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: Vietnam War

  • How can I tell her

    Lobo was hot in Vietnam during the 70’s. Decades later, on an American stage, his Vietnamese fans even invited him to perform live for music video. Just a simple man. “I love you too much to ever start liking you, so let’s just let the story kind an end…” The contradiction and dialectic – friend and…

  • Thu Thiem and Cu Chi

    Both have tunnels, but Thu Thiem‘s has just been built and visited mostly by Viet natives. Cu Chi tunnels however is a backpackers’ must-see. Going through Thu Thiem Tunnel, you feel like you were in Louisiana or Baltimore. It unveils the future of  Vietnam, where ferry workers now work as toll booth collectors. District 2 is…

  • Anchor kids

    Although “Last Men Out” tells a story about the last Marines on the last day of Vietnam, readers still learn a great deal about the Vietnamese “group culture”. Many workers of the former US  embassy were on the list to be “chopper” out (Operation Frequent Wind). It just so happened that the gardener of the embassy came…

  • In the mirror

    Among Dylan’s many memorable lines is “you don’t need the weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blow-in”. Even without the weatherman, we can feel that things are at a boiling point. Like in the movie “the Network”, people start to open their windows and bell out “I am mad like Hell, and…

  • Don’t jump the gun

    It started with interchangeable parts in a gun factory, then “re-engineering” in the auto-assembly plant to full automation (former Secretary of Labor Reich said that if workers lose their sense of optimism, then there is no replacement). In NY, the manufacturing sector employs 40% a century ago, now it stands at mere 4% (conversely, a…

  • Choppers that chop the seas

    The news of Premier Nguyen Cao Ky passed away brought back a long time passing. In my youth, the sound of hovering helicopters was as common as street vendors’ chants. On the war’s last day, ambassador, flag, ground-keepers, pilots and anything that moved, tried to get out to International Waters . Buses, barges and yes, choppers. Lone…

  • Attending my funeral

    The paper announced “a A student committed suicide for not passing Vietnam‘s first IBM-graded SAT“. So, my classmates showed up at my house the next morning for condolences. True story. Not having seen the column the day before, I was completely taken aback. Hence, my first exposure to bad journalism, and Vietnam’s first trial run…

  • Ole friends as mirrors

    We finally met, at Starbucks. 3 classmates. 39 years and a huge ocean in between. We could have just waited. Starbucks is opening up in Vietnam soon. But there we were: the skinny, the fat and the ugly (me). Past, present, past. Time interlacing. No preset agenda. No chronological order, or Robert’s rules of order.…

  • Bumpy boat ride

    Stories of tourist boats that capsized, ship builder that went default on loan payment, and fishing boats got intimidated by a gigantic neighbor, kept coming out of Vietnam recently. When you live along a coast that spans from San Diego to North of Vancouver, sea-related incidents are bound to happen. The latest dispute centered in the…

  • 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…