We’re vacationing in New Hampshire and staying close by Attitash Resort. Yesterday, I signed up for a two-hour private lesson for Đán and a group lesson for myself to learn snowboarding. Due to lack of coaches, my group lesson got canceled; therefore, I tagged along with Đán. We took a semi-private lesson together.

For two hours, we learned how to turn using our heels and toes and then connect them together to zig zag across the slope. Our coach told us that snowboarding was a bit harder to learn than skiing. Once you got over the learning curve, snowboarding would be less than skiing.

I started out with my dominant right foot, but I kept leaning back to my left foot; therefore, my board didn’t move and it turned in the direction that I didn’t want to turn. I tried switching my feet. As I stepped on the magic carpet with my left foot, I lost balance and fell. I landed my left hand on the belt and bruised my thumb.

After our lesson, Đán went up to the green slope with Đạo, who stuck with skiing. Đán fell several times and managed to snowboard down the slope. I stayed at the magic carpet and worked on my turns. In the afternoon, I joined Đạo and Đán on the green slope. I fell all the way down. I tried it one more time and fell even harder. I felt the impact afterward. My whole body was aching. My thumb was swollen and painful every time I wiggled it.

I am not so sure about snowboarding. My lack of sleep the night before put a toll on my ability to learn. I found strapping my left boot on the binding every single time I went down the slope and unstrapping it to get on the lift to be annoying. I had to sit my ass on the snow and pulled the board closer to strap in. With my swollen left thumb, it was painful to strap in.

I am glad Đán took up snowboarding. With his confidence and fearlessness, he successfully went into the dark side. I am going to stick with skiing and to develop more skills for this season.

Upon receiving a text message from Cousin Minh sharing stories about our extended family written by Aunt Chín, I dropped everything I was doing and focused on reading every sentence and every word. Aunt Chín’s conversational prose gave me an impression as if she was sitting next to me and telling me these stories. Among the siblings, Aunt Chín and Aunt Hai had a gift for storytelling. One time, I had the pleasure of joining Aunt Hai’s family taking a vacation to Disney World. The drive from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Orlando, Florida took more than half a day. At that time, there was no smartphone and I was not into reading yet because I only came to America a few years earlier and my English was not good. Fortunately, Aunt Hai, who sat in the front passenger seat, told us stories in articulate details about her parents’ life and businesses during the world. I wished I had a recording device to document every word she said. My wish, however, is now fulfilled when I read Aunt Chín’s stories.

Reading about the lives of my mother’s parents and her siblings, not only made me proud, but also lucky to be related by blood with the Lý’s extended family. I admired Grandfather’s talent and audacity. At fourteen, he left his home in the village to find work. From his empty hands, he made his dream come true. He opened his own Chinese traditional drugstore and became a herbal doctor who created his own cough medication. He was not just an entrepreneur, but also an innovator. I respected Grandfather, but I had tremendous love for Grandmother. She put her life on the line to work and to feed her family. The casualty of war ended her life. Her sacrifice was profound.

Aunt Hai was not only the oldest daughter who upheld her filial piety, but also the oldest sister who loved and cared for her siblings. She was a talented business woman. Her successes in both Việt Nam and America had proved that she can be put anywhere on God’s green earth and she’ll triple her worth. Aunt Hai was a hustler. As for my mother, I had lived with her peculiarities, including her clean freak and glacial pace. As for her jealousy, I had a different perspective than Aunt Chín’s (and I will delve in more details about it).

Aunt Năm was always willing to help out her parents’ business as well as her younger sisters with schoolwork. In addition, she was a quick learner and skillful in making handcrafted jewelry. Uncle Sáu was the only son of the family and an outstanding student. His story reminded me of my childhood memories including cricket fights and soccer. I did not know about “The Beetle Car Game” until I looked it up on YouTube. It was an intriguing traditional game that made me wish kids today used their hands to craft their own toys instead of just pushing buttons on their touch screens.

Aunt Tám was indeed the savior of the family. I am here today in the land of opportunities because of her love for her family. As the first person to escape, she helped and supported each of her family members to reach the land of freedom. Last but not least, I admired Aunt Chín’s photographic memories. Although some of these stories occurred over 60 years ago, she remembered them in great detail. Her storytelling was frank and honest. She wrote what she experienced and observed. Sometimes the truth hurt and the reality was ruthless. I hope we can take away what she has offered and learn from our past.

When deciding to write this epilogue, I would like to share my own thoughts on what Aunt Chín has written. As I had mentioned before, I had a different view on my mother’s jealousy. My observation might not be right and hers might not be wrong, or vice versa. We just had two different perspectives. I knew nothing about my mother’s previous marriage because she never mentioned anything about him. In her heart and soul, he no longer existed. Aunt Chín shared the issue was that he always went away and she was jealous of him; therefore, she asked him for financial help to raise their kids. He didn’t give her anything. They got into arguments and physical fights. They ended up in divorce.

To me, my mother was not the jealous type. She shouldn’t have to ask her husband for financial support for their kids. As a responsible father, he didn’t need to be reminded to provide for his family. Maybe that was her fate; therefore, she could not escape it. Even when she was married to my father, the situation was the same. He worked far away for months and only came for a few days, then left again. When my mother asked him for financial support, he told her that he did volunteer work; therefore, he had no money. She had to pawn her jewelry to get by until we left for America.

In the first few years living in a foreign country, she raised two kids on her own. She felt sad and chastised him for not taking care of his wife and kids, but she was not jealous. Even though she knew he was having an affair with another woman in Việt Nam, she paid him no mind. After thirty years of living by herself, she no longer needed any financial or emotional support from any man. A few times I asked her if she missed him or was jealous of him and she responded, “I have no time to be jealous or to miss him.” Of course, most of her time was spent in the kitchen from early morning to late night.

I always remembered and respected her toughness; therefore, I never thought she was jealous. To be jealous was to love. If she were jealous, she could have found a way to trap him in the US or she could have gone back to Việt Nam with him. She had done neither. She gave him complete freedom. After many years of submitting the paperwork for him to reunite with his wife and son in the US, he ended up only staying for a few months and wanted to return to Việt Nam. She didn’t hesitate to buy him a one-way ticket back even though she knew he would not have another opportunity to return to America.

I was not as strong as my mother, but she had taught me an invaluable lesson in love and marriage: You can’t stop someone from leaving. Before my own marriage, I had a few relationships in which “my lovers left me one by one like small rivers.” I was sad, but I accepted their departure and never held them back. I have found love for the time being. I will love with all my heart and soul. We will walk together in this journey through life and I won’t let go unless she wants to go. I will hold on if she wants to stay, but not if she wants to go—even if I had fallen madly in love with her.

As for education, I have a different view than Aunt Chín. Of course, education is important at any time, but it was heavier in her generation than mine. I must confess. I hated high school and college. My English was poor and my grades weren’t good. I went to school, but it felt like I went to prison. Especially during four years of college, I counted down each day until I finished serving my time to get a release paper. Why didn’t I drop out of school? The only reason was that I didn’t want to disappoint my mother. In Aunt Hai’s family, Cousin Minh and Cousin Karen graduated from college. In Aunt Năm’s family, Cousin Nhơn and Cousin Tam also graduated from college. Aunt Tư’s family had none. I wanted my mother to be proud of me and that was my motivation to prevent me from dropping out of college. I earned my BA with an average GPA. Fortunately, I found my skills in design; therefore, I taught myself to be a web designer.

I only started to love school when I was accepted into the master program in graphic design. Even though I had a full-time job and a family with young children, I studied hard. As a result, my GPA went up to almost 4.0. With my master, I was promoted to Director of Design and Web Services. Although I had risen to the director position, I still had to work for the people above me. If I were lucky, I would have a boss who would trust my expertise and provide me the flexibility to do my work. As of this writing, I have that boss. If I were not so lucky, I would have a boss who would micromanage my every step. Unfortunately, I had that type of boss and I was stressed out. I would never put myself in that position again.

In contrast, Cousin Duy is his own boss and he has succeeded in starting his own business. In retrospect, Duy inherited our grandfather’s genes in business. Unlike me, they worked for themselves. I had indeed tried to work for myself, but I didn’t have the business mind like Grandfather and Aunt Hai; therefore, I had to continue working for the people above my pay rate. Nowadays, Duy is doing well with his own business and he is happily married to his wonderful wife. They have two beautiful daughters. All that he needed now is a little boy to carry on the Lý legacy to fulfill our grandfather’s wish.

Let’s get back to Aunt Chín’s writing. Because these stories were meaningful to me and they will be more valuable to my kids later on, if they wanted to learn about their origin, I wanted to contribute in a small way. I asked Aunt Chín’s permission to allow me to edit these stories and put them together in a book form to preserve them. I was filled with joy when she gave me the permission to revise her stories.

I am not a writer, but I am a designer who enjoys writing and reading. I write on my personal blog everyday to hone my writing skills in English and Vietnamese, but this is the first time that I edit someone else’s work. It is a daunting task even though I just help fix spelling and make the prose flow better. At first, Aunt Chín only wrote in Vietnamese, then she translated her stories into English. For almost a month, I spent every late night and early morning editing the content, but I am sure I still missed many errors. If you spot anything, please contact me.

As for the book platform, I am a web designer; therefore, I created a web book instead of a printed book. A web book can easily be shared with family members anywhere. When I wrote my thesis for the Master of Arts in Graphic Design, I chose my topic in Vietnamese Typography as an experiment. My goal was to create a guide to help type designers around understand the Vietnamese language so they could design proper, legible, readable diacritics. I dug deep into my research on the history of the Vietnamese language and studied our writing system to provide a complete guide on the topic of Vietnamese diacritics. After I submitted my final thesis and received an A+, I listed my printed book for sale and launched a web version online. The printed version didn’t do too well because no one knew anything about me. The web version, however, attracted thousands of unique visitors each day. My web book reached type designers around the world. In return, they had hired me to review and make recommendations related to Vietnamese diacritics for their new typefaces. I am proud to play a small part in expanding and enriching our Vietnamese language.

Because of the success of Vietnamese Typography and the potential of the web for reaching people across the globe, I wanted to continue to create a web book instead of a printed book. If later on anyone in our family wanted to contribute, it would be easier. Whereas a printed book can’t be updated until the next reprint or a new edition, a web book can continue to be edited and expanded. I would like this website to be a living book.

At the same time, I want to maintain all the profile information for our family members including their official names, ages, birth dates, and death dates (for those family members who had left us). I would like to thank any family members who contributed to this project by sending in profiles and photos. Thanks to Cousin Minh for encouraging Aunt Chín to write. Once again, thanks Aunt Chín from the bottom of my heart for these incredible stories.

When I started writing about music, I wanted to read from music critics to get different perspectives. I don’t remember how I discovered Greg Tate’s writings, but I wanted to read more once I did. Tate had a distinctive style of writing and a criticism voice of his own. He went beyond music and pushed as far as he could on the page.

I wanted to learn and to emulate his writing. I pored over the Village Voice archive to read everything he had written. I read Flyboy in the Buttermilk several times. I read his Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Flyboy 2 and I pre-ordered it as soon as it was pre-released.

Even though I don’t write much about music anymore, I still have Tate’s voice in my mind. I was shocked to discover that he had passed away on December 7, this year. He was only 62. The cause of his death was undisclosed. America has lost one of its true cultural critics.

Rest In Peace, Greg Tate and thank you for inspiring and influencing many music writers, including myself, a self-proclaimed critic.

Verizon offers me a deal. I can trade in my current phone for a brand new iPhone 13 Pro, which costs $1099.99. It estimated my perfectly fine iPhone 6 Plus for $10. Now I understand the true meaning behind “fair trade.”

Since Apple stopped making iOS updates on my iPhone, the experience felt like playing Squid Game. The game apps, such as Roblox and Plants vs. Zombies my kids played, no longer worked. No games, no problem. I eliminated all game apps. The Amazon app redirected to its website. No shopping, no problem. I uninstalled the Amazon app. The McDonald’s app was slow to a crawl. No free fries, no problem. I removed the McDonald’s app. Starbucks kept prompting me to update every time I opened up its app, but wouldn’t let me update. No Starbucks, no problem. I got rid of the Starbucks app and used Dunkin’ Donuts’ app instead.

In the next few months, more apps will be eliminated as my smartphone becomes dumber and dumber. All that I really need are a phone to make calls, Google Maps or Apple Maps to get me around, and a browser. I really wish I could delete the apps that came with iOS. They are just being grouped together in a folder called “Apple’s craps.” Also that U2 album, Songs of Innocence, just crept up on the Music app no matter how many times I had deleted it. I never purchased it. Apple just shoved in there.

I am going to stay faithful to my iPhone 6. She is my Klara (as in Klara and the Sun). Her technology might be outdated, but she knows everything about me. She knows how much time I spent on social media and how much time I spent on reading. She knows what podcasts I like to listen to. She even reminded me if I was still interested in listening to NPR’s Fresh Air since I hadn’t listened to a couple of episodes.

I even sleep with her; therefore, I am going to ride with her until the end.

At my sons’ Scout pack, a parent posted the following message on the sign-up sheet for food allergy: “Crazy Liberals/Socialists/Communists.” The Scout leaders called him out, but he defended himself with “emotional allergies” and PTSD. As much as I don’t want to get involve in politics at my kids’ Scouting, I had to speak up:

Hi all,

I agree with the committee chair and the leaders. There is the right place and the right time for everything. Being snarky on the potluck sign-up sheet is inappropriate.

On the personal level, however, I appreciate the allergic alert. I will do my best to keep a distance from those who suffer from “emotional allergies” in our Scout meetings. I don’t want to cause any harm to their brittle emotions and sensitive reactions. I might be one of those “Crazy-Ass Liberals/Socialists/Communists.” I am not so sure. I am still waiting on my free healthcare to get an evaluation. If there’s any parent who is a psychiatrist, please let me know.

His behavior has become more and more erratic ever since the Orange Clown lost the White House. Maybe he is suffering from PTSD.

In the past three weeks, I had been working late nights to edit my aunt’s stories about our family. I wanted to turn it into a web book similar to Vietnamese Typography. I wanted to add old photos as well as profile information for the characters in her stories, which included my mother’s parents and her siblings.

Although I volunteered to put the website together, my main focus was on editing. I had been blogging on this site for 20 years, but it was the first time that I edited someone else’s work. It was a daunting task to edit both English and Vietnamese. What I looked for were spelling errors, cutting down repeated sentences to make the flow better, and consistency—particularly in English to keep the stories in past tense.

I had the impression that when my aunt wrote these stories, she wanted to get the words from her head to the page. As a result, she didn’t pay much attention to the technical part of writing. As an editor, I came to her stories from a fresh perspective; therefore, I had an easier time to spot the errors. I had learned quite a bit editing someone’s writing, but I don’t enjoy it as much as writing.

In addition to editing the stories and designing the website, I wrote an epilogue. I wish I could share the entire book, but it was intended as a family project. I will share my piece on this blog.

The final draft is almost finished. I just wanted to get it done so I can get back to my normal routine and catching up on sleeping. I had a booster shot yesterday and my arm is sore.

Last night, my classmates and I took our ice skating test for Freestyle 2. Our coach graded our skills using the pass-or-fail system instead of the 1-10 scale. I passed the jump sequence, ballet jump, and half-lutz jump. She didn’t test us on the dance step sequence and the edged spirals. To the coach, as well as mine, surprise, I pulled off the one-foot spin. It was like a miracle because I had been struggling with it throughout our 10-week lesson. I could barely spin for 3 revolutions, let alone meet the requirement of six revolutions. Even earlier today, I couldn’t get my spin together during practice. Somehow I found my groove during the test.

I can now relax a bit for the holidays. Learning ice skating had been quite stressful at this level and I just wanted to learn for fun; therefore, I decided to stop after Freestyle 2. The techniques were becoming more challenging and I would need more time to practice. Unfortunately, my kids are no longer interested in ice skating. Đạo and Đán are learning ice hockey. Xuân is still taking figure lessons, but his heart is not in it. He hadn’t practiced and he couldn’t do the techniques at his level.

I don’t see the point for me to continue if my kids are not doing it. I felt guilty going to practice by myself while the kids stayed home with their mom. She had also been complaining about me going to practice. In addition, I have trouble spinning. I have all the excuses and legitimate reasons to quit. So yes, this is the end of my figure skate learning journey for me. I am glad I have made it this far. It was a wonderful experience.

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.