Some time last year, I decided to close the comment section on this site for various reasons. I was tired dealing with spams and the relevant conversations had dropped tremendously. I felt that comment has moved to a different platform like Twitter and Facebook. Now with Facebook’s comment, I can merge my blog and the social network together; therefore, it’s time to bring back the comment. Please note that you won’t see the comments until you actually in the individual post. So click on the headline if you want to leave a comment. Of course, you’ll need to have a Facebook account as well.

Every once in a while, I manage to make some dumb mistakes that could have been avoided if I was being more careful. Last Thursday when I arrived home from work, I received a big bill for something I shouldn’t be responsible for. I knew that the bill was a mistake, but I was irritated. I told no one about it and I just couldn’t through the night. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t wait to get it resolved the next morning. That’s one of my weaknesses.

The next day, I started to make phone calls and then realized that I am going to have to go through some hoops to get the charge drop. The lack of sleep of the previous night combined with the stress of not solving the issue sent my head straight to the depression camp. I finally told my wife about it after I got home from work and she assured me that it’s not a big deal and I shouldn’t have to worry. I took her advice because she’s my better half and she knows more shit than me.

So the weekend, I left it at the back of my mind and just enjoyed my time with my sons. Now I am just dealing with it as much as I could. If it doesn’t work out, fuck it. As long as I know in my heart I am not responsible for it. If I did I would have no problem paying for it. Though I blame myself for being carelessness, I never pride myself in being a perfectionist. I made many mistakes in the past and I’ll make many more in the future. One of the things wish I could learn from my wife is to sleep it off. She is a master at it. I also need to learn how to calm the fuck down as well to make my life less stressful.

Dana, Dao and I were at Thanh Son today buying some sweet treats. The line was long and Dao didn’t want to stay inside. I took him outside while Dana was waiting to made orders. Outside the store, there were two women selling fruits and banh it (sticky-rice dumplings). The older lady is probably in her late 70s and the younger one is probably in her mid 40s.

The younger one is quite aggressive. She would grab anyone walking by trying to sell them something. One time she grabbed me and offered me some banh it in the bag for $10. I told her that I only wanted half of it for $5. So I handed her a five-dollar bill, but she insisted that I give her a twenty because she needed some change. When I gave her a twenty, she threw it in the bucket and gave me two bags of banh it instead. I took my money back and told her that I didn’t want to buy anything from her. Since that day on, she hasn’t harassed me to buy anything.

Back to today, as Dao and I were outside waiting for Dana, I heard the two of them arguing. The younger lady accused the old lady of spreading rumor about her. She said in Vietnamese something like, “You told people that I have diabetes.” The elderly responded, “I do not spread rumors. I only mind my own business. Yes, I said you have diabetes, but I never said anything about your pussy dripping wet.” The exact Vietnamese words were, “lon chay nuoc.” I couldn’t help laughing, but I had to drag Dao away. When I told my wife, she said, “You don’t need to be in Vietnam to hear Vietnamese gossiping.”

It seems like yesterday that Obama won his historic election, and yet here we are again for 2012. So what the President had accomplished so far? On foreign policies, he had intelligently gotten rid of Osama bin Laden and he’s bringing our troops home. The bailouts weren’t a popular decision, but they stabilized the economy. He lowered taxes on the majority of Americans and passed universal healthcare.

Sure, Obama couldn’t make the change he has promised in 2008 because Washington is not easy to transform. As Ryan Lizza pointed out in “The Obama Memos“:

Obama was learning the same lesson of many previous occupants of the Oval Office: he didn’t have the power that one might think he had. Harry Truman, one in a long line of Commanders-in-Chief frustrated by the limits of the office, once complained that the President “has to take all sorts of abuse from liars and demagogues…. The people can never understand why the President does not use his supposedly great power to make ’em behave. Well, all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.”

But he has definitely learned how to work with the system to get things done rather than changing it. He is more confidence and the experience he has gained over the past few years would be an advantage for American.

Up to this point, I am still in favor of Obama, but I am also keeping an ear out for other candidates. So far I am enjoy seeing GOP candidates ripping each other to pieces, but I have not yet convinced. I am not envy of Millionaire Mitt’s success of earning about $57,000 a day, which is most average American makes in a year, but I am deeply concerned that Mitt doesn’t see anything wrong with paying less taxes than average American. In fact, his firm Bain Capital hired lobbyists in 2007 to killed a bill that would increase tax on private equity firms. As for Grandiose Gringrich, can you trust a guy who cheated not once but twice? I rest my case.

In his New Yorker‘s “The Obama Memos,” Ryan Lizza concludes:

Obama didn’t remake Washington. But his first two years stand as one of the most successful legislative periods in modern history. Among other achievements, he has saved the economy from depression, passed universal health care, and reformed Wall Street. Along the way, Obama may have changed his mind about his 2008 critique of Hillary Clinton. “Working the system, not changing it” and being “consumed with beating” Republicans “rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done” do not seem like such bad strategies for success after all.

Andrew Sullivan:

What liberals have never understood about Obama is that he practices a show-don’t-tell, long-game form of domestic politics. What matters to him is what he can get done, not what he can immediately take credit for… Not for the first time, I realized that to understand Obama, you have to take the long view. Because he does.

Worth reading.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music.

Over the weekend, I spent an hour updating this site’s CSS for mobile-first, responsive design. I used em unit instead of pixel for breaking point, which I have reduced to just one media query.

I added a new testimonial from my latest client.

Also a big shout out to the Text Link Ads for the sponsor links on the right column. Vistaprint also renewed its ad placement for 2012.

Some of my family members who are avid Amazon shoppers asked me to put up the Amazon.com’s Affiliate link so that they can make me some money. Thanks for the support.

Paul Krugman:

Think about it: someone who really wanted equal opportunity would be very concerned about the inequality of our current system. He would support more nutritional aid for low-income mothers-to-be and young children. He would try to improve the quality of public schools. He would support aid to low-income college students.

Dr. Ken Murray:

Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone.

Insightful and informative. Must-read.