Thật vui và cảm động khi đọc bài viết của cháu Nguyễn Nhựt Trường với tựa đề, “Chú Donny có một trang web xịn!”

Lúc tung ra phiên bản thứ hai của luận án Vietnamese Typography, tôi mới thêm vào phần mẫu (samples) để những nhà thiết kế chữ có thể thấy chữ Việt được sắp xếp ra sao.

Lúc đầu tôi chỉ thiết kế chừng vài mẫu thôi nhưng càng lúc tôi càng cảm hứng làm thêm nhiều trang khác nhau. Như lời cháu viết, tôi không chỉ muốn “tôn vinh” chữ Việt mà còn muốn tôn vinh văn hóa và văn học Việt.

Tôi không nghĩ nhiều người xem nên chỉ âm thầm thiết kế để thỏa mãn chính mình. Khi nhận được tin nhắn động viên của Nhựt Trường, tôi cảm nhận được rằng cháu hiểu được mục đích của tôi từ bấy lâu nay. Tôi cảm ơn cháu.

I am a skiaholic. Damn right, I just coined a new word and I am not ashamed to admit that I am a skiaholic. This season, I already spent 27 days skiing, snowboarding, and teaching. I think about that white powder all the time. I don’t want to hit it. I just want to shred it.

As a skiaholic, I always try to get my fix. Waiting for the weekends to come is getting way too long. I need to get on the slopes more often. Liberty resort is closest to my house and its hours of operation are the longest. On Monday to Wednesday, Liberty opens until 8:00 pm. On Thursday, it opens until 9:00 pm. I have been tempted to hit the slopes after work even just for a few hours, but I also have responsibilities and obligations at home.

I didn’t mind skiing or snowboarding alone, but I would feel guilty without my family. Unfortunately, my wife isn’t into skiing. Fortunately, three out of my four boys still enjoy skiing and snowboarding. Spending time with them on the slopes had been my most-treasured moments.

Being a skiaholic is a good thing. It is definitely better than being an alcoholic. In fact, I have been giving up drinking to prevent getting gout. If I got a flare up, I would be out of commission for two to three weeks. I couldn’t take that risk.

Being a skiaholic is good for my physical health. I am out in the cold moving for hours. My body is getting used to the cold. I don’t get sick. I feel stronger. Being a skiaholic is also great for my mental health. Because I am so focused on skiing and snowboarding, I don’t pay attention to all the negativities around me.

Before ski season began, I was miserable. I was carrying loads of personal issues. I couldn’t control my own emotions. My wife sat me down and told me that I needed therapy. I agreed. I was a mess and I would seek out a therapist. On second thought, why would I pay a stranger to hear me vent about my personal issues? I could do that on my blog for free. I also knew that once ski season started, I would be just fine.

Taking on the seasonal job as a Ski & Ride instructor allows me to be more social. I talk to many guests. I interact with a group of passionate ski and snowboard instructors. Even when I was not working, I was skiing, snowboarding, and talking to strangers on the chairlift. All I had to ask was, “How is your day?” Then we would kick off a 5-minute conversation or not. Some people don’t like to talk and I respect that.

Being a skiaholic definitely improves my quality of life. And the best part of being a skiaholic is almost free. There’s nothing to whine or complain about being a skiaholic. I am going to say it proud and loud: “I am a fucking skiaholic.”

Nguyễn Ngọc Tư is a littérateur of short stories who has a distinctive style of capturing the language of Southern Vietnamese, particularly in the Mekong Delta. Her stories are often heavy on social issues and injustices. After reading her collection of short stories in Đong tấm lòng, I decided to pull a few of my personal favorites to create a Vietnamese typographic sample. The main text is set in Hahmlet, designed by Minjoo Ham and Mark Frömberg. For the title cover, I chose Smooch, designed by Robert Leuschke. Special thanks to Nhựt Trường for requesting me to create a sample page for Nguyễn Ngọc Tư and for recommending me to read Đong tấm lòng. Check out “Giữa người với người”.

After stepping aside for 5 weeks, I was back in my warm and cozy office at Scalia Law School as Director of Design & Web Services. I needed some catching up to do, but my colleagues had done an exceptional job of holding down the fort while I was away on snowy mountains skiing, snowboarding, or teaching. While my office job works my brain, my outdoor job works my body.

I spent my evenings driving my kids to their activities or tuning up skis and snowboards for customers. Then I spent some late nights working on freelance web design and development. If I had no client work, I would work on my self-initiated projects. I worked with my wife on HaH! Chili. She made our product. I made all of our marketing materials from our website to the bottle label to social media promotions.

I advised type designers on Vietnamese diacritics. When I didn’t have any gigs, I churned out Vietnamese typographic samples. I keep myself busy. I consider myself a hustler, but my wife thinks I have ADHD. I brushed her off at first, but I had been thinking about what she said. She might be right. I couldn’t shut down my brain to sleep until I exhausted my body and mind.

I haven’t been able to stay still. My state of mind has always been in constant elevation. In retrospect, it all started with my professional career working in the web industry. Being a web designer and developer, I have to constantly come up with new designs and keep up with the latest technologies. Then it spread over to my personal developments. I read to improve my knowledge. I blog to improve my writing. I ski, snowboard, and skate to improve my physical and mental health. I always feel the need to improve myself with whatever I am involved in. I don’t need to make tremendous improvements overnight. I practice my techniques and hone my skills one day at a time. As long as I am better today than yesterday, I am improving. I play the long-term game.

Maybe I am overdoing it, but I don’t think that’s ADHD. I think of it as a self investment.

I am excited to announce the launch of a landing page for my passionate work as a ski & ride instructor at Whitetail Resort, which is part of Vail Resorts.

I want to share a bit about my journey to skiing and snowboarding. I also want to share my coaching progressions for both sports so guests will know what they will learn from me.

For the design, I had to go with the jacket blue. For all Vail instructors, blue is the color of our uniforms. For typesetting, I had to go with Roslindale, designed by David Jonathan Ross.

Check out my new site, book a lesson, and come ski or ride with me.

Right off the first line on the opening track, “On With the Show,” Celeste sings, “And so… Got a feeling I should go.” Her gruff voice and articulate phrasing sound just like Billie Holiday. The piano plays behind her throughout with an occasional bass and subtle strings following her. She turns up an octave on the bridge: “There’s the swell of strings, the choir in constant rage / It’s the pit that sets the time, but we never see them play.” Damn!

On “Keep Smiling,” a strumming guitar accompanies her while the lust orchestra backs her up. Again she channels Lady Day in phrasing fascinating lyrics: “Curved at the edges, first in a frown / Held like the truth is there in my mouth.”

On the title track, “Woman of Faces,” the piano accompanies her as she sings, “She is a woman of all faces / Works so hard just to be replaced with / Who really cares what she’s made of?” The tune progresses into swelling and hypnotizing orchestration.

Most of the recordings on this album has an orchestra element except for “Could Be Machine,” which has a wild drum machine. The chorus has a child-like melody in which her voice fights against the marching drums, “Could be laughing right now, could be laughing right now / Could we be machine? Could we be machine?”

I had been listening to Woman of Faces every time I hit the road early in the morning when the sun was still down, but it could have been fantastic to enjoy at night with a glass of whiskey. I tried not to drink much these days so I could focus on skiing and snowboarding. If my gout flares up, I am done.

Thank you for your requests and pre-orders on our HaH! Chili Sauce. While waiting for our HaH! Chilimaster to make a new batch, we invite you to check out our HaH! updated website. We added a photo gallery to the site. We also created a fun YouTube playlist of Donny Trương (that’s me) enjoying his food with HaH! Chili Sauce.

Timber & Lụa, by Vi Khi Nào and Lily Hoàng, is billed as experimental narratives. Each short story is written in three versions: Vietlish, English, and Vietnamese. I read several pages of the Vietlish version and gave up before my head was about to explode. Here’s a sample excerpt:

Love, mặc dù phổ quát, is not a ngôn ngữ she is designed to speak and its performance always feels a bit lập dị and nổi bật. She wants to understand it like the way ruy băng understands its lăng kính or tù giam. She was built to be a rô bô sắc sảo, từng hàng of code is perfect. Vì vậy, what is không đúng about her now? She nhìn lên nhìn xuống with her rotating eyeballs and asks Chalk, “Is fucking like a một bữa tiệc xa hoa. Or, ngoại trừ me, is it a bathroom door everyone knows how to open?”

What the fuck did I just read? The English version flows a bit better, but the Vietnamese version reads like Google Translate. I experimented with alternating between English and Vietnamese as I turned a page and that confused me even more. Even as someone who reads and writes both English and Vietnamese, I was having a hard time grasping the narratives.

Timber & Lụa is a bold, daring experimentation, but that’s about it.

Hôm nọ đang ăn cơm với cá khô ngon lành thì bị hóc xương. Tuy nhai cá cũng rất kỹ lưỡng nhưng vẫn bị miếng xương nhỏ vướng vào cổ họng. May là nó không làm cho cổ khó chịu. Chỉ chừng nào nuốt xuống mới bị thốn thốn. Thử đủ mọi cách cũng không làm miếng xương xuống được. Thôi đành chịu vậy. Chừng nào nó xuống thì nó xuống.

Nghĩ lại tôi có quá nhiều điều may mắn, bị xui một chút cũng không sao. Vả lại trong cuộc sống có nhiều cái gai trong mắt không thể nào khuất được cũng đành phải chịu. Riết rồi cũng quen thôi. Quang trọng là đừng để những cái gai trong mắt đó ảnh hưởng đến tâm trí của mình. Khi đã nghĩ suốt được như thế thì tôi cảm thấy cuộc sống nhẹ nhàng và thoải mái hơn. Tha thứ và buông thả những gì khiến mình phiền muộn. Dĩ nhiên đôi lúc cũng không thể nào kiềm chế được cảm xúc chính mình nhưng phải cố gắng.

Sau một tuần, tôi không còn để ý đến cái xương bị hóc nữa. Nó đã trôi đi hồi nào tôi cũng không hay biết. Điều này chứng tỏ rằng, mọi chuyện xui xẻo hay phiền phức rồi cũng sẽ qua. Ăn thua là lý trí và cách suy nghĩ của mình. Cuộc đời này ngắn ngủi lắm. Hãy sống cho thật tốt.

Hên là xương cá nhỏ, chứ xương cá không thì không biết phải làm như thế nào. Lần sau ăn cá phải cẩn thận hơn nhiều hay chỉ ăn cá không xương.

Hôm nọ, tôi dạy trượt tuyết cho 4 người Việt. Một chị chắc cỡ tuổi tôi hoặc nhỏ hơn. Còn 3 đứa trẻ chắc ở tuổi học trung học. Nghe nói là con của bạn chị ấy chứ không phải con của chị.

Dĩ nhiên mấy đứa trẻ học rất lẹ. Chỉ cần chỉ vài lần là tụi nó trượt được. Còn chị lớn tuổi một chút thì cần chỉ dẫn thêm. Tôi dạy 3 đứa trẻ đi vững và có thể tự lên ghế. Chúng nó chỉ cần học cách cua hình chữ “S” thôi. Còn tôi thì đi với chị lớn để đi kiềm. Chị ấy nói, “Đi học lớp có thầy nói tiếng Việt mà còn chỉ cặn kẽ nữa. Lần sau sẽ tìm đến anh để học tiếp”. Tôi cảm ơn chị.

Đi làm nơi tuyết trắng lạnh lẽo mà nghe được tiếng Việt cũng thật ấm lòng. Những kỷ niệm nho nhỏ tình đồng hương sẽ lắng đọng mãi trong tôi. Thỉnh thoảng cũng thấy người Việt và nghe tiếng Việt trên bãi tuyết. Có lẽ người Việt cũng đang tham gia môn trượt tuyết này.

Tôi làm ở Whitetail mỗi thứ Bảy và Chủ Nhật từ đây cho đến hết mùa đông. Bà con nào muốn học ski hay snowboard, hãy đăng ký lớp học (nhóm hay riêng) trên skiwhitetail.com nhé. Đến lúc lấy lớp thì yêu cầu Donny Trương. Tôi sẽ dạy hết mình.