My Dearest Sons,

You are my lifelines. You are my saviors. Without you, I have nothing. Reality is harsh, ruthless, and brutal, but I accepted it. When my mother passed away, part of me had died. Even in her dying days, I came close to losing everything, but you saved me. I am forever grateful to each one of you.

The other day, I felt miserable. I went for a drink and headed to the skatepark. I shouldn’t drink and skate, but I needed to clear my head. As I was ready to hit the ramps, I was reminded it was time to pick you up from school. I packed up and left the skatepark. You saved me once again. I am telling you this because I don’t want you to ever do what I was about to do.

I want you to know that nothing can replace my love for you. Everything I do for you comes from a place of love, even tough love. Whenever Đán was frustrated with me, he would tell me, “I wish I had a normal dad. Why can’t I have a normal dad?” I don’t want to be a normal dad. I strive to be an extraordinary dad. A normal dad would drop you off at a skatepark, watch you skate, and tell you what you want to hear, “You skate so well. I am so proud of you.” I wanted to join you and to take on the challenge with you.

Most of the time you would rather sit in front of the screen than go to the skateparks with me, but you went because you wanted to make me happy. You might think nothing of it, but I treasured every moment of it. As the days get shorter and the nights get colder, I enjoyed rollerblading with you in the skateparks that had bright white lights. The thrills of dropping in the bowls, riding around the ramps, jumping off the benches made me feel like a kid again.

I am proud of the progression that we had made together. As Đạo pointed out, we were intimidated by the lowest ramp when we first started out. Now we can skate on almost every ramp in the skateparks. I hope that one day, you will think back and remember our time together. Thank you for making these unforgettable memories for me. Soon you’ll head to college and live your own life, and I will miss having you around.

Thank you for taking on this journey with me. As Xuân is picking up rollerblading, I can’t wait for Vương to join our crew.

I love you guys.
Dad

When Vik and José sought out my advice on Vietnamese diacritics for one of their award-winning font families, Bree already supported the Vietnamese language. Upon reviewing the typeface, I noticed its diacritical marks were lacking the handwriting qualities that gave Bree its friendly yet distinctive voice. In addition to their generic shapes, the marks were strangely connected to each other, specifically the acute was attached to the right side of the circumflex and the grave was attached to the left side of the circumflex.

Based on my suggestions, José did a complete overhaul of Bree’s diacritical marks. With attention to the details, he incorporated the handwriting touches and organic shapes from the base letters into the diacritical marks. In particular, he redrew the tilde to give it more curves and added the bottom tail to the hook above to give it a humanist touch. In combined marks, he detached the acute and the grave from the circumflex and repositioned all the stacking accents to the right of the circumflex for consistency, which helped with readability on long-form texts. He also reworked the ư and ơ horns to make sure they were harmonized.

After many rounds of revisions, I was happy to see that the diacritics have become part of the letters. I appreciated José’s commitment to get it right. He sweated every detail to make the diacritical marks flow with the base letters. I can’t wait to see more Vietnamese texts set in Bree.

Donda is a dud. It is impossible to sit through the entire album, which consists of 27 tracks and clocks in an hour and 49 minutes. It is a work progress, not a polished album. Guest stars are almost on every track and Kanye is rambling on almost every track. The album has been heavily edited to remove all the curse words; therefore, the lyrics are hard to understand. This is easily Kanye’s worse album of all time.

Let’s talk about shame. Shame is part of my life. I can’t live without shame. All I can think about is shame. Shame is ruining my life and my relationship. I am ashamed of shame, but I can’t help myself.

Maybe I need therapy to get shame out of my mind. Maybe I am living my world full of shame. The more I try to ignore shame, the more shame takes over me. Just the thought of shame makes me miserable. I need a cure for my shame. Shamefully, only one could save me from shame.

I don’t know what to do with shame. I guess I just have to live with shame. Dealing with shame is hard. I wish I could get over shame. I wish I could resist shame. I wish I could conquer shame. I wish I didn’t have to talk about shame. I wish I didn’t have to write about shame.

It’s a damn shame.

Vài năm gần đây, các ca sĩ trong làng âm nhạc Việt Nam, trong và ngoài nước, phát hành một album đã ít rồi, và album đôi còn hiếm hoi hơn nữa. Thế mà tên của cô ca sĩ lạ hoắc lạ huơ, Phương Phương Thảo, lại dám ra mắt một lúc hai album.

Nhìn tracklist của album thứ nhất, Yêu anh một đời, toàn những ca khúc nhạc trữ tình. Không biết có nên nghe thử hay không. Bây giờ ở vùng Hoa Thịnh Đốn, thời tiết đã trở lạnh nên nghe nhạc bolero dù có rên rỉ chắc cũng ấm áp. Thế là lôi vô xe nghe thử. Không ngờ khác với dự đoán của tôi, giọng Phương Phương Thảo nồng nàn nhưng không não nề.

Ca khúc đầu tiên được mở màn với tiếng đàn violin đầy ray rứt cùng với tiếng đàn guitar da diết đưa tiếng hát cô vào câu chuyện tình “Một lần dang dở” của nhạc sĩ Nhật Ngân. Sự thay đổi từ trữ tình qua thính phòng khiến cho ca khúc mất đi phần sến. Cũng như ca khúc “Tình đầu tình cuối” của nhạc sĩ Trần Thiện Thanh được hòa âm theo giai điệu blues rất thấm thía nhưng không bi luỵ.

Được đệm qua tiếng đàn guitar, Phương Phương Thảo trình bài ca khúc “Chiều hạ vàng” của nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Bá Nghiêm với cách phát âm rõ và cách nhã chữ riêng của mình. Còn “Trúc Đào” (thơ Nguyễn Tất Nhiên, nhạc Anh Bằng) thì có những nét mới. Thường thì bài này được hòa âm rất sôi động, nhưng qua cách hòa âm mộc mạc và chậm khiến cho ca khúc trở nên gần gũi hơn.

Còn album thứ hai, Quà tặng âm nhạc, Phương Phương Thảo covers lại những nhạc phẩm Hoa lời Việt. Đã lâu rồi không nghe những ca khúc được viết lời Việt của Jimmii Nguyễn như “Hoa Bằng Lăng” và “Mưa Tuyết.” Tuy nhiên, cả hai album chỉ đem lại một luồng gió mát nhẹ rồi cũng sẽ lướt qua chứ không đọng lại trong lòng người nghe. Đây không phải vì giọng cô không hay nhưng cả hai dòng nhạc này đều có quá nhiều ca sĩ trình bài. Nghe đi nghe lại cũng những ca khúc ấy.

Hơn tuần nay, tôi làm biên tập cho một quyển sách của gia đình do dì út tôi viết. Trong đó dì có viết lại bài cao dao như sau:

Dùi đánh đục, đục đánh săng.
Ách giữa đàng, quàng vào cổ.
Ăn bữa giỗ, lỗ bữa cày.
Ăn chưa no, lo chưa tới.

Khi tôi google thì không tìm ra được bài thơ này. Dường như đây là những câu tục ngữ. Và tôi đã dịch lại như sau:

Stick hits chisel, chisel hits wood.
Putting on one’s neck a yoke from the middle of the road.
Attend a death anniversary, lose a day of plowing.
Not fully eaten, not yet worried.
Eat new rice, have old conversations.

Nếu bạn đọc nào giỏi cả tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt có lời góp ý, xin vui lòng liên lạc với tôi.

The Times Book Review has released its list of “The 10 Best Books of 2021” and I have read none of them. I bookmarked it. Will pick up a few of them over the winter holiday break after I finish editing a family book. If you don’t see me blogging much these days, it is because I am working on a family project and it takes more time than I had anticipated.

As my boss is counting down to her retirement, she wants to make sure that all of her responsibilities are taken care of before she checks out. Although she is an associate dean, she has been very hands on. She is more technological savvy than her peers.

For instance, one of the tasks she took on was organizing and running the school calendars for over a decade. The program she had been using was no longer supported. She would have to pay $25,000 to get it upgraded to the cloud. As a result, she tasked me and the assistant director of technology to find alternative solutions. My first priority was to use the web to solve the issues. For public events, I turned to WordPress using the Events Calendar plugin. It worked out great. Instead of entering the events myself, I created accounts for stakeholders to post their events themselves. To solve class schedules and room reservations, we decided to use 25Live since the university already had a deal with the program. We just need to customize it a bit to match our brand. We saved the law school 25 grants.

Another item on my boss’s list was the TV screens around the building. She used a program that allowed her to display news via RSS feeds, weather forecasts, slideshows, and events. That program was also outdated and would cost $12,000 a year to keep it up to date. She assigned me and the director of technology to find a solution. In our initial meeting, I just asked if the screens could display the browser and the answer was yes. Once again, the web saved me. I recreated all the features using pages in WordPress. I created a page to parse RSS feeds, a page to display events, a page with slideshows. Once I had all the pages, I combined them together using the header refresh (via meta tag). We saved the school another 12 grants.

She was very pleased with the simple solutions we provided and they were free thanks to the beauty and flexibility of the web. She was also relieved that we took the weight off her shoulders. She has been an amazing boss and I wish she would continue, but she deserves her retirement. I will miss her dearly after she leaves. I am not sure what our future boss will be like, but I am not going to worry about it now. Que será, será.

Đán’s English teacher reached out to us because she was concerned about his expression of feeling sad and lonely. He drew sad faces on the back of his assignment sheets and often placed a sad face on his online profile. He made passing comments that he had never felt real happiness. He thought that no one liked him.

After reading his teacher’s note, my wife and I had a talk with him. He told us that he felt lonely during recess at school. When he played football with his friends, no one passed the ball to him. He sat at the “buddy bench,” but no one wanted to be his buddy. We didn’t even know about the buddy bench until he explained it to us. The bench was intended for any students who didn’t have anyone to play with and would like someone to play together. It seemed like an interesting concept, perhaps.

We asked Đán if he felt lonely at home and he said no because he had his older brother Đạo to play with. He also shared that he felt sad sometimes when we rushed him and raised our voices in the morning trying to get him to school on time. We promised him that we will make that change. Later on, when we were driving home from their ice hockey practice, Đán told Đạo that things had changed after Đao left for Robinson. He said that kids sweared a lot more. We had the impression that he missed having his brother around at school.

Now that we are aware of his emotions, we check on him more often. We should also give him space to hang out with his friends outside of school. We usually have family activities like scouting, learning ice hockey, going to the skateparks, and eating out.

We appreciate his teacher for sharing her concerns with us. It shows that she cares about his well being as well as his happiness.

Đêm qua thức khuya biên tập một quyển sách về gia đình dì út đã viết. Sáng nay cũng phải dậy sớm đưa con đến trường và đi làm. Thời tiết bây giờ đã trở lạnh. Những giọt sương đọng trên kính xe đã trở thành băng đá. Vào xe nghe nhạc phẩm “Một ngày mùa đông” của nhạc sĩ Bảo Chấn do Phương Uyên hát bỗng dưng thấy ấm lòng. Được đệm bởi tiếng đàn guitar êm đềm và tiếng bass sâu lắng, Phương Uyên hát như đang trải lòng tâm sự.

Tuy thiếu nét riêng, giọng của Phương Uyên khỏe khoắn, ấm áp, và già dặn. Tuy lần đầu nghe cô hát nhưng tôi cứ ngỡ đã nghe cô hát từ lâu rồi. Nghe đến lời kết tôi mới biết Hãy về bên em là album đầu tay của cô. Tôi ngạc nhiên là vì album này rất an toàn từ ca khúc cô đã chọn cho đến những bài hoà âm. Với một album đầu tay, tôi nghĩ rằng cô phải mạo hiểm một tí để chứng kiến được đường lối riêng của mình.

Như lời trong ca khúc “Đời có bao nhiêu ngày vui” (Châu Đăng Khoa), chúng ta phải nắm lấy cơ hội để bước lên, nhất là trên con đường âm nhạc Việt Nam có quá nhiều đơn điệu. Ca sĩ nào cũng lôi bài cũ ra hát đi hát lại nghe phát ngán và album đầu tay của Phương Uyên cũng không ngoại lệ.