Christmas
-
While waiting for my next appointment, I heard a man whistle. He carried a tune while being oblivious to outsiders. Maybe he just try to pass the time in between classes. Maybe we should whistle too. We are all passing the time. Some of us are doing time. Stephen Hawking wishes he could hear his own…
-
Mark Zuckerberg is here for Christmas vacation. http://english.vietnamnet.vn/en/science-technology/16933/facebook-s-ceo-visits-vietnam.html Perhaps he would find a striking difference between the way people celebrate the Holidays here as opposed to Northern California. In the US, the joke is “if you got tired of the Turkey, you can always order Chinese”. McDonald’ s and KFC‘s are closed. One culture withdraws…
-
My friend had a square jaw. When he laughed, his features became more pronounced. Already taller than most, he carried himself above the fold. Not all kids in my school went to the Conservatory. You had to have talent. For that brief year in 7th grade, he joined us at music practice. “Can you play…
-
Instead of “I woke up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me…” like Paul McCartney, I woke up to strange sounds these days: peddlers who use “low tech” au parleur (bull horn) mounted on bicycles or tri-cycles (selling boot-legged CD‘s). In fact, it was my first time got chased by pleasant sound from…
-
It’s known urban legend here in Vietnam that you do not take a photo with three people. Someone will need to stand in to defy the odds (of bad luck). It is also bad luck that a person in the photo but was cut out. I once saw a family picture which had a missing member.…
-
It is also fun. Certainly it is not work. An insight here, a discovery there. Hey, look at this! I still remember appearing in a school play (Elementary). Got a lot of laughs from the student body (playing a mother, Tootsie style). Somewhere along the way, we have lost the inclination for play, the urge…
-
The Year of the Cat. Al Stewart in white suit. Cyclical, eternal and in sync with nature. No “dominion over the land and seas” as in Western theocracy (in an ironic twist, outside my window, the work crew keeps digging, plowing, flattening and paving the sidewalks – one after another, from water to power, cable…
-
I was there on Black Friday. 95 North. Wal-Mart stop. I saw shoppers pushing carts filled with wireless printers, Blu-ray players and flat screen TV’s. The only other time you see people taking stuff from the store in the dark was during the LA riot or Katrina. Just as soon as one comfortably sat back…
-
It’s that time of the year again, when Poinsettia are everywhere, from Walgreen to Walmart. I saw it in my Mom’s assisted living back when she was still alive. That pair-association stuck with me: Mama-Poinsettia. We have buried in our CPUs millions of those pairings: white-blue/school uniform, fruit-cake/Christmas, peanut butter/GI ration …( in Vietnam, it’s…
Thang Nguyen 555 