Although Thu Minh’s new album is titled in English, seven of the ten tracks are Vietnamese. Not sure what she tries to prove, but her Vietnamese English doesn’t do the justice. She should have left the last three English tracks off the record.

I Do would have been a perfect ballad album because Thu Minh is a fantastic ballad singer. With her clear voice and big tone, she could make a popular tune her own. With the help of Duc Tuan, she gives Vo Thien Thanh’s “Uoc Gi” a powerful cover and her rendition is as good as if not superior than My Tam’s. Likewise, her version of Huy Tuan’s “Nhung Giac Mo Dai” is so gorgeously romantic.

On Van Phong’s “Giac Mo Mang Ten Minh, ” her voice is constraint to accommodate the jazzy groove, but she sounds best when she could move beyond control. The result is just stunning when she turns up her pitch a bit too high for comfort on the chorus of Nathan Lee and Chu Minh Ky’s “Pho Vang Anh.” I have to cover my ears whenever Bang Kieu pulls out a stunt like that, but not in her case. Her high pitch and shrill seem to work well on big, belt-out ballads.

Washington Post

According to leaders of the large, affluent communities of Korean Americans, Vietnamese Americans and Indian Americans in Northern Virginia, sentiment among those groups favors Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), although Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) enjoys a core of loyal support among older Asian refugees who suffered at the hands of communist regimes.

Palin might be running for the VP with the Republican, but she is supporting the Democrat with her latest fashion: a scarf with donkeys and the word “vote” on it. Go Palin!

Callie Shell has captured some of the most intimate moments of our next president Barack Obama.

AP:

The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, “impetuous” Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Isn’t this a good enough reason not to vote for McCain?

Remember my technical stress regarding to my 500gig external hard drive? I left the damn thing with my brother-in-law for a few months. He finally gave up and handed it back to me last week. I went back to the post and tried out your suggestions. Last night, I tried SadValley’s method. I downloaded Mediafour MacDrive, installed on a PC laptop, plugged in the hard drive, and voila, the files are all there. You’re a fucking genius, SV. The feeling was hard to describe, as if I just found my lost treasures. I dragged all my works back up to the laptop, but all my music, which is around 350gig, is too big for the laptop. I have to find another solution to transfer my digital music collection. Thanks to those of you who offered me suggestions.

An AP investigation shows that:

Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of tax money, our hard-earn dollar, she would spend on her children if she becomes VP.

Racine, a wonderful colleague of mine, stopped me on my way to my stair-running routine just to point out how chubby I was when I first started at GW. Photo doesn’t lie, I guess. Yes, I still run up those steps everyday, but no longer running down after hearing how anh Trong had ruined his knees. I try to walk as slowly and as softly as I could.

I switched my jogging from the morning to evening. I wanted to do it in the morning, but it is still dark as hell at 6:30am. I do it after work to unwind my mind. I need to be revived to cook rice, wash dishes and prepare my salad. Doesn’t it sound like a typical married man in the States?

Yes, I still have my homemade salad with grilled chicken and low-calorie dressing for lunch everyday. My wife had given up on the salad. I am also a smoothie freak. I gotta have my smoothie at night after a meal. I am trying to convince my wife to get me a Blendtec, but she has not agree to it. How can you not like Blendtec? It even blended an iPhone.

Dana and I saw a house last Saturday. The place is not all that great, but in a good neighborhood. These days, the damn neighborhood is more important than the home you live in. I used to live in a bad neighborhood and went to poor school where all the white kids were in AP classes while black, Spanish and a few Asians were in normal classes. I didn’t fuck up and so my kids won’t either. Then again, I don’t want to risk their future. Better be safe than be sorry.

Anyway, I didn’t like the house much, but I would live. The house is actually owned by the listing agent who bought the place last month for a foreclosure price of $280,000. She resells it for $400,000. She listed on the market for three days and already had a couple contracts. Can you believe it? She makes $120,000 profit in a month. Damn. That is some serious investment.

West Philly rapper, Nish Gaveer, drops a joint for Obama: “(Barack Obama) Change the World.”

Jesse Taylor sums up McCain’s campaign in one paragraph:

It’s not so much that McCain’s campaign has been purposefully sleazy as they’ve been meanderingly, pointlessly sleazy. It’s the “fuck it, whatever” guide to Republican politics, with no particular focus except putting anything out there to win a daily news cycle. Obama was a conspirator in voter fraud for a weekend, a terrorist for about three days, until he was a socialist because some plumber in Ohio said so. Before that he was a celebrity and presumptuous, a race-baiter, a shady community organizer, sexist, inexperienced, a baby killer, a sex predator and a dozen other things. You wonder why McCain/Palin supporters feel like they can go to rallies and talk about Obama being a Jew-bought Islamic radical cokehead forced abortionist communist? Because it’s the standard that the campaign’s set by having ridiculously drawn out public conversations designed to draw full attention to the charges while laboring under the pretense that they’re “debating” over using the smear.