Có những suy tư không nên chia sẻ cho dù là người thân nhất và tin cậy nhất. Dù trong công việc hay trong gia đình, cố gắng tự giải quyết mọi chuyện cho xong. Chia sẻ với người khác cũng không giúp được gì. Ngược lại còn mang phiền muộn đến cho người khác. Biết vậy mà tôi vẫn cứ không tự kiềm chế được. Còn nói đến và còn suy nghĩ đến nghĩa là còn lo lắng còn muốn hàn gắn. Thôi thì tôi sẽ không nhắc đến cũng không bàn đến. Kể như không có chuyện gì xảy ra. Phớt lờ là giải quyết tốt nhất.

Giờ đã lớn và đã trưởng thành, tôi không ngại người khác không thích mình hoặc thậm chí ghét mình. Trong tình đồng nghiệp, trong tình bạn bè, hay trong cả tình gia đình, những mối quan hệ nào không thể giữ được thì không nên miễn cưỡng. Muốn chặn số điện thoại của tôi, muốn lẩn tránh tôi, thậm chí muốn ghét ra mặt cũng được. Tôi không ngần ngại.

Cho tôi là thứ khôn nhà dại chợ cũng không sao. Cho tôi là kẻ ích kỷ chỉ biết nghĩ cho chính mình, tôi cũng chấp nhận. Cho rằng tôi chỉ muốn những gì tôi ham muốn, tôi cũng đồng ý. Có những lúc nhìn lại chính mình, tôi cũng đáng sợ. Không tài, không sắc, không bản lĩnh, không có lòng tốt, cũng không độ lượng. Tôi nhận thức được những khuyết điểm của mình và tôi luôn lạc quan rằng những gì đến được sẽ đi được cũng như trong những mối quan hệ. Cho dù những gì mình thương yêu nhất cũng không thể giữ được trọn vẹn. Cho nên tôi luôn thủ sẵn cho mình một lối thoát.

Trong tình cảm, trong công việc, trong gia đình, trong bất cứ trường hợp nào cũng áp dụng được. Đến được với nhau thì mừng. Không còn đến được với nhau thì cũng đáng tiếc nhưng phải chấp nhận cho nhau một lối thoát. Thôi thì ai muốn đối xử sao cũng được. Gặp nhau làm ngơ cũng được. Gặp nhau không chào cũng không sao. Không gặp nhau cũng OK. Không chấp nhứt cũng không nghĩ ngợi gì cả. Mỗi hành động điều có lý do. Mỗi cử chỉ điều có tự do.

Thôi thì cứ tiếp tục lo chuyện của mình. Chỉ riêng trách nhiệm làm cha của 4 thằng con là quá nhiều rồi. Không còn chỗ để lo xa.

I spent my Sunday cleaning up our bathrooms. I started to get to work around 9 am. I wanted to do a deep clean since I hadn’t done it in a while. Scrubbed the toilets, the bathtub, the shower stand, and wiped down all the floors and the trims on the wall.

The worst part was removing the molding caulk in the shower stand. The process took me about two hours just to finish the square. The best part is that my wife will re-caulk it since she’s an expert on it. I am terrible at that type of handy, crafty job.

I am trying to do everything I can before the winter because I won’t want to do anything else on the weekend besides skiing and snowboarding in the winter. At leas, that’s the hope.

Phương Anh có chất giọng ấm áp nhưng cô hát hơi bị cứng không thích hợp với những ca khúc trữ tình mùi mẫn. Hơn nữa cách nhả chữ của cô nghe hơi bị chói tai. Nhất là ca khúc “Mười năm tình cũ” (Trần Quảng Nam), cô ngân mỗi câu nghe nhói cả màng nhĩ. “Khi còn gọi tên nhau” (Trường Sa) cũng thế, cô hát hơi bị gò bó. Khi cô thả lỏng, như “Thành phố buồn” (Lam Phương) và “Người ngoài phố” (Anh Việt Thư), nghe đỡ hơn. Về phần hoà âm phối khí của Sơn Trần thì mộc mạc chứ không màu mè. Nó (không rõ là ám chỉ đến nhân vật nào) nghe cũng tạm tạm. Không gì lạ cũng không gì nổi bật.

I haven’t posted anything on Twitter/X or LinkedIn in almost a year. I don’t miss them. They don’t do anything for me. I still use Facebook heavily to stay in touch with family and friends. In addition, I have been using Facebook’s Marketplace to sell used skis, snowboards, skates, and things we don’t need anymore. Even with a few scammers, I have been able to sell things. I am slowly replacing all my old equipment with new ones. Once my new skis come, I’ll sell my old ones. I should also try to sell toys and materials that are accumulated in my basement. My next career move, when I lose my job, is to buy used things, fix them up, and resell them on Facebook’s Marketplace.

Cuong Lu:

[H]appiness and suffering are very close to each other, and that touching our own suffering can be a source of relief and even a prerequisite for true happiness.

This sample contains ten selected poems from The Secret of Hoa Sen, written by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and translated by Bruce Weigl and the author. For the title of this project, I chose “Là Việt” because Ms. Nguyễn speaks eloquently and proudly about being Vietnamese. “We have crossed the glorious cities / Paris of light or ancient London,” she writes, “Our souls still drift back to our harbor.” For typesetting, I selected Kaius, by Lisa Fischbach, for reading text, and AT Kyrios, by Stephen Nixon, for display text. If you like this sample, pick up a copy of The Secret of Hoa Sen for the full experience.

Damn, my kids use their digital devices way too much. My firstborn always glues to his phone or laptop. My second son constantly plays on his PC. My third and fourth can’t stay away from their iPads. They have no motivation to do anything else. If they go to the skatepark with me, I have to reward them with boba tea or their favorite food.

The issue is they don’t know when to stop. If I don’t ask them to turn off, they will play for hours. Even when I tell them to stop, they won’t get up until they get yelled at. It breaks my heart to see them dropping everything else and just focusing on their digital devices.

My oldest is no longer reading paper books like he used to. My second is no longer interested in playing piano. He takes months to learn one song. My third gets whiny when being asked to practice piano. My youngest doesn’t do much else.

Am I the only one who is deeply concerned? Most kids seem to do the same. When my kids get together with other kids, they spend most of their time on their devices. I get so irritated that I just don’t want to witness it.

Other parents seem to be fine with it though. Maybe I should just stop worrying and let them do whatever they want with their time and hope for the best. What else can get worse? Addiction, depression, dropout, withdrawal? As a father, I love them and want to prevent the worst, but I am failing big time. I was so naive about parenthood. I thought love would conquer everything, but love alone isn’t enough. The more I love; the more I care; the more I fail. They have sunken to the point that they can’t function without these digital devices.

My concerns, worries, anxieties have fallen on deaf ears. I hope I am dead wrong. I hope I am worrying too much. I hope I am just being paranoid. Only time will tell.

Mitch McConnell froze two times while talking with reporters and we invited him to speak. That’s fucking hilarious.

My reading pace had been slow. A 250-page memoir should only take me a few days or a week to finish. Beth Nguyễn’s Owner of a Lonely Heart took me two weeks not because it wasn’t engaging, but because I was distracted with other projects and priorities. The last two days I was determined to focus on it and I just couldn’t put it down.

Ms. Nguyễn’s memoir is so real and relatable, in particular her story as an immigrant from Việt Nam. I love the story of her name. Like her, I changed my name from Doanh to Donny because I got tired of correcting people butchering it. In recent years, I have been wondering if I should change it back to show that I have not been Americanized. After reading Beth’s story, however, I’ll stay with it. It’s just a name, as she points out, “… it doesn’t change my past, my family, our lives as refugees in the United States.”

Ms. Nguyễn writes about the complicated relationship with her mothers as well as her relationship with her own kids. Even though she married a white guy, she still recognizes who she is. She writes:

All my life I have felt like an imposter daughter, an imposter Vietnamese, an imposter American, and often an imposter mother, failing and disappointing, an unreliable narrator. When does a refugee stop being a refugee? The answer is in the question itself, forever unanswerable.

I also appreciate her realness on motherhood. She confesses:

Here is a thing that I have never said or admitted because it sounds fucked up: every year my children get older feels like such a relief, not just because every year feels like a gain in their health and growth, but also because it feels like every extra year means they will be okay because they will be old enough, and getting older enough, to bear it if something terrible happens. One of the reasons early childhood, and thus early motherhood, is so terrifying is that we are always thinking about danger, worrying about safety and loss. What is worse, the fear of losing your children or the fear of your children losing you? And if your children lost you, would you live enough in their minds? What if they forget, and thus lose you?

This memoir speaks to me in various aspects and her prose is so damn good. I am so glad to see more and more Vietnamese-American writers making it. Whether fiction or nonfiction, I am seeking out Vietnamese-American authors to read.

Virginians, if you live in the 67^th district, you must re-elect Delegate Karrie Delaney because her challenger is a nutcase. He’s still a Trumper who uses fear tactics to get votes. He’s attacking Ms. Delaney a communist because he knows the Vietnamese community in Virginia hates the communists. In fact, he would label anyone communists if they disagreed with him.

I want to support a fellow Vietnamese-American candidate, but this guy is wrong for the job. He is stuck in the far-right bubble. If he isn’t Asian, he would join the Proud Boys. I had a few political exchanges with him and he quoted misleading and misinformation sources. We can’t have someone who can’t tell opinions from facts to represent us.

Furthermore, I doubt that he will be able to perform his public duty when he couldn’t even get his own life together. When he volunteered to teach our children Vietnamese, he failed to show up just for 45 minutes a week. Even just a small commitment he couldn’t keep. He isn’t going to commit to being a serious delegate. I wouldn’t vote for him if I were in his district. Please vote for Delegate Delaney.

There, I did my civic duty.