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

  • strip tease

    A Canadian lady, on her insurance-paid leave for mental distress, walked into a bar. Not just any bar, but a male strip tease bar. And she posted her excursion in Facebook to share with “friends”. Among the uninvited  “friends” was the Insurance adjuster. So, her insurance checks stop coming. Reason: “we have joy, we have…

  • Forced realities

    “the Network Effect of Nations”. Brazil, the “B” in BRIC, is on course to be number 5 by 2014 according to the Economist. http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14845197&source=most_commented So, it’s not just the International Olympic Committee which noticed Brazil Rising. Nor is it seen only as the  corn basket of the world (When I hear Brazil, immediately popped to…

  • Gatsby in China Beach

    I thought the USS New York was cool until I read about ex-refugee came back as US Naval Commander in China Beach. http://www.omantribune.com/index.php?page=news&id=58579&heading=Asia Same waters, similar vessels, but context and crew have changed. Just like what we read today about a school teacher walking students on a day field trip to former East Germany. What…

  • Smart brand

    Given everything that has been going on, recent news that Ford turned the corner on North American market was quite remarkable. Ford, as American as Coca Cola and apple pie, has done a number of things right: – it cross-pollinated ideas and markets (Smart in US vs Fiesta in Europe) – it stuck out while…

  • California Dreaming

    TIME spotlights California on its cover this week. As a country, California would be with the G8 ( between Italy and Brazil, thus displacing BRIC with CRIC  i.e. California, Russia, India and China). Yet it has no world-class soccer team (despite having in-shored Beckham) just yet. That’s said, it is one of the brownest States…

  • Load balancing

    A few years back, we got headlines like “women made strides with Nobel prizes“. And I remember hearing our shared winner of Economics said she studied ways which societies managed to share work load, from fisheries to farming. I assumed she was trying to crack the “non-zero sum” code, or something similar to Network Theory…

  • low-emission Recession

    The Law of Unintended Consequences kicks in: we got 25% lower in carbon emission this past year, and maybe lower gas prices toward year-end. Extra cash for Christmas shopping: kids need shoes. Nation leaders are flying in to NY to attend a Summit on the Environment. Big boys (and powerful women) club. Hope they represent…

  • Learner-in-Chief

    If my memory serves me right, both First Ladies Bush, and their husbands read to school children (Ex-President G W Bush was sitting at one of those school chairs when he first heard about 9/11.) So it is hard for me to understand the uproar about President Obama’s Back-to-School speech. How can one protest something…

  • Spent

    http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/477965/Lotto-winner-Callie-Rogers-reveals-hell-her-pound19m-fortune-brought.html You can’t handle the truth! Or blew 3 million dollars of lottery winning on booze, boobs and bags of white powder. What a boyfriend the 16-year-old lottery winner hangs out with. Meanwhile, another couple from Tokyo win the Tango contest, leaving the Argentinians in the dust (another couple from Colombia win Second place). Now,…

  • Red lanterns

    There is a story on BBC news about an Indian engineer who complains that he only married thrice: “why would the Muslims have all the wives, and me, a Hindu, cannot have multiple marriages” he vented his apparent frustration. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8224746.stm Truth be told, he was confirmed to have been married at least six times, concurrently.…