-
It’s kind of redundancy. Fast foods in Saigon? The place has already been fast. I don’t know if fast foods will help. At Saigon Central (train depot), I was told to take a number and wait (the way Carl Jr would do in the US) for my fries. Saigon is not used to mono-chronistic tempo…
-
Dr Lloyd Tran never stops and hardly sleeps. For a right reason. He is an inventor at heart. He started out as a chemist. Then worked for huge corporations such as Monsanto. Then he invented and manufactured his own drug release device in Irvine, CA (right at the time companies started to look elsewhere to outsource…
-
I met a pianist last Sunday. When he told me he was 65, I almost flipped. He happened to be a Judo trainer as well. Wow! He looked 45. Another friend of mine, Jazz musician and software expert, also looks young for his age. What’s the secret sauce? Shirley MacLaine doesn’t look 78. You might…
-
I went out for my morning jog in slippery Saigon. I was hoping for cooler weather. Now that my wish was granted, I begin to have second thought: if it’s cool here, it means somewhere up North, people are freezing, or boats and houses destroyed. We live in a connected world and leave behind carbon footprints.…
-
The war novel with similar title was surprisingly good. I have known about it for a while, but couldn’t get myself to “carry” it home. Until now. Until it’s translated into Vietnamese. It’s the opposite of reading Bao Ninh‘s The Sorrows of War in English. Both novels had the same setting, same period, same conflict, same ending…
-
My new-year resolution is to get through Tolstoy‘s monumental “War and Peace.” The characters and ethos were deliberate and elaborating (everyone wants a piece of the inheritance while the man was dying etc….). Visitors were announced at the gate (no intercom), received at party etc…. Tolstoy’s imperialistic people have time on their hands. We don’t. We tweet,…
-
I live next door to a convent and behind a restaurant/bar. The differences are quite obvious: Above and Below. One life style is to focus on the afterlife, the other , this life. For the weeks leading to Christmas, I heard rehearsals and refrains on one end, toasts and talks on the other. Both found an…
-
It’s like a can of worms, once opened, can never be put back. Yet, that’s what makes us human: from A to B, we insist that a straight line is not the shortest. We have to factor in free will. Even God respects that (by not forcing us to move quickly through Foxconn-like assembly line). Our…
-
Jackie Chan delivered again in Chinese Zodiac. The 12 Animals. The East learn to tell fortune from symbols. The West teach others to “read” people. Animals or People. We all want the advantage of foresight the next outcome. People commit to New-Year resolutions: lose weight, take up lessons in this and that, get off a…
-
Program lingers on linearly while project has its own bell-shaped form. Beginning and ending. Life is constituted of both programs and projects. Child-rearing is not a project. Schooling them is (until they come back and take over the couch). Warring is a project. At least when we could get out and not sink deeper into…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Thang Nguyen 555 