Book Review: Project Management for Mere Mortals by Claudia M. Baca

Due to the complex work demand, project management requires a lot of skills and knowledge, among them, flexibility and smartness cannot be missed. Human beings are unpredictable and project management job spends more than 90% of time to deal with human (the upper, peer and lower). If a person unluckily gets stuck in that maze, every day at work is just like nightmare. To be flexible, there was more than once I put myself deeper in the process to obtain soft skills and somehow I got positive returns. However, smartness or cleverness was a kind of innate talent, I supposed, which was not a thing that money or time could buy. What to be done if I’m not lucky enough to possess that kind of talent? “Project Management for Mere Mortals by Claudia M. Baca” opened a door for me. Achieving the skill via in-house empirical experiences, I’ve been always questing for some formal materials to fill my gaps and gain more credit of work.  This book gave me hope.  Recommended by my mentor, just after reading two chapters of the book, I knew I had to take notes carefully and must read it from cover to cover. The book tells me that a project manager, especially IT project manager, isn’t necessary to be a superman or superwoman. By its aid, as long as I pay enough time and attention to different aspects of work, I can gain some level of the thing called “cleverness”. And someone who has never read this book would call it “smartness” [not able to obtain by learning process] as I used to. If you’re looking for a full skeleton of project management from opening to closing, an approach to work with your team and a strategy to face with your uppers, this book is for you.

Impromptu Homemade Dishes

Today I tried out a new feature on Photoshop CS6 called Irish Blur. Actually, I watched a demo on Youtube about this feature for a couple of months ago and loved it right away. The reason was simple. With an old PnS camera, full macro pictures were just in my dream. Flowers and food, however, macro style is always the best choice. There is also awhile I didn't share any food images. I guess now is the moment to combine two of them into one shot. This entry will be the least verbose one ever on my blog too [with brief text and the rest is photo!]

My Blog is One Year Old – Happy First Birthday!

Time flies. It was just like yesterday but one year passed. From the very first days, I setup this blog with the only purpose: reviewing books I read. However, day by day, more and more targets were included. My little cyber home now also takes care of studying journeys and food findings. One year ago, on August 1^st, 2011, the first post was published. Now, after 1 year sharp, there are totally 74 posts. The number is modest but still, it's not nothing. I’ve been trying to have at least 1 post per week. With 74 posts for 52 weeks, I can call it a success and I’m at least catching up the goal well.

Happy first birthday to my dear blog!

(Picture from the Internet)

Extr@ – a good TV sitcom for English studying

Being language learners, I think the most important factor is able to keep up the mood and energy enough for the long run. Any ways that help both studying and entertaining are always the best choices. Between “I have to sit down and study now” and “oh, let study and it must be a lot of fun today”, if that were me, the latter one would be far more effective.

By the means of entertainment, of course we can’t miss movies, films and TV shows. Beside music, they are also the best candidates for both studying and entertaining. Therefore, it’s not surprising that whenever questing for English study tips, you can easily bump into thousands of recommendations on those media genres.

To enrich self experience with visual media on English studying, I’ve tried one of wonderful TV sitcoms called Extr@. I’m going to introduce and share a little bit about this TV show with you here.

(Picture source: from the Internet)

Black Sticky Rice by Microwave

In my food culture, rice is the most important component for all kinds of appetites. Needless to say, there are also plenty of rice variations on the market. Hence, when it comes to the table, there is tremendous selection of dishes to go with rice. Also, talking about the rice family, it will be a big mistake if I don’t mention about sticky and glutinous rice. They contribute to enrich our breakfast with many ways of cooking and garnishing.

Mentioning about sticky rice, my memories are flooding back about difficult days on the family farm when we all rushed out of the house in very early mornings with empty tummies and nothing else, except tiny packages of sticky rice. Sticky rice also followed me most of morning during my years at high school.  Later on when I started working, sticky rice was always the best solution for hurry mornings to the office. To sum up, I can say sticky rice is the most simple, compact and comfortable food to start a day, especially tough and busy days.

Do I sound like I love sticky rice? Honestly, I didn’t love sticky rice as much as my memory about it. The reason was simple - it was pretty dry and tedious. It is a perfect saver for a quick day kickoff, but not a choice for everyday. I don’t remember exactly the last time I had sticky rice. I would say more than 2 years ago. Back home, whenever feeling like eating sticky rice, I always bought from small vendors on the way to school or work. I had never thought about cooking sticky rice myself. On my mind, it’s too cumbersome to deal with sticky rice in the kitchen. Moreover, when things were always available and too easy to get, like most of people, I didn’t bother to do it myself.

Now, it’s different. I’ve been out of the country for more than 2 years. Some simple food that I never missed or thought about before, they’ve been touring back in my mind times to times. Sticky rice is one of them. I always thought that I might just be able to eat sticky rice again if and only if I backed home to visit my family. Maybe my thought would never change if there was not a day, a day I found ways to cook sticky rice by microwave, the day that many ideas of sticky rice dishes blossoming in my mind. If you are a great cook, you can tell right away – how dare you compare sticky rice made by microwave with the traditional way? The answer is you’re right. I’m not going to put those two methods on scale. Just imagine me as being drowned and found a life buoy.

I love black sticky rice the most, thus of course it will be my first try too. I know if I don’t post an entry of cooking recipe now, there will be no entry later. The first time is always the one uplifting me the most. So, let’s go through the simple recipe and I hope you can do it yourself one day (if you've never done before). 

(black sticky rice dish from black glutinous rice)

Duolingo - A potential and powerful system for language learners

If you speak English as the first or second language, have you ever wished to study another language with zero fees? Have you ever thought about a system which can help you study at any time you want and any pace you define without paying a penny? In this post, I will introduce you a system like that - a completely flexible and accessible system for everyone. The beginning of this entry, I’m off the topic a little bit to tell about my language learning curve. If you have no interest in it, please click here to go straight to the main topic.

English Vocabulary – Learning aid software, podcast and radio

I used to study new English words with the traditional method which was usually taught at high school in the old days, like getting ready a handful of drafts and trying to write down words as many times as possible until I felt like I remember them. This method followed me many years not because it was good, just because I wasn’t motivated enough to look for any alternatives. The awful result was that the words were forgotten very easily after a short time. This method also didn’t help with pronunciation either.

(Image source: Internet)

Father's Day 2012: Daughter's wishes to Daddy and Daddy's Songs for Daughter

Father's day is here and like any other daughters in over the world, I also want to send my special love and best wishes for my beloved daddy. Absolutely there is not only Father's day, but every day he's always in my mind.  He's with me for every single step; he was the FIRST MAN in my life. Even though I'm living away from him, he's still here with me in my heart. I missed him in my important day of life; however, if he were there, he would happily give my hand to my man and bless us too. He's the generous man who would give me ALL THE BEST THINGS IN THE WORLD for nothing back. I love him!

(Picture source: art.com)

Book Review: What the dog saw and other adventures by Malcolm Gladwell

I’ve been reading 4 books from Gladwell so far. However, I think only “Outliers” and this book “What the dog saw and other adventures” inspired me to write a review. Basically, Gladwell’s books usually collected reliable science evidences or research studies to reveal the world in disruptive ways which need the third eye to discover. What was considered as myths or weirdness were explained pretty well in different manners in Gladwell’s books, especially in the cases of mysterious accidents, social phenomena or human psychology. I’m going to give a brief review for “What the dog saw and other adventures” in this post.

Summer trip and wormhome one year anniversary at Niagara Fall

Worm family had a great trip to Niagara Fall area in the last week of May. Let's share some pictures here to keep the good moments. Actually, this time, my camera was out of battery pretty early since we recorded a couple of videos [video recording costs more battery and space than picture taking]. Plus, the camera lenses weren't properly cleaned (so embarrassed me!). I guess I need to take care of my camera better even though it's an old-age one but it's still my best friend though. Those were the reasons that we didn't have great pictures this time, but we still try to share the good ones we have in hand. May summer bring you enough inspirations for great trips like us!

(Close-up view)