Đạo and I hit the skate park in the morning. We had been rollerblading two to three times a week. Đạo is a good skater, but he is very cautious. He stuck with the low, straight ramps. I encouraged him to try the higher, curved pipes, but he declined. Of course, I didn’t force him to do anything he didn’t feel comfortable doing. I took some risks and pushed myself a bit. I fell several times in the past; therefore, I am being careful as well.

After our rollerblading session, we had a brief conversation. I complimented him for saying no to my challenge. He didn’t take the bait and he wasn’t being pressured into doing something that he didn’t want to. I wanted him to apply that concept to his life. He will start seventh grade in two weeks.

Just thinking back to my seventh and eight grades gives me a chill. I had such a rough time; therefore, I do not want him to go through what I went through. I was bullied for being the only Asian kid in class. I was laughed at for not speaking much English. I kept it all to myself because I didn’t know who to turn to. I didn’t tell my mom because I didn’t want her to worry and she couldn’t do anything for me anyway.

I advised Đạo to come to me or his mother if he experienced bullying in school. I reminded him to just walk away from situations where he wouldn’t feel safe or comfortable. I stressed the importance of not being pressured into smoking, taking drugs, drinking alcohol, or doing illegal activities. He understood my advice and I hope he will remember my words when he has to deal with peer pressures.

As the school opening getting closer, the cases of COVID due to the Delta variant are surging. Parents in the Fairfax County Public Schools are worrying. They are petitioning to get the school board to offer a virtual option.

As much as I despise having our kids attending online classes, it is a safer alternative. The issue is that I have to return to my office the same time our kids begin their school year, which is two weeks away. I am going to discuss with my supervisor about extending my remote work.

Over the weekend, I talked to my wife the potential of not letting Xuân attend kindergarten this year. I am fine with keeping him at home for a year, but she doesn’t want to since she would have to bear the brunt if I have to go back to the office. Letting Xuân and Đán attend in-person classes is risky. The pandemic is far from over and we cannot let our guard down.

America is deeply divided over vaccination. Before the pandemic, I thought the number of anti-vaxxers was very insignificant. Now I realize I am dead wrong. I stopped following politics in America because of its divisiveness. I only pay attention to policies I care about. Now the anti-vaxxers are taking the divisiveness to the extreme.

I refused to attend our family gathering because many of my cousins have refused vaccination. It took one member of the family who is obsessed with conspiracy theory to convince others not to get vaccinated. I love them and pray for them not to catch the virus, but I can’t put my kids at risk. I hope we can see each other again after the pandemic. Yesterday, a friend from high school shared her story on Facebook, which confirmed that I made the right decision not to attend our family gathering. She wrote:

I’ve been masking since end of February 2020 before any mask mandate or shut-down was even announced. I worked all of my hospital shifts through the pandemic. I drove almost 200 miles a day when the trains shut down. Then I started taking the trains and busses, while fully masked, when they opened back up. I was tested for covid weekly and always came up negative. Masking works really well. I let my guard down recently at a family gathering and let my daughter go about unmasked even though she wasn’t vaccinated. It was stupid of me, but I had hoped that everyone in attendance was vaccinated or not a covid carrier. You should never really just rely on hope. I love my family to pieces regardless of what they believe in. I only wish them health, safety, and happiness. If I had to repeat the family gathering I would have still attended, but would definitely have kept my daughter and myself masked and more distanced. Hind sight is 20/20.

Two weeks ago, I took Đạo and Đán to try out Vovinam. It took place in a small studio close by our house. Many kids didn’t mask up. Except for one master and myself, none of the parents wore masks at the meeting. As a result, I decided to pull them out for now. Our kids are good with masking up. Even our two-year-old Vương wanted to wear his mask because his brothers were wearing them. We still need take more cautions with the high transmissible from the Delta variant.

In the past few weeks, my nine-year-old Đán started talking with an Asian-mocking accent. He stressed out the syllables, especially the last word in his sentences. It irritated the fuck out of me. I asked him to stop, but it was already stuck in his head. I explained to him how Americans use that racist accent to mock Asian-Americans and I had to endure it throughout my life living in America. Hearing it from my own son brings back those painful moments.

Last night, I asked him how he picked up that accent and he pulled up YouTube videos made by a Vietnamese-American named Nathan Doan. I could barely watch one of his clips without cringing. He played a character named Ging Ging who adorned a conical hat, spoke with a fake Asian accent, and closed his eyes the entire time. I don’t know his purpose for creating this character. I don’t give a fuck if it is a satire. I don’t want to find out.

He needs to stop selling out his culture for cheap laughs. They are laughing at him, not with him. When kids picked this up without knowing the reference or the history and started to emulate it, that’s not a laughing matter.

I pride myself as a constant learner. It started when I became obsessed with Flash. I wanted to learn everything about Flash. I spent days and nights going through online tutorials. It felt great when I learned to create something new. At first, Flash was simple to learn. It was a visual tool for creating web animation. Everything took place on its timeline. Then Flash introduced ActionScript. I plowed through books after books learning ActionScript programming. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far with ActionScript. The more Flash advanced, the more lost I got. Eventually, I gave up the complexity of Flash programming and picked up the simplicity of HTML and CSS. I continued to learn as much as I could about web design and web standards.

Working in the web industry, I had to constantly keep myself up to date or else I would become irrelevant. That fear had haunted me and made me want to do something else. Unfortunately, I don’t have any other skills. I kept myself in the game by learning and practicing HTML and CSS. Of course, I needed to know a bit of PHP, MySQL, and server technologies to run content management systems like WordPress and MODX. I have not looked into any new frameworks. I don’t even know what React does.

Despite not focusing my learning on new technology, I am constantly learning something else. If I don’t, my brain would be inactive. I feel the need to activate my brain and to constantly improve myself. I blog almost daily to improve my writing. I read every day to improve my language skills. I try to skate as much as I can to improve my health. I enjoy these activities, but I also feel the burden. Why do I need to learn constantly? Why do I need to improve myself? What am I trying to prove? Would it be OK if I just let my brain idle? Have I learned enough already? Life is short and I will die one day.

I encourage my kids to read, write, and stay active. They are young and they have so much to learn. Learning is much easier at their age than mine. When I was a kid, I didn’t have any guidance to encourage me to learn or to play sports. My mother offered me food on the table and that was her way of raising me. She just wanted me to eat well and do well in school. I missed out so much that I am trying to make up for it now. I am not a fast learner and I recognize my limited capabilities; therefore, I try to take one thing at a time. I become a constant learner. Yes, constantly learning is rewarding, but where am I going with this? What is my end goal? What am I trying to achieve? I have nothing set out for myself, except I feel better about myself. I can express myself in writing. I soaked in more information when I read. Learning to skate gives me some physical activities. Could the pressure of constantly learning keep me from getting depressed? If I have nothing to occupy my brain, I might fall into depression. I didn’t feel so great about my body when I was inactive. I am still not in any great shape now, but I feel better about myself doing sports.

When I started writing this blog post, I had a doubt about the conditions of constant learning. I was not sure if it would be good or bad. By thinking out loud and writing it down, I came to the conclusion that learning keeps me from getting depressed. That’s a good thing. I am doing these for myself and that’s all that matters. I hope I can instill constant learning into my kids.

Woke up around seven in the morning to get Đán ready for his hockey lessons. Drove him to the ice rink and watched him practice and play for an hour. Went back home, grabbed a quick bite, and took Đạo, Đán, and Xuân to an ice skating public session. Spent three hours working mostly on outside backward edges for the test next week. Took them to Sweet Berries for some frozen yogurts. Went home, rested, then headed to my sister-in-law’s house for dinner. Found out my mother-in-law’s brother-in-law passed away after a long battle with cancer. Drank a beer and reminisced on the short time we spent together. Life is too damn short. Rest In Peace, uncle Chiếu.

I picked out this book to read together with my nine-year-old son at bedtime. Each night we read three stories. His reading was improving, but he gave up on me halfway through the book. I might as well finished up it myself. From Socrates to Tim Berners-Lee, Michael Phelps to Ricky Martin—among the few names I recognized—each brief bio written by Ben Brooks and illustrated by Quinton Winter. These figures are inspiring and I don’t know many of them. Aaron Fotheringham stuck in my mind the most because he skates in his wheelchair at skate parks. I would love to have the opportunity to watch him someday. Then I realized I could pop over to YouTube. Wheelz of steel.

My oldest son, Đạo, wrote a fiction piece title “From Dirt to Diamond” in forth grade. It’s an impressive read. So proud of him.

I hardly use our master bathroom’s shower, which is a Moentrol (pull-and-push) valve. Last week, I was shocked to see my oldest Đạo pulled the handle. The entire faceplate was yanked from the wall and snapped back in. I tried to tightened up the faceplate, but it was still lifted off every time someone pulled the handle. I imagined the pipe would burst if it being pulled over time, but my wife ensured me that she had used it for over a decade without any problem. Still, I wanted to be safe than be sorry. I don’t want to deal with water pouring all over the house. That’s my fear. I kept thinking about it and the night before and I lost sleep over it. I am an over-thinker.

Yesterday I woke up early, but didn’t go to the skatepark like usual. Instead, I went to Home Depot to pick up Danco’s one-handle valve trim kit for Moen’s shower faucet. I watched a YouTube video and it seemed straightforward to replace the trim kit. The best part was that I didn’t have to shut off the main water because I only replaced the trim, not the valve.

The Danco’s trim kit had everything that I needed for the replacement. It comes with both a clear plastic and a lever handle. I went for the level handle. The instruction that came with the kit was easy to follow, but the Bilt app has 3D modelings and interactive features to guide me through the process.

I am glad I was able to replace it, but I need to stop overthinking or over-stressing on such a minor issue. Being the man in the house, I feel the burden to keep everyone safe and sound. As a result, I got stressed out over tiny issues related to water and electricity.

Parts

Danco’s one-handle valve trim kit for Moen’s shower faucet: $45

As I finished reading this book, the pandemic is far from over. Even though the Biden administration has a much better handling of Covid, it was only last year that America had experienced the failure of the previous administration that cost us over half a million of human lives, including my mother’s. Through thorough research, vigorous stories, and compelling histories, Lawrence Wright illustrated how our government at the time botched the response from Covid, even with the simplest method of wearing a mask. If we had a competent leadership, we would have come out much better and this book proved it. It is a riveting revisit of America under Covid.

The follow account, in particular, brought back the experience that I had gone through with my own mother (p. 247-248):

On November 14, Selene got a call advising that her mother’s blood pressure was plummeting. “Based on how she’s declining, how long do we have?” Selene asked, thinking that she would pick up her father so that he could say goodbye. “A couple hours,” the doctor said. Ten minutes later, a nurse called and said, “Get here now.”

“They put me in a helmet,” Selene recalled. “There was a plastic flap that closed around my neck. Inside the helmet there was a fan at the top that blew air down, so that any air that got in would be flushed away.

And they put a gown on me, and double gloves, and they let me go in and say goodbye to her. That was the biggest shock, to see her, and to see how she looked. She was twice her size, because she was swollen from steroids. Her tongue was hanging out the side of her mouth because she was on the ventilator—she’d been intubated. They had to brace her head to keep it straight on the pillow, and they had tape around her mouth to keep the tube in. I’ll never forget it. But I think the thing that will haunt me is the smell. It’s like the smell of decay, like she had already started to die.

“The thing that made it so hard to see that was to juxtapose it against President Trump out there, saying he felt like he was twenty-eight years old again and he never felt better. So how could the same thing that did this to her, how could someone ever take it for granted that this was nothing, you have nothing to be afraid of?”

Selene gathered her mother in her arms as the machines went silent.

Yesterday morning, I took Đạo and Đán to try out Vovinam. While they were training, we had a parent meeting. I raised a question about practice. Since the class is only held once a week, how would they practice at home? I wouldn’t know what to help them. The master suggested that I should join the class as well so I can practice at home with them. Instead of waiting around for an hour and a half, why don’t I just take the lessons? That’s a great suggestion. Even though I would love to use that time to read, I am considering joining. I need the exercise anyway. My only fear is that once I am committed, I will need to dedicate my time to it.

I started ice skating lessons because I wanted to learn and practice with the kids. Now I am more devoted to it than they are. After their Vovinam lesson, I asked them if they wanted to go to the ice rink to practice. They all said no. I didn’t want to force them so I went alone. I practiced for almost three hours. I reviewed all the techniques for Freestyle 1 since I will have a test coming up in two weeks. I also learned the ballet jump from watching Coach Julia on YouTube. My poser was not that great, but I got the technical part down. I felt great and guilty at the same time knowing that my kids were playing video games with their cousins for the same amount of hours.

My wife and I got into a heated argument over her work schedule again. I don’t know how she prioritizes her work, but she always scrambles at the last minute to meet her deadline. On Saturday afternoon, I asked her how she was doing with her work and she chewed my head off. When I didn’t ask, she would say I didn’t care. When I asked, I got an earful. There’s no win in this situation.

I don’t know what her work involves, but she has a deadline at midnight every other Saturday. I suggested that she tries to get her production done the first week instead of the deadline week. It might not be possible, but it would give her less stress trying to meet the deadline. Then again, what do I know?

I thought that getting involved with the kids’ activities would give her free time at home to do her work. By taking them out to eat, she wouldn’t have to cook as much to give her free time to do her work. I took them to hockey, summer school, private tutor, and private lessons, so she didn’t have to and she can do her work. Still, I am not doing enough.

I was considering joining Vovinam with the kids, but I won’t. Now that the kids aren’t into skating anymore, I should quit as well after my group lesson is done. We should wrap up private lessons for Đạo and Xuân since they don’t seem to be enthusiastic about ice skating anymore. Once Đán is done with hockey, we’ll call it quit as well.

I realized that my motivation for doing all of these is to get them off their screen. It would be much easier to let them have their way. Why bother?