Vũ Thành An is a talented Vietnamese songwriter whose music is well-known for his series of nameless love songs. In 1997, he published his first book, Chuyện tình không tên (Nameless Love Stories), in which he shared stories behind his nameless songs through personal letters.

Even when I was a kid, I always marveled at the beauty of cursive handwriting, especially through letters. In the Vietnamese culture, honing cursive handwriting has been an essential, life-long skill. I have been wanting to create a sample page to showcase a quality handwriting typeface that supports Vietnamese and Vũ Thành An’s letters fit the bill. I chose “Tình thư thứ ba” (Love Letter #3), in which he included the original version and the updated version of “Bài không tên cuối cùng” (The Last Love Letter).

After playing around with a handful of cursive typefaces, I settled on Playwrite Việt Nam, designed by Veronika Burian and José Scaglione. Playwrite Việt Nam is based on the Mẫu chữ thảo tiếng Việt (Vietnamese official cursive script) provided by the Bộ Giáo dục và Đào tạo (Ministry of Education and Training). Take a look.

I can’t stand the excessive heat. I am done with the summer. I can’t wait to get back to skiing and snowboarding. I don’t care much about the beach and the water.

I haven’t been to the skatepark for a month due to the gout attack. It is finally going away. I can returning practicing snowboarding in the basement. I am focusing mainly on my body position for carving. I hope it will help once I get to the slopes in the winter.

I still have so many projects to do for the house. Getting rid of things we don’t need is one of them. I don’t want things to pile up to the point where we just give up.

That winter, December of 2006, I fell head over heels in love with a wonderful lady. She and I took a trip to Niagara Falls. We drove around the Niagara River Parkway at night in the rain, viewed the holiday lights, and listened to Madeleine Peyroux’s Half the Perfect World.

Last Thursday, she, who is now my lovely wife, and I revisited the Falls 18 years later, with our entire family. As we were driving from Toronto to the Falls, Ms. Peyroux’s latest album popped up in my Spotify. Her voice is still beautiful, but her style has changed. Let’s Walk is filled with gospel music including “Find True Love,” “Blues for Heaven,” and “Please Come On Inside.”

Then again, Ms. Peyroux is no angel when it comes to “Me and the Mosquito.” Over the reggae groove, she confesses, “My heart is tenderly respectful of every living incarnation / But when this minute sucker bites, I won’t be reading its last rites.” The lyrics are hilarious, but she sings with her heart out.

The album closes out with the environmental-conscious “Take Care.” She rhymes over Jamaican-inspired beat: “Food is good if it’s organically grown / Without pesticides, plastic wrap, or Styrofoam / Growth hormones or horrific conditions for hard working humans or the cows or the chickens.”

I definitely enjoyed Ms. Peyroux’s sense of humor. Furthermore, her music has a special connection to us.

Every trip must come to an end. A week had gone by so fast. It’s time to head home. It was so nice seeing familiar faces again. Furthermore, It was a pleasure meeting new friends and my wife’s family members for the first time.

Canada isn’t much different from the U.S., and yet, it is still a bit foreign. I didn’t care much about seeing the scenes. I care more about seeing the people. Thank you for welcoming us with open arms. We appreciate all the love you gave us. It was such a meaningful trip.

In addition to seeing our loved ones, we spent time together as a family. My mother-in-law is 82 now and it is such a blessing that she can still travel with us. Not too many seniors her age can travel hours in the car and walk to places.

Traveling with four boys was chaotic, but we managed to have fun. I am glad my wife decided to make a family trip out of it. I got to spend two days with my friends and the rest with our family. The schedule turned out great. I would love to turn it into our annual summer trip.

The Japanese jazz trio, which made up of Masayuki Hiizumi (leader, pianist), Nirehara Masahiro (bass), and Kou (drum), kicks off the title track with so much energy as if they were playing jazz on steroids. I can’t even read this Japanese title “ゾウ,” but I love the Cuban flavor the trio cooked up. At “9 P.M.,” the group laid back for some funk jazz. Dynamics lives up to its title from start to finish. I will need this album on long road trips to keep me pump up.

We will be driving over 10 hours tomorrow to Montreal Quebec, Canada tomorrow; therefore, I decided to replace all four tires. The previous tires, Michelin Primacy Tour A/S, were replaced only two years ago at Costco and yet they were already badly worn out. I only used Michelin’s tires in the past, but I was disappointed with the previous tires.

I decided to try something new: Firestone Destination LE3 BL 235/50R19 99H 70,000 Mile. Since we have the lifetime alignment with Firestone Auto Care, it saved us to go with them. Our minivan is about 73,000 miles now so we’ll see how they’ll perform.

I also bought insurance just in case. The total was $1,100. Damn!

Lately I have been so stressed out that I couldn’t sleep at night. I needed some music to put my mind at ease and Jill Barber’s Encore! was the perfect remedy. I have not heard of Jill Barber before, but her French singing soothed my brain immediately. Her beautiful voice accompanied by an orchestrated swing on “Plus je t’embrasse” lifted my spirit. The whoa-whoa horn section on “Ménilmontant“ brought back the good old Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Hot Sevens vibes. Encore! is a French jazz record to kick back and relax.

After 29 days at the dealership, our 2018 Toyota Sienna SE is back to us—just in time for our vacation to Canada. Ourisman Fairfax Toyota has exceeded its customer service. Ourisman loaned me a car all the 29 days while my minivan sitting in their shop.

It was an unforeseeable accident. The Deet chemical in the Repel Insect Repellen melted the rubber, not plastic. It took the technician two weeks to figured out. The final cost was almost $3,500. I am so glad that Connect insurance covered the cost. I just paid the deductible.

Let’s hope that everything will be good in the next few weeks.

It started with Đạo last week. He had a fever and headache. Then Đán had a stomachache. He used the bathroom every half an hour. I was debating whether I should cancel their Summit camp, but my wife let them attend.

I volunteered to drive the Scout troops to Summit, which was five hours away. Last Saturday, the night before the trip, I started coughing. In addition, I worried too much, I couldn’t sleep. I worried about Đạo and Đán. Because our newer minivan was still in the shop, I had to take the old minivan. The AC minivan had been inconsistent. I worried about their comfort.

Due to lacking of sleep, I asked my wife to come with me on Sunday. I needed help driving back. As soon as we got back home after over 10 hours on the road, I took a bath and went straight to bed around 8:00 pm. I took some cough syrup and it seemed to help. I am feeling better today, but still can’t rollerblade because of my gout.

Today both my wife and Xuân got sick. I hope they will recover before Friday so we can go to Canada as planned. Nothing seemed to work in our favor. This summer is not going too well so far. I hope Vương and my mother-in-law won’t be next.

Physician-poet Cao Nguyên, the author of Thơ Mưa (Rain Poems), follows up with badòngthơ (tercets). The form for badòngthơ is similar to the Japanese haiku, but Cao Nguyên also plays with three, five, and seven syllables.

As someone who is rediscovering his native language, I appreciate Cao Nguyên’s simple wordplay. As a designer, I appreciate his generous use of white space. When he asked me to bring badòngthơ to the web, I jumped at the opportunity.

Since the web has plenty of white space, I decided to keep it to one page. Readers just scroll to read the next poem. For the book title, I kept the web version the same as the print version, which is set in SVN Conqueror Didot, a Vietnamese-supported version of AW Conqueror, designed by Jean François Porchez.

In the print version, the body text is set in Microsoft Sans Serif, which is clean and legible. The Vietnamese diacritics for Microsoft Sans Serif, however, are a bit off, especially the circumflex-acute and the circumflex-grave combinations. For the web version, I set the main text in Inclusive Sans, designed by Olivia King, instead.

The website started off with 15 poems. The print version has 119 poems. If you can read Vietnamese or want to learn Vietnamese, you will enjoy these delightful poems. Go ahead, give badòngthơ a read.