**Looking through my travel journal for inspiration, I came across this 2019 entry I’d written about China. Before the world shut down, Beijing was one of my favorite and most frequent layover destinations. However, following Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric along with recent reports of hate crimes against Asians, this 2019 entry is inserted into a new…
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It’s graduation season, and this year, I happen to have many graduates in my life. So, I thought I’d write an (unsolicited) advice blog for the class of 2021. Normally, I don’t like to give advice because I don’t pretend to have anything figured out, but what the hell? Here goes… My advice: # 1….
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For Mother’s Day, I invited my mom to dim sum in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Since I have a broken ankle and my mother has a walker, we didn’t cover much ground -only about a 4-block radius. San Francisco is a great walking town unless you have a broken ankle or a walker. Then, it’s a…
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If you like history and architecture and books, then you’ll like this blog. This blog is dedicated to literary houses, that is, houses either lived in or written in by literary giants. Not all of them, just the ones I’ve visited: Ernest Hemingway, Shakespeare, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Mitchell. I love looking into…
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Wait, where? Pearsall, Texas, y’all. It’s my hometown. And it also happens to be the hometown of the king of country music: George Strait. In fact, his dad, Mr. Strait, was my brother’s math teacher. My grandmother, a little Mexican lady who didn’t speak English, was so proud of this native son that she kept…
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I’m from southern Texas. I don’t live there anymore, but I go back every summer to visit and every February to rodeo. Well, I don’t actually rodeo, but I attend it. This year, however, I did not. Why? Because my 80-year-old mother threatened to go with me. And at the start of the rodeo, she…
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All flight attendants get injured on the job. It’s just a matter of time and I’m sorry to say, unavoidable. Whenever we get hurt, the supervisors always ask us the same infuriating question: “What could you have done to prevent this?” Flight attendants can’t stand this question because the only valid response is, “Umm, not…
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Hanging out with my teenage son, Ben, isn’t easy. We have nothing in common. So, I’m always looking for creative ways to spend time with him. A few years ago, he was really into cars and racing. It turns out that Japan has an underground car culture of street racing and car customizing. So, I…
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After Obama opened travel to Cuba, and before Trump closed travel to Cuba, my daughter, Valentina, and I went. We spontaneously booked a cruise over her college winter break…one day before sail! All we had to do was get from San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale before the ship set sail the next day. The itinerary…
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I have a request from my most faithful reader, my mother, to blog about her favorite city, Paris. As one of my favorites as well, I am delighted to do so. The only reason I haven’t blogged about it sooner is that it’s a little overwhelming -just like the city itself. If Paris were a…
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