Celebrating a 91st

On May 6th, Tung and I headed down to SoCal with his family to celebrate his dad's uncle's 91st birthday. Our Doubletree hotel room was quite comfy and welcoming, especially after a day on the road.


On the night of our arrival, we ate at Tan Cang Vietnamese Seafood Restaurant. Among the dishes we tried were abalone with bamboo, snow peas, and shitake mushrooms; catfish hot-and-sour soup; and my personal favorite, crab sauteed in tamarind sauce.



The next day, we met Tung's sister at the UCLA campus to pick her up after her campus tour.




We stopped at the the sleek and modern campus Jamba Juice to reminisce upon the days when Tung and I would wait for our campus-job paychecks from SJSU to afford to treat ourselves to one Jamba Juice, power-sized and split into two cups. He would never let me have the Femme Boost.



After UCLA, we browsed Rodeo Drive, home of the unaffordable-and-preposterously-overpriced tourist window shopping.





Big-brand-name shops and fancy cars are a commonplace around Rodeo Drive, and Tung had fun car-watching. He even scored big with this picture next to a Bugatti. Insurance for this bad boy must cost...how much? A mere million dollars or so?


Even the Beverly Hills chihuahuas come here all dolled up and decked out.


Million-dollar, precious-gemstone-studded clubbing clutch purse, anyone?


Inspired by an "ancient" statue, Tung thought he'd fit in a yoga session.


I'll just kick it with the bouganvillea here and wait for him to finish.


May 7th, the night of the birthday dinner. The red cloth is laid out to serve as a "guest book."


Here's our "birthday boy"! It's been explained to me that the Chinese believe odd numbers are lucky, so they will celebrate landmark birthdays such as 71st, 81st, and 91st, never on an even-aged year.


The immediate family gather on stage to sing happy birthday to him. How odd it must be to hear this song sung to you for the 91st time throughout your life!


Tung's parents take a picture with one of his dad's relatives. He has not seen most of these people for a long time.



Here we are, enjoying the dinner.


On the road trip home the next day, we dropped by Sanuki No Sato Japanese Cuisine for lunch. The place is renowned for having a lot of famous people, including Hollywood stars, visit to eat.



Tung had a "tofu custard" as one of his appetizers.


And I enjoyed a steaming bowl of udon. The fresh noodles were delicious and definitely distinguished in taste and texture than the refrigerated or dehydrated udon noodles.


Our last touristy stop before heading home for the work week was Solvang, CA.


There were horse-drawn-carriage tours around the small town.


We dropped by Carivintas Winery so Tung's dad can experience his first wine tasting. I'll admit I was a little jealous to have to sit out due to being on medication.


Carivintas Winery has doggie decor all over its walls, from quirky pet photos to blown-up modern art of dogs. They donate a portion of sales to shelters to help homeless dogs.

Light Switcheroo

It's nit-picky, but we think the light switches with the lame on/off labels from the 70's are tacky and ugly. So Tung, all by himself, embarked upon the project of changing them out to the more modern, big-tab switches throughout our entire house. It's a good thing, too, because what goes on with electricity in the dark, cavernous confines of the wall is something that I don't want to mess with. Here's a picture of the switch after the wall plate has been removed:


Um, yuck. I wasn't around to hear the cursing that must have inevitably come forth when Tung discovered the lack of color-coding of the positive and negative wires, but I'll bet that was fun times for him. Below are pictures of the old double switches, along with a new and old switch mounted side-by-side for comparison:




And here's the ugliness of the wall stuffs aesthetically covered up with new wall plates:


The double switcheroo:

And now, all that's left to do besides enjoying the pretty new switches is getting past the muscle memory of flicking instead of pressing whenever we want to turn our lights on and off.

Against the Grain

Time flies, like a kite cut free of its tethering string, borne on the fickle winds, fluttering and drifting aimlessly against a backdrop of dark clouds and gray sky. In between being out of town and being sick, I hadn’t been to the dojo in over a week. A week on break from training feels so long, and my internal sense of time gets knocked off kilter. The hours bleed into days, and I forget where in the week I am without the benchmark training evenings to regulate myself.

It serves me right for being healthy for such a long streak—I knew that whatever I got next, it would be heavy enough to knock me out for a while. Memories of the last few months’ events drift into my prescription-drug-induced unconsciousness, of Sensei badly injuring his knee during the Hawaii Doshu Seminar, of his surgery and time away from the dojo. Sensations of jo training with Sempai lace my dreams; I am struggling to manipulate the jo to bring him down in a shihonage, but the wood bends in the middle and refuses to lend me its strength. “The wood is strongest along the grain,” Sempai tells me, “so extend through the jo.” I understand, but I cannot physically move to make it work. Sweat drenches my brow and soaks into my shirt as I sleep. It’s all I want to do for a long while, and I shun the sensations of consciousness and the healing sunlight to stay in that Sandman world where I hope my body can heal.

But I do wake. Yesterday, I stepped back onto the freshly-varnished wood of the dojo floor. My body feels weak from muscles left unconditioned and from the release of antibodies to fight the foreign intrusion. My lungs ache from the constant, hacking cough that still lingers. But Sensei is there for his frequent visits, hurt knee free from the clunky brace, and now walking without crutches. He’s been off the mat for a lot longer than me—since February—so I know I don’t have a right to complain. He inspires me to heal, shows me that if you work at it, it becomes possible. I bow in, and I take it easy during my first evening back, but I still sweat and struggle. My coughs bring forth a copper-tinged taste of weariness, like there are holes inside of me that bleed out my energy and passion. I have been off the mat, but I have never stopped fighting. It feels like a constant battle against the grain to get better and regain my strength. How can I blend and make it work? “Take it slow, but don’t baby it,” Sempai would advise. “Keep training,” Sensei would say. So I do. I take slow and steady steps back onto the mat, say “Onegai-shimasu,” and give the best that I can from this body recently broken.