People Who Go Places

One of my favorite lines from S.E. Hinton’s Tex, a beloved adolescent novel, goes, “There are people who go places and people who stay. . .” When I was young, working retail in my parent’s businesses, growing up in the less-than-utopia Eastside San Jose, being the minority enrolled in the few Honors’ classes offered in under-sourced and under-budgeted middle and high schools, I was desperate to be one of those people who go places. My husband recently asked me, “Do you often think about the future?” I responded, “Well, when you grew up like I did, you either obsessively planned a future for yourself, or you accepted that you didn’t have much of one.” So, I studied, got my coveted college degrees. I moved out. I got to see a little bit of the world through recent travels. I pushed at my spheres of comfort to get a glimpse of what lies beyond.

Recently, important people in my life are going places, too.

My instructor at Aikido of Silicon Valley, Michael O’Quin, is moving back to Louisiana after 15 years of teaching at the dojo to care for his elderly mother.


With O'Quin (left) and MacAllister (right) Sensei at the farewell dinner

I met him four years ago, when the days turned dark faster and I wandered the premises of a private high school, looking for the training room where the aikido students met. I had spoken to O’Quin Sensei on the phone to inquire about Aikido of Silicon Valley. I thought I’d be the one asking the questions: How long are classes? Where can I change? How much are the fees? But instead, he asked me, “What are you looking to get out of aikido?” That stopped me, rehearsed questions flying out of my head. I didn’t know. I practiced it in college for a few years. I had about five years of hiatus since then. I needed the exercise. But really, it felt like I was looking for something I lost. So, slightly lost I wandered, looking for the obscure dojo at King’s Academy High School on a rainy night. And it was O’Quin Sensei who found me, who led me the rest of the way and brought me home.

In Susan Shillinglaw’s California Literature class, where we read and discussed Steinbeck and C.Y. Lee, I met Kate Evans: tall, confident, happy blonde who always wears a smile.



With Kate at Vyne near SJSU

Some classmates you see for a full semester and then never again. Some classmates become lifelong friends with you, inseparable. And some you get to know a little in class, lose touch with for many years, and then find yourself immersed in the most important and memorable aspects of their life. When we crossed paths while walking to class one day, Kate asked me, “How do you picture your future? Do you want kids?” Loaded down by too many Norton Anthologies and graduate units, I responded, “I do, but really not thinking about that right now.”


The hall of Faculty Offices Building, home of English teachers' offices and where I once worked before the corporate world.



English Dept Awards list, winners posted. I'll never forget the feeling of looking with anticipation at this list when it got posted and finally seeing my name under some of the creative writing awards.

 After college, Kate stayed at SJSU to teach, and I moved on to join the corporate world. I saw her occasionally at campus readings, and then not at all. . . until I was engaged, and my husband and I decided to ask her to officiate our wedding. What followed were emails, dinners, and meet-ups to work on my ceremony script, getting to know each other’s spouses better, and sharing pre-matrimonial celebrations. Kate, always the over-achiever, actually got engaged shortly after me and snuck in her Hawaii-based wedding before my own. She came to my bridal shower to play games like “pin the flower on the wedding dress,” and I came to her limo-riding, wine-tasting bonanza, where we shared appetizers in good company and danced together in front of a live band as the stars came out.

Very soon, Kate will head off with her husband on a world tour. With their personal belongings given to others or stored away, they’ll be visiting places such as Australia, Hong Kong, India, and Sri Lanka, spending the upcoming year (and beyond!) as travelers. Kate is a strong believer of serendipity and how one positive, happy event often dominoes to create other positive, happy events. She performed a poetry reading at her cousin’s wedding and caught the bouquet. She and I got married, and she officiated my wedding. Recently, some friends of mine asked me to officiate theirs. For our last meet-up before she heads off, Kate passed along a black leather portfolio, the same one she used to contain my ceremony script, so that it could once again be put to use for another wedding. During our meet-up, she asked, “You two want kids?” And the future is now, and I confidently answered, “Yes, Kate. We do.”


Kate's office, on her last day of teaching. You will be missed.


After recovering from a cold and coming back to work at Telenav one day, I discovered that I had a new across-the-aisle cube neighbor, Karen Sudre. We stumbled past our computer chairs in our too-tight cubes to shake hands, and what resulted was almost six years of an amazing friendship. We designed department signs together and worked on localization/translation projects, both being kind of grammar/punctuation snobs. We laughed over punny sentences, rode horses, ice skated, scaled Planet Granite rocks, shot pool, played air hockey, bowled, barbecued hot dogs for donations, and walked the Making Strides fundraiser. Yes, our jobs at times can be extremely stressful, I know. Karen’s been there for me through those giant milestones in life, like buying a house and getting married. I watched her oldest son grow up and walk down the aisle as my handsome ring bearer. I got to know her daughter since she was born. We celebrated promotions and vented through those not-so-glorious moments. She makes work life humanizing, and sane. As our company expanded, we moved further from each other, putting more space between our cubes, and finally ending up on different floors of our office building, but still touching bases and enjoying each other’s company at occasional lunches and corporate gatherings. Next week, after a five-year tenure, Karen will move even further, leaving Telenav to start at Yahoo. May she excel in her new role at localization project management. . . and exercise the powers of self-control over the unlimited, free corporate breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.


With Karen, 5/10/13. One week left at Telenav!


I used to think that The People Who Stay are the ones getting left behind, the ones missing out on all the living they should be doing, such as in Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go,” where the dreaded Waiting Place is mentioned. You just hope that

“Somehow you'll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You'll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,
once more you'll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.”

In reality, we are moving all the time, not on one determined trajectory but on unique pathways that are right for us. Once in a while, they criss-cross, and we reconnect with beloved companions who may travel in parallel with us for a time, or simply say farewell and move on. When you’ve done as much “going” as you need to do and are ready to settle down and “stay” for a while, you get to appreciate your current place, too. The familiarity of well-known surroundings, family, and friends. The calmness of a sunny afternoon spent in lazy leisure. The quiet place where you can just relax, break out your brainstorming cap, and plan for what lies ahead.

For The People Who Go Places, we Stayers wish you pleasant adventures. May you unearth new thrills in undiscovered places, and may happiness forever light your pathway as you forge ahead to find all the things you seek.

Giddy 'Yap for Tung's Birthday

Here are some highlights from Tung's birthday bash. We went horseback riding at the nearby Ed Levin Park, followed by a Mexican feast at La Milpa, and ending at home for some mocha cake and champagne.

At the start of the ride

Me on Orchid

Teepee along the trail

Steph on her horse

View from atop my horse, Orchid

Some mustard is still left blooming

View of the lake near Odin's dog park

On the trail. Feeling like real cowboys/girls.

Finished with the 1-hour ride

Duong and Johnny rein it in

Liane, with cowboy in her genes!

Strawberry daquiri made with wine

The crew at La Milpa for lunch

Cheese enchiladas and beef taco

Tung and his chicken burrito muy grande

Another year celebrated with another mocha cake

Pampas Anniversary Dinner

To celebrate a "dual" anniversary of Duong's and Johnny's and Tung's and my old anniversary in March before we got married, the four of us went to Pampas in Palo Alto, a Rodizzio-style restaurant where waiters bear large cuts of meats around. Some interesting things on the menu include marinaded chicken hearts and roasted pineapples, the latter being surprisingly bursting with juicy flavor. I'm inspired to pop my own pineapples on the grill from now on.

Salad buffet with generous fixins'

Meat, meat, and more meat!

The spicy "Frango Picante," chicken marinated with garlic, chile, and vinegar, was one of my favorites

Wine from home. A good Cab to go with all that meat.

Anniversary couple #1

Anniversary couple #2

Season of Cherry Blossoms

I love it when the cherry blossoms bloom. Since adopting Odin, I've been taking him on daily morning walks, all the more reason to appreciate these ephemeral petals. Winter is a bland season, with trees bare-naked and resting, devoid of colors and scents. In springtime, the birds burst into song, with the bright buds of the cherry blossoms heralding the coming of newness. The air is subtly marked with the sweet scent of flowers; greens, pinks, and reds start to dot the streets along my walk. One day they are but tight buds furled on brown branches:

And before you know, it, they bloom forth in color, striking against an incomparably blue spring sky:

The pink trees are the most prolific, paper-thin petals so numerous that they cake the branches:

The branches reach upward toward the sun, the warm source that drives their built-in clocks, coaxing them to come forth.

 There had always been a fantastical source to my admiration of cherry blossoms. When I see a cluster of trees, I am reminded of a favorite childhood epic saga, The Condor Heroes, set in China, filmed in Hong Kong, and dubbed in Vietnamese. My dad used to rent the 10 to 20 VHS tapes of different sword-fighting sagas to keep me entertained, and in The Condor Heroes, the heroine, Hoang Dung lives on a well-fortified island, Dao Dao Hoa (Island of the Cherry Blossoms) with her father. When she sneaks off to Mainland China to see the world, she meets her husband-to-be, Quoc Tinh. The two have many adventures together in a fun, carefree, slightly awkward teenage-first-love-coming-of-age story, until he angers her one day and she runs back to hide on her home island. There is a certain way to walk through the maze of cherry blossom trees surrounding the periphery of the island, and without knowing the correct path, one could get lost and disoriented, never finding the way out. Hoang Dung traps Quoc Tinh in the maze for a time before finally reluctantly forgiving him and helping him out.

There is a Vietnamese old wives' tale cautioning people against planting cherry blossoms in their front yard if they have a daughter. Chances are, a rogue boy will become enamored with the cherry blossoms' beauty, symbolic of the frail demeanor and innocent beauty of daughters, and steal her away from her family.

The cherry blossom is a Japanese icon, and annual festivals celebrate Japanese-American sister cities, hearkening to the 1912 gift of cherry blossom trees from Tokyo to Washington D.C. as a gesture of friendship.

 White cherry blossom trees are striking, too, a soft snow robe draping delicately on dark tree branches:

Most of all, cherry blossoms are symbolic of the swift and ephemeral human life, here and gone in the blink of an eye. The swiftly blooming, swiftly fading blossoms give way within just a few weeks' time to dark leaves that hang on the tree for the rest of the year until winter winds cause them to shed. Pathways are littered with the pink flowers, and soft springtime breezes blow the delicate petals in the air, raining pink confetti on me as I walk.

As Ezra Pound writes about their evanescence:

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough."

Office Blinds

It's nice to watch the sunset from our office window that gives us a glimpse of the red orb sinking into the west. The clouds turn a blazing pink as trees and roof lines are silhouetted.

We replaced our fabric curtains that didn't slide so well on the rods with horizontal blinds that we had cut to size at Home Depot.

Fabric curtains from before



What we used to have to do for sunlight



Tung takes measurements before hanging the blinds



Le done!


Project completed 2 days before Christmas in December 2012. In time to see those upcoming golden summer sunsets.