Reading Time: 4 minutes Any questions please let me know || Mobile: 314 540 2721 || Email: minjie.xu@gmail.com (Update 11-18-2022) We ended the daylight saving time for the year. The sunset is usually at about 5 pm, thus 4:30 pm starting time will give about 30 minutes time. More importantly, the weather is becoming a bit cold as the

Reading Time: 4 minutes A.k.a., the enrichment opportunities, as they usually call it in the elementary schools. For middle school, though, they usually have more choices than elementary school. This is the Ladue Middle School current offerings. Note the Science Olympiad itself has 20+ subjects / events, and it’s mind boggling to say the least. Also note I was

Reading Time: 2 minutes Community night, open house, curriculum night,… the bottomline is, they are all “meet the teachers” night. It’s not as hard as “meet the parents” (I recall there was a movie with that name). Because of pandemic, last few years, meet the teachers have mostly virtual or drive through, to avoid large crowd etc. And I

Reading Time: 2 minutes Background: I went to a boarding school when I was 13. I saw my parents once a month. Society was much simpler then but the change was in the air and in the ground, Ningbo was opened up in 1984, and I saw a lot of earth moving around me. Although foreigner was still rare

Reading Time: 2 minutes I started a Twitter thread on Alcohol recently. I have not finished it yet, and I am in a bit relapse now. But I will attempt to rewrite it as a blog. Or reflection. I think the most important thing of all, is we need to make sure we don’t get drunk often, or have

Reading Time: 2 minutes First: I am happy to say the kids to back to school. In the last 2 weeks before school starts, some days Sophia really got bored, and she let me know that. She asked me to to buy the humming bird feeder, among other things. I recall the days I shopped at Sears (hint, a

Reading Time: < 1 minute In my old job at the credit card 💳 co. I did support for a while and once I spent about 2 hours giving cardholder about 1.3 cents worth of US dollar. Today the roles reversed. Btw, Serenity said she was proud of me (assuming she was complementing I was the cool 😎 guy). What

Reading Time: 2 minutes A checklist for Ladue school parents and guardians Buy school supplies; Meet the teacher / community night (bring school supplies if applicable): mainly say hi to teachers and staff, and for the kids to learn where are the classrooms etc. on 1st day; Adjust kids sleep routine: from summer (no school or no camp) schedule

Reading Time: < 1 minute Personal opinion: the coffee from ALDI is pretty good; so was the regular half & half (creamer) from Costco. On the flip side: probably 1st world problem, the store brand coffee from the biggest grocery store in St. Louis 圣村 is not good.

Reading Time: < 1 minute Zero covid analogy A hotel in Sanya #Sanya (below tweet appears since deleted) But there are more similar Covid Test scenes. A building in #Shanghai Yangqu district sudden locked down: