Whenever reading a book with Dao, I try to translate the texts into Vietnamese so that he could also pick the language. One of our bedtime stories for tonight was P.D. Eastman’s Go, Dog. Go!. I read to him, “Đi Chó Đi.” He repeated, “Đỉ Chó Đi.” My jaw dropped and I asked him, “What did you just say?” Then I quickly changed my mind, “Don’t repeat what you just say. Let’s read on in English.” I was laughing my head off and the poor kid didn’t know why. Sometimes just a slight tone could change the whole context in Vietnamese. An innocent word could turn into something quite pejorative.

You never know what being a parent is like until you become one. As a father of two sons, I appreciate and love my mom even more for what she had gone through. Every now and then, she would remind me how angry and worried she was when I came home late or didn’t come home at all when I was in high school. I didn’t do anything wild. I just stayed at my friend’s house and played tien len (Vietnamese card game) for dollar bills all night. At that time I didn’t think it was a big deal, but now I can see why my mom was terrified.

Our mom placed all of her hope and love on us. She chose her kids over her men. One of her legend stories is how she broke up with my sister’s father. She told him to watch his daughter and he covered her up with the blanket when she cried instead of trying to calm her down. She confronted him that he might suffocated her. He beat her up. She just let it go. Once she napped her daughter, she beat his ass and filed the divorce. This is just my mom’s side of the story; therefore, I am not sure how it all went down. Still don’t ever fuck with my mama’s babies.

With my father, she rather took up the opportunity to go to the States to give us a better life then stayed with him. When he came to the States with us and decided not to stay, she bought him one way ticket back to Vietnam. She let go of husband but never her kids even though rising kids is a tough challenge. My dad either couldn’t live up to the challenge or simply didn’t care. Now that I am a father, I can see why he couldn’t deal with it, but unlike him, I won’t run away from my responsibility.

Like my mom, being a parent trumps everything else. Even if my relationship with my wife turned sour, we still have our share of responsibility for life. Just that bonding alone should hold us together if everything else failed. Sure, we fell in love, but we can so fall out of love. We have gone through tough times, but we can no longer just think of our own lives once we have kids. We simply can’t throw the kids away if we don’t want them any more. No one put a gun to our head and said, “you two better make some fucking babies.”

Yes, I am a flawed father. Sometimes I felt like, “What the fuck had I gotten myself into?” I never prepared for this, but I will not give up. My mom is my best role model, but I also learned the experience of not having both parents. I am not saying that my mom didn’t do a heck of a job raising us, but still something felt missing. I definitely don’t want that missing piece to fall on my children.

Jane Mayer’s “Attack Dog” is an intriguing piece in the New Yorker profiling Larry McCarthy, a negative-ad master siding with Mitt Romney. She writes:

Romney, unlike the remaining Republican candidates, has served no time in Washington. Yet he’s relying on a media offensive managed by operatives who have long been at the heart of Washington’s Republican attack machine. One of the leaders of this advertising war is Larry McCarthy, a veteran media consultant best known for creating the racially charged “Willie Horton ad,” which, in 1988, helped sink Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee for President.

If Romney wins the primary and compete against Obama, negative ads will dominate the media. Whatever side you’re on, don’t let the ads influence your vote. If you see something isn’t seemed right, fact check it.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post on “Carelessness Leads to Stressfulness” and I have tried my best to resolve the issue. After many phone passes, I thought I was not be able to clear the debts. I tried not to think about it, but today I decided to follow up to see where the issue is going. To my surprise, my debt has not only been cleared, but I might also get a big bonus. We’ll see if the check will arrive in my mailbox.

Roger Skalbeck published his annual report on the “Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2011.” George Mason is #10 on the list. This is based on the older homepage from last year. I am wondering if responsive design will get a bonus for next year ranking.

This morning Dao’s classmates gathered around Ms. Julianne, one of his favorite teachers. They all sat on the floor interacting with the teacher. Dao came in and made his way to Ms. Julianne’s lap. He sat right on her thigh as if that special seat has been reserved for him.

Listening to Ngoc Khue’s Ben Bo Ao Nha Minh on my way to work gives me nostalgia and makes me realize that I haven’t heard a Vietnamese groundbreaking album like this in ages. Out of all the singing contests in Vietnam, Sao Mai Diem Hen 2004 introduced two rare talents up to date: Tung Duong and Ngoc Khue.

Nowadays singing competitions only produced pop singers with grand voice but no vision. Vietnam Idol 2010 Uyen Linh shook up the Vietnamese pop scene. She became an instant phenomenon and yet her new release Giac Mo Toi under producer Quoc Trung’s direction is a disappointment. Rather than taking her far out, Quoc Trung constraints her with pop-rock template. In a year making, he only produced seven tracks for the album and six of them were rerecorded from the contest. The arrangement of “Chi La Giac Mo” takes away the rawness she performed on stage accompanied by simple strumming guitar. Her version of “Sao Chang Ve Voi Em” immediately brings Hong Nhung’s to mind. Her English on Al Green’s “Take Me To The River” is decent, but she hasn’t quite mastered the language’s nuances.

Luong Viet Quang won the people’s vote in Sao Mai Diem Hen 2010 and released his debut titled Can Ban (Basic) under the direction of My Tam. Recognizing his likable voice, My Tam picked out pop ballads like “Dem Nam Mo Pho,” “Boi The Ta Yeu Nhau” and “Doc Thoai.” The minimal, elegant arrangements allow Luong Viet Quang to sing right on the melodies. It makes perfect sense why the album is called Can Ban. Let’s hope that Luong Viet Quang will break out of the basic training in his next release, but I highly doubt it.

Even though the George Mason Law web site relaunched more than two weeks ago, the work is still not done. I have been doing tons of tweaking behind the scene including cleaning up templates, CSS and contents that added by others. Editors like TinyMCE are quite evil for people who don’t write markups. Sometimes I just have to let it go and not too bothered with it.

The major work I have been doing is recreating all the banners on the secondary pages. For example, the top banner is now running across the page instead of splitting with the side navigation. So I spent most of my time looking for photos and recropping and recreating the banners. It’s actually a pretty fun, creative exercise. Now that I think about it, all the jobs that I held involved crafting banners. I did a whole bunch when I was at Vassar College. Then I crafted a collection for random rotation when the School of Business rebranded into the University look and feel. Here I am again, pumping out banners after banners. One of my colleagues also helped me out and she likes doing it as well.

Of course I also try to make something fresh for this homepage at least once a week. I like to use this space to not only promoting just my work, but also other things that I find interesting to keep you stay tuned.

Em Dan has been completely recovered from the cold. He’s now working hard to gain weight. Because of his chubbiness, he feels so good in my arms. He starts to smile quite a bit nowadays like this one my wife took. He looked at himself this morning and also started to smile. We gave him a bath last night and he enjoyed it quite a bit. He seems to be the opposite of anh Dao.

And Dao irritated me last night. He kept scratching my arms and keloids. His finger nails were so sharp that I felt like needles poking me. I stomped out of the room to change to a long sleeve shirt. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I am going to wear long sleeve to bed from now on and trying to get him off my arms. I felt so bad because he kept saying, “tay, please.”

About the biting incident the other day, his teacher called me to apologize. I was cool about it, but I emphasized the important of letting us know things like that occurred at school. As I was giving him a bath, I asked him how was school and if anyone bit him. He said that he told his friend, “Please ‘A,’ don’t bite me, thank you.”

We spent the Saturday at my sister’s house and Dao played with Eric the whole time. Most of the time they played well together, but they get a bit rough once in a while. Dao cried and said that Eric hit his hand with a (toy) car. Eric also complaint that Dao started it. After calming them down, Dao said to Eric, “Please don’t hit my hand. I am a little small.” He sounded so cute the way he said “little small.”

Being a parent is hard, but seeing your kids grow and develop make it all worthwhile.

When giving Dao a bath last night, I noticed a red bruise on his back (below his left shoulder). I asked him what happened and he told me that one of his classmates bit him. He told me the name of the kid and where it happened. He cried and the teacher tried to comfort him, yet no one reported to us.

I was sad and irritated, but I stayed calm and spent the rest of the evening with him. This morning I was going to have a talk to his teacher, but she was reading to the kids so I didn’t want to interrupt. I reported to the administrator instead, but I didn’t say who did it. He’s going to find out and contact me sometimes today.

I am very glad that Dao was able to tell me exactly what went wrong. Although I was outraged, I didn’t flip out or anything. I just wanted him to be able to communicate to me if things don’t go right with him at school. The clip of the Asian kid attacked by seven kids still traumatize me. I told my wife that we will make sure that our kids will go to school and home safely until they go to college. Yes I am a helicopter parent when it comes to the safety of my kids.