coming, doomsday for one, anytime (especially when you are old). Dilemma: too big to fail, the book then the movie (might not make it big at the box office). Irony: got to have a job to land a job (hence, the growth of internship i.e. free  labor). Underneath it…

  • The Vietnamese pleasantry

    A few days ago, we were entertained with a lavish meal, of all things, in a  wedding banquet hall. Being the first customers that evening, we ate in this huge wide open space. One by one, the dishes arrived. To me, that’s a lot of cholesterol in one shot. But I couldn’t get enough of hospitality…

  • Census in our mind

    1976. Washington D.C. Belt-bottom pants and boom-boxes. The city was predominantly black. 2011 Washington D.C. Gentrified, half-black and half others.And that’s just one stat in the 2010 data. Asian population in Arizona, Texas and elsewhere like Philadelphia should surprise any demographer. While America went to war in Europe, European ended up at America’s shores. Then…

  • Lehrer and Hart

    The list goes on and on. As if they could fit another Vietnam War memorial wall, but this one, for broadcasting. Someone observes that on campus, the dorm lounge during news hour is a quietest place to make a phone call. I still remember when Peter Jennings, Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson  shared the ABC newscast. NBC…

  • My Japanese tutors

    Ishiguro, Fukuyama, Kawasaki and Murakami. I read Ishiguro in bed, watched Fukuyama on Charlie Rose, watch Kawasaki interview on his latest book Enchantment and dream on with characters in Murukami’s novels. Multi-media tutors. They might look Asian, but speak and write perfect English. Best of both worlds. Like Singapore or Hongkong. Ishiguro penned beautiful prose and plot, that…

  • 3D and 4G

    At the most elementary level, we got the chip set. That is about to change, from “flat like a sheet of paper”” to 3D chip, announced Intel (which made Applied Materials jump to its 3.9 Billion acquisition of Varian Semiconductor to keep pace). Our world is about to change once again, not to the tune…