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: Vietnamese language

  • 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…

  • Start acting

    After the trilogy: Start seeing, start hearing and start thinking, I am on the roll. Behaviorists have debated whether action precedes attitude, or vice versa. Nike commands: JUST DO IT. Start acting. Some guy somewhere mustered his courage to ask for a girl’s hand. That girl after much deliberation, accepted. Boom! Action. We are conceived out of…

  • 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…

  • Celebrating Love in Saigon

    Consumer confidence is up. Spending is up. Cards, chocolate and crocodile (over beer). I thought it must be Christmas or Tet all over again. Hunting down a ticket for A House in the Alley took me to two theaters, with the only available seats at 11:20PM. Way pass my bedtime. Oh well, I tried. Supporting Vietnamese…

  • First, learn respect!

    After transitioning from a French elementary school to a Vietnamese middle-school, on my first day of school,  I saw “First learn respect, then learn literature”. My brother’s generation at the same school had been from the same mold (his classmates are still staying in touch). No wonder they showed up at my Mom’s funeral in a…

  • Watching Victor Vu’s film

    The Coke, (pop) corn and cinema. Heroes of Destiny. Boom, bang! karate kid! Justified violence (revenge). Boy meets girl, boy almost loses girl, boy gets girl in the end. Happy Ending. When the bewitched Empress released her grip, she broke the chain of self-perpetuated violence. It’s like cutting the credit card when you  are a…

  • Mom’s Ao Dai

    Mom’s Ao Dai

    When I saw a Vietnamese woman on motor bike with helmet, mask, sunglasses, messenger pouch, gloves and Ao-Dai steering her scooter while holding a baby on their way to the sitter, it brought back memories of Mom’s dress. She was a schoolteacher, deeply committed to and consistent in her multiple roles: mother, teacher, wife, daughter-in-law…

  • Team building

    I invited a new classmate to join our volleyball team. Thought I kill two birds with one stone: we could use a tall guy, and I couldn’t bear seeing him unfriended during recess. Turned out he couldn’t play well, but we got to be friends for life. We pitched in to buy a professional ball.…

  • Adventure in my homeland

    One of my earliest  collections was the Adventure of Tin-Tin. It was a roadmap for my adventure later in life, which took me to ten countries and roughly fifty cities in North America. But nothing had prepared me for an adventure in my homeland. Certain familiar elements still exist: Chemin de Fer, Ben Thanh Market and…

  • 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…