Every once in a while, I manage to make some dumb mistakes that could have been avoided if I was being more careful. Last Thursday when I arrived home from work, I received a big bill for something I shouldn’t be responsible for. I knew that the bill was a mistake, but I was irritated. I told no one about it and I just couldn’t through the night. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t wait to get it resolved the next morning. That’s one of my weaknesses.

The next day, I started to make phone calls and then realized that I am going to have to go through some hoops to get the charge drop. The lack of sleep of the previous night combined with the stress of not solving the issue sent my head straight to the depression camp. I finally told my wife about it after I got home from work and she assured me that it’s not a big deal and I shouldn’t have to worry. I took her advice because she’s my better half and she knows more shit than me.

So the weekend, I left it at the back of my mind and just enjoyed my time with my sons. Now I am just dealing with it as much as I could. If it doesn’t work out, fuck it. As long as I know in my heart I am not responsible for it. If I did I would have no problem paying for it. Though I blame myself for being carelessness, I never pride myself in being a perfectionist. I made many mistakes in the past and I’ll make many more in the future. One of the things wish I could learn from my wife is to sleep it off. She is a master at it. I also need to learn how to calm the fuck down as well to make my life less stressful.

I put together a minimal page for our second son Dan. Uploaded many new photos to our Picasa album. I also clean up his big brother’s page and added a few more photos. Love the shot in which he gave grandma a kiss.

Eden Center has sprung up two new, slightly upscale Vietnamese restaurants: Rice Paper and Vy Bistro. Unlike most eatery places in Eden that focused mostly on the food, these two paid some attention to decoration and presentation as well. The interior design is simpler and more modern. The plates and dishes aren’t like the one you can buy in a Vietnamese grocery store in the same strip.

The problem is that their menus aren’t too different from the rest of the places. Vy Bistro doesn’t offer anything unique. The waiter asked us if it was our first time there and he recommended bun bo Hue (Hue’s vermicelli soup) as one of its highlights so I ordered it. The soup, which was not piping hot, didn’t stand out. The portion was a bit small compared to other places around Eden Center.

Rice Paper does have a few unique dishes like the delicious appetizer Oc Len Xao Dua (Snails cooked in coconut milk). I also had Com Bo Luc Lac (Rice With Shaking Beef), but not that impressive. The beef is a bit overcooked. The service here needs some improvements though.

Dana, Dao and I were at Thanh Son today buying some sweet treats. The line was long and Dao didn’t want to stay inside. I took him outside while Dana was waiting to made orders. Outside the store, there were two women selling fruits and banh it (sticky-rice dumplings). The older lady is probably in her late 70s and the younger one is probably in her mid 40s.

The younger one is quite aggressive. She would grab anyone walking by trying to sell them something. One time she grabbed me and offered me some banh it in the bag for $10. I told her that I only wanted half of it for $5. So I handed her a five-dollar bill, but she insisted that I give her a twenty because she needed some change. When I gave her a twenty, she threw it in the bucket and gave me two bags of banh it instead. I took my money back and told her that I didn’t want to buy anything from her. Since that day on, she hasn’t harassed me to buy anything.

Back to today, as Dao and I were outside waiting for Dana, I heard the two of them arguing. The younger lady accused the old lady of spreading rumor about her. She said in Vietnamese something like, “You told people that I have diabetes.” The elderly responded, “I do not spread rumors. I only mind my own business. Yes, I said you have diabetes, but I never said anything about your pussy dripping wet.” The exact Vietnamese words were, “lon chay nuoc.” I couldn’t help laughing, but I had to drag Dao away. When I told my wife, she said, “You don’t need to be in Vietnam to hear Vietnamese gossiping.”

It seems like yesterday that Obama won his historic election, and yet here we are again for 2012. So what the President had accomplished so far? On foreign policies, he had intelligently gotten rid of Osama bin Laden and he’s bringing our troops home. The bailouts weren’t a popular decision, but they stabilized the economy. He lowered taxes on the majority of Americans and passed universal healthcare.

Sure, Obama couldn’t make the change he has promised in 2008 because Washington is not easy to transform. As Ryan Lizza pointed out in “The Obama Memos“:

Obama was learning the same lesson of many previous occupants of the Oval Office: he didn’t have the power that one might think he had. Harry Truman, one in a long line of Commanders-in-Chief frustrated by the limits of the office, once complained that the President “has to take all sorts of abuse from liars and demagogues…. The people can never understand why the President does not use his supposedly great power to make ’em behave. Well, all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.”

But he has definitely learned how to work with the system to get things done rather than changing it. He is more confidence and the experience he has gained over the past few years would be an advantage for American.

Up to this point, I am still in favor of Obama, but I am also keeping an ear out for other candidates. So far I am enjoy seeing GOP candidates ripping each other to pieces, but I have not yet convinced. I am not envy of Millionaire Mitt’s success of earning about $57,000 a day, which is most average American makes in a year, but I am deeply concerned that Mitt doesn’t see anything wrong with paying less taxes than average American. In fact, his firm Bain Capital hired lobbyists in 2007 to killed a bill that would increase tax on private equity firms. As for Grandiose Gringrich, can you trust a guy who cheated not once but twice? I rest my case.

In his New Yorker‘s “The Obama Memos,” Ryan Lizza concludes:

Obama didn’t remake Washington. But his first two years stand as one of the most successful legislative periods in modern history. Among other achievements, he has saved the economy from depression, passed universal health care, and reformed Wall Street. Along the way, Obama may have changed his mind about his 2008 critique of Hillary Clinton. “Working the system, not changing it” and being “consumed with beating” Republicans “rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done” do not seem like such bad strategies for success after all.

Pampers’s Sesame Street diaper comes with various graphics including Elmo playing basketball, baseball and soccer. Dao only prefers the basketball ones. He wouldn’t let me change him until we use the basketball ones. Since the basketball one is quite limited, I switched out before I put it on without him noticing it. I know it is sneaky, but I am in no mood to fight with him which diaper to use.

When I didn’t have kids yet and when I witnessed a child disrespecting or disobeying his parents, I thought to myself, “If that was my kid I would beat the crap out of him.” Now I still want to beat the crap out of my kid for not listening to me, but the flashback of him falling off the playground with my carelessness haunted me. At times I got so mad at him and instead of beating the crap out of him, I just give him a big hug as if I am apologizing. Then he would say, “Are you happy, daddy? Are you happy?” Then I get this weird anger, amusing feeling as I responded to him, “Of course.”

After getting Dao to sleep around 10pm last night, I logged in to work on the new Mason Law School site cleaning up a dozen of pages inside MODx. Took a break at midnight to ring in the new year and then went back to work until 2am. I was so tired that I emailed my supervisor to stay home today. I also wanted to celebrate Lunar New Year with my family.

With the cold weather and the icy road, I haven’t stepped out of the house since Friday night. I stayed in and hung out with the boys. The little guy is now having a double chin. I just love holding him and watching him sleep in my arms. He is just so sweet.

To make the older guy not feeling left out, I engaged in some activities with him around the house like playing with trains, puzzles and any toys we could pull out from the basement. Yesterday I went outside trying to break the ice on the driveway. I asked him if he wanted to help me and he said, “no, you go and clean the snow. Go daddy go!” Dao says a lot of things now that I am sure we haven’t taught him yet. He uses phrases like, “Don’t talk to me,” “Don’t touch me” and “go away.” His answer to everything now is “No, thank you.” Do you want to eat? “No, thank you.” Do you want to take a bath? “No, thank you.” Do you want to brush your teeth? “No, thank you.” I feel like just let him dirty and hungry for days and see how he would react.

Dao is an adorable little kid when he decided to. I am sure most two year-olds are like that. I any rate, I am glad to have the couple of days spending with the kids. Happy Lunar New Year to you all. Yes, all three of you, my readers.

I am pleased to announce the new, improved Mason Law web site. This is not a complete redesign, but a realign. All contents are the same, but the layout is simplified. Many drop-shadow elements have been removed in favor of a modern, streamlined look and feel. The logo is now anchored in the center and the menus are reorganized for clearer navigation. The slideshow on the homepage was replaced with FlexSlider for faster, flexible performance.

Markup is rewritten in HTML5 based on the Boilerplate. CSS is rewritten from scratch for optimzation and to take advantages of the new CSS3 features. The site is still running on MODx, an open source Content Management System and Application Framework. Because of MODx’s flexibility, the switchover from previous to new templates was rather smooth.

The most challenging yet fun part about this project is making the design responsive from content out. I had written about my process, approach and reason for making Mobile third and not first. Working on this site has been a rewarding experience for me. I got a chance learn MODx and put my skills to good use. For three months into the new job, this is a great start.

One of the perks of working closed to Eden Center is quite obviously for a food addict like me. For instance, I didn’t feel like having salad with grilled chicken for five days in a row, I drove seven minutes to Eden for a bowl of goat curry goat with noodle and a bottle of Bia 33 at Lacay. Before heading back to the office, I dropped by Song Que to pick up an avocado shake with boba. What can I say? It’s my Friday treat.

Goat curry at Lacay is like hamburger for me. I have to have it once in a while even though I feel extremely bloated and awful afterward and promise myself to have only once a year. Actually one of my New Year resolutions is to eat for one person instead of three. I haven’t been able to do so yet because I am on lunar calender. I have a couple more days to go before starting my resolution.

It seems as if the more I try to cut back on food the more I just wanted to eat and having convenient access to Eden only makes things worse. For example, I take Wilson Boulevard home everyday and everyday I get stuck in traffic right in front of Eden. I stare at the place and I could hear the voice in my head saying, “What the heck are you waiting for? Come one in.” So I bust a right and head straight to Thanh Son for fresh fried tofu. If I lucky I would catch the fresh batch right off the frying pan. The hot, slightly spicy with lemongrass flavor is just heaven sent.

The other day I met up with my wife and her sister for lunch and I suggested that we try out Rice Paper, a fairly new opening. It’s a bit upscale comparing to most joints in Eden, but what caught my attention was one of its appetizers dish: Oc Len Xao Dua (Snails cooked in coconut milk). I haven’t have this dish for so long. When I went back to Viet Nam about a decide ago, I used to take a nap in the afternoon just like everyone else. Around three thirty or four in the afternoon, I would hear a chanting from the street, “Ai an oc len xao dua khong?” (Who want snails cooked in coconut milk?) And every afternoon, I would order a dish. They were so good that I joked with the lady who sells the snails that I’ll have to married someone who can cook this dish for me as good as she does. She blushed.