[Obama] may have saved the world from a second Great Depression and all that, but the jobless rate keeps on climbing, the planet keeps on heating up, Guantánamo keeps on not getting closed, and roadside bombs keep on exploding. He’s had eight whole months, and he still hasn’t signed a comprehensive health-care bill. Given that his perceived political problem is exaggerated expectations, does he really need a Nobel Peace Prize before he has actually made any peace?
Watching Cu Dao sleeping last night made me think of my father and our relationship. Once in a while the little guy would open his eyes halfway, stare at me to make sure I was still there, crack a half smile and then close his eyes again. Just the joy of seeing that is indescribable. I thought to myself: there is nothing in this world that could keep me away from him. Then I thought of my father who was hardly around me when I was a kid.
There’s a saying that you give your children what you never had. If that’s the case, the first thing I will give Cu Dao is a fatherhood. Even when I lived in Viet Nam, I never felt what it was like having a father. He would go to work (mostly charity) for a few weeks or months and only stay home for a day or two.
When I left Viet Nam, our relationship was disconnected as well. Growing without a father was hard. I didn’t know who to turn to when I was bullied at school. No man around the house to teach me how to become a man. Mentally I was weak. I lacked the confidence in myself; therefore, I could never make a decision on my own. Sometimes I wish I could be strong like him. I wish I could do whatever I please and fuck everyone else. I envy him and despise him for that. He made his decision to go back to Viet Nam to live his life even though his wife and kid needed him here the most.
I am now walking in his shoes and I could never see myself doing the same thing that he did. I will be there for my son. I want him to have the confidence I never had. I want him to not only make his own decisions, but live and be responsible for them. I would like him to take risks and to follow his heart. I will be satisfied as a father if I could accomplish these goals.
This Colombian sex symbol sure knows how to work your hip as well as your hormone. Shakira’s new release, She Wolf, bounces from start to finish. While the groovy beats try to shake you, her words try to mind-sex you. On the catchy-ass Pharrell Williams-produced “Long Time,” she moans, “And when you think I can take no more / Just keep on going.” On the highly-addictive “Why Wait,” also produced by Pharrell Williams, she teases, “Why wait for later? / Hey don’t you want some action / I’m not a waiter / I like to make things happen.” Fuck yeah, let’s get it on.
Michael Bublé doesn’t need to rock. He just needs to swing. Unfortunately Bublé spends way too much time crooning soft-rock ballads on his new release Crazy Love. “Cry Me a River” starts off promising. The slick arrangement works wonders with his charming tenor. “All of Me” shows off Bublé’s swinging swag. But then the album begins to sink with “Georgia On My Mind.” He has to bring it if he goes against Ray Charles. From the title track to “Heartache Tonight,” Bublé tries to floss his way around the boring pop-rock numbers with not so much excitements.
This weekend we celebrated Dana’s parent’s 41st anniversary. My obvious question was how do they do it? My father-in-law gave us his one-word answer: patience. Unfortunately I am an impatience guy and our relationship isn’t so simple.
Patience is simply not enough. Trust plays an important role in our relationship. Everything is based on trust. From our fidelity to our finance, we stay true to one another. We don’t doubt each other’s faithfulness and we never question what each of us do with our money. We share the same account and we make all decisions together.
Although I don’t have forty years of experience to prove, I know what works based on previous relationships. Until now I had always put myself first and as a result, each one left me like the little rivers. The “I” now comes after the “we.” The “we” now comes even after the “Duke.” Everything we do; we do it for the Duke.
One time at a friend’s kid birthday party, the guys decided to sing some karaoke. One dude sang one of Dam Vinh Hung’s hits “Goc Pho Reu Xanh,” on top of his lung. I didn’t want to get up and walk out so I sat there being tortured. A little four-or-five-year-old girl walked by with her hands covering her ears made us all laugh even the singing dude, yet he still didn’t get the point.
I don’t sing in public because somehow my voice doesn’t sound the same through the microphone. Nowadays the only person I would sing to is Cu Dao. It’s my last trick, if everything else fail, to keep him from crying. I don’t pull it out too often because he seems to get bored with old tricks fast. As soon as I would begin to sing, he would start to smile. When I hit Bang Kieu’s girly register he would chuckle. I had to sung my heart out in order to capture those gorgeous smiling photos of his. I had to trench my soul during our road trips to prevent him from screaming.
Being with Cu Dao really sets me free. I can do any silly things I want to. He leaves all my worries behind and all my stress away. The time we spend together, the world is our. One day he will be too embarrass to introduce me to his girls and friends, but for now I am enjoying every second of it. Cu Dao rocks my world.
This morning Dana drops me off at Vienna/Fairfax Orange line as usual, but she didn’t want to drink the coffee we shared so I finished up the whole mug in one shot. I felt groovy walking to the platform. Boarded the train and I started to feel that I need to do a number one. Wait, a number two as well. This can’t happen. I ate nothing this morning and spent half an hour in the bathroom earlier clearing out my system instead of playing with Cu Dao.
I tried to read to get my mind off it, but I couldn’t concentrate. The train stopped in between Ballston and Virginia Square. Why the fuck is the train not moving? The train operator announced that a customer had a seizure at Foggy Bottom that caused the delay. Oh, fuck me. If the train is not moving, I am going to have a seizure myself for holding it in. I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to get off the next stop to find a bathroom. Because of the seizure incident, Clarendon’s platform was filled with passengers trying to get on. There was no way I could get off so I sat back and holding it in.
As soon as I got to Foggy Bottom, it felt like I was reaching heaven. I rushed toward my building ignoring the traffic lights and straight to the bathroom. I sat back, relaxed and did what I had to do while some guy was brushing his teeth at the sink. I tried my hardest not to trumpet, but my ass didn’t cooperate. I heard the guy moaned as he left the bathroom. I am sorry. What do you want me to do? It’s one of those crappy days.
I know I am old when my little nephew who I used to hold in my arms is now in 10th grade and taller than me. I know I am old when the little boy who used to live next to me and my mom has a son older than my son. I still remember him wearing his diaper running around our apartment and now he’s changing his baby’s diaper. How crazy is that? Now we can talk about fatherhood to each other.
Dana told me that yesterday marked her 17 years living in the States. I then realized that I have been here for 19 years, even though I can’t remember the exact date. Although I have been here for almost two decades, become an American citizen and changed my name to Donny, I never once feel like this is a permanent place. Somehow Vietnam still holds on to me like the color of my skin, which hasn’t get any lighter over the years, even though childhood memory is the only part of me that belongs to Vietnam.
I have changed and so has Vietnam. My relationship with Vietnam is like my relationship with my father who hasn’t been around me all these years. We are connected by blood, but the gap is unbridgeable. We love each other, but we are distanced. I can’t live with my father just like I can’t live in Vietnam. We’re in two different worlds and our lifestyles have changed. My life is better here, but I still don’t feel a sense of home. I don’t yearn to go back just like a kid who grows up and doesn’t want to return home.
When I look at the older generation like my mom and my parents-in-law, I wonder how do they feel? With their limited English, this is definitely a temporary place for them. How do they live on and adapted to the environment that is so foreign to them? Was it because of the hardship in the past that give them the strength?
Often times I see myself living here temporarily for the rest of my life and than die on this land and that’s it. Don’t give me wrong. I love America and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world, but here. It just that Vietnam is also part of me. When I am in this sentimental mood, Trịnh Công Sơn’s “Ở Trọ” comes to mind and his words help me get through: “Tôi nay ở trọ trần gian / Trăm năm về chốn xa xăm cuối trời.” Even life is just an interim and you will go somewhere else after this. So live this short, impermanent life to the fullest so that “Mai kia dù có ra sao cũng đành.”
“I’m the sickest emcee,” a Viet kid rapped on a track called “Vietnamese Noodle Soup.” I concurred. His nursery rhymes make me sick. He compares one of the hottest Vietnamese noodle soups with his lame-ass sex boost: “I’ll cover you in white stuff, yeah I got a lot.” Worst are his ad-lib vocabularies including “un-pho-gettable,” “pho-nominal,” “pho-gettaboutit.” Don’t you want to smack the pho out of him? It’s embarrassing. (via khongcoai)
The each motion piece is now in its own directory. CSS elements are rewritten to place the Flash piece in the center of the browser. I also switched to YouTube’s embed style for much cleaner and simpler codes.
The info page is now featured a “What clients and colleagues say about Donny Truong” section. I have wanted to add this feature a while ago, but never got around to it until a formal colleague at Vassar writes me a nice recommendation on LinkedIn. I will update it as more testimonials become available.
Last month, I converted Visualgui.com’s markup to HTML5 and now my site is featured on HTML5 Gallery, a showcase of sites using HTML5 markup.