Bluebellia

You may have noticed that there was no post last week. It’s because Arwen and I went to Montana visiting my family for a week. The week went by really fast and now I want to look back and see what we did during that week. I haven’t done diary-style posts like this for quite a while so click on! There are pictures too! Day 1, Wednesday We flew the whole day. At first it was nice and Arwen thought her snacks were interesting enough and took a picture of it. Then it got really boring and tiring, so we decided to take some funky pictures together. Here are some: After 7 hours, we arrived at Bozeman, MT at 8 PM. Howdy, MONTANA! Then Mom came pick us up. Then us being tired and sleep. Day 2, Thursday The second day was a shopping day, since we didn’t finish our Christmas shopping yet. My brother Holden drove us to three different stores then we had lunch at Burger King. Good time. Then we went to Petra Academy, my high school, which was now much diff...

I love books. In fact, when I am no longer nomadic I would acquire so many books and stare at the shelves and feel excited. I also like collectibles – the “cool” things from this and that; statues, swords, stuffs. And I like video games a bit too much. At the moment I am enjoying Blizzard Ent.’s Diablo III, a fantastic game about the eternal conflict between the Burning Hells and the High Heavens and the struggled humanity living in between. And this is what Arwen gave me for my birthday: Diablo III Official Strategy Guide, Limited Edition ! The perfect combination of books, collectibles, and Diablo III! How awesome is that? I was speechless. I am such a lucky person to have a girlfriend like that. Here is the picture of the gift: (From left to right: the hardcover strategy guide, the bonus binder, and the sculptured metal bookmark) Just so you know, I don’t usually get collectibles of any sort. Those always are the things I would drool on forever and never buy....

As I was looking through my old documents of the past, I found this short essay. I wrote this for my ICAP class in Summer 2010. I do not know what the assignment was about, but I chuckled when reading it again recently. I share it below here and hope you will find it funny as well. I spent my twelfth grade year in Montana as an exchange student. One day I came back after school and felt starving. It was when a smell coming from the kitchen got my attention. I had never smelled anything like that before, but it was one of the most delicious smells ever! So I walked to the kitchen, determined to find the source of the goodness.  There I found some newly baked cookies in the yellow cookie jar. Though cookies were popular, and I had watched the movie “Over the Hedge,” but that was the first time I ever saw them in real life. With the round and crunchy shapes, the delicious smell wandering in the air, the reflective dark brown color of the chocolate chips, the cookies were unbeli...

Yup, I'm back! How have you all been? Long story short, I have started doing my Master's Degree and also working so I have been quite busy. I have failed to keep up with blogging, I know. I have also failed to work out, to draw, to make manga, among many things. But I love this blog, and I love my readers, so here again, I am back. Thanksgiving this year was wonderful to me. Arwen and I were invited to my professor's house to have dinner with his awesome family. The meal was fantastic, and Arwen enjoyed hanging out with the baby and the two huge dogs they had. That's all I have for now. I will try to do this once a week as before and share with you the most exciting things I can get to. I think Arwen is gonna have her own blog so it's just me here. It's good to be back. Thanks. ------------------------------- The Thanksgiving posts of the years past: And So I am Thankful Dark and Cold "You Want to See Miracles?"   A.R.K.

I am back!!! It’s another Origami collection (Wohoo)! It’s AIRPLANES this time (anyone feels excited?!) Airplanes are awesome, you gotta admit that. This time, most of the models are from Gary Hsu’s Origami Airplanes that Fly – a book filled with great models and bad instructions. I was certainly happy folding them nonetheless, but come on, Mr.Hsu, try making clearer diagrams and your Origami will be much more popular! The keynote this time is a model by Marc Kirschenbaum – what a fantastic designer! Oh so that means this time all the models are American (where did the Japanese go?)! One more fun fact: the model for the cover picture this time, it’s Bluebell (Yay)! :D OK I am done. Posting something on this page again really makes me happy and excited. PART 09: AIRPLANES FIGHTER by Gary Hsu – What a fun model, but can it really “fly” with this much weight? FUTURISTIC FIGHTER by Gary Hsu – Can you spot the differences between this model and the previous “non-fu...

I like to share. It’s not like donating stuffs (it’s good too) but more like… introducing to other people what I find interesting. So actually this post’s title should be: “ It’s Hard to… Introduce ”, but it wouldn’t sound as good. So there you go. Songs, books, movies, games… Whenever I find one interesting I’d love to show it to another person – like a “maven”*, if you know the term, even though I am not as specialized and valuable. It’s pretty much become a hobby of mine. “ Hey, you want to hang out? Come to my place and I’ll show you this awesome video clip I found last week!” And one day I finally realized the ugly truth, and I am sharing it with you right now. Well, the title exposes it: sharing interesting things is hard. It’s very weird, really, because when I share with someone the stuff I found, it’s not as interesting as before ! Almost always, when I play a movie or the song while introducing about it super-enthusiastically, I will feel that the movie or the ...

There is a Canadian guy names Joe Roelle. He works for UNICEF in Vietnam (yes, Vietnam ), and his Vietnamese is absolutely phenomenal. Living in Hanoi, Vietnam for roughly 10 years, he’s become a very popular blogger with his (of course) Vietnamese blog. His two published books, one of which just came out this February, are two top-sellers in the Vietnamese market. Having a chance to enjoy his new book, I was put to awe. Knowing too well of how difficult Vietnamese can be to Westerners, I can say that Joe has archived something extraordinary. Learning another language is usually challenging. Someone who has been interacting with English since forever like me still has his incompetencies, and that makes me believe that it takes a life-time of effort to master a second language. Now I am trying to get to Korean, it gets even tougher. Will I ever become tri-lingual? Let me tell you a secret about that Joe Roelle guy: he started learning Vietnamese when he was 25! Twenty-five years ol...

(click on the picture for a bigger resolution) The newest artwork of mine, celebrating Arwen's successful GMAT result. This is the second time I tried coloring my works using Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (the first time was that silly comic poster ). The characters are in Vietnamese high-school students' clothing. "You are to be loved by me", 2012 .

Duyên hồng phận nhỏ Trời thương Nhìn em muôn kiếp nghìn phương mơ màng Phút giây ngoảnh mặt quên nàng Hồi lâu thức dậy, ngỡ ngàng: anh sai! Dẫu mai tháng cạn ngày phai Dù thương dù giận nào ai vô hình? Nắm tay, nắm trọn chữ Tình Vì em là để cho mình anh yêu!

I like drawing dragons. Today I am gonna share with you how I complete a dragon picture. It’s been awhile since the last time I posted something tutorial-like, so I am pretty exciting. Should be fun. Here we go.

More updates if you will: 1. We finished a brand-new comic! I may have said this before: whenever I don't have to go to school, or to go to work, I will be... extremely busy with self-appointed projects. About 4 weeks ago, I decided to join force with my best friend DO to participate in a huge Vietnamese comic competition. We worked hard on that, and the result was satisfying. The comic is in Vietnamese, regrettably, but here is the link if you want to take a look. : D As the competition is still going on, I am only allowed to post the poster (title page) of our comic here. 2. My brother has a fundraiser My brother Holden is entering the Nashville St. Jude Country Music Marathon, and he is trying to raise some fund for his school New College Franklin in TN. Here is the page. Please take a look, vote for him or support him with donations. 3. Bluebell is back Bluebell, once was the co-writer of this blog, is now back! Let's hope that we'll see her new posts soon....

I am taking a break. As I recently stopped working for BofA I was switched to "doing nothing" mode. The apparent freedom turns out not to be the case, as I am finding myself swimming in various self-made projects. Life is good, though, but I currently am quite busy. So I will be back, because there still is a lot I want to share! My experience as a teller for Bank of America; maybe the 2012 Lunar New Year moments; maybe some pictures or fun stories about Vietnam; maybe a brand new music video; or maybe some more Origami! So yeah, I will be off for a little while. You may want to check back in a month: I'll definitely be back by then.  

How popular is this blog? Shouldn’t be “very”, because I never receive more than five comments for a post, and the like/dislike button doesn’t seem to help with getting feedback from my visitors. I am not really concerned, though, it’s just that I have this interesting thing to share today.  I didn’t find out about this myself. My cousin shared me a link one day: LINK. I clicked. It’s just a Vietnamese article about various “interesting” café places for young people. I scrolled down and I saw this:  O... kay… so it was a picture of mine! Moreover, it’s from an Origami post in this blog! As you may guess, neither that Origami post nor myself has anything to do with the café which my picture demonstrates. And to say, if it’s not because of my cousin, I might never get to see the article. So this is what I decide to think and do: - Hey guess what! I am on newspaper, and this blog of mine is popular!!! :''D