Tinna Tinh impressed me with her debut performance of “Tra Lai Cho Toi” on Van Son in Taiwan not because she looked kind of hot and she could rock, but she sang her own tune—something extremely rare among the young Vietnamese pop stars. Her new album strangely titled Mu Tac (Wasabi) features nothing but her original works. Although Tinna is half Vietnamese and half Czech, she writes and sings Vietnamese with confidence.

As a singer, Tinna has a strong, slightly gruff voice. In the opening track, “Hoa Lai Mau Xanh,” she knows how to maneuver her way around the upbeat drums and guitar riff. The best part is that she could make her Vietnamese lyrics flow so damn natural in a rock-up tempo. In the self-reflecting “Xin Loi Cuoc Doi,” she starts off by trading sentimental thoughts with a strumming guitar, but progresses into a hypnotic rock chorus.

The album actually gets a bit weary with the pop-rock flavors, but the closeout “Co May” stands out. The track begins with the street noise, follows by a simply strumming guitar, and proceeds with heavy rain and children’s laughter. A minute and thirty seconds into the song, she pours her heart out on a story of an abandon kid in the middle of the big world, in which she observed, “Mot lan di dao pho thay nha cao cua rong xe hoi, net mat sang trong / Lai thay mot dua be nam tren chieu tran truon co ro / Giua the gian menh mong trong be, nho be, cang be.” It’s quite a heartfelt tune.

Tinna has definitely stepped into the right direction. Keep up the passion and rock on.

Such a smooth criminal.

Give it a try.

The trailer alone caused a woman in tears. How cute! I gotta see the film. Waiting to take the kids to watch it this weekend.

NPR reports:

The cliché refers to newborn children as “bundles of joy,” but recent research indicates that bundles of anxiety, or even bundles of depression, might be more accurate.

I don’t care. I still want four.

Pop singer and former model Carla Bruni is impressing the French as a first lady.

Washington Post‘s Michael Alison Chandler reports:

Asian American students will outnumber white classmates for the first time in the freshman class at the region’s most prestigious public magnet school this fall, a milestone reached as the number of African Americans and Hispanics has remained low and the Fairfax County School Board prepares to review the school’s admission policy.

Way to go, Asian kids!

McCain hated the gooks and now bloggers too. What about a gook who blogs?

A little history of “American The Beautiful” from NPR:

America the Beautiful” didn’t start out as an American anthem. It was first a poem written in 1893 by a teacher, Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929), after a visit to Pike’s Peak in Colorado. It first appeared in print in 1895. Since then, more than 60 musical settings have been made of its words.

The music we typically associate with those words is by Samuel Augustus Ward (1847-1903). It was originally a hymn called “Materna” and was composed before Katharine Lee Bates took her trip to Pike’s Peak. Even though Bates did not have the melody in her mind, the words fit the music perfectly, and it has become the version we know today.

Check out Ray Charles’s live, soulful rendition.

From The Economist‘s “Of sommeliers and stomachs“:

a group of researchers led by Joseph Kanner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has discovered that pairing red wines like these with red meat appears to be more than just a matter of taste. If the two mix in the stomach, compounds in the wine thwart the formation of harmful chemicals that are released when meat is digested.