Tag: Student

Brain Fiber

My cholesterol test result was just in. The coast is clear!

Two eggs please.

I have eaten oatmeal for five years.

Fiber here, fiber there. Can’t go near real food, like Soul Food (fried chicken and french fries).

Here at UVT, culinary students serve their practiced meals: ordering, preparing, serving and collecting the cash.

Long way from the days when we were kids, playing “restaurant” using made-in-china toys.

I stumbled upon a kid picture.

And I wonder how many passages it takes to go from boy2man.

Sounds like a rap group.

A boy in a hot seat.

All future, no past.

Now all past, not much future (if I feel pessimistic it was because I have just lost a sample of my blood this morning).

I recall a lonely childhood.

But seeing other students with eagerness to learn and anticipation to study abroad, my heart warms up to them, in full empathy.

Will they be lost in a larger but impersonal society?

Will they be wise enough to sift through options while retaining core values.

Will they keep that sense of humor and optimism ?

Will they come up with and cook Soul Foods?

I have barely tried the lunch here at work twice.

Now that my cholesterol level is in check, I think I might order my 3rd meal here. After all, the Vietnamese has a saying “an cay nao, rao cay nay”.

Charity begins at home.

I might as well play customer to our first-year Culinary students who in their own rights have graduated from Play House and Kitchen games, to be in the pro game. That innocent looking kid in the pic above has been tossed and turned by war, disasters (personal and circumstantial). I wish someone had told me then to take my time.

Two eggs please. While at it, please toss in some Brain Fiber to help me think, breathe and love.

Old market New market

It’s a norm here in Vietnam that a certain market, after being moved to a new location, still has its old location called “cho Cu” (Old Market). My Dad and I used to go for breakfast in Cho Cu, which no longer does brisk business despite its prime location near the harbor (people are shopping at SuperMarkets, whose plastic baskets are overstuffed with stuff). Now we even have night markets such as Hanh Thong Tay, which during the day, is a “ghost town”.

http://www.eturbonews.com/27000/vietnam-wants-move-away-traditional-markets

Happy New Year, Happy New Year…..

The old markets  offer a common roof, spare ventilation and without piped-in music, whether it’s in the North as in Ham Long, or the South, as in Binh Thoi.

It is said that soothing music induces more shopping. Upscale shoppers want to assert themselves (life-style) and their social status.

In the States, Walmart has crossed-over to Supermarket’s turf (best-selling item: bananas),

Supermarkets crossed over to drug stores’ territories, and Walgreen-CVS crossed over to both.

In the alley outside where I live, people hold make-shift market in the morning: vegetables, fish, pork and fruits. The supply chain is simple: slaughter house to your house, with no refrigerated intermediaries. Chicken got charcoal-grilled inside a bamboo trunk or wrapped inside wet clay, feathers still intact.

It’s a good thing I blog about these things right after lunch (mouth-watering still). Fish glistened under the golden sun, while crabs got lined up in rows and columns neatly like an Excel spreadsheet in a tray outside a restaurant (normally when alive, these legged creatures crawl uncontrollably in all directions). An old American Indian captures this scene: when one tries to crawl out,  the others try to grab it right back in (as in Mission Impossible team rescue to highten the vertigo suspense on top of Dubai’s tallest building).

I had a late lunch next to a table full of restaurant staff. They were getting ready for their busy evening shift, Quang Trung style (celebrating Tet early, to pull off a military campaign that surprised the enemy during the Holidays).

I notice the stark difference in attitude and service between old and new markets: the mom-and-pop folks know your face if not your name.

The Supermarket staff work for a corporation, tend to be younger and can’t wait to get off work (factory style).

College students double up as city workers. College students as bus riders, and consumers of all kinds of goods (sweet and snacks) and services.

College students scramble for exams, for seats on the Last Train Home, for a table outside in the evening.

College students in Old Markets. College students work in New Markets, but can’t afford to shop there.

College students who Google but can’t connect the dots (not yet).  Educational managers whom I visited realize those gaps between High School and College levels, and between academia and active world of work.

(in ICT, this gap is even deeper when work means taking an outsourced load from overseas such as US and UK.  In that space, competitors are India and other Asian Tigers).

Welcome to the new market of talent, place and logistic cross-over (such as Boeing and I-phone, all made from parts supplied elsewhere, and later, sold back to those same countries as complete product.)

Old market, new market. Will one survive in the new century with just a warm smile and a broken back? Happy New Year, Happy New Year. May we all have our hopes, our will to try.

Let’s hope when one chapter is closed, another one will be opened. Places and time, people and opportunities: we are all in transition, from the old to the new.  So is the market. Just make sure you stay alive and hungry! Better that than be “confetti on the floor”.

Honor roll

I attended a power breakfast this morning.

Neither Presidential nor Congressional.

Only elementary honor students and designated parents.

Something about “the magic”.

New Report System (Most improved etc… as opposed to traditional A,B,C grading).

I am proud of my daughter.

She exhibits all the traits of an up and coming Asian student (the model minority). Tiger Mom, you know (translation: I got “Tiger” spouse).

Just then did I notice Bonnie from Penn State, and how she was introduced as one “who knows every student by name”.

That’s a tall order to know each kid and affirm them.

Where would we be today without those “Bonnie’s”.

I am a TK (Teacher kid).

I know the  price a TK has to pay (as his mom was at service of thousands of other kids).

Mom, could you tug me to bed (instead of grading school papers late into the evening).

Society is highly hypocritical when it comes to children’s right and

pet’s right etc…

But as soon as we grow up, Bam! we got put into boxes (in California, latest  census measures showed ” alarming decline of non-Hispanic white group etc…”).

Indignez Vous?

The author of the above title also joint-authored the UN Human Right charter. Still going strong at 93. Still fighting with every liter of hot blood.

I want to leave behind two beautiful kids, who will give so much to the sustainability of spaceship Earth.

It’s always noble of parents to say they want better lives for their children. This was true with my Mom.

Now it’s my turn.

Have you ever paid attention to the hyphen (-) key on top line of the key board.

We all are “hyphens” in between generations,  not “dumb” nodes.

We adapt, evolve and discriminate (in a good sense), to uplift and elevate next generations. Net-Geners will have longer life expectancy, but conversely,

they will bear the brunt of  financial and environmental burden.

I felt sorry for having bought  the water bottle trend back in the 90’s.

For you, perhaps, the SUV‘s.

Global warming wasn’t the act perpetrated by any single person.

The school handed out my child’s honor roll.

But it’s our responsibility to make sure she get breakfast roll, without accompanied toxicity.

America is still number one in some areas, among them, obesity and rate of incarceration. Yoga, baby, yoga.