Housewarming - Friends Edition

Tung and I held a housewarming for our friends, separated from the housewarming for our family because, let's face it, only so many people could fit in a house at once, and throwing two Asian families together must hit some sort of legal room capacity in the event of a fire escape. We had such a good time with everyone!

Tung's coworkers from Actel (now MicroSemi) kicked it in the back yard around the BBQ grill used to serve Top Dogs hot dogs to everybody. Special thanks to Gene (in red) and his wife Veronica for coming early to help us grill those bad boys.


We thought distracting their two kids with our Wii was a fair trade-off. Heck, while we were at it, we'll distract everyone else's kids with the Wii!


My coworker Alba also graced the house with her family's presence:


Along with the Sudres--bonjour, mon amis! I love the striped-shirt family theme.


And Elia's hogging the blogging spotlight a bit here, but who could resist this adorable picture of her? Wheee! Sitting on a platform wall, wheee!


We got to see some old college buddies from our San Jose State days. Here is Randy (freakishly tall Asian dude--some sort of mutant gene there) and his lovely girlfriend, Kat.


A gang of us used to kick it at the former Clark Library at the center of campus with Bryan (pictured below). Well, more correctly, I was studying like a good student and Tung and his guy buddies would oggle at girls in their bachelorhood days and play prank jokes on each other in the Men's restroom, but who's counting.


And who can mention SJSU without some of my lovely ladies from the English Major program? Liane (in pink) and I are still pen pals to this day. Yes, we write each other longhand and send it through traditional snail-mail post, because we're geeks that way. And Stephanie (in white)--haha, we had such hardcore Asian-American lit pride. Good ol' days.


My friend Julie and I go way back, all the way to the 3rd grade when we first met! She is just one day older than me, but clearly the overachiever already with husband and baby daughter...


...Ms. Bella pictured below, blissfully zonked out on our guest bed. "Bah, parties are for adults. They don't know what good sleep they're missing out on."


And here is part of my Aikido of Silicon Valley crew. I'm surprised we all resisted the urge to put each other in wrist locks and start throwing each other in hip throws on the lawn. What a happy, sweet group picture--you'd never guess we go beating each other up on an almost-daily basis.


Thanks, everyone, for all your gifts...


...and for encouraging the alcoholism in us. You all are the greatest buddies, really, and much too kind. The house would have been "lukewarm" without you (and all this booze).

Being Sempai

I remember when she had just joined the dojo, a female comrade amidst the sea of men, a bit bumbling and awkward, not unlike myself, questioning her own techniques, muttering self-criticisms through training. I remember her bowing into me, holding onto her narrow wrists, feeling out the movements of her body, seeing her potential. She showed up regularly to train and progressed fast through the ranks.

As I sit in the middle of a line-up bifurcated by the shomen, I try on this role of being Sempai like new clothes, these attempts to explain techniques for the first time to curious Kohai. I pay closer attention to where to put my hands and feet and thumbs, how to stand in correct posture for various techniques, and how to point the toes, so I can tell them correctly when they ask me. In my dojo, junior-ranking students initiate the attack, and I get used to those little things like allowing myself to be grabbed first at the start of each new techniques, or positioning us so the uke falls to the outside of the circle and not clash into those training behind us.

Sometimes I hear my Sempai’s voice in my head as a self-reprimand, or hear him echoed through my own words: “Stay on the mat—don’t throw off.” “Switch feet.” “Twist your hips.” Kohai tell me, “You make that look graceful,” or “I wish I could do that like you,” and I remember thinking that about my Sempai before me. Familiar now with the basics, I am not frantically trying to memorize what to do when Sensei demos; instead, I start to think about why we do it, how we can do it in a varied form, or how we can reverse it with another technique.

My Kohai asks me to be her uke for her 3rd-kyu test. She self-censors a lot, constantly questioning whether or not she’s doing it right. Balance, timing, technique precision—she struggles with the things that we have once or are still seeking to get right. But there’s strength in her throws, commitment in her practice. She goes at it hard every single time, never lackadaisical, and takes in mind every single criticism or comment. At first, I show her how to do it harder, hurt me more. Then she gets so good at it that I have to ask her to ease off for the sake of the achy ol’ injuries. She’s got one killer ikkyo pin that I’m sure she can use to immobilize any unwary street assailant.

Despite the constant self-doubt, muttering, and even humming during practice, I am surprised to see her be able to shut all that off on the day of her test. She does well, performs nobly. Afterwards, new belt in hand, she comes bounding up to me, bows, and thanks me for pushing her, for teaching her. I thank her back for pushing me as well, and for teaching me lessons that I can only learn through experience, from being a Sempai.

Visiting Skys Sensei

It had been over five years since I had seen him last. How long, exactly? Six? Seven? Time is like the wind and rain making its mark across figures carved into the rocky mountainside—subtle, but sure and inevitable. I met him when I was a young freshman in college, insecure, unsure, straggling into the dojo to find something I was yet unable to name. I left him to seek my Master’s degree, my mind full and buzzing with too much English literature and creative writing concepts to have room for aikido. I said goodbye to him and the campus to venture into the world of corporate, where I was taught completely different lessons, foreign and new. But something called me to him again, so I went to visit him in Fremont for a training session.


Nestled in the back of a building complex, Sunny Skys Sensei’s dojo stood with its sakura emblems painted on the front glass, the characters “Ai-Ki-Do” standing straight and proud. Being inside the dojo brought me to another world of zen temples and the sounds of nature: two doves cooed to us as we trained; instrumental music played, muted in the background; the sound of flowing water from the koi pond softened the hot morning with its cooling sound.


Weapons racks holding bokken and jo stood mounted on the far wall, the Zebra mats felt sleek and cool beneath my bare feet, and the lavish studio mirror reflected my posture, my too-wide hanmi. The dojo was white and bright and made me feel welcomed.


I bowed into new training partners throughout weapons and taijutsu classes. Skys Sensei would walk around and try out a technique with various students. He’d instruct me to keep moving, not give up so quickly on a technique by showing how, along any given point, a reversal can happen. He’d teach me flow by making me go after his hand to grab, moving it around just out of reach so I’d be chasing it like bait. I remembered that feeling of being caught up in the moment, my sole intent to go for something just that little bit beyond my reach, exhilarated by the chase, fascinated by the nearness of capturing it. Just like learning aikido, its many secrets and subtleties, reaching for those epiphanies that make meaning out of confusion. After all these years, Skys Sensei is still teaching me the same lessons: Don’t tense up and relax. Keep it flowing. Train with an empty mind and an open heart, wide and endless like the sky.

“We start out learning aikido from our teachers and peers,” Sensei said as we lined up to bow out that morning. “And when I was there, I wanted more, so I looked for aikido in books. And where I was there, I wanted more, so I looked for aikido in movies. And still I wanted more, so I looked for it on the Internet and then YouTube. There’s a wealth of information out there, but that’s not where aikido is. Aikido is here,” he said, tapping on his heart. It’s true our aikido shows bits and pieces of our Sensei and Sempai and all our aikido idols whose practices we try to emulate. They peek through our techniques like holes in a fence, appear in brief glimmers and flashes. But everyone’s aikido is at least a little different, as are all our journeys on this same, well-worn path. How we individually do aikido is a reflection of our own heart and spirit.


Time passes, and the winds sweep across the desert plains, altering the terrain, shaping the surface of sands with age. But one thing stays the same with Skys Sensei and me: our passion for the art of aikido, a tether to what is true and constant in a forever-changing world. This is the part of me that was yet unnamed all those years ago, that inexplicable longing that came to be fulfilled on the mat, and I’m grateful to him for helping me find it.

Swimming: To My Teachers

It was the end of September, and the usually mellow Bay Area California weather finally lashed out with a late-summer heat wave. I thought about going to train in 90-degree heat, boxed in the un-air-conditioned dojo, and quite unconventionally decided to play hooky by going to the swimming pool instead. I raced the sun through traffic on the way home, hoping for some light to be left, but it was fueled by the adrenaline from the swiftly-approaching autumn and sank below the horizon for an early rest. By the time I made it to the pool, the evening glowed in soft moonlight, accentuated by pinpricks of stars.

I dangled my legs calf-deep in water, always too cold at first, watching kids throw neoprene balls at each other and listening to the joyful, careless sounds of their playing. Finally, I plunged in, engulfed in chlorine, shocked by cold, allowing my body to go through the familiar motions of finding the surface and then staying on top of it. The first time back in a swimming pool after over a year away, it always seemed daunting. The length of the pool stretched out before me, and I was afraid of the point where I knew the bottom to dip down too deep. It was my "tiring point," made more acutely so by my awareness of its existence, by my acceptance that if I got winded or got a cramp, I couldn't simply dip my toes down vertically and feel for solid ground.

I took a few easy laps across the pool's width and thought how strange it was that swimming was one of those skills that you wouldn't forget once you'd learned, like riding a bike. No matter how long it had been since the last time you had done it, you intuitively reacquainted yourself with the balance and familiarity to perform the same actions again.

I got to thinking about my high school teacher who taught me how to swim. I remembered her face, how it loomed above me as she carefully watched me treading water for the first time, expectant and hopeful, but also alert as soon as I sank, ready to shove the long, metal rod into the pool to fish me back up. Then I remembered her name, her voice, and her mannerisms. How interesting that we never forget our best teachers, those who had taught us an invaluable skill. Those tutors and instructors and mentors. Those professors and Sensei and Sempai, there to pace alongside us paths that are new to us, worn and familiar to them, always onwardly supportive and encouraging.

Before I knew it, I was clumsily stroking my way up and down the pool's length. I wasn't taking in oxygen rhythmically, gulping for air when my lungs felt deflated, slapping the water with my limbs.

"Keep your back and knees straight as you kick," my swimming teacher said, and I did.

"Don't forget to breathe," Sensei said, and I didn't.

"Relax," Sempai said, and I allowed myself to.

I no longer fought the water but let myself blend with it. I stopped struggling to bring my head above the surface for air but turned it from side to side, laying my ear on the water as if it were a pillow. I stroked my arms in its soft, velvety coolness, let it flow around me as I passed through. I released the pressure in my jaws, unconsciously clamped tight to resist the water's intrusion, let my cheeks deflate from the useless breath that I kept there to bloat up my face. I relaxed, and I swam. Who knew that even though I went to the pool that day, I ended up doing aikido after all.