I have always known about the book, but I dared not opening it for fear that it would change me. Today, my fear has just caught up with me: I could not finish my bread without thinking, what if I had been in that concentration camp, with other prisoners around me. Would they let me…

  Watching the Dragon dancers go about their Moon Festival celebration, I can’t help remember my Moon Festival with lantern and moon cakes. You just put a candle in the middle of that lantern, and the heat would turn those cardboard merry-go-round to your amusement. My Moon Festival pre-dated television and internet. In fact, all…

When I first heard that Vietnamese touring Thailand and Singapore had come across signs like “Beware of Vietnamese pickpockets!”, my initial reaction was that of denial “you must be kidding me!”. Then it dawns on me: we must have done it to ourselves,somehow. There have been a steady few (among the 200,000 who arrived as…

I grew up, unfortunately, not seeing a lot of love, in any language. Instead, a lot of fighting: in-fighting within my family, (whose consequences are still working themselves out) and in-fighting within my country. With one exception. My sister, strong in personality, has pursued the love of her life all the way til the end.…

Troubles are everywhere these days:from Ferguson to the Far East, from Western Africa to Western of the US ( from Ebola to earthquake). So are ideas, actionable or academic. What we need is a good problem, one that is challenging, and must be solved together. The kind of problem that defines our purpose in life.…

For what’s it worth, at least you can make use of its nostalgic theme music. Boy coming of age. Coming back to his village. to find its town Cinema, now destroyed for a parking lot. Same thing is happening downtown Saigon. With the demolition of old buildings for new, memory lane for metro lane. Prominently…

If there were a Dislike button, it would be for Ebola. Give me some Dislikes. Another Doctor Sans Frontieres has just died, setting back the fight a bit. People shun you, run away from you and “Like” you not if you got Ebola. There is no love in and around Western Africa these days, certainly…

August is muggy. Full blast indoor A/C or a vacation near the beach. On the East coast, it’s time for snow birds to arrive back in to town (NY). For the French to bare it all on the beach. It got so hot, we even had an earthquake in China. Disasters spare no one: Haitian…

Naively, for my high-school English-speech contest, I submitted “I want to grow up becoming a lawyer”. My residual statement at the time was “I want to give voice to those who are voiceless…”. In short,  becoming an advocate. A lot of waters under the bridge since .  Even when God doesn’t smile on my speech…

Where is that song now? With 3 avionics accidents (ML17, Taiwanese and Algerian)  in one week. Glad to have such thing called selective memory. We will soon forget, out of necessity and convenience. (Last week, people still rushed to the front to board my return flight, completely unaffected by those bad news). It’s been a…