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

  • Yearning for the new

    The Year of the Cat. Al Stewart in white suit. Cyclical, eternal and in sync with nature. No “dominion over the land and seas” as in Western theocracy (in an ironic twist, outside my window, the work crew keeps digging, plowing, flattening and paving the sidewalks – one after another, from water to power, cable…

  • Use it

    Safeway doesn’t feel safe. Desert is now full of people ( from the media to law enforcement). Last weekend Arizona shooting reminds me of “Under The Banner of Heaven” which revealed the intersect of religious occult and gun culture in the region. It also highlights young people’s plight to make a name for themselves (in…

  • Calling on Leaders

    Mongolian Khan, upon his first day out of jail, jumped on the horse to lead his nation to new height. Lennon and Yoko still purchased full-page ad in the NYT to run the same poster as they did 40 years ago “WAR IS OVER, if you want it”. With the new digital order, thought-leaders emerged…

  • Viet-Am Third Migration

    First wave: 1975, 4 “ports of entry”: Arkansas, California, Florida and Pennsylvania. Second wave: 1978 -2008 South Westward to California and Texas. Third wave: joining everyone else during this Recession to the Lone Star State, where 8% unemployment still looks better than 12% and 10% in Florida and California, respectively. Part of the American Dream…

  • VINA MOUSE

    Last week, an op-ed in the NYT lamented the death of Disney dream in America. This week, they signed a multi-million dollar deal to build HappyLand in Long An, Vietnam. The dream doesn’t die. It simply moved offshore. Imagine you can tour both Cu Chi Tunnel and HappyLand in one full sweep. The new Vietnam…

  • From sleigh to moped

    http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2010/12/christmas_vietnam Ho, Ho, Ho in Ho Chi Minh City. Toys for tots, delivered by Santa on moped. When the US pulled out of Vietnam, it played “White Christmas” on Armed Forces radio. Now, it’s peace-time Vietnam, where people enjoy every bit of cotton and confetti used to decorate the city’s manger. I was there two…

  • Where have they gone?

    Subtitle “Time to remember”. When I was in high school, the consumer society began to take shape in Vietnam: beer, cheese, cigarettes, toothpaste and vinyl music albums. Then we moved on to AKAI tape. By the time I got to the US, the first item I purchased was a portable cassette recorder (to record music…

  • Forgetfulness is necessary

    In clinical terms: selective memory. Speak ill not of the dead, for instance. Auto-biography is another version of selective memory (before actual amnesia). For me, to see Dow Chemical opens a polymer and acrylic factory in Vietnam, roughly 40 years after Agent Orange got sprayed over the same landscape, is a great example of collective…

  • Halloween in Vietnam? A redundancy

    Young people are out in drove, that is, if they were not already on bikes, racing like mad on weekend nights. This time around, in costume. Halloween costume. In Vietnam, of all places. First, the masks trickled in at tourist and expat hot spots. Then, wider adoption is made possible by cheaper goods from next…

  • Telcom’s waste in Vietnam

    From beepers to printers, from pay phones to city-phones, Vietnam was in a hurry to leapfrog to latest in Telecommunication. After all, there are a lot of territories to be covered, even now, with 3-G. But some attempts stick, others faltered according to an article in Labor newspaper. http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v5/newsworld.php?id=538113 It stated that some rural households…