I think I mentioned in an earlier post that my son is working on a YA novel called Challenger's Chase. Related to that he is creating a series of channels on Instagram, etc., but specifically a Youtube channel talking about writing drafts. He has posted his first three vlog entries:
Check it out!
My son George has been writing his first novel, Challenger's Chase(prologue), and instead of going the normal publishing or self-publishing route he has decided to release the book via blog posts. He just released the first chapter which can read here: https://ccghawkins.com/2021/01/02/book1chapter1/. I read a very early version of the first part of this chapter. Obviously the story is George's but you will also notice that it has a lot illustrations that go with it. Those are his as well.
My son George is in the process of writing a book, a young adult fantasy novel. The book is called Challenger's Chase. It is very hard to get published so he is taking on the new world introduced by internet technologies. He will be releasing the book one chapter at a time to Patreons. He's calling it an illustrated web novel.
It's pretty cool to see him give this a go, even though we have no idea if he'll be successful or not. At least he's giving it a good shot before he gets serious and has to go find a job. He's going all out and creating accounts on various social media including twitter, youtube, facebook, instagram, etc. He's created a website and a blog. It'll be interesting to see how he can keep all of those things up and running, I would have started with a shortlist, probably something like Youtube and anything an app like hootsuite can support (1 post to multiple sms). I'm doing my best to not say anything because it is his thing, not mine. He can do what he wants but it is hard to see a blog that doesn't offer an RSS feed. Part of being a parent to adult kids though, you gotta let them do their thing.
Here is the list of his online presence:
Much to my surprise, though, it was actually really good. The liquid smoke I think is really what makes it, but I topped it with arugula, mustard, Ketchup and caramelized onions.
You can see the wraps on the plate covered in saran wrap. There's a pun in there somewhere.
The second recipe used a quarter cup of the Tofu Cashew Mayonnaise. For my fellow no oil friends, this recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon of tahini. I bought tahini that had no extra oil added but it was still quite oily. I like the flavor of tahini I just don't want the oil. But for yesterday I used 1/2 teaspoon of tahini.
Other than that though the tofu cashew mayonnaise was fantastic. Here's the recipe
I used this mayonnaise for the Eggless Tofu Salad. For what it is worth I never really liked egg salad so I don't consider this a replacement :-) The Tofu Salad was fantastic, the dill adding it the perfect flavor. The bowl bigger bowl in the picture to the left is a Quinoa salad my wife Arisa featuring Chayote.
For scheduling reasons we started earlier than we would have normally and we finished earlier as well. Which was just as good because by the time we would have normally just been settling in to eat we were inundated with rain.
ジョージょが合格しました！ 12月にシカゴへの旅について記事をアップしましたが、主に旅の内容でした。 でも、もともとシカゴに行った理由は日本語能力試験を受けるためです。 ジョージだけではなく、僕とケンも試験を受けました。 ケンとジョージは同じN3レベルに挑戦しました。 僕はレベル１を挑戦しました。僕とケンはジョージが先にもらい合格ということで後で届くというのは不合格になるじゃないかと心配しています。 しかも、今日は大統領の日という祭日なので郵便配達がないわけで早くとも明日にならないと届かないので余計に結果を気になります。ジョージ君、おめでとうございます！
The following image is a picture I grabbed of George's pc monitor. He is making this robot in a graphics program called Gimp which comes with just about every distribution of Linux.
I'm no artist but that looks amazingly detailed to me.
Merry Christmas all. I know that not everyone who reads this blog(all two of you) are actually Christians, however, take my Merry Christmas in the spirit it is given regardless of what you believe. As you will see on another post I am preparing I'm not particularly "christian" either. But I've always believed in Christmas as a celebration of family, love and giving. If you can't believe in that regardless of your actual religion, or even lack thereof, then we probably aren't friends. Merry Christmas anyway.
The following is this year's Christmas card that due to technical and time problems we didn't get out this year.
The following is the note that my wife added to the email we sent out in lieu of regular cards this year.
Happy Holidays!
To this email, I attached a picture of the Cleveland Hawkins Family. Included is a picture of Grandpa. We all miss him very much. Here are some quick facts from this past year.
Robert : Robert traveled a lot this year. He currently has 7 projects that he's working on for Hyland. He took Ken on a College tour during the summer and he is very happy that Ken's favorite was Wesleyan.
Arisa(me) : I started a part-time job this year to help support our family. I miss Elly, who is studying hard in American. With only boys(Robert is included) in the house, I constantly worry about the state of our house, and often tell them to clean their rooms because Santa is coming.
Elly : Elly is a Freshman at American University at D.C. She tells us that she enjoys her new freedoms, and life in general. Her major is "International Business". You cannot tell in the pictures, but Elly cut 12 inches off her hair for a new look.
Ken: Ken is a Senior at Mayfield High School. His soccer team made district champions for the 3rd year in a row, and now they have a spot in the school hall of fame. As with Mayfield tradition, Ken bleached then dyed his hair. Ken even cut his hair into a mo-hawk. The soccer shirt he is wearing in the picture is from Grandpa and Grandma Ishii(japan).
George: George joined the soccer team this year. He also got his temporary license, adding some new grey hairs to Rob's head. Although in the picture you cannot tell, He has grown, and is nearly as tall as Ken. The picture is of him tutoring a Japanese boy, which he does every week.
We all hope to see you soon.
The Cleveland Hawkins Family (Rob and Arisa)
As you can tell, Arisa's English isn't perfect. I still think you get a sense of what our year was like. The year started off on a grim note, with us taking a trip down to Charlottesville VA to say good by to my Dad on New Year's day. 10 days later he had passed on, and we made a trip out to Boston for his funeral. The funeral, while a sad event, obviously, was also a really fun time. It has been quite a while since the extended family had gotten together, or at least a long time since my family and I had a chance to participate.
Life goes on though, and Elly was accepted and matriculated to American University. With the exception of one "b", she got all A's and did well enough in Calculus that she didn't need to take the final exam! Ken was on a team representing the State of Ohio at the SkillsUSA contest in Kansas and came home with a gold medal. He played varsity soccer, is in all honors or AP classes at school with the exception of "Chefery", which is what I think they used to call home economics. Several years ago George was labelled "gifted" by the State of Ohio and while I'm still unclear as to what that means, he is also in all honors classes, and getting straight A's. What really surprised me was his joining the soccer team. I certainly didn't expect it. While still not the best player - he had never played before - you could see improvement in foot skills over the season and just as importantly an understanding of how the game is supposed to be played.
Arisa continues to be the rock of this household. This year she is transitioning from focusing on her online business to finding a job. She currently works at Target for a minimum wage job to help the family finances. This job is just a step for her. As she looks for a job one of the things that really hit home is that she needs to improve her English. So she has drastically reduced her efforts in her online business to focus on studying English. I could tell that she's improving, probably not where she needs to be yet, but improving. But more importantly she is really trying, and she will get there. I really appreciated her efforts last night at dinner where she was very talkative and it was clear she was trying to use her English.
The other thing we found was that companies don't really take her online business seriously. Regardless of the fact that the amount of work across the spectrum of the business, from market research to marketing communications, to sales, to customer support(to some of the pickiest customers in the world) and P/L tracking, she is not working for a "company" and therefore it is discounted. So the job at Target is part of the plan. It helps the family finances but gets her working for a "company". The other major part of the plan is already in the works as well. We have gotten her transcript from Japan and it "officially" evaluated to be the equivalent of a B.A. here in the U.S. The next step is for her to take the Social Worker licensing test for the State of Ohio.
While I continue to be a cog in the machine at Hyland, both Arisa and I are active with the Japanese Association of Northeast Ohio. I am, not surprisingly, involved with the web team which is probably the most active part of JANO other than our two main events, the Shinnenkai and the Sakura Picnic. We have three other volunteers that make up the web team and they are truly spectacular. One of their more important roles, other than posting to our website, is the "welcome" they give to Japanese nationals that are moving to the area. I am currently tracking an email thread from an individual who will be attending a graduate program beginning next year. Over the last 3 or 4 days, 20 or so emails have gone back and forth over such things as health insurance, places to live, what to bring from Japan, what not to bring from Japan, etc., etc.
For JANO, this support of Japanese coming to Northeast Ohio prior to arrival is a relatively new thing and it has been hugely successful in my mind. Almost every single person we've helped has turned around and become a JANO member. But more importantly, I think they are arriving with substantially increased ease-of-mind. For many of these individuals, moving to Northeast Ohio will be there first time outside of Japan - and moving to another country for anybody can be a worrisome thing just because of the unknowns of a new country and culture. I think it is telling that the vast majority of people these ladies have helped in 2010 became members of JANO.
Thank you ladies!
Obviously, there's a lot more that happened in 2010, but in the end I think it was a good year with the huge exception of losing my Dad. And most of all, looking back on it, I realize how lucky I am to be surrounded by some of the best people in the world - my kids and my wonderful wife. Merry Christmas guys, I love you!
子供が凄いな。このまえ、ケンとジョージが漢字能力検定試験を受けましたが、立派に合格です。
もちろん、子供よりありさが凄いですね。毎年の夏に日本語を子供に教えています。前日、2時間もかけて教えているそうです。ほとんど、子供が文句を言わないし、真面目にやっているそうですけど、子供よりありさが教えるための準備などに努力してこの結果になったことですよね。いいママですね。
エリーは大学4年生が取る日本語授業を受けていて、結構いい成績が出来ていると思います。もちろん、エリーがケンとジョージより日本語利用時間がなかったのであんまり驚いていないんですが、大学で週に2ー3回授業があることでどのぐらい上達しているだろうかと気になっていて仕方がないんです。
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
今年の感謝祭は自宅でした。母はボストンに行っていますので、5人家族だけでした。特にエリーがワシントンDCのアメリカン大学にいってから始めて帰って来ていますので5人だけで楽しく過ごせました。
So I can't really talk about Buzz. But I can talk about other items of interest about Google products and services.
As most GMail users and Gapp (Google Apps) users are aware, Google recently deployed Priority Inbox. Nifty little filter and I like the idea that it gets smarter, much like the spam filters get smarter with more data. So I think its a great feature. Just a tad bit late.
