Signed, secured and laminated. My vaccine card. My pandemic passport. Years ago, it was the draft-deferral card. Times change. New world order, still with enlooming Trump’s shadow and a lesser Liz. Soon, we’ll see the interpreters, the contractors and the educators fleeing Afghanistan. History has a funny way to repeat itself. When researching for her…

Saw a bunch of rough-looking…in goatees, dark T’s and caps…milling about the Hallmarks section. It’s Mother’s Day. In my telephony days, Mother’s Day was the busiest. Network planners worked over-time load-balancing the circuits and CPU’s. Even during Operation Frequent Wind – later re-branded as “Honorable Exit” – one of the code phrases was “Mother wants…

We all suffer “data deficit” i.e. not having enough data to make informed and wise decisions…stocks market, “meat” market (spousal choice) or “hot” career choice. To add insult to injury, we carry inside these un-altereable genes….besides happenstance in our forever unfolding lives. So we seek counsel and advice, only to see the hyper-actives and hyper-ventilators…

Every week every Monday morning, we start again, with vigor and vision. Yet to move forward, we need to look back, learn and improve e.g. auto companies are steering away from just-in-time manufacturing (shortage of chip components). In other realms, we watch the fall-out of a huge presidency…most likely, self-inflicted. Michael Lewis calls this “Premonition”…

Climate change and pocket change, racial discrimination and vaccination, voter suppression and voter turn-out, all have a common denominator: up to us. We can create the problems then solve them (like Charlie Chaplin the window fixer) or we can pro-actively solve them (by education and re-boosting infrastructure). 21st-century problems demand a 21st-century playbook. Can’t bring…

When I first saw it, I was shocked! It had my sister’s name on it. Yet, she is still here, alive and well. Her name was engraved, on the copper marker, next to her husband’s. It makes New Orleans’ stack-up grave yard look like junior high. This is serious. She planned ahead of time, for…

Oh well. When I get my 2nd jab (Moderna), I will get out while observing CDC-guidance. But this pandemic brought back memories of past lonely times, like the time I was “parachuted” into lily-white Penn State, freshly arrived from South Vietnam. Missed Move-in date, missed Fall orientation, I started from ground zero literally all-by-myself. In…

My nephew who left Vietnam a few years later, mentioned – during the course of our conversations- that he came by the house, saw my Dad living all by himself (we were apart for a good decade). And he mentioned something interesting: upstairs, in our bedroom, those beds were left just the way they were…

To some people, April 15 used to mean paying up. After all, we have exploited and maxed out our infrastructure e.g. water, wifi and right of ways. To others, it starts with April Fool, then Holy Week and Spring Cleaning. To my little exile community, it’s Black April. The time to be reminded how we…

In looking back, “many thousands of lives could have been saved”…BUT…INSTEAD….blah blah blah lies lies lies. Where is the spirit of 1969? Of questioning your government and its dereliction of duty (back then, sending young men to a protracted war with ” no end in sight”, “nothing to join up”…) We’ve been spin-ned, had. Been…