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 …
Category Archives: Creativity
Creative Volunteerism
After a heated election, Feel inspired, America brought me a big smile. One example… In 2016 Scott Duncombe, a software developer in Portland, Ore., saw on the news that Cleveland residents had to wait hours in long lines to vote. His heart went out to them. In Oregon, there are never any lines because everybody …
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 …
Worth it?
We, product and UX team have spent the past few months designing the customer research and interviewing users to gather feedback of the current customer portal and the new design. It took a lot longer than expected to set up the calls though most of sales/ Ops teams welcomed the idea to engage customers. Looking …
Fun & Why of Halloween
Have you wondered why people dress up in custom in Halloween? Why children go trick ‘o treat? Also, why people carve pumpkins vs. zucchini or other vegetables…and why they are “spooky” faces? I decided to research on them for my Toastmaster speech, “Fun and Why of Halloween”, let me share with you what I’ve found… …
Hybrid Meeting
One of my bucket list is to visit all 50 US states. If without Covid, I’d make that and visit my last state, Arkansas in March. Also, I love meeting Toastmasters (members) and joining meetings around the world. With Covid, many clubs have brought meetings online so let’s make a “double” – I contacted Little …
Double Celebration
Today is my roommate Stan’s birthday. I thought to get lunch to celebrate but he was busy on the phone. I changed to plan B: make croissant (as he loves it) and give him a ‘surprise’. I pulled the little piece of trigger and the cylinder ‘pop-open’, what a cool packaging. I pulled out the …
I Have Time
My roommate Stan is a consultant at a top healthcare consultancy. It’s not unusual to see him to work till 10PM or later and over the weekend. Sometimes, with big project and tight timing, he even worked till 2-3AM or overnight…yet he is usually cheerful and always willing to support others. I asked him how …