TED Community » Lace Nguyen

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Fingerstyle guitar, Filmmaking, Rubik cubing, Writing

An idea worth spreading

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs

HOW TO BE ALONE

A video by filmmaker, Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter, Tanya Davis.

People don't know that I'm good at

pulling allnighters.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +182.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A comment on Conversation: What is the most overstated / understated topic from or about your country.

  Dec 6 2011: Okay I get why Americans are the loudest to cry about their government. I live in Vietnam, fyi it's a communist country.
  
  Here you go.
  Most overstated topics: Ha Long Bay, abundance of natural resources. The petroleum sector contributes practically 25% of GDP -- and they take pride in exporting crude oil. It's dangerous to define "wealth" that way.
  Understated: freedom of speech (obviously, "understated topic"). Facebook got blocked here. Wondering if anyone from China here want to speak.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Charlie Todd: The shared experience of absurdity

  Dec 3 2011: High five!
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: We can learn by exchanging and discussing our own lists of "10 Things I Know to be True."

  Nov 20 2011: Well, my list is kinda more personal:
  
  1. Done is better than perfect
  
  2. Everybody goes through an identity crisis
  
  3. I'm a left-handed, a hardcore left-handed
  
  4. There's nothing wrong with secretly dreaming of moving to New York
  
  5. How to overcome writer's block: the ass-applied-to-chair method
  
  6. All nighters are overrated
  
  7. The media is portraying women as sex objects
  
  8. Airports are spacious and welcoming. Twenty-something girls feel cosmopolitan missing them.
  
  9. There ARE particles faster than light.
  
  10. The world is about to change.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: The world lost one of its greatest visionaries tonight. A man who made a real difference. What would you say to Steve Jobs, if you could?

  Oct 6 2011: You know that scene in Harry Potter where they all raise their wands and the tips are illuminated? we should all do that but with our iphones and ipods.

• A comment on Conversation: What is the single most important question that the youth of this era need to ask themselves?

  Sep 8 2011: What will there be in your Room 101?

• A comment on Talk: Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

  Aug 12 2011: As a Vietnamese student when traveling abroad I often encounter exclamations about my nationality like 'Oh the sorrow of war! I'm sorry for all the agent orange victims and mothers who lost 10 sons to the battles." Often I would be at a loss for what to say, now I have the American Psycho bomb (No, I'm not serious).
  
  It will take decades for nations to break stereotypes, and the struggle for identity probably requires greater effort than the past wars.

• A comment on Talk: Jennifer 8. Lee hunts for General Tso

  Aug 12 2011: What strikes me is that she CHOSE to deliver opinions about small but powerful brands in such an hilarious, casual talk. Now I really want to be a well-traveled NY Times reporter.

• A comment on Conversation: Would you ever choose to be homeless?

  Aug 5 2011: Erm I'm definitely misquoting but this blog entry is so beautiful:
  
  "Let’s DO talk coffee.
  I travel a lot. I haven’t had a stable home ever since I was very little, after 14 years old I changed so many places I stopped counting at around roughly 27. And there have been many nights, many countries, many different languages, many cities, many streets. Most of the time when you live like this, you don’t have many friends, people forget you fast and those who want to love you don’t do it because they feel you’ll be just a passenger in their lives. So nights pass, days too, you meet people, forget some, run to catch a bus, try to remember this word in that language, you run across Terminal D with the suitcase in one hand, the ticket in the other and a carton coffee cup between your teeth, dangerously swinging about a coffee grown cold since half an hour ago.
  
  Someone’s car, a stop at a gas station at 5 in the morning in the middle of nowhere, grab a cup. An airplane flying above the ocean at night, you call for the stewardess to get you, if she can, a cup of black, bitter one. A crowded street. Waiting at the travel agency. Working over time. Working 2 jobs. Balancing a pile of books with a cup on top of them. Writing, writing many words. Here, there and everywhere. And in some silent moment you sit waiting for the airplane, it’s late at night and your flight is still 5 hours away and you sit there alone, on top of your suitcase, staring at your coffee cup and you know this is all you got right now. Sure, it’s just coffee. But it’s funny how it’s the only thing in the world that gives a damn about you at 5 a.m."
• +5

  A comment on Conversation: Alright everyone, what big and crazy or small, sustainable things will you try for 30 days?

  Jul 25 2011: Has anyone done the Tumblr 30 days writing challenge? It starts by writing 15 facts about yourself, concludes with 'What have you learned about yourself in the last month?' on day 29 and 'Who are you?' on day 30. Recommend it to anyone who wants to gain insight into themselves or simply writes for fun. This is the greatest thing about keeping a blog: writing your diary with the desire to be overheard.

• A comment on Conversation: Aren't transhumanists committing the Jurassic Park fallacy?

  May 8 2011: I think the original point is whether technology will outrun our wisdom, and what would happen then. Scientists are too blinded by how to create generations of transhumanists, but failed to see how that society, full of gaps - including the modern 'genetic gap' - would function. Who's in charge? The problem is first, the brave new world undermines society's sense of-value, when talents, intelligence and creativity are not acquired by self-training, but the mass are not Delta and we're not conditioned to accept that disparity, which threatens social structure. Back to Richardson's point, this scary future will not happen if we don't go that fast in creating cyborgs but upgrade the general standards of human beings first. Second, while accelerating evolution, we are building a society without history, without the trials-and-errs of its own, whose collapse would be disastrous. By compressing the course of evolution into a handful of years, I doubt, we are jumping out of the current equipoise.