We were at Costco yesterday and Dan screamed when I didn’t let him get the books with toys that he wanted. He was sitting in the shopping cart and bawling so I went to the front of the cart to find a tissue. An Asian teenage boy came right up to Dan and did something to Dan. I couldn’t tell what he did because I was looking into the bag for something to wipe Dan’s face, but Dan stopped crying instantly. He could have smacked Dan’s face lightly or just put his hand on his mouth. I gave the kid that what-the-fuck-did-you-just-do look. As soon as he saw me staring at him, he realized he must have done something wrong. He stopped giggling and walked off sniffing new clothes on the display. I then realized that he isn’t a normal kid.

It was hysterical because Dan just sat there quiet the entire time. He didn’t scream or want the toys anymore. At the same time, it was a lesson learned. What if the kid was really screwed up and he knocked the fuck out of my kid. If I stood right by Dan, he wouldn’t had done that to him. I looked around to find the kid’s parents, but I couldn’t spot them. The incident confirmed me that you can never be too overprotective of your kids.

When Lệ Quyên experimented with sentimental ballads with the release of Khúc Tình Xưa, she gained tremendous traction. I even raved about it. Hearing her covering old tunes for the entire record was rejuvenating. Then she dropped the sequel, Khúc Tình Xưa 2, but it lost all the momentums of the first one.

With her latest release Dòng Thời Gian, she moves to romantic ballads like “Bản Tình Cuối” (Ngô Thụy Miên), “Một Mình” (Lam Phương) and “Xóm Đêm” (Phạm Đình Chương). While her vocal delivery is spot on, the musical arrangements and the interpretations are shortcoming. Other than “Mắt Biếc” (Ngô Thụy Miên), which gets a nice bossa-nova orchestration, most tracks are straightforward. Her heart-rending rendition of “Xin Còn Gọi Tên Nhau” (Trường Sa) is a successor to Le Thu’s. Nguyen Ánh 9, who made quite a few controversial statements recently regarding to singers who are fucking up his music, would approve Lệ Quyên’s rendition of “Cô Đơn” because she stays faithful to his original composition.

On one hand, the music is timeless for a reason and it doesn’t need any update. On the other hand, it feels so safe. There’s not even an oz of inventiveness in the album. Dòng Thời Gian is a classic good taste, but also just the same old shit.

In addition to covering old songs, Lệ Quyên releases Con Tim Dại Khờ simultaneously for no other reason than to keep her name in the pop game. It’s a straight trendy record that would come and go in probably a few months, if not a few weeks.

Seven out of the eight tracks aren’t even worth mentioning. The lyrics (from Duy Mạnh, Thái Thịnh, Trương Lê Sơn and Hoàng Nhã) are cheesy and the productions are just lazy. “Chôn Dấu Một Tình Yêu” (Lương Bằng Quang) is the only joint that stands out. The beat picks up a little bit with a mid-tempo r&b flavor and Hồ Ngọc Hà stole the show.

These two albums show that Lệ Quyên needs to break out of her comfort zones and take on a new challenges. Staying on the treadmill is not going to get her to the next level.

Chèo, a form of folk tradition originated from north Vietnam, is not an easy listening for the non-aficionados. As much as I appreciate its unique artform, I can’t get past a third track on a straight chèo record. The heavy accent is hard to hear and the pitch is usually a bit too high for my comfort level. Tân Nhàn recognizes these obstacles as she puts together Yếm Đào Xuống Phố. In order to bring chèo to a wider audience, especially the young demographic, she has to make the traditional music fresh and inviting. Enlisting pianist Trần Mạnh Hùng to combine chèo and jazz is a smart strategy.

Trần Mạnh Hùng has been making chèo working with jazz since Ngọc Khuê’s debut; therefore, he is not new to this east-melody-meets-west-rhythm approach. He understands the authenticity as well as the aesthetic of both worlds and he knows the marriage between the two without sacrificing one another. “Tò Vò” is a perfect illustration of how he masterfully makes the two styles work together. While Tân Nhàn’s singing is rooted in chèo, Trần Mạnh Hùng works his magic around her voice rather than changing the melody to fit jazz. As she sings, he accommodates her with bluesy touches. The beauty of “Mục Hạ Vô Nhân” is that no traditional instrumentation is used, and yet the trumpet is a sensational complement to her voice.

Yếm Đào Xuống Phố only has seven tracks and clocks in just a bit over 30 minutes, but every piece counts. From “Đường Trường Phải Chiều” to “Chèo Mở Lái Ra,” Tân Nhàn and Trần Mạnh Hùng offer a complete listening experience rather than throwing different tunes in the album and hoping something would stick. I am so glad to see Tân Nhàn puts tremendous effort in making this album. It definitely pays off. With the support of Trần Mạnh Hùng and talented musicians, Tân Nhàn reinvigorates chèo with jazz.

Made it through my second week of school. I really like the Brand Identity Design class. I already created over 50 logos for the project. The professor is tough, but his criticisms are constructive. I like the class so far even though it takes up so much time outside of class. I am back to four-hour sleep schedule as well as extra large Dunkin’ Donut coffee.

The only time I could do my homework is when my kids were asleep. I have finally come to term that there’s nothing I could do when they were awake. The weekends are even worse. After spending the whole day with them, I could hardly stay up at night to do anything. From six in the morning to ten at night, my time is devoted entirely to driving them around and doing something with them. This past weekend, we went to Roselyn Jazz Festival on Saturday and Burke Center Festival on Sunday. We sure had crazy fun, but so exhausted afterward. Unlike my sister-in-law and her husband who liked to work in the yard on the weekend, we just drove around to the mall, park or any event we could find. As long as the grass were trimmed, we spend no time at all around the house.

My wife brought up the subject of a third kid last night. She warmed me that we better make one by the end of this year or else we’re done. The clock is ticking. As much as I wanted a girl, I won’t survive if we have another boy. Cu Dan alone is a handful. I am probably going to have to stop school if we have our third.

Dan seems to like babies. He loves to point out kids who are younger than him as baby. The other day, we were driving by a restaurant he yelled, “High. High.” We were like what? He continued, “High. High. Baby. Baby.” He pointed to the kid sitting on a highchair, but he only said the word “high.”

To prove how important diacritics are in Vietnamese writing, here’s a conversation I had on Facebook that started out with a haircut, but could mean totally something else depending on how dirty your mind is:

John Smith Ban thich cat ngan hay cat dai?

Donny Truong Writing Vietnamese without “dấu” is quite dangerous.

John Smith And sometimes so confusing that it makes people ask you over and over for clarification. You answer and answer but they keep asking, asking. Cu hoi, cu hoi, cu hoi hoai! Until you get upset and want to chui lon!

Donny Truong Du roi, du roi. Dung chui lon nua.

From fundamental concepts to branding process to case studies, Alina Wheeler’s Designing Brand Identity is a quick yet comprehensive guide on building a brand. This is a required reading for my class on Brand Identity Design, which only started two weeks ago, and I already plowed through it. The Fourth Edition has many up-to-date information such as new best practices. Without a doubt, this is a book to keep as a reference for designers and Marissa Mayer should have read it as well.

Coady’s brief guide explains color-blindness and provides helpful tips on making design accessible to people with color vision deficiency. Re-reading it for a visual-storytelling project for my graduate seminar class.

Frank Chimero’s The Shape of Design is a delightful page-turner even on the iPhone. His response to design thoughtful and the connection with jazz improvisation is insightful. The reference on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue alone is intriguing. Definitely worth a few rereads. Here’s an excellent excerpt on framework and the work of Miles Davis:

A framework for improvisation allows us to get into the process of making things more easily. Perhaps the most famous example of an imposed framework was created by jazz musician Miles Davis during the recording of his album, Kind of Blue. Davis, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb, Paul Chambers, John Coltrane, and Cannonball Adderley packed into a CBS recording studio in New York in March of 1959 without any songs pre-written. Jazz musicians routinely tolerated this sort of ambiguity, because they made their living by winging it. But it’s unlikely that any of them predicted that jazz would be reinvented that day.

The predominant style of jazz at the time, called Bebop, was frenetic and lively, but had a tendency to overstuff songs with notes. The abundance sometimes hindered the musicians’ melodic expression by occupying all the space in the song. Bebop has been described as musical gymnastics, because the style’s flourishes and showmanship forced musicians to negotiate complex structures. In spite of the artistry necessary to maneuver in the Bebop style, it can become too large a load to carry. It’s hard to swing if there’s no room to move. Davis wanted to let the air back into the songs, to give the musicians more space to play. They were asked to improvise with simple scales and modes rather than Bebop’s chord progressions.

The recording session began with Davis handing each of the seven men a small slip of paper where he had written down a description of their part. None of them had seen any of the songs before coming to the studio, but with the guidance of the slips of paper, they recorded the whole day, and booked a second day a few weeks later. After two sessions, the album was finished.

Kind of Blue is unequivocally a masterpiece, a cornerstone to jazz music created in just a few short hours by altering the structure of the performance. The musicians accepted the contributions of one another, and ventured out into a new frontier, using their intuitions as their guides. Davis amassed a stellar group of musicians, and with a loose framework of limitations to focus them but plenty of space for exploration, he knew they would wander with skill and play beyond themselves.

Davis’ example is a bit misleading though, if only for its efficiency. Improvisation is a messy ordeal, wasteful in its output, and it should be accepted as such. The key is to generate many ideas, lay them out, and try to recognize their potential. Don’t be concerned if you improvise and don’t use most of the ideas. There’s always a significant amount of waste when mining for gold. (Unless you’re Miles Davis, apparently.)

After hearing me sing “Con Chim Non” to Dan so many times, Dao picked up the lyrics and sang to grandpa. Notice how clear he enunciates the words. He has a really good ear for nuances. I think he would be good at learning different languages. Over the weekend, he saw the police stopped someone, he told his mom, “Mẹ, police phạt-“ing” người ta.”

Dan, on the other hand, is still babbling quite a bit. He speaks a lot, but very hard to understand. One time he said, “water fountain” and I could not understood him until he pointed me to the water fountain. He hasn’t been able to sing “Con Chim Non” yet, but he got the melody down. When he said “đi (go)”, he would sing the melody, “đi đi đi… đi đì đi… đí đí đi…” Yesterday, he pushed the elevator button and stated to sing, “bâm bâm bâm… bâm bầm bâm… bấm bấm bâm.” It’s quite funny how he turns every word into a tune.

A required reading for my graduate course on Brand Identity Design, Marty Neumeier’s The Brand Gap sets the record straight. A brand is not a logo, a corporate identity nor a product. A brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is. The book is such a pleasure to read thanks to Neumeier’s concise writing, clear illustrations as well as large Helvetica.