Let's play "Anagram"! (source from NPR aired on March 29, 2020)

This week presents Sunday Word Puzzle aired on NPR.

With a given word and an extra letter, anagram everything into a new word ... in which the added letter is silent.

e.g., MOW + B = WOMB

  

  1.  GRIN + W =

  2.  TOGS + H =

  3.  FINE + K =

  4.  TENS + C =

  5.  HANS + G =

  6.  BRIDE + S =

  7.  NOMAD + L =

  8.  RETINT + W =

  9.  NO SHAME + D =

Answer Keys

  

  1.  Wring

  2.  Ghost

  3.  Knife

  4.  Scent

  5.  Gnash

  6.  Debris

  7.  Almond

  8.  Writen

  9.  handsome

Frequently Used Words/Phrases Related to CoVid-19

Today, let me share some English words or phrases that you hear frequently these days due to the current mind-boggling pandemic that’s sweeping the entire world. We all feel insecure, unstable, devastated, and lonely. However, this too shall pass. Take a deep breath and hang in there!!!



non-essential businesses: the businesses that are generally recreational in nature. (They don't provide groceries, health or financial support, or utilities) e.g., shopping malls, theaters, hair salons, nail salons and spa, museums, casinos/ racetracks, sporting and concert venues

*Most restaurants can operate as long as they switch their service to exclusively ‘take-out’ and ‘delivery’.





to shelter in place: It means to stay at home or find a safe location indoors and stay there until you are given an “all clear” or told to evacuate.





(to be placed on) lockdown: a situation in which people are not allowed to enter or leave a building or area freely because of an emergency





Social distancing: avoiding people or staying at least 6 feet away from each other or places where it’s possible to come into contact with germs by droplets, direct contact or surfaces that are potentially contaminated with the virus.





to flatten the curve for CoVid-19: the curve refers to the line on a graph that rises as the number of confirmed cases of Corona virus infection. Flattening the curve means to slow the transmission of CoVid-19 so that a community/ society does not have an overwhelming number of cases.





to self-quarantine: voluntarily stay at home because they think they may have been exposed to the virus or they are being cautious





isolation: Isolation is for people who actually have the virus or suspect they may be infected. Those who have the virus need to be hospitalized in an isolation unit.





an uptick (in cases): a light increase (in cases)





price gouging: charging exorbitant prices for necessities in times of crisis or emergency, which is violation of unfair or deceptive trade practices





to hog or hoard…: to panic-buy goods or food items to stockpile in a large amount at a time in case of emergency

Small Thoughts I Had Today

Small Thoughts in Big Crisis

by Jean J. Lee

Social distancing to flatten the curve

It serves the purpose, but wracks our nerve

So tired of news and stories we observe

Alas! Is this crisis what we truly deserve?

People keep adding piles of food reserve.

Hope our humanity is still the thing we can preserve.

Oh, Lord, please let the virus swerve

    and go away for good with much less verve.

Let's solve word puzzle only with the letter C, T, and Vowles

Let us challenge ourselves with the NPR Sunday Puzzle aired this last Sunday. (source: NPR on-air challenge Word Puzzle, March 20, 2020)

Every answer today is a word, name or phrase in which the only consonants are C and T — repeated as often as necessary. All the other letters are vowels.

Example: Understood without being staged =>   answer: tacit

1.   A room at the top of a house

2.   Like an angle that is less than 90 degrees

3.   group of 8 musicians

4.   desert plants with needles

5.   an adorable person

6.   city on the Erie Canal (in upstate New York between Buffalo and Albany)

7.   strategy

8.   something invisible a grade schooler doesn’t want to get

9.   brand of breath mint (two words)

10.       kind of acid or derived from/ producing vinegar

11.       ancient Greek state with Athens

12.       (verbal phrase) to misbehave (two words)

13.       Virtuoso musical piece played on a piano

14.       The highest large lake (in the world) between Bolivia and Peru

15.       Cry meaning "Stop! That's enough!” (3 word-verbal-phrase)

16.       Game with X’s and O’s (hyphenated name of a game)

ANSWER KEYS 

   1.  attic

   2.  acute

   3.  octet

   4.  cacti

   5.  cutie

   6.  Utica

   7.  tactic

   8.  cootie

   9.  Tic Tac

  10.  acetic

  11.   Attica

  12.  act out

  13.   Toccata

  14.   Titicaca

  15.   Cut it out

  16.  Tic-Tac-Toe

Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or support groups for therapy. These people he has accidentally come across were the paths through which Dr. Jedidiah could look back on his own life, being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life….or some fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.





Episode # 33. Lonely Hearts




Laura and I were both broken souls. Her husband had cheated on her more than twice, which made her determined never to fall in love or fall for the wrongful system of “marriage”. When I first met her at the ‘members’ social’ night of the fitness club I belonged to for years, she looked like a loner who always prefers to keep to herself. I started to wonder who that woman was, but I was too preoccupied and exhausted with my own personal matters to reach out to Laura. I lost my beloved wife to depression and drugs. In a sense, both Laura and I had been stabbed in the back by the most precious person in life before we knew it. Those hidden years disguised in rosy colors must have secretly grown the sharpest thorns that penetrated our souls deep down inside. Laura latched her mind. I worked my butt off at my clinic all the time and exercised after work like there’s no tomorrow . In this place called “Fix and Fit” where ‘healthy body and mind’ should be a major goal for people, Laura and I were two effete habitués of the club.





One morning, I found myself bored again, pedaling so carelessly on the elliptical machine like a poor blowup doll dancing in the wind against its own will. Then in the corner of my eye was Laura quietly crying on a stationary bike. Her feet and legs pedaling on the bike looked like they didn’t belong to her. It just seemed like myself. Blank eyes, compressed lips, determination not to mingle with anyone out here, muzzed mind and soul...but one thing in heart. I don’t know about Laura, but I know for sure that I needed someone so badly so I could be honest with and confide in. I wanted somebody to read my sorrow and wound in me. Before I realized, I was already standing beside the weeping woman. Laura looked at me and said “Thanks. Thank you for your concern.”





Laura and I had been going out for several years until she left for Ethiopia for her missionary work. She said one day “Even when it rains, the Sun is still up there shining behind the clouds. When I was shedding tears in my own clouds of depression, you’d been right there behind the wall that I built. It was just like condemning myself to death by none other than me. You took off the latch of my fear and solitude. Now…I hate to leave you, but I’m heading out to the ones in need with this love in my heart you have rekindled.”  I was not courageous enough to join her for her faith in planting God’s love in broken and deprived souls in another country. But every time I think of Laura, I feel that a long lost smile comes back on my face, which reminds me of what I need to do for the rest of my life: ‘Keep looking around, find someone behind the invisible wall, and let them know there’s still a place they are welcomed.’





Like my favorite poet George Eliot says, “it is never too late to be what you might have been.” Both Laura and I came to learn from each other that it wasn’t too late to be someone else’s precious being when it looked next to impossible.









Expressions

    

    1.  to keep to oneself: to avoid contact with others

    2.  to work one’s butt off: to work really hard

    3.  effete: worn out/ weakened

4.  habitué: a frequent visitor to a particular place

    5.  a blowup doll: a giant inflatable doll

    6.  muzzed: confused or blurred

    7.  to comdemn somebody to ….: to sentence or relegate someone to a particular punishment

Encouraging Quotes for Lonely Hearts

Are you sad? Are you lonely? Do you need some words that would touch and hear your painful soul at the moment? I would like to share these quotes so we all could embrace what we are facing and come to terms with those feelings inside of you.



"Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them -- every day begin the task anew."

Saint Francis de Sales







"Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

C.S. Lewis







“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others;

For beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness;

   And for poise, walk with the knowledge that

                   You are never alone.”

 Audrey Hepburn



 



“Some people can’t believe in themselves until someone else believes in them first.”

Sean Maguire







“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world. Not even our troubles.”

Charlie Chaplin







“People only bring up your past when they are intimidated by your present.”      Unknown







“I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.”

Louisa May Alcott

“We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced.”

Malala Yousafzai







“At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.”

Brendan Francis







“Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.”

Roger Crawford

Fun Word Puzzle from NPR (aired on March 1st, 2020)

Here’s the interesting word puzzle from this last week’s Weekend On-air challenge game made by Will Shortz from NPR.

You are given clues for two words. The first word ends in -GO. Drop the GO, and what's left will answer the second clue. 

For example: What's loaded onto a ship? / Automobile --> CARGO



1. Tropical fruit / Guy or fellow

2. Australian sheep menace / Cacophony

3. Ballroom dance / Light brown

4. Second-longest river in Africa / Opposed to

5. North Dakota city / At a distance

6. Game with a 25-square card / Large container

7. Foreigner in Mexico / Smile

8. Italian cheese / Where China is

9. Third-largest city in America / Latin-American girl

10. Name of a bay in Jamaica / Card game associated with cheats

11. California city / Cookie often made with pecans











Answer Keys  

   

   

   1.  mango/ man

   2.  dingo/ din

   3.  tango/tan

   4.  congo/ com

   5.  fargo/far

   6.  bingo/bin

   7.  Gringo/grin

   8.  Asiago/Asia

   9.  Chicago/Chica

   10.              Montego/Monte

   11.              San Diego/Sandie