No shopping this Black Friday, instead, I ordered two things online. In the past, aunt’s banquet easily had 20+ people and 15+ dishes, today just 4 of us with 3 home-made dishes: rice cake stew, shrimp, string bean; plus roasted veggie pizza I brought from a local shop, simple and delicious. We ate on the …
Category Archives: Beauty
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving! Last year I went home and spent the week with family. This year, due to Covid, I along with many stay wherever we are. I saw a friend’s text comparing last year she had a Thanksgiving dinner with friends in NYC then flew to Asia for class reunion trip, this year, she’ll have …
TEDx Seattle: Other Sides
I joined TEDx Seattle 2020. The event itself showed the other (bright) side of Covid, first ever virtual and free. I don’t know its past attendance # yet 1200 watching live would be a great # to spread worthy ideas, thank you TEDx Seattle hosting team. The theme was chosen well – to bridge and …
Staycation => Voluncation
Due to Covid, this holiday season will be staycation, no travel for me. I would enjoy reading, writing, and attending virtual activities yet I want to do something more and different. I read about Catch a Fire, a platform for skill-based volunteering, a while ago and decided to sign-up. I applied for two projects with …
Give a Gift that Lasts a Life Time
I met Heather Beem, founder of Practical Education Network (PEN) at an MIT social innovation event several years ago. I like her/ PEN’s mission to improve learning outcomes by building teacher capacity with locally available materials. We became friends. I reached out to her recently asking if anything I can assist with my voluncation (volunteer …
Sal Mubarak
My roommate usually goes to visit his girlfriend during the weekend. The past weekend is Diwali (11/14), one of the biggest Indian holiday to celebrate light over evil. I was eager to hear how it went. When I got up on Monday and came to the living room, I saw a card with my name …
Patience
I posted the job of book cover design on Upwork and 9+ people responded. One designer offered to do it for $5 in exchange to write him a recommendation afterwards. He calmed he has done many book covers yet new to Upwork so he wants to “fast-track” establishing himself. The cost is tempting and I’m …
Enchanted Halloween
A special Halloween 2020: I achieved the goal to complete “UncoverSpecial” book editing by the end of October – getting ready to publish in November and I enjoyed two first experiences… First Trick ‘o Treat: I came to US as an adult so I never had a candy basket experience. I did my usual after-dinner …
Snow
First snow this winter…Thanks to working from home, I enjoyed watching the beautiful “little white cloud” falling outside the window without having to “dig” my car out to go to work. I remember 2018, a historical freezing winter, my fingers were “hurt” inside 2 gloves and though the heat was on in my car, I …
Not Perfect but Always Get Better
I attended a virtual AI conference and several speakers/ hosts, based on how they spoke, were not native English speakers. One host kept saying ‘you know’, another seemed hesitated to choose word to use, and a panelist spoke on ‘n on in circles… At first, I was irritated then I felt bad for them (they …