Klim Type Foundry has released a gorgeous, genderless serif family named Epicene. Kris Sowersby has written an in-depth essay on his research, thinking, and process went into Epicene. He writes:

Epicene is not a straight revival of any of [J.M.] Fleischmann or [J-F.] Rosart’s fonts. Rather I’ve reconciled details from across their body of work, integrating gestures and forms into a cohesive whole.

Epicene supports over 200 languages, and yet no Vietnamese. How disappointing? I was going to tweet about this, but I don’t want to be the Vietnamese guy who has written a book on Vietnamese Typography keep beating the drum on Vietnamese support. Since this is my blog, I can rant all I want.

It hurt when my wife talked nicer to other people than to me. Our marriage has come to the point where anything I say annoys the heck out of her. Last evening, she told me that she was feeling sick. I asked her why and she flipped out: “What do you mean why? I don’t know why. I am just feeling sick. Do you have to know why?” Maybe I was asking the wrong question, but I was genuinely concerned. I wanted to know what caused her to feel sick. Did she come down with a cold or a flu? Was it because of a lack of sleep? She just came back from the dentist. Did she have an extraction or a crown that made her sick? Just a simple question that could make her furious. If I didn’t say anything at all, she would say I don’t care.

Nowadays, she yells at me like I am one of her kids. I miss her soft voice and gentle tone when we first met. She used to laugh at my jokes. These days, my jokes have become either satirical or mockery. I have been pondering how we got here. It’s my fault that I have turned a sweet lady into a cantankerous wife. I wish I could turn things back, but there is nothing I can do to right my wrong. I have become a thorn in her eyes. Without telling me that I am lazy, she often hinted at how I didn’t do anything around the house. On weekdays, I went to work, came home and took the kids out to ice skating or rollerblading. Would she rather have them sit in front of the screen and play video games instead? When we started skating, she was the one that pushed me to take them. I hesitated at first, but I was hooked when I put on those skates. On weekends, the kids had activities like Scouting or ice hockey, which required me to be out. I mowed the lawn every two or three weeks and tried to fix things around the house. When she did the laundry, I folded the clothes and put them away.

I had always been grateful that she cooked for us. I helped out by doing the dishes or giving the kids a bath. It was not like I just sat around and did nothing all day. Still, my efforts were never enough. When we were on vacation, for example, she often cooked for everyone including her brother’s and sister’s family. She not only cooked, but also served everyone. I felt guilty and asked her not to serve me anymore. I can do it myself. Even our kids, I made them serve themselves and help set the table.

She is a caring daughter, kind sister, loving mother, and a wonderful wife. Unfortunately, I have failed to bring her joy and happiness. She has become grumpier and crankier. I understand raising four boys isn’t easy. I struggle everyday, but we can do it together. I apologize for my shortcomings. I apologize for not holding up my end of the bargain. I apologize for being a shitty husband. I don’t apologize, however, for loving her. Maybe I don’t know how to love her or how to show my love to her, but I love her from the bottom of my heart. I hope underneath all the harshness and bitterness, she still has some love left for me as well. I am not going anywhere unless she wants me to.

Friday evening after work, I took Đạo and Đán to their Scout meeting. I spotted some new parents taking their kids to join the Cub Scout. At the hour-long parent-leader meeting, most parents who had been with the Scout for a year or more helped out with something. One parent handled the logistics. One volunteered to teach Vietnamese. One took charge of outreach, which included designing the website. The leaders asked me to run the lion dance group, but I turned them down. I can’t take on anymore responsibility. The Scout ended at 8:30 pm. There went my Friday evening.

Saturday morning, I woke up early to take Đán to ice hockey. I also made him practice for half an hour. We didn’t get home until noon. At home, I went up to the attic to check on the fan. My wife kept complaining that her room was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter; therefore, she thought the fan was broken. I worried and couldn’t sleep for a couple of nights just the thought of having to replace the fan. I avoided going into the attic if I could. I didn’t realize that I needed to walk on the beams. As I stepped on the dry ceiling, I heard a crack. I quickly stepped onto the beam. Luckily I didn’t break the ceiling yet. I walked around the dark- and-hot-as-hell attic trying to find a fan and we don’t have one. I was relieved. I went back down, cleaned up, and vacuumed all the rooms. After lunch, I went rollerblading at the school’s parking lot near our house. I practiced the 180 jump on and off the sidewalk. It was a great exercise. I sweat profusely. An hour later, I was exhausted and took a quick nap on the coach. I woke up and my legs were soaring. My wife complained again. I was supposed to feel better after exercise, not more tired. I am old and I used too much energy. My body couldn’t keep up. I felt tired, but I also felt great that I made myself active.

Sunday morning, my sister-in-law dropped her boys off at our house so she and her husband can fix their own fan in the attic. I took the older kids to ice skating from 12 pm to 3 pm. For three hours, I got a lot of practice in. I improved my backward edges and my waltz jumps. I reviewed my half-flip and ballet jumps. I did some one-foot spins and learned the new half-lutz jump. I felt productive and eager to get back to ice skating, which I hadn’t done much when I injured my knee. After ice skating I took the kids to High Side for some snacks and some craft beer for me. We ordered tornado fries, sweet potato fries, chicken baos, and beef teriyaki skewers to share among the four of us. I had two glasses of sour ale with Magdalena River Mango, Tangerine, Pineapple and Calamansi. The bill came out to almost $100. Nothing is cheap anymore. After our overpriced street food and craft beer, I went over to my sister-in-law’s house to help her husband replace the motor fan in the attic. I went to the roof to unscrew the fan while he was in the attic holding on to the motor. The process took 15 minutes. We went to our house and had a hotpot my wife made for dinner. It was delicious. I always loved hotpot.

Those are the highlights of my boring weekend. The lawn still needed to be mowed. The HVAC still needed to be opened up and vacuumed. The basement still needed to be reorganized. The list of home maintenance goes on and on. My weekends are either filled with stress or guilt. I get stressed out because I could not get the things done around the house. I feel guilty if I push off the housework and go out ice skating or spending time with the kids. The struggles never seem to end.

While waiting for my kids’ ice skating group lessons, I heard Vietnamese adults gushing over their kids. The father said in English, “You have done so well for the first time.” The mother said in English, “Yes, I am so proud of you.” The grandmother said in Vietnamese, “You were so good.” They took turns and repeated their praise over and over again as they took off the kids’ rental skates.

Is it just me or do Vietnamese parents tend to over compliment their kids? This is not the first time I have heard something like this from Vietnamese parents. Sure, encouragement is good, especially for doing something new for the first time, but do you have to overdo it? It felt like giving kids false hope or toxic positivity. I give my kids compliments too, but I also try not to exaggerate their accomplishments.

I know kids who think they are the best at everything because their parents kept bragging that they are the best. Being competitive is good. It makes the kids work harder to achieve their goal, but when parents make their kids think they are the best, they set them up to fail. They put their kids on the pedestal and their kids can’t reach it. The kids threw tantrums when they lost in a game. When the kids can’t be the best, they just quit.

I rather have my kids keep working to improve their game than just giving up. Then again, what do I know? When I taught my kids how to skate, I just left them on the ice by themselves. I didn’t hold their hands. I didn’t help them get up when they fell. I just showed them how to get on their feet again. Đán didn’t hold on to the wall at all. He just walked like a penguin until he found his balance. Đạo used the wall until he found his groove. Xuân fell a couple of times, but he picked up quickly. I haven’t been able to get Vương into the rink. He isn’t quite ready yet.

After stopping private lessons for Đạo and Xuân, I enrolled them into group lessons again. Private lessons were expensive, but Đạo told me he was not interested in competing. Neither of them wanted to practice. If they don’t practice, they won’t get anywhere. Group lessons are not only cheaper, but they also come with free public sessions for practice. If they don’t use them, I will. Ice skating is still a fun sport for the kids even if they don’t take it seriously. Xuân is taking Beta. Đạo is taking Freestyle 1. I am looking into taking Freestyle 2 at the end of this month. With my knee injury, I haven’t practiced much. I still have a minor pain, but hopefully I will fully recover by then.

As for Đán, he seems to be sticking with ice hockey. He is doing well in class. He has the speed and the skating skills. He needs to work on his hockey skills. He needs to learn to control the puck with his stick. He needs to learn the strategy of the game. Fortunately, hockey is similar to soccer; therefore, I can provide him with some tips such as working with his teammates and passing the puck away from his own goal. We’ll see how he does.

Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings is filled with major thoughts. From an Asian-American lens, Hong provides a clear-eyed view on race and racism in America. Hong breaks down complex issues with her impeccable prose. Her investigative profile of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, in particular, is heartbreaking. I want to get my hands on Cha’s Dictee. Reading Hong’s personal, historical, and analytical accounts, I am glad that she represents Asian Americans. We need more voices like her. This collection of essays is a must read not just for Asian Americans, but anyone who is interested in the race issues in America. She is a damn good writer and thinker.

After more than a decade of using an outdated calendar system for the law school, we have finally switched to a modern calendar system using WordPress. When it comes to calendar, WordPress has tons of choices to choose from. After some researching and experimenting, I selected The Events Calendar plugin.

The Events Calendar has a simple interface that is integrated with WordPress’s UI. It also has a decent layout that adapts well with our existing theme. It took me a few hours to set up and moved the events over. The nice thing about being powered by WordPress is that we can invite law school members to post their own events instead of sending them to us.

My supervisor is happy with the new calendar. We can finally sunset the expensive and outdated system. I am not sure why we waited this long. I should have take the lead and just do it. Take a look.

After seven months, my mother’s monument had finally arrived and had been installed at her gravesite last Tuesday. I was anxious and nervous. I prayed that it would turn out the way I had expected. We had worked so hard on the design and I wanted to make sure that every detail was correct. On Sunday, I took my family to visit her grave and I was relieved that her monument turned out perfect. The black granite headstone shipped from India looked gorgeous. The smooth, curvy shapes added a nice touch to the headstone. The heart-shaped jade was firmly recessed into the stone with epoxy. Finally, the typesetting was excellent.

When I shopped around for my mother’s monument, I needed someone not only I could trust but also someone with patience and understanding. Even though we had to paid a bit more, I went with Heritage Monuments, which is a division of Charles F. Snyder Funeral Home that provided exceptional funeral service for my mother. I worked closely with Kathy Snyder Guidos who was very patience and understanding, especially when it came to typesetting.

At first, I did not understand the process; therefore, I wanted to set the text with Queens, designed by Sebastian Losch, to match the tribute website I had created for my mother. It turned out that I couldn’t use any typeface I wanted. I had to choose one of the typefaces from the catalog. I went with Garamond, but it didn’t work either because I wanted to set the text in a block. The only typeface that could accommodate the block was Modified Roman, which is a modified version of Time New Roman. Ms. Guidos and I went back and forth countless of iterations to make sure the alignment, the words, and the Vietnamese diacritics were correct. I didn’t want to be an annoying client, but Ms. Guidos had reassured me that they won’t start the project until I was completely satisfied with the design. I was grateful for her accommodation.

In addition to the text, I wanted to include a heart-shaped jade (my mother used to wear) on the headstone. Ngọc (Jade) was her middle name and my cousin, Karen Huỳnh, had shared an important detail about Jade. She wrote:

[W]hen our grandfather (her Dad) gave her the middle name, 玉 (Yù) in Chinese, translated to Ngọc in Vietnamese, he had in effect shaped her person, inscribed, etched, and carved her personality, character, and temperament. This beautiful name 玉 (Yù) or Ngọc means Jade in Chinese. In Chinese tradition and culture, 玉 (Yù) represents “fair, pure, and graceful (as in a woman).” Your Mom is the embodiment of these wonderful qualities… Looking back at your Mom’s life, I believe that her life experiences undeniably reflect the qualities of jade described above. What a special precious gem your Mom was! As a person, as a daughter, as a mother, as a grandmother, as an aunt, she truly lived a life befitting the name, 玉 (Yù).

I cried with tears of joy that her monument turned out well. It was the last thing I could do for her. I love her and miss her everyday.

Ten years ago, Kanye West and Jay-Z put out a monumental collaboration. Watch the Throne has top-notch productions as well as lyrical substances. For his part, Jay-Z proved to be a lyrical genius. Kanye West who played the role of curating the beats also stepped up his word game. He landed punchlines in almost every song. I started noticed his wordplay on “No Church in the Wild,” in which he rhymed:

When we die, the money we can’t keep
But we’ll probably spend it all ’cause the pain ain’t cheap.

No money can cure the pain, but Kanye also played on “pain” as in expensive champagne. On “Niggas in Paris,” he bragged about being real:

Doctors say I’m the illest ’cause I’m suffering from realness.

The contrast yet similarity between “illest” and “realness” worked well together. On “Otis,” Kanye responded to Jay-Z’s line, “I got five passports, I’m never going to jail,” with:

I made ‘Jesus Walk,’ I’m never going to hell
Couture-level flow is never going on sale
Luxury rap, the Hermès of verses
Sophisticated ignorance, write my curses in cursive.

The reference to the record that made called ‘Jesus Walk’ was just brilliant. I am also impressed that Kanye knew about typeface classification called cursive. On “New Day,” Kanye addressed his son:

And I’ll never let my son have an ego
He’ll be nice to everyone wherever we go
I mean, I might even make him be Republican
So everybody know he love white people.

“New Day” is a heartfelt record, in which he told his son not to do the things he had done like when he addressed George Bush on TV after hurricane Katrina:

And I’ll never let him ever hit the telethon
I mean, even if people dyin’ and the world ends

Or when Kanye provided his son advise on love:

And I’ll never let him ever hit a strip club
I learned the hard way, that ain’t the place to get love.

It could a swipe at Amber Rose, but he sounded genuine. Kanye never shied away from offending white people and strippers. If he is a racist, he admitted it on “Who Gon Stop Me”:

Heard Yeezy was racist, well, I guess that’s on one basis
I only like green faces.

Kanye doesn’t give a fuck about any race except green faces. Then he went hard as a motherfucker on “H.A.M.”:

And if life’s a bitch, bet she sucked my dick, huh
And I bet she fucked the whole clique, huh

Kanye compared life to a bitch; therefore, two bars above were not intended to be sexually explicit. Just when I thought he was not being misogynist asshole, he dropped two vulgar lines:

Had a few white girls, asses flat as shit
But the head’s so good, damn, a nigga glad he hit.

No wait, he actual referred to white girls as cocaine and not as sexual objects. On “Joy,” he injected another wordplay:

I never understood Planned Parenthood
‘Cause I never met nobody planned to be a parent in the hood.

That’s a good one. Kanye had proved that he is witty as fuck. I am sure his new release, Donda, is filled with witty punchlines. I just haven’t had a chance to get my hand on the album yet.

I was in Vietnam when my mom called. She asked me, “Haven’t you heard what happened?” I replied, “No.” She said, “The terrorists crashed airplanes into two tall buildings in New York.” I was numbed and devastated. I couldn’t recall what we talked about after that.

Then it was all over newspapers and TVs in Vietnam. It was the topic at restaurants and coffee shops. I listened to family, friends, and strangers talking about it, but I had nothing to say. I was in my homeland, and yet I missed my home in America. Even though I just went back to Vietnam for the first time since I migrated to the U.S. a decade earlier, I wanted to go home to America to grieve with my fellow Americans.

A few months before the tragic attack, I graduated from college, but couldn’t find a job in web design. I took a trip back to Vietnam to see my dad and to see if I could make a change with my life. The 9-11 tragedy made me realize that I was an American. Vietnam had become my past. America was where my heart was. I went back to America to start my career and my life.

Twenty years have gone by, but the memories will always remain. We will never forget the deadliest terrorist attack on our soil. It broke us, but also brought us together and made us stronger as a nation. Our skin color and our political view didn’t matter. We were the United States of America.

Unfortunately, we’re now deeply divided as if we’re living in the same place but in a different universe. I hope that the twentieth anniversary of this tragic event reminds us that we can still come together despite our differences.

A few months ago, I ordered some pickled cucumbers to complement a glass of drafted hard mango cider. I didn’t know what it was called, but I loved the crunchiness of the cucumbers with a slightly sweet and sour flavor. It went well with the drink.

Last week, I wanted to recreate something like that, but with bitter melon instead. I searched for Korean pickled cucumbers and came across this video on YouTube. I modified the recipe a bit and made two batches of pickled bitter melons. In addition to the crunchy and vinegary taste, I loved the bittersweet flavor from the melon. It might not be suitable for anyone who can’t handle the bitter taste, but that is the reason I made it.

Ingredients

• 3 bitter melons
• 2 tablespoons of sea salt
• 1 teaspoon of purée garlic
• 3 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
• 1.5 tablespoon of honey
• .25 teaspoon of lemon zest
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 3 chilly peppers
• 1 tablespoon of chopped green scallions
• 1 cup of water

Split the bitter melon in half, scrape the seeds off with a spoon, and slice them into big chunks. Place the chopped pieces into a big bowl, add 2 tablespoons of sea salt, and mix them up. Set it aside for 15 to 20 minutes.

In another bowl, add purée garlic, apple cider vinegar, honey, lemon zest, salt, chili peppers, scallions, and water. Stir everything up well and sprinkle some freshly ground black peppers. Taste to your liking.

Rinse the bitter melons with cold water to remove the salt, place them in a container, and pour in the liquid. Let it sit in the fridge for 12 hours. Enjoy!