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: Vietnam War

  • To beat a dead horse

    Even to this day, people still using the Vietnam War as a figure of speech: “Syria will be another US‘ Vietnam” etc… It was meant to be the new Boogeyman. To scare off the children. To conjure bad imagery and bring back nightmares. In Rambo, Stallone’s rare line was “where they call Hell, I call…

  • Number is up!

    Mr Tarr, head of the Vietnam draft lottery, has died at age of 88 in Walnut Creek, CA. A Nixon appointee, he headed Selective Service in 1970. He heard a lot of “Hell No, We Won’t Go”. And now, his number is up. I wonder how those who survive him, still lingering in the Canadian…

  • Isolation, interaction and interpretation

    One person to himself. One or more chatting, arguing, agreeing. Then, a multi-lingual gathering, with or without a headset, with a bilingual person in the middle, trying to transport the weight behind loaded words. In Chinese Zodiac, Jackie Chan tried to smooth out intercultural tension by giving an opposite translation from the intended message. We also…

  • Romancing Saigon

    Good luck! Bit it’s better  for you to wait until the scorching heat subsides, before you have a chance. There are layers to Saigon, like you would peeling an onion. Cafe Sua Da prices fluctuate from one street corner to the next. On the main tourist strip, you still find Zippo lighters and even dog tags…

  • Reflections of my life

    ” I am changing everything” …Like Holden Caulfield, catcher in the Rye. “Oh I don’t want to die..”. The future that I once fret is my current present. “All my sorrows”….were for nothing. They said 90% of our worries didn’t materialize.  Yet we keep worrying. Like a plague. Dec 21st or 23rd (Mayan Calendar). Just…

  • Repo and Retro

    We don’t want the former, and wish to collect the latter. In our age of mass production, supplysiders push consumption to the  point of writing up bad loans, hence Repo. Then, and this happened to me once, products came out of the assembly line all look alike: I once mistakenly opened an identical rental car…

  • 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…

  • Closure

    Fact 1: I went to Penn State. Fact 2: I felt ashamed and defensive (no punt intended) at the same time Fact 3: I am not alone in this. There are more stuff to be worried about these days: immediate and long-term future. Already a book was out (at 50% off) about Penn State and…

  • Saigon’s nearest beach

    From Saigon, with Russian-made fast boat, you can be in Vung Tau (literally Ship Harbor) in an hour and a half. I made that trip yesterday. Poor man’s vacation. Peace-time R&R. The neighborhood used to be a hang-out place for GI’s, Australian, and every major news agents and double agents. Now the fight has moved on to…

  • This side of the curtain

    It would have been stuff taken from” The spy who came in from the cold.” For three months now, I have lived in the alley behind the local police station. My big brother would have fainted just to learn about it. He is a pharmacist, retiring, but still goes to work per diem. He was…