Nicki Chen's Blog, page 3

Move Fast and Break Things

A Not-so-techie Grandma Reads Kara Swisher I’m old enough to have taken a typing class in high school. Old enough that our first computer was an Apple knockoff when we lived in Manila. An Orange? Or did they call it a Banana? We played tetris on it. That was in the late ‘80s. Like many […]

When You’re Just One Person in a Crowd

When you’re just a drop in the ocean, just small change in a billionaire’s pocket, only a pittance, a trifle, what can you do? You can’t do anything. Can you? You’ve probably heard this poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller. It begins like this: First they came for USAID And I did not speak out Because […]

Finally Something Fun in My Inbox

I don’t hate clearing out my inbox, but I don’t love it either. How about you? Do you let it pile up until you have dozens or hundreds of messages you haven’t looked at yet? Or are you the conscientious type who finishes going through your inbox and taking care of everything before you go […]

Asian Art on a Rainy Afternoon

It was raining. A light rain, but cold. I had my hood up. My sister was wearing a knit cap. A woman walked past us wearinng nothing on her head. We all smiled, and I said something stupid about the rain and her bare hair. “Oh!” she said, holding her hands up as though to […]

Neighbors, Good and Bad

I understood why my kids liked Sesame Street when they were young. Sesame Street was fun. But why were they so entranced with “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood”? Why did they sit for thirty minutes five days a week watching a soft-spoken man in a cardigan? There was no action, no bad guys, no change of scenes. […]

A Little Story about Dogs, and Cats … and Bombs

They wake up to the sound of bombs. Jump out of bed. They should huddle inside the bathtub, right? Or in the hallway. But, no. The bombs are close, and they’re enormous, large enough to destroy the entire building. We’ll go into the subway tunnels, they decide. We can shelter there. But what to bring? […]

Cats and Feng Shui, a Guest Post by Ruth Silbermayr

Ruth Silbermayr started her blog chinaelevatorstories after moving to China in 2012. Currently she lives and writes in Austria. Below you can read an example of one of her recent posts: Chinese Feng Shui and Cats by Ruth Silbermayr I am not very knowledgeable with regards to Feng Shui, but I have always found certain […]

Hearing again from Ruth

I’m talking about Ruth Silbermayr of the blog, China Elevator Stories. She’s a writer and blogger I met online in about 2014. I started my blog in August of 2013 when I was getting ready to publish my first novel, Tiger Tail Soup, a novel of China at War. My blog posts at that time […]

Courage–A Virtue for 2025

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”– Robert Louis Stevenson I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year. I didn’t resolve to eat fewer sweets and more veggies or to exercise more or clean out the cupboard–although those are good goals to keep in mind every year and all year […]

A Time for Everything

One of President John F. Kennedy’s favorite bible verses was from the Book of Ecclesiastes. It begins like this:  “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.…” […]