I deactivated Facebook again 10 days ago. I dipped in and out of the platform to check on friends and family members.

The constant feed of misinformation, however, depressed the hell out of me. The urge to correct fake news posted by my own family members was simply too much. It got to the point that angry posts from supporters of the idiot in the White House had taken over family activities. I needed a break.

I am more relaxed not getting caught up in the fake news cycles. I must admit. Facebook had hooked me in. It’s an addiction that’s hard to kick off. I will try to stay off the platform as long as I can.

After enjoying Offil’s Weather, I wanted to read more of her work; therefore, I picked up Dept. of Speculation. In a coincidence, I was having some marriage issues and the novel feels right at home. For example:

For most married people, the standard pattern is a decrease of passionate love, but an increase in deep attachment. It is thought that this attachment response evolved in order to keep partners together long enough to have and raise children. Most mammals don’t raise their offspring together, but humans do.

Offil’s writing is worth savoring every word and her storytelling is moving and funny. Best of all, the novel can be read in one sitting. I am warming up to reading more fiction.

A dear friend and a longtime reader of my blog had emailed his advice on marriage. He and his wife have been married for 39 years. They had gone through fights as well and he shared some of his personal experiences. For his privacy, I won’t share his personal information, but only his advice, which I find helpful. I hope you can learn something as well.

Couples fight. No exception. Since fights are unavoidable, a couple has to know HOW to fight, and how to wrap up a fight. Most couples lack this skill.

At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, “Is this person worth it for me to try so hard?” But in our case, the next equally important question is, “Are my children worth it for me to try so hard?”

In my case, I find that by trying just a little harder (it’s not that bad in the grand scheme of things), by loving without demanding to be loved back, by being honorable without being proud, I can be ready for death whenever it occurs—which is necessary with the current plague.

Now, if you still love her, spend more time with your wife and be gentle with her, and ask her to be gentle with you. Tell her you are certainly not perfect, and even though she is better than you in many ways, but she is not perfect either. Yet two imperfect people can still have a perfect union, if they help rather than hurt each other. They have to be allowed to have their own little crazy moments and be forgiven later. We all need this kind of forgiveness.

Lastly, you seem to work too hard. I hope you and your wife have time to exercise. It’s harder to be happy if you’re not in good shape.

Thank you TD for reading and reaching out. I appreciate your advice.

In her moving speech, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responds to Representative Ted Yoho for calling her a “fucking bitch”:

What Yoho did, in front of the press, he gave permission to use that language against his wife, his daughters, women in his communities, and I am here to stand up to say: “That is not acceptable.”

AOC uses a man’s whip to whip his back with it (lấy gậy ông đập lưng ông). Next time when a man uses his wife and daughters as shields and excuses for his despicable behavior, he should think about the repercussion. Mad respect to AOC.

Nowadays I write more in Vietnamese than English. To spare my English readers from receiving my Vietnamese posts in their RSS reader, I decided to make two separate feeds.

I had thought about this for quite a while, but hadn’t come up with a simple, streamline solution until this morning. It just occurred to me that the simplest solution is using tags, which built into WordPress and RSS. I just need to tag my Vietnamese posts with “vi” and English posts with “en.” To subscribe to my RSS feed, you can now choose English only or Vietnamese only. If you can read both languages and want to get everything, you don’t need to do anything. The default feed still works.

I wish I can go back and tag every post with either English or Vietnamese, but sorting through 7,267 (as of this writing) is just not a good use of time. Fortunately, I can filter out my Vietnamese posts by searching for letters with diacritics such as “ô” or “đ,” which narrowed down to 690 posts. Using bulk actions, I can quickly tags my Vietnamese posts. Now that I have most of my Vietnamese posts tagged, I can add a CSS class and design something specifically for Vietnamese and English in the future. That should be fun.

Since my wife bought a few bags of fresh lychees and I still have a bottle of saké in the fridge, I made a saké lychee martini. The delicate sweetness of lychee combined with rice liquor made a light, refreshing drink for the summer.

Ingredients

• 3 parts saké
• 2 parts lychee juice

Take 6 fresh lychees and press out the juice. Add ice, saké, and lychee juice into the shaker. Strain into a martini glass and enjoy!

My dearest sons,

Seeing you cried on the other line broke my heart. I am sorry that you got dragged into my problem. I promise you that I will never leave you. You are a part of me and no one can ever take you away from me. I will not let that happen.

The pandemic had hit hard on all of us. I might have failed to live up to my responsibilities. I might have failed to meet expectations. I might have failed to show my support. I might have failed to nurture my relationships. Nevertheless, I still have my dignity. I can work on my failures, but I do not take insults.

I want you to know that you do not deserve any insults. Do not let anyone put you down—not even me. I am grateful that you understand my love for you. No matter what goes on and no matter what happens, just always remember I will be there for you.

Love,

Daddy

In the early 2000s, when I began my career in web design, I wanted to know if there were other Asians, particularly Vietnamese, in the same field. Then I came across Chris Dang’s website. His futuristic artworks combined with typography, especially his Halovision series, in his designs blew me away. Every time he redesigned his site, I was just in awe. I envied his talent. While his artworks were awesome, his words were mostly angry. He wrote about his life, his parents, and his online girlfriend at the time.

As time passed, he stopped updating his site. I went on to establish my own sense of design. I could never make the futuristic artworks that he had created, but I took the minimalist approach from him. Although I was no longer following him, I always remembered his name and his artworks. Early last year, I googled his name. His portfolio came up. He was an art director at some company. Although he was no longer designing his own site (he was using Squarespace instead), his illustrations were still amazing. It looked like he had done well balancing his artistic vision with his design.

Yesterday, I was not sure why I googled his name again and his obituary page came up and it read: “Christopher Hong-Dat Dang was born on February 20, 1983 and passed away on October 22, 2019…” I was shocked. He was only 36 years old. I scrolled through his public tribute Facebook page, but couldn’t find out the reason for his death. I never met him and never contacted him, and yet he had a profound impact on me through his art. RIP, Chris.

Victória worked as a museum cleaner, but aspired to become a writer. Then she married a rich husband. From mopping the floors and scrubbing the toilets at the museum, she became a wife who lived in a beautiful house with a diligent maid taking care of everything for her. She spent her days reading and writing and her nights doing things rich folks do or having sex with her husband. Although her husband could provide her the financial freedom, he couldn’t provide her the freedom she needed to write or to live her life. Indelicacy is a short, beautiful novel. Cain’s prose is clear, concise, and accessible. I usually had trouble following a work of fiction, but not this one. I loved it.

Offill’s prose is so damn funny that I marveled every sentence in her latest novel. As a result, I damn-near missed the entire plot. The book is 200 pages and the characters started to make sense to me around page 135. The whole time I didn’t realize Lizzie Benson, the narrator, is a librarian who is habituated to sleeping pills. She struggles between tending for her family and taking care of her brother who is a recovering drug addict. The novel is dark, urgent, and just hilarious. I could quote anything in the book, but here’s an example:

All I would have to do is take my clothes off with a stranger who has no particular interest in my long-term well-being or mental stability. How hard is that? I could do that. It would be fun. Especially if said stranger got all my jokes, and liked how I never nagged and how I never asked if I looked fat, and would agree to make me go to the dentist and doctor even though I don’t ever want to (because of death, death, the terrible death), and would be okay with my indifferent housekeeping and my seventies-style bush, and would be okay with us having to take care of my brother financially and emotionally for the rest of his life, also my mother, who is good and kind, but doesn’t have a cent, then I’m totally into it, I’d happily fuck him whichever way he fancied until the bright morn.

I will reread this novel in the near future.