After my mother passed, I went through her room and found my pictures she had kept. As I flipped through them, I came across a snapshot of me taken with Dalena. The photo made me nostalgic and wondered what Dalena has been up to all these years. Has she left the Vietnamese-American entertainment behind? I tried to google her name, but nothing about her came up. I miss her. Like millions of Vietnamese Americans, I fell in love with “the blond beauty who sings flawless Vietnamese.” Beyond her singing talent, I had a deep respect for her English translations, which seemed to be underappreciated, of popular Vietnamese ballads.

I went back to my CD collection and realized that I have a few of her solo albums and a handful of her collaborative efforts with other Vietnamese singers including Don Hồ and Mỹ Huyền. I pulled out, Lệ Đá (Stone’s Tears), her debut for Thúy Nga Production, and relived the moment. In the opening title track, a soulful ballad by Trần Trịnh and Hà Huyền Chi, she croons Vietnamese with perfect enunciation and offers her own English version:

Just ask the stone how long it’s been
And ask the distance of the wind
Then ask the street lamp in the night
Shine on more your friendly light
For my love has gone away

I am not sure if I transcribed the fourth line correctly, but she deviates from the original lyrics a bit to match the melody of the tune. Her performance is soul-stirring even though the arrangement is just average. Another notable translation is Đức Huy’s “Như Đã Dấu Yêu” (As If We’ve Loved), in which she pours her heart out on the bridge:

You came to me with all of your soul
I came to you with all of my heart
But it’s too late for love meant to be
For love will stay with me always

Dalena taps into Vietnamese hearts and souls all over the world with her rendition of Y Vân’s “Lòng Mẹ” (Mother’s Love). Her English interpretation is as exceptional as her Vietnamese execution:

Mother’s love is deeper than the sea, so wide
Her soul as sweet as peaceful stream inside
Her words on songs are gentle breezes rise
Rock-a-bye her baby in the moonlit night

I couldn’t hold back my tears thinking about my mother when Dalena sings: “With love from morning until night / All through your life she holds you in her heart.” My mother’s love was unconditional in every sense of the word.

We’re winding down our spring break vacation in Rodanthe, North Carolina and ready to head back home tomorrow. A week had gone by fast. The kids—six boys ranging from age three to twelve—had a blast despite not having access to their iPads. They didn’t complain. They watched TV, played board games, made each other scream, biked to the playground, jumped the waves, swam in the pool, relaxed in the hot tube, ate like crazy, snacked like hell, and ate some more. We didn’t venture out much except for visiting the aquarium.

While the kids were doing an exceptional job of unplugging from their digital devices, the adults still glued to our phones. How hypocritical that the rule didn’t apply to us. I limited my phone usage to only night time when the kids went to bed. I used it mostly to blog and to take videos and photos. I read when the kids watched TV. I plowed through three short books. My main role was to chaperone the kids to wherever they went. It wasn’t as fun as skiing though. I preferred winter break over spring break. Though I had the chance to rollerblade a bit and a small skatepark next to the playground the kids liked.

I ate and drank much more on this trip than our ski trips. The beer belly I lost from three months of skiing came back and bigger. I started to have a gout attack as well. It is a sign that I went over my alcohol limit. I hadn’t had an attack for a while; therefore, I let my guard down. I am hoping to get it done and over with.

Overall, it was a decent trip. My wife did an excellent job of planning and booking the spot. The kids and I are happy to just follow her lead.

A collection of essays from 1968 to 2000, Joan Didion has written eloquently on various subjects including Nancy Reagan, Ernest Hemingway, and Martha Stewart. My personal favorites are her own reflection on “Telling Stories” and “Why I Write.” She writes:

By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

A short, sweet, and pleasurable read.

Thoughtful and tender, this collection of personal essays delves into today’s culture including maternity, sexuality, masculinity, spirituality, and vulnerability. Zoffness’s prose is honest and hilarious. Here’s her reason for writing:

I wrote—I write—because I prize language’s surprises and limitations, and because in college I connected to books more than I did to friends. Literature offered throughways to comprehension, to compassion, to a quieter mind. Writing offered the same, though its lens flipped around, allowed me to introspect, test assumptions, unscramble experiences and observations. It was an attempt to participate in the conversation rather than just nod along to it.

I love it and highly recommend this collection of memoirs.

Hôm qua mơ thấy ba. Thấy được những nụ cười tươi tắn cũng như những nét giận dữ trên khuôn mặt ông. Lần đầu tôi về Việt Nam vào năm 2001, ba hay rầy la nên tôi thấy khó chịu. Lần cuối tôi trở lại quê hương vào năm 1997, mới đó mà đã năm năm, ba vẫn hay la rầy tôi nhưng tôi không còn khó chịu nữa. Ngược lại tôi cảm nhận được sự lo lắng của ông dành cho tôi. Tánh của ông là thế. Miệng cứng lòng mềm. Mỗi lần ông lớn tiếng, tôi chỉ chọc ông cười. Thế là hết chuyện. Vả lại thời gian được ở bên ông quá ngắn ngủi dù ông có càm ràm rồi cũng sẽ qua nên tôi vẫn niềm nở với ông. Và ông đã tâm sự với tôi rất nhiều chuyện khi chỉ có hai cha con bên nhau.

Không ngờ rằng những ngày cuối đời của ba, tôi không thể ở gần bên ông vì con đại dịch. Không chỉ ba mà má tôi cũng thế. Những ngày cuối đời của mẹ, tôi cũng không có mặt bên cạnh bà. Tôi viết lên không phải để than vãn thân phận mình mà chỉ tự nhắc nhở rằng không ai tránh khỏi cái chết và không biết lúc nào sẽ chết. Có lẽ hoàn cảnh của tôi và ba đã sắp đặt như thế. Chúng tôi phải sống giữa hai phương trời cách biệt. Phải sống xa ba từ thuở nhỏ nên vẫn luôn ám ảnh tôi. Giờ đây cũng làm cha nên tôi không muốn chuyện đó sẽ xảy ra. Tôi cố gắng dành thời gian cho những đứa con của mình. Những ngày cuối tuần hoặc những ngày nghỉ hè, tôi luôn muốn được bên chúng. Đi ăn, đi chơi, đi đâu cũng được. Nhưng tôi cũng hiểu được rằng một ngày nào đó tụi nó cũng sẽ có thế giới riêng của bọn nó. Tôi nghĩ ngày đó còn rất xa xôi nhưng không ngờ nó đã sắp tới.

Thằng Đạo (12 tuổi) thằng Đán (9 tuổi) đã bắt đầu mọc lông mọc cánh. Tụi nó không còn hứng thú với những trò chơi cùng tôi nữa. Hôm trước tôi có tâm sự với hai đứa nó và nhắc lại những kỷ niệm bốn cha con (Đạo, Đán, và Xuân) cùng nhau phát triển những năng khiếu ice skating hoặc cùng động viên nhau vượt qua những sợ hãi để chơi rollerblade ở skatepark. Mùa đông vừa rồi mấy cha con cùng nhau xông pha skiing. Vài năm nữa bọn chúng cũng sẽ chán skiing. Tôi vẫn theo đuổi những môn thể thao này nhưng không còn nhiều động lực nữa khi không còn bọn chúng đi cùng. Nhưng tôi cũng nhấn mạnh với tụi nó rằng, tôi may mắn và hạnh phúc đã có được những ký ức đẹp với bọn chúng. Sau này dù có chuyện gì, tôi sẽ không hối hận vì tôi đã làm được những gì tôi có thể cho con.

The other night, I woke up around 3:00 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. I reached for my phone then started browsing. Somehow Greg Tate came to mind. I wanted to reread his essays. I found a handful of his work from the Village Voice and a few from Rollin Stones and Spin. As much as I love Tate’s articulate criticism, particularly on music, I hated reading his essays filled with annoying ads and JavaScripts that not only slowed down the loading to a crawl, but also kept freezing up the page. I wanted to just take all the content and create a book website without ads and JavaScript and with high-quality typography and editorial design. I want to keep his legacy alive. I might be running into the copyright issue even though I won’t make any money off it.

One of the perks of working at the law school is that every once in a while I would receive a bobblehead of a Supreme Court Justice from a generous and creative law professor. In the past ten years, my collection has grown. From Antonin Scalia to Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Sonia Maria Sotomayor, I have a display on my bookcase at work. I heard the rumor that some of these bobbleheads had been sold on eBay for a few grants a pop. They are gifts and priceless to me. I will keep them for as long as I can and I wanted to make a website showcasing them. I also wanted to learn more about them since I still don’t know many of them, especially the Justices from the past.

Just the thought of creating passion projects like these makes me love the web even more. I love to just design a website and share it to the world. All I need is some great content to markup in HTML, style in CSS, and set in flexible typefaces. I don’t need bloated CMS, JavaScripts, and third-party ads. For almost two decades working on the web, I sat out on all the frameworks. Even WordPress has become way too complicated for me to develop a theme. Full-site editing is where WordPress is heading. I have become more of a WordPress user than a developer. For my own blog, I am using about ten percent of WordPress’s capacity. I am still using my own theme, which has an index.php, style.css, and screenshot.png. From the start, I knew I wanted to keep my blog simple and easy to update. I use no photos, no JavaScripts, and no bloated CSS. I am still using the Classic Editor, which I don’t know how long the support would last.

So far, my simple sites with just HTML and CSS still stand the test of time. I hope all of my sites will stay online for as long as I am alive. I don’t want to worry about them after I am gone. My body will return to dusk and my sites will return to nothingness. I have learned to accept the reality of it instead of trying to keep my legacy alive.

I am unofficially done with Freestyle 3. Since I am learning on my own, the process took much longer than the ten-week group lesson. In addition, I took a break when we went skiing. I learned the backward-outside and backward-inside pivots fast. The back arabesques weren’t much of a challenge. I had the most trouble with the salchow jump. I got it down, but I am still not great at it. I skipped the change foot spin because I do not want to learn any spin. I didn’t learn the dance step sequence because I could not find any tutorial on YouTube. What I enjoyed the most from Freestyle 3 was the toe loop jump.

I am now ready for Freestyle 4. I am going to start with the loop jump. I am not sure the different between the loop and the half-loop jump. Then I’ll work on the flip jump. I am not sure what two arabesques and back 3-turns are. I need to look those up. I am going to skip the sit spin as well as the dance step sequence.

Continuing to learn figure skating allows me to set a goal for myself. Learning on my own is harder, but I don’t feel the pressure to keep with up with my classmates. I used to practice a lot to not embarrass myself. Now I just incorporate it into my exercise routine. At times I felt so frustrated, particularly when I was learning the salchow jump, and wanted to sign up for private lessons just so I can nail the techniques I was working on, but I was a bit shy to work one-on-one with a coach. In addition, I don’t want to pay for private lessons. We’re already spending private piano lessons for two our our kids and other activities including ice hockey and swimming. I’ll see how far I can go learning on my own.

I work Monday and Friday from home and Tuesday to Thursday at the office. On a typical day, I wake up at 7:00 am sharp to start my routine. Around 7:15 am, I wake up Đạo then head down the kitchen to prepare lunch for him and myself. We go out the door by 7:40 am.

On Monday and Friday, I drop Đạo off school then go back home to get Đán and Xuân ready for school. Then I take them to school as well. I then return home again to start my job. I work straight to noon then take Vương out to lunch and the playground during my lunch break. Then we return home. He takes a nap while I continue my work. Around 2:45 pm, I pick Đạo up from school then go back home to do more work until 4:30 pm or 5:00 pm.

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I drive to work after dropping Đạo off to school. I arrive at the office around 8:30 am. I drop my lunch off the fridge and make myself a cup of latte. I head into my office and work until noon. I heat up my food and head back to my desk. I have a quick lunch and watch some YouTube, mostly on figure skating or rollerblading tutorials. Then I get back to work to 2 pm. If the weather is warm and sunshine, I use my lunch break to go to the skatepark to rollerblade. If the weather is cold or rainy, I go to the ice skating rink. Both places are about five minutes from my office. I skate for an hour then head back into the office until 4:30 pm or 5:00 pm. That one hour of taking a break and getting some exercise has motivated me to come to work. It helps me stay healthy and rejuvenate my mind. I am grateful for that flexibility.

The best part of skating at 2:00 pm is that the skatepark or the ice skating rink is mostly empty. I get plenty of room to practice. Sometimes I skate with home-schooling kids. A while ago I met a mom who took her daughter to the skatepark to skateboard. After talking to her, I learned that her seven-year-old daughter snowboards and she has a big goal for her—like Chloe Kim. This afternoon I met another mom at the skating rink. Her kids had private hockey skating lessons. I asked her a few questions and learned that the private lesson cost $90 an hour. That’s not including ice time. The public session cost $15 per person and I thought it was already expensive. The money we spend on our kids is insane. We are spending the same amount each week for Đán and Xuân to take private piano lessons. Đán seems to be into it. He practices regularly. Xuân doesn’t practice that much. Last summer, I let Đạo and Xuân take private figure skating lessons. Unfortunately, they showed no effort or interest. I ended up dropping the lessons. Now they don’t even want to go ice skating for fun. I am debating whether I should take some private lessons for ice skating, but I don’t want to pay $90 an hour. I am learning to skate on my own because I am a cheapskate.

After reading the introduction, I had a different expectation for the book. I thought Jaffe would delve into how we can find some glimpse of happiness from our job since we spent the majority of our waking hours working. In contrast, Jaffe writes about inequalities, politics, and exploitations that come with work. We still have to work to make a living; therefore, we might as well demand better working conditions. Not what I expected from this book, but an informative and essential read nevertheless.

I removed the blogroll from my homepage since many blogs on my list are inactive. Bloggers don’t write like we used to anymore. I just found out that Ms. Nguyễn has made her blog private. I followed her journal for a long time. She was my only Vietnamese blogger left. She was like my blog confidant. I am going to miss her writing. It is hard to find passionate bloggers to follow nowadays. Of course I could turn to books to read, but I have always loved the raw form of blogging. I appreciate the unfiltered thoughts as well as the immediacy of publishing to the whole world to read.

I still love writing and I have learned that this is the only place that allowed me to write freely. Facebook is not a place to post lengthy journal. No one reads my writing when I cross post my blog on Facebook. As a result, I just post everything on here only. Maybe it is the fact that I don’t know who is reading has allowed me to just write. I don’t care about the likes and the comments. I just dash off a few hundred words off my head and hit publish.

Since I removed the blogroll off my homepage, I am just going to keep it here as an archive. I am not going to curate it. If the blogs go inactive, let them be. I might go back to add more in the future if I find blogs worth reading.

• Adactio
• A Working Library
• Bảohouse
• Colly
• DJR
• Ethan Marcotte
• Frank Chimero
• Hey Georgie
• I Love Ngọc Lan
• Lilgui
• Lil Xuân Shine
• Maggie Appleton
• Matt Mullenweg
• Ms. Nguyễn
• Robin Rendle
• Sơn Phước
• Susan Jean Robertson
• Tinigui
• Winnie Lim