Dear Ms. M,

We would like to cancel the vacation resort rental booked for the week of April 4 to 11, 2020, which is three weeks from today. Yesterday the government declared national emergency on Coronavirus.

We understand your refund policy, but we hope that you make an exception for this grave pandemic. We made the decision to stop all non-essential travels until the Coronavirus is under control. The outbreak is too risky for us and for our 80-year-old mother in particular; therefore, this vacation will have to be cancelled. Please let us know if we have any options or if we can work something out.

Thank you for taking this serious matter into consideration.

Best regards,

The Truong Family

Lúc lên bốn, Nguyễn Ngọc Ký bị liệt cả hai tay sau một cơn sốt nặng. Dù khó khăn trong cuộc sống hằng ngày, ông phấn đấu không ngừng và đã trở thành Nhà giáo Ưu tú và Nhà văn đầu tiên ở Việt Nam viết bằng ngón chân. Đây là tập truyện ký ghi ấn lại công ơn cha mẹ, thầy cô, và những người thân thương đã giúp đỡ và động lực ông trong suốt cuộc đời của ông. Nội dung của những bài viết rất cảm động nhưng lối diễn văn của ông hơi khô khan nên đọc hơi bị chán.

As the coronavirus silently creeps in, it exposes the incompetence of the president. He can’t lie his way out of this one.

His administration shut down the global-health office in the National Security Council. Insteading of preparing for the pandemic early, he ignored warnings. He boasted that the virus will go away one day. That miracle has not come. He lied that the virus had been contained when it had continued to spread. He lied that testing would be available for everyone when it was not. He lied that the vaccine would be available in a few months when it will take a year or more to develop. He admitted that he cared far more about the numbers than the people’s lives.

Because of his massive leadership failures and constant lies, the American people had to make the decision themselves. Responsible leaders including university presidents, supertendents, state governors, and business owners had bypassed the president to shut down schools, workplace, and activities. We can no longer wait for the guidance from this con artist.

He is unfit for this job and needed to be replaced. We need someone who could handle a situation like this to keep us safe. This incompetent president does not know how to keep us safe.

Cuối cùng Đán chịu ngủ riêng một mình. Nó ôm biết bao nhiêu là mền gối và thú bông với nó. Đạo vẫn ngủ với mẹ và Vương. Xuân thì ngủ với bà ngoại. Thế là tôi được ngủ một mình sau hơn một chục năm ngủ chung với mấy thằng con. Cảm giác rất thoải mái và rất ngon giấc.

Một trong những thất bại của người làm cha như tôi là không tập cho con ngủ riêng. Thấy bọn nó còn nhỏ mà phải ngủ một mình cũng tội nghiệp nên từ nhỏ cả bốn thằng lúc nào cũng ngủ với mẹ để mẹ cho bú. Khi thằng em chào đời thì thằng anh sang ngủ với ba. Có lúc cả ba cha con cùng ngủ chung giường. Tôi thì khó ngủ nên chật chội càng khó nuôi giấc. Tôi biết mình ngáy rất to sợ làm điếc mấy đứa nhỏ nên ngủ chập chờn không ngon giấc. Sáng nào dậy cũng uể oải. Tôi nghĩ mình bị ngưng thở khi ngủ (sleep apnea) nhưng đợi qua vụ Coronavirus rồi mới đi thử nghiệm.

Bây giờ ngủ một mình cảm thấy đỡ hơn nhiều. Trước khi ngủ, tôi đọc sách hoặc viết blog cho đến khi mệt mỏi rồi mới lăn ra ngáy. Có lúc mười hai giờ khuya mới ngủ. Tuy nhiên ngủ một mình hơi cô đơn. Có lúc muốn được ôm tụi nó ngủ nhưng tôi thật sự lo ngại khi mình ngáy quá to. Còn vợ thì đã không ngủ chung giường mười mấy năm rồi. Hơi hám gì cũng quên mất rồi. Tôi hy vọng sau này bọn nhóc lớn lên thì vợ chồng cùng chăn gối trở lại nhưng vợ trách tôi ngáy to quá nên cũng đã thẳng thắn từ chối. Thôi thì từ chối ngủ chung cũng không sao. Từ chối cái khác mới có chuyện.

Like many Black comics, Arnold takes a crack at Black-related issues including parenting, alcohol, marriage, and blowjob. His jokes were raw and raucous. The audience seemed to be entertained. What stood out for me was when he talked about being petty. Arnold is in his 50s and he isn’t afraid to admit that he’s petty. I loathed myself at times for being such a petty. I know it is wrong, but I can’t help myself. Arnold gave us the license to be petty. It’s an enjoyable Netflix special.

For the second iteration of Visual 2020 theme, I reset the typefaces. Main text is anchored in Exchange, by Tobias Frere-Jones. I played a small role in providing Frere-Jones my feedback on Vietnamese diacritics before this typeface released. Headings are set in Bild, by David Jonathan Ross. Bild’s variable font comes in handy for setting various level of headings. For the title of each article, I am making it big. Code excerpt and category are set in Input Mono, also by DJR. I also changed the background color. I went down the rabbit hole a bit on COLOURlovers and I needed to stop. This iteration is not a big departure, but a change to keep the site fresh. These days I don’t do a whole redesign, but small changes here and there. I hope you enjoy this little update until iteration 3. I am not sure when that will be, but pretty sure in three to six months depending on what typefaces I wanted to try out next.

Last week I met up with Molly and she gifted me her beautiful painting titled “The Migration of Eels.” I was honored to accept the invaluable gift my kids helped pick out. They love eels, especially eel sushi; therefore, they immediately gravitated to it. What I love about this particular painting is that her vision of eels are much more colorful than the slimy creatures. If the real eels look like the eels in the painting, people would keep them as pets rather than making sushi with them. I love her imagination and I am glad to see that she is doing what she had always dreamed of. She is much happier than before.

In retrospect, Molly played a key role in my life. When I was working at Vassar College, I went through some tough times until I met someone special. Just as we started dating, she found a new job in Virginia. My heart almost crushed when she told me. I had two choices to make. I either kept working at Vassar College or I needed to find a new job in the DMV area. If I stayed I might lose what we had just started. I applied for web design positions at George Mason University and George Washington University, but I was not too optimistic because higher education always took forever to get the hiring process rolling. To my surprise though, I received a call from someone at The George Washington University School of Business just a couple of hours after I submitted my application. She asked me if I would like to schedule an interview. I came to D.C. to meet with her and some key administrative and faculty members at the business school. The interview process took the entire day. I thought I did well, but I didn’t expect a call the next day offering me a job. She wanted me to give in my two weeks notice at my current job and to come to D.C. as soon as possible. She was aggressive and I had a feeling what I was about to get into.

As I had predicted, our working relationship turned out to be testy at times. She was a challenging boss, but caring and encouraging on the personal level. After three years, the school of business had gone through some major changes. Most of us, especially Molly, were miserable. She was no longer my supervisor and we all answered to a young kid who had no clue about communications and technology. At that point, I knew I needed to move on. I ended up at George Mason School of Law and I have been happy here till this day. Molly went on to other universities including Mason, but she was still struggling to get by. She finally decided to end all of this political nonsense in the working environment and to just paint. She had a degree in painting after all. It is not easy to make a living off painting, but she seems to be doing good. I truly am happy for her.

When we met up last week, she brought a friend with her. We sat in an Irish Pub, drank gin and tonic, and reminisced on the good old days. Her friend was quite a drinker. He washed down two Martinis and countless glasses of wine. I had two gin and tonic and I was buzzing. She made my blush when she told her friend my two sentences of how my wife and I met. She recounted, “She lifted out her hand. He held her hand and she didn’t take her hand back.” Our story reminded her of her grandparents’ love story, which was also told in two sentences. Her grandpa said to her grandma, “I decided to be a priest. Then I met you.”

As we hugged goodbye, she said to me, “I love you, my friend.” I was touched. I realized that I have a friend. Even though we see each other once in a blue moon, I truly treasure our friendship. I suppose we don’t need to see each other often to be friends. Even once in a while is still good—as long as we think of each other. Until we meet again, take good care of yourself, my friend.

In her spellbinding memoir, Anna Wiener takes readers into the mysterious world of Silicon Valley. As a nontechnical employee in technological startups, she witnessed and experienced sexism in the relentless industry dominated by young white men. A woman who had her offer for an engineering position revoked after she negotiated for higher pay. A woman who had been demoted after her maternity leave. A woman who had been fired after reporting she had been raped. Misogyny in the tech bubble isn’t new, but reading it from a keen observer and exhilarating storyteller is heartbreaking. Of course, the book delves into other aspects as well. As a contributing writer to The New Yorker, Wiener’s prose is just a pleasure to read and to learn from. Here’s one of my favorite sentences on designers: “The cofounders had prioritized aesthetics and hired two graphic designers off the bat: men with signature hairstyles and large followings on a social network for people who referred to themselves as creatives and got excited about things like font sizing and hero images.” She is dead-on and I could not stop laughing when I read it. Her experience on programming is even more hilarious that I have to quote in in full passages. Wiener shares:

Engineers I knew talked about how the world had opened up to them the first time they wrote a functional line of code. The system belonged to them; the computer would do their bidding. They were in control. They could build everything they’d ever imagined. They talked about achieving flow, a sustained state of mental absorption and joyful focus, like a runner’s high obtained without having to exercise. I loved that they used this terminology. It sounded so menstrual.

Working in tech without technical background felt like moving to a foreign country without knowing the language. I didn’t mind trying. Programming was tedious, but it wasn’t hard. I found some enjoyment in its clarity: it was like math, or copy editing. There was order, a clear distinction between right and wrong. When I had edited or vetted manuscripts at the literary agency, I moved primarily on instinct and feeling, with the constant terror that I would ruin someone else’s creative work. Code, by contrast, was responsive and uncaring. Like nothing else in my life, when I made a mistake, it let me know immediately.

I love this book and highly recommend it to designers and developers as well.

The presidential candidates and the incumbent are in their 70s and all white. I have nothing against their age or their race. If he can unite the country and make us better as a nation, I will support him. The race is now between Biden and Bernie.

With Biden, we can foresee his political agenda. He will continue where Obama left off, especially on healthcare. He’s a safe bet. Bernie, on the other hand, will make more drastic changes, particularly on healthcare. I am all in on Medicare for All. Let me give you a real-life scenario.

My nephew who is in his late 30s had made a drastic decision to start a new life. He quit his job, sold his house, and moved his family to a new country. Unfortunately, his plan didn’t work out. He moved back to the U.S., tried to find a new job, and restarted from scratch. He applied everywhere, but nothing came through. While on his job search, he got sick. Because he didn’t have health insurance, he kept brush it off until he had trouble breathing. He checked himself to the hospital because he thought he could die. It turned out that he had serious heart failures and if he didn’t check in, he could have died. He was hospitalized for three weeks and his medical bill was $80,000. Without a job and not much in his bank account, he applied for Medicaid. Who is picking up the bill? Yes, tax-payers. If we had Medicare for All, he would not have put his life as risk.

If Bernie keeps his promise, he would be the ideal candidate. Bernie is at a disadvantage because the establishment is railing against him, but it is still up to the rest of the Democrat voters to decide who will get the nomination. Either Bernie or Biden, we have to get behind that person. We can’t win the general election if we are divided. I urge supporters of either Bernie or Biden to come together to vote out the danger in the White House. Just look at the way the idiot is mishandling the Coronavirus pandemic.

Yesterday I received a generous contribution from a reader. As an independent blogger, I feel appreciative and encouraged. Blogging has become a passion of mine. I am not a writer, but a designer who writes. Blogging has allowed me to express myself through words without filter. I could write whatever I wanted. The freedom is both hypnotic and hell-raising at times.

Although I have invested time and effort into my blog, from designing to writing, I hesitated to ask for support. I don’t want to change the way I write if I have people paying me. Fortunately, it has not been the case. But then on the flip side, why the hell not? I will never know if I never tried it out. Whether I get support from readers or not, keeping my blog up-to-date will not change. Writing has been a way for me to deal with many issues in my head. If nothing else, I can improve my writing. I still trip up on English grammar, but I am getting better. I still make Vietnamese spelling errors, but I am relearning them as I write.

These days, I do cross-posting on Facebook as well. I want to share some of my thoughts to family and friends who do not visit my blog. On Facebook I have 230 friends, which is a much smaller audience than my blog. I pull in about 12,000 unique visitors a month on my blog, but I have no idea who they are or where they come from. I do not have any third-party tracking script on my website. I have no like button and no comment section on my blog. It is just me writing my life away. Facebook is different because it is Zuckerberg’s platform and not mine. All my content belongs to him and I don’t feel easy about it. The good thing is that I can simply turn off the switch and everything will be gone. Most of the content I shared on Facebook I already have an archive on my blog.

If you find me deactivating my Facebook one day, you can always find me on my blog. My blog is where I keep most of my writing. I wanted to thank everyone who had contributed to my blog. If you’ve moved to do so, here’s the link.