Worms' Conversation_Did you find love?

Here was a very random conversation between two worms on way home after midnight.

(Picture source:  mynameisjacy.com)

Book Review: The Magic of Thinking BIG by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D.

These three weeks, I took a short break in the middle of project management books by reading The Magic of Thinking BIG by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D. This book now is worth of being added into my book recommended list for life motivation category. Since I’m rather busy to run after some huge life plan at this point of time, I’m just introducing a cursory review here.

Homemade: Candied Ginger or Crystallized Ginger

For an introduction, I would honestly say that I have a sweet tooth but I always try to avoid confectionery. I think everyone knows the reason, just to make it clear in my case, it's to thwart the waist protest! However, with candied ginger, I still enjoy it anyway. In Vietnam, it's likely no TET (Lunar New Year) without candied ginger. Therefore, I would give myself a special treat to not thinking much when eating some slices of candied ginger in the biggest holiday of year. Ginger root is very well known to be good for health, but it's not easy to eat the raw one.  And if you're a ginger lover, you can tell me what you shall do with a pound of raw ginger root? I've been recently offered that amount of ginger and I need a way to "spend" them, LOL. Well, let me tell you my solution right now. I sugar coated them, yay yay! I don't want to sound so excited but this is truly my first time to crystallize ginger root! 

Once in a blue moon

Inspired by the great moon today, I feel like having some fun with my modest pictures and I ended up with this post. It's just a random moment and if my memory served me right, it may be called blue moon too. Enjoy!

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.