Month: December 2025

Modern technology has almost eliminated the need to visit banks.  These days, I rarely find myself visiting a bank, or more specifically, an ATM (automated teller machine), unless I travel.  Still, if you’ve regularly used an ATM, at some point you would’ve probably used a drive-up ATM.  I’ll let you in on a little secret about drive-up ATMs; they outfitted them with Braille on the keypads for each of the numbers.  Some likely think that I made this up; I didn’t.

You may ask, “How would a person who is blind ever drive up to an ATM?”  However, they constructed drive-up ATM’s this way intentionally.  First, the most obvious explanation is that the user may operate from the back seat as a passenger.  This scenario is perfectly reasonable, especially since the drive-up ATM’s often keep longer hours than the bank itself.  Second, it costs less money to design, manufacture, distribute, and manage the inventory for one panel instead of two.  Since having the raised dots for Braille does not prevent anyone else from using the keypad, they all have them.

Continue reading “Wishing you happy holidays” →

On a day in late August 1977, my father passed away.  He was the model of health; it happened suddenly.  One moment, he was cooking in the kitchen of our family restaurant; the next moment, my mom took him to the hospital.  He died that night.  He didn’t just leave emptiness, as if he walked to the next room.  He had presence; he left a vacuum in his wake.  I was nine years old.

The family that remained was my mom and my two sisters, ages thirteen and seven.  We had no actual family here in Puerto Rico, but friends flooded our home that day.  They were effectively family; we even called them by the Chinese words for “aunt” and “uncle”.  I had never seen so many of our friends together at once.

Continue reading “To dismantle the hierarchy” →