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

  • the Invisibles

    They are out there, sleeping in street corners, behind dumpsters, in the park and parking lot. They move about collecting bottles and cans, junk and juice. We have trained our eyes to tune them out, to ignore their pleas and pitches. We certainly don’t read their signs. We already knew, since it’s written on cardboard…

  • From Co-worker to Co-llaborator

    Some workplace didn’t even get to that phase. People just share a parking lot, a refrigerator and maybe a Christmas Party. Meanwhile, you can collaborate with  people miles apart, in different languages and time zones. Welcome to the new work place. MNC’s have gone through this phase. From relocation to repatriation. Employees got shifted around, to…

  • Long Winding Road

    To your door…… I woke up to a Friday. Not any Friday. But a birthday Friday. Long and winding road. Like a graph, your life can be “manipulated” to make it a more positive-trending (not Bell-shaped). Depends on how you look at it. People have said that President Obama looks older than when he first…

  • The undercurrent

    Got jolted last night. 4.1 shock. And this morning, some more aftershocks. It reminds me we share a vulnerable surface: ozone layer all around and a sea of lava underneath. While we receive pictures of Mars surface, we are reminded of Earth surface as well. It takes some getting used to, living in California. But…

  • Confidence

    2.5 per cent. That’s US growth figure. Enough? Confident? Could be better? I am glad we are growing even when it feels like we are running in place. Perception vs Reality. Like how they feel now at Microsoft, at Yahoo. Even at RIM and Facebook. Something is missing. Mojo? Passion and Pride. Exuberance and Exhilaration.…

  • Sudden Dream

    If you dropped everything and listened to all the casual remarks, you would be paralyzed. The current economy is like an elephant, perceived by four blind men: it’s going to get better, it’s like a wave form, a V-shape, a downward cyclical. They could illustrate and demonstrate. They could even persuade. But who is to…

  • Connect and Respect

    I often go first to Home Page on LinkedIn to see who is connecting with whom. The Network Effect assumes people are inherently decent, deserving respect and reciprocity. Society continues to work on that basis. Not random shooting, nor indiscriminate mass slaughter. We have learned invaluable lessons in collaboration: WWII, internet peering, crowd-sourcing and job networking. We…

  • On being a sidekick

    I was born late into the fold. My brother and sister had already been in college when I arrived. So I grew up watching “chinese fire drill” around the dinner table: Dad chasing brother, mom trying to intervene and my sister, w/nothing to do, joining the commotion. It’s like Chevy Chase‘s National Lampoon Vacation in Europe, caught…

  • Fragmented and segmented

    Marketers have had a field day over the last few decades: market fragmented and segmented. The former is a reality in our pluralistic society. The later, careful study and strategy to go after niche markets. Microtrend covers this very topic: knitting, teen markets etc…as long as the niche constitutes 1% of the total mass market. It’s a…

  • Monday-morning quarterbacking

    We can’t change history, but we can sure learn from it. Just view training film, freezeframing it, and nail down some take-aways. What did we do wrong? why? what did we fail to do? Where? Avoid assigning blame. Move forward. America is all about the future. Sarah who? Sandusky who? Just do it (BTW, Nike removed…