Bobberisms

"First with the head..."

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Laurie Penny | Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless

Late capitalism is like your love life: it looks a lot less bleak through an Instagram filter. The slow collapse of the social contract is the backdrop for a modern mania for clean eating, healthy…

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I’ll be presenting a poster session on academic writing in the English as a Foreign Language context at the #TESOL18 convention. #Chicago friends hit me up!

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Want to Live a Life 99% of Other People Will Envy? Read This Immediately.

“If you keep living like the way you are now, you will continue to produce the same life you already have.” -Jim Rohn

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How to use your Raspberry Pi as a NAS box - The Pi

The Raspberry Pi is small, silent, and can connect to your home network. So it’s no wonder that the Raspberry Pi NAS box is a popular...

RasNas : Nerd Quest of the week - Running a portable NAS on Raspberry Pi 3 with a portable open router to do Deluge (torrent) -> Jackett -> Sonarr / Couchpotato -> Plex Media Server -> to Bob. Extremely low powered (can run off a USB power bank) and for that digital nomad lifestyle. 

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A Complete Ten Step macOS Sierra Guide for the HP 6300 Pro/8300 Elite [ATTACH] [ATTACH] HP 6300 Pro Mini-Tower (MicroATX size case)...

Nerd Quest of the week! (perhaps the 2nd or 3rd)

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Quoting and citing my internet reading addiction

I’ve been on a destructive cycling of reading my recommended articles from Pocket, Flipboard, and Medium. Here’s how I’ve been citing my readings so that I can quote and lead people to their own conclusions in this Post Truth world. 

Citable on Google Chrome. 

Check it out: Puts the citations that you highlight on a page into a Google Sheet for you to look up later. (I haven’t found anything similar on the newly lovely, smaller footprint Firefox yet). 

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Climate changes

“Even using a conservative number, like $60 per metric ton, all the world would need to pay to start to make the CO2 problem go away today is $360 billion. For comparison, the world’s GDP is forecast to be $78 trillion in 2017″ (Akshat Rathi).

These two articles make valid points against each method of reaching the below two degree change in temperature as they spiral down the rabbit hole of climate change. 

Carbon capture and storage: A long read on CCS that explains the technology and its potential impact: Humanity’s fight against climate change is failing. One technology can change that.

Direct air capture article in the New Yorker: Can Carbon-Dioxide Removal Save the World?

“As a technology of last resort, carbon removal is, almost by its nature, paradoxical. It has become vital without necessarily being viable. It may be impossible to manage and it may also be impossible to manage without. ♦” (Elisabeth Kolbert).

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Who are the homeless living in the shadow of the Big A? Here are 11 stories

We spent a week talking to people who live along the Santa Ana River trail. Here are 11 profiles of people who, for now, live where they call River View Village.

This is a problem on so many fundamental levels especially on “good” people’s lack of compassion in these hard times. 

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Five years later, I'm now teaching English in Ethiopia. Five years later, I shared my experiences with my students about the Great East #Earthquake and #Tsunami. Sending love and peace from Ethiopia. #peacecorps #3.11 #wewillneverforget

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The funeral

We walked through a narrow dirt road, lined by houses with cacti, the later blooming prickly pears still growing on some. The road opened up and we approached a house where the village men, with their shoulders wrapped in dusty gabis, the shawls worn by local men, lined up. Inside could be heard the cries of the women of the family. We sat on rocks and branches, our heads hung low covering our tears or averting our eyes from the scene in front of us. The screams and moans came from a well of sorrow buried deep inside everyone human being; it was the sorrow and pain of losing a part of oneself, of losing a part of the community, and of losing one’s self. The women wailed until their voices ran hoarse. Finally, the snacks of dried corn and bread and local brew were passed around. After every person had a moment to reflect on their mortality and to forget about their petty problems, we stood up and slowly filed out of the room and walked back up the road in silence. 

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shaken but not beaten

It’s sometimes hard to vent here.  Most 20 somethings have a poorly developed ability to listen without reciprocating, to listen without judgment, or to just give a damn past their own resume building activities.  Other people just tell you to get over it. And the rest will just ridicule and mock you for being vulnerable. 

There’s been a lot on my mind and my heart becomes laden as the days trickle down, adding their ripples to the expanding waves. Growing faint and fainter, each circular emanation starts from the same point but goes out on its own course. Like a diver, each drop is trying to attain perfection in timing and form as it approaches its landing. Smooth and effortless, unaffected by the atmosphere or the drops that came before it...

In the past two days I’ve been woken from a nap in the teacher lounge by a kick to my shoe by a teacher, punched numerous times by another co-worker who thinks its funny, screamed at on the street, provoked by small children with rocks, and threatened on the phone by someone I would rather avoid. It’s been tough.

Yet I’ve been inspired by my students who this week demonstrated against the living and educational conditions at the school. They cancelled class on Monday and the administration has given in to some of their demands, demands that align with my own wishes to improve the situation at my school. After two months of ineffective prodding, the electric socket in class 11B has finally been fixed, the siren for class announcements (sounds like an ambulance) has been repaired, school lunches have improved in quality (we go yogurt with the stew), and there’s been a sense of change in the air. If my students can do that, then I can overcome my own hurdles. 

And perhaps then, those ripples will be placid and even. 

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Bad Pictures of Good Food

I’ve slowly to come to embrace Mekele as my home for the next two years. School is becoming more and more manageable. I’ve learned to budget and save money and I started to cook comfort food from home; food that keeps me from missing the small and the sacred things in life: nourishment for the soul and the body.

So here’s some obligatory food pictures straight from my kitchen.

Operation Pickling has begun

Fried Rice

Cooking with the alcohol stove when the power is out

Broccoli soup with potatoes (in a bechamel sauce)

I’ll start to learn how to make more Ethiopian foods besides shiro wat and alecha potato and let you know how that goes. 

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Mekele or Mekelle or Makale or መቐለ

This is my new home for the next two years.  I work at Kalamino Special High School, a prestigious private boarding school for gifted students that focuses on natural sciences, teaching the two sections of grade 11 students.  It’s been a challenge integrating into my community where I live, as well as integrating into the social dynamics at the school.  There’s been challenges adapting my teaching style and creating a new curriculum that will benefit my students understanding and enjoyment of the English language. And there’s been the challenge of taking care of myself, spiritually and physically.  But these issues are all working themselves out, with the help of time and some hindsight, and soon I’ll be rolling along full steam.  I’ll be posting more about my teaching methodology and practice.  Feel free to criticize and critique.

And here is my updated mailing address:

Bob Nguyen P.O. Box 1741 Mekele, Tigray, Ethiopia

Ethiopia Number: [phone] (Add me in your contacts and get Whatsapp so we can chat and talk). 

Bye for now,

Bob

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Random Quotes

"Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it," she said, raising her eyes to mine. "The pain of growing up. We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here. We were like kids who grew up naked on a desert island. If we got hungry, we'd just pick a banana; if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms. But that kind of thing doesn't last for ever. We grew up fast and had to enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were the link connecting us with the outside. We were struggling through you to fit in with the outside world as best we could. In the end, it didn't work, of course.” (Norwegian Wood, Murakami 1987)

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Teaching English in Menagesha. #peacecorps #g13

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Checking in and Contact info

Hi everyone. I’m not good at checking in. My parents never had that policy when I was a kid so I would roam the neighborhood until we got hungry. It was a different time back then so don’t judge her.

I’m safe in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This city pleasantly reminds me of Bali, Thailand, and Vietnam with a different coat of paint. Scenes on the streets are oddly familiar at times and I feel a certain ease here. I’ll post some pictures someday, but for the most part this blog is going to stay professional and academic. 

For anyone who wants to contact:

[phone] (Ethiopian cellphone)

[phone] (this is my Google Voice number, you can text me still and leave me voice messages if you don’t want to make an international call).

email: [email protected]

Address during my 3 month training:

Bob Nguyen C/O Peace Corps Ethiopia 7788 P.O. Box Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

iMessages:[email protected] / Line:cinnabob / Skype:cinnabob / Whatapp: (currently not working at the moment for me) 

Drop me a message to say hi. I’m currently soaking in the culture and the language but I’ll try to respond as soon as I can. 

Peace out!

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The road to competition

As many of you know, I’ve been boxing for a long time now.  Despite my late start in the art of boxing, I’ve been pursuing “the sweet science” with a lot of passion and respect for the sport under the wise tutelage of Coach, a man that I’ve come to respect in a myriad of ways.  Though I don’t gush in front of him often, he plays a major role in shaping the person that stands in front of you today.  Sure, I should take responsibility for my accomplishments as well as my mistakes, but when someone gives you the tools and strategies for learning a(n) art/science; techniques that you can apply to the learning of other seemingly disparate fields; you come to appreciate his efforts and guidance. 

In any case, my journey on this road has been long and twisted, filled with missteps and sidetracks, pain and reward, and soon redemption.  I’m not getting the matchup that I was expecting for this weekend, the weekend after finals of the hardest academic term of my scholarly life (probably for the better).  But if I still have some breath in me and the will to fight, then I’ll drive back to Sacramento on June 6 in order to compete in my first amateur match (at the age of 35).

I can check a bucket list item off my list, collect the last of my belongings here in Sacramento, and then do my final preparations for my departure to Ethiopia.  It’s been a long year, a long month, a long week, but I’ve got a long way before the “title”. 

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So there was another reason for this post.  In my previous post, the author mentions using videos to analyze your performance in order to “learn something new”, or actually in this case, master something.  I’ve been using video recordings to analyze myself since I’ve gotten serious about learning how to box. And these recordings have given me opportunities to use the “mind”, to train and visualize when the gym isn’t available.  There’s something to watching something over and over again; to seeing every pattern of error that you make and eventually correcting them; and the sudden epiphany of realizing what you’ve been doing a right for so long (feint left hook -> straight jab - “the curveball”).

For all you fight fans, here are some of my recent sparring and instruction videos that I have used for inspiration in my training and mastery of a complicated martial art that has given me the discipline and confidence to perform better in so many other things in my life. Here’s to the road ahead, to traveling in the footsteps of champions, and to the gifts and blessings of knowledge.  Now to finish my finals. 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWHqPcYUxgZRF7K080Q-HZ14NzBhIEeaS