PR approval, Sudbury trip and work

Finally I could find time to write something here after an extremely busy month. My life is moving to a new page now. 

(From the Internet)

Australia Network: Study English IELTS Preparation

It's been awhile since my last post on IELTS topic. Today, I will introduce a free but good resource for IELTS preparation. It's called Australia Network (Learning English). 

australianetwork.com

Self-study, self-organizing and self-push are the strongest power for life

Today I just walked through the video titled "Shimon Schocken: The self-organizing computer course" on TED.com and I cannot refrain myself from sharing it on my blog. 

(from Internet)

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)