Google is searching for a Staff Visual Designer. This full-time position is $168,000-$252,000 + bonus + equity + benefits. Sounds like a good deal. If you’re a designer, take a look.

I hadn’t listened to “How Can I Tell Her,” by Lobo, in a long time. In the early 90s, when I first came to America, I heard this tune covered by a handful of Vietnamese singers including Don Hồ, Trung Hành, Henry Trúc, and Kenny Thái. In fact, I hadn’t even listened to the original version by Lobo. At the time, I did not fully understand the story behind the lyrics because of my limited English. The Vietnamese version, sang by Don Hồ, was completely different.

A couple of days ago, I came across an acoustic karaoke version on YouTube and I could recall the melody. As I sang along, I realized the story was pretty fucked up. The guy was a cheater and he wanted to keep on cheating. He tried to convince the girl he was cheating with that he wanted to tell his wife about their infidelity, but he hadn’t done so because his wife still treated him well: “Whenever I’m discouraged / She knows just what to do / But girl, she doesn’t know about you.”

The music was so romantic and he knew exactly what to say: “How can I say ‘It’s you I think of’ / Every single night and day?” This guy is a damn-good cheater. I definitely couldn’t tell the story, but I tried.

A Corea-Fleck collab? Get the fuck outta here. As expected, the dynamic duo come out swinging right off the bat on “The Otter Creek Incident.” The jazz-meets-folks and piano-meets-banjo are just exhilarating to the ears. Corea and Fleck had their own idiosyncrasy and when they teamed up, they pushed “Bemsha Swing,” a composition from an eccentric legend, even further out. I will be spending even more time with this double album.

Simplexpression is my wife’s online jewelry store. Since the initial launch in 2009, I worked closely with her on the branding and the site design and development.

Over the years, I kept refining the wordmark. I wanted it to be simple yet somewhat expressive. Yet I hadn’t quite got there until the latest redesign.

The new wordmark combines Poetica and Adobe Kis, both typefaces designed by Robert Slimbach. Adobe Kis is simple and elegant. Poetica adds a bit of flare to Adobe Kis. Since they were both designed by Slimbach, their proportions and structures matched effortlessly.

I am happy with the new wordmark. I finally found what I had been looking for so many years.

Yesterday, I helped Xuân reviewing for his test on the Famous American Civil Rights Leaders. We ended up creating a blog post so he can use as a study guide. Good luck on the test tomorrow, son!

This little book features 59 quotes on writing and short responses from the author to demonstrate the intersect between writing and mindfulness. Some of my favorite quotes including John McPhee’s “Writing teaches writing,” Carlos Fuentes’ “Writing is a struggle against silence,” and Thích Nhật Hạnh’s “Compassion is a verb.” It’s an enlightening read.

Last weekend I asked Đạo and Đán to help me clean up our cars. Đạo took the vacuum and went to work. Đán, on the other hand, kept watching Youtube instead of wiping down the interior. He told me he wanted to change the cabin air filters. I told him I would let him do it but I needed to order the filters first before he opened up the glove compartment. The glove compartment in the 2011 Toyota Sienna is falling apart anyway so I didn’t mind letting him give it a shot.

I order the filters on Amazon so he could change both cars. I am glad he did because the filter in the 2011 Toyota Sienna was so dirty. I am not sure if the dealer ever changed it when I took the car in for oil change. The 2018 still looked clean, but he changed it out anyway.

I am so happy when the kids wanted to do these kind of things instead of sitting in front of their screens.

All the people
Livin’ life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one.

Imagine that!

In this Why I Write series, Knausgaard shares his personal stories. I love the quote he heard from another writer, “I write because I am going to die.” I also love this passage:

The discrepancy between the reality I lived in and the literature I was writing at a certain point led me to throw in my cards and try something new. I wanted to get close to reality, and the genre with which I felt the greatest affinity at the time was the diary. What would happen if I combined the diary’s closeness to the self and urge for reflection with the realist step-by-step novel? The rules I set myself now were exceptionally simple. I would write only about things that had actually happened, and I would write about them as I remembered them, without doing research or amending my memory to conform to other versions. I also had to write a certain number of pages every day, first five, later ten, and toward the end up to twenty. In that way I simply wouldn’t have time to think, to plan or to calculate, I would have to go with whatever appeared on the screen in front of me. This method came about because I had set out to write about myself, and since we know more about ourselves than about any other subject, it seemed important to avoid the established versions and to seek instead the complexity that lies beneath our self-insight and self-image and which can be accessed only by not thinking about how our thoughts and feelings will seem to others, how it will look, who I am if I think and feel these things.

I read this long essay in one sitting.

I haven’t had a gout attack for more than a year (knock on wood). I haven’t avoided steak, phở bò, and liquors either. I eat and drink pretty much whatever I want. How do I have my gout under control? I think apple cider vinegar has something to do with it.

I don’t know for a fact that apple cider vinegar is the remedy, but I think it helps. I asked my internist and she informed me that there’s no scientific evidence to prove it. Nevertheless, I am popping 2 pills of apple cider vinegar (along with K3+D3 and Zinc) each morning with 2% milk. That has been my breakfast for the past 6 months or so.

Even if apple cider vinegar doesn’t work for my gout, it doesn’t harm my kidney like other gout medications including Allopurinol. In addition to apple cider vinegar, I put a lot of pressure on my feet through rollerblading, skiing, and snowboarding. Again, I am not sure if these sports helped, but I am so damn glad that I don’t have to deal with gout attack.

If you have gout, try out the Nature’s Truth apple cider vinegar and let me know if it helps.