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

  • Goodbye Saigon

    Last night I said goodbye to a good friend. He was going back to California. We sat and listened to Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World (Vietnamese singer but if you closed your eyes you would think the black legend was there in person). I recalled a scene from Good Morning Vietnam whose subjective shot…

  • My Saigon

    Like Trinh Cong Son‘s Diem Xua, I got my own imprints of what  Saigon was like. Especially on Sundays, like today. Shaded streets, short strolls and sweet smiles. Who needs all the executive shirt with designers’ emblem on it. Instead of shirt, just smile even when you are not on camera. “Cuoi len di em oi” Just…

  • Motherhood, Madness and Meditation

    Seeing a photo of a grey-hair guy, on bike and  backpack, riding home with bouquet of flowers in the front basket, reminded me of International Day of Women. There is no doubt, according to an Australian’s observer, that women are bosses here in Vietnam. Tiger Mom. To punctuate this point, I was sitting at an outdoor…

  • Survivor’s guilt

    We have heard uplifting stories about the human spirits, survivors at seas and in the wilderness. But the other side of the coin is survivor’s guilt. This reaction is just an extension of that loneliness as portrayed in Cast Away. The story goes like this. Three guys survived a crash and found themselves on an…

  • Saigon, smoke and smog

    You got to be stronger, you got to be wiser…. Cigarette companies are employing sales girls to peddle their tobacco here: buy two get a lighter etc… The girls, all well cast to fit the bill. Sampling a product, hooked for life. Best way to break in a market is via Direct Sales: Likeability, Commitment and…

  • Museum of Loss

    If you sneaked in the back street of Independence Palace here in Saigon, you would find  Cafe 30-4, named after that fateful day. Most of us have seen that 1975 tank-crashing-gate photo. But from the vantage point of the Cafe where I sat yesterday, I could only see people playing tennis and tourists walking about trying…

  • Saigon Tech Talent

    It could have been a waiting scene at Acoustics, Saigon Rock Alley. Except for the instruments and the bands. They were CEO’, CTO and Venture Capitalist. Not Bar Camp, nor Web Wednesday. It’s Mobile Monday, held on Thursday night. The cool, the calm and the co-ed. They were all there. Web to Mobile and back…

  • Rain and tears

    In the three months that I was in Vietnam, I have seen more rain and tears than 3 years in the US. When it rains, it pours. Then, it all of a sudden clears up. Branches and trees start to breathe and “branch out”. The tears’ part came from funerals that have a way to…

  • Middle-Income Trap

    The phenomenon known as Middle-Income Trap is alive and well in SouthEast Asia. Not all boats rise with the water. Contentment sets in and gets in the way of progress. Countries like the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are  in this trap. From a global perspective, they could do better if getting over the hump. Yet…

  • Recognize the face

    Machine is getting smarter (facial recognition). In “It might be you” Stephen Bishop sings about “if I found the  place, would I recognize the face“. The face he has waited for all of his life. Babies could hear before birth (the logic behind classical music during pregnancy). Then psychologists theorize about us looking for that first trusted…