David's and Lily's Wedding

Seems like weddings are the theme this summer. Tung's cousin David got hitched on June 25th. The morning started off traditionally with a tea ceremony at the bride's house. Tung and I are all decked out.



The bride, in her traditional outfit, offers tea to her parents and esteemed elders to thank them for raising her and as a symbol of her joining a new family.


Groomsmen stand by, bearing gifts in red cloth-covered platters. The gifts traditionally consist of tea, cakes, fruits, and even betel nuts from olden days.


After the tea ceremony, the bride is transported to the groom's house in a "xe bong" (flowered car) as part of the "ruouc dau" (receiving the bride) ceremony. Her parents and close relatives follow, then have tea and refreshments at the groom's house for a brief time before making their departure.


Since both families are Catholic, the afternoon mass is held at church. Tung and his cousin Mindy goof around before the ceremony starts.


The bride and groom stand in front of the altar with the bridesmaids and flower girl waiting on the sidelines.


Before the banquet dinner, I get my hair done as a trial run for my wedding.


A picture with the bride and groom before dinner starts.


Posing with Tung's sister. My hair turned out fine--didn't like the makeup.


The Precious Moments cake. By the way, I recently learned that many couples save the top layer of the cake and freeze it for a year to eat on their first anniversary?? Eeew. I'm all for ordering a new cake at the same place in the same flavor rather than eat year-old cake.


During the banquet, the bride typically wears an average of 3 outfits: her white wedding dress, a traditional outfit, and an evening gown for the cake-cutting. Lily managed to get David into a traditional Vietnamese groom's outfit as well.



Tung snags Cousin Bryant for a picture during dinner.


The ladies line up for the bouquet toss. Not me this time--my bouquet-catching days are behind me!

Upon Stepping Back on the Mat After a Week Away

It shouldn’t be too hard, coming back after a little over a week. There is the familiar smell of freshly-varnished wood floor, the new smell of wall paint, the faint scent of Zebra mats, the warm displacement in the air hinting at the arrival of summer. Putting the gi and hakama back on, tying the fabric in place, tugging at the loose ends to smooth out the uniform, even that is a comforting reminder of how it should be. I line up, clap to bow in, and the training starts.

And I thought I paced it right but suddenly everything seems to speed up, and Sensei says for everyone to give it an extra 20 or 25% more speed, and Sempai goes around to tell us the same thing: “Get back up! Attack, attack! Hurry up, let’s go!,” and I feel the impact of the mats with every takedown along my back, my calves, my palms as I slap the surface, and feel the bruises starting on my knees and elbows, those sharp joints that have had too much time away to remember the conditioned pain, and the sweat starts on my forehead and slides into my brows and eyes, and I could feel the beads glide down my front and back underneath the shielding layers of shirt and gi, pooling at the cinched belt, soaking into the fabric like tears on snow, and the summer air is more apparent now—thickened and heavy with the scent of collective perspiration—and suddenly there seems to be not enough of it as I forget to keep my breathing rhythm and start to gasp, but don’t look at that clock because the minute hand has not changed, it is stuck forever at the half-hour mark with no momentum left to begin its grueling climb back to the 12, and the second-hand is not that much more cooperative to my mental plea, so look away and don’t think at all about time, and go for that wrist and fall down and get back up and fall down and get back up and fall down and get back up and roll and roll and roll and let’s not allow those muscles weakened by illness betray me, or focus on my lack of coordination or my decreased sense of balance as I struggle through vertigo to get even the simplest of techniques right, and I get physically worn and mentally frustrated while thinking, “Come on, Sensei, have mercy,” when suddenly he yells out, “Owari masu!”—“Let’s finish!” and his resounding clap ends class, and I melt into a pool of gratitude in my place during line-up and pant during the bow-out.

See? That wasn’t so bad. Sensei catches me afterward and says, “Welcome back to the mat, Daisy.” I smile, bow, and say thank you. It’s nice to know the mat and the people on it missed me as much as I’ve missed it and them.

Apothecary

One month later from the start of May, and I’m sitting here wondering if my next blog entry would finally be one that doesn’t involve the subject of illness. May 1st started me off with a normal cold/sore throat, which led to an extended cough that required antibiotics, which really didn't help as the cough transitioned into seasonal allergies. I got my first migraine ever coming back up from a Southern California trip. I had to schedule an emergency dentist appointment to re-seal a tooth’s crown that suddenly popped off during flossing. Just a few weeks ago, even my work computer caught a virus. But the worst that happened was I caught a stomach bug and ended up missing the entire annual Gasshuku at Lake Tahoe.

It must have been adrenaline that got me there, and every day, I woke up in the hotel room with the hope that I could hobble to the gym and train at least one session, only to have that hope shot down by yet another trip to the bathroom. As I lay groaning in bed, wishing it could have been any other way, I wondered if I had been a bad Buddhist lately and missed a vegetarian day, or forgot to help my fair share of old ladies across the street to get that big of a karmic kick in the butt.

It must have been adrenaline that got me back. The prospect of home, of comfort foods my body was used to processing when it’s ill, of the Bay Area’s signature warm and healing sunlight instead of a white world of wind and snow. With four days and five pounds lost, it was difficult to stand without needing to lean onto objects. The night I came back, I stood in my future mother-in-law’s kitchen, watching her prepare my evening meal. When she learned of my ailment, she threw a handful of raw white rice onto a nonstick pan, roasting the grains over the heat until they turned a yellow-brown color. Rice—a staple in most Asian diets—has been known to have healing properties to the digestive tract. Roasted rice tea, thought to promote a healthy digestive system, is a common beverage served in Korean restaurants.

She told me that roasting the rice kills off the milky-white substance that the stomach cannot digest when it’s ill, leaving behind the nutrients that coat the lining and sustain one’s energy. Her late grandfather was an apothecary, and he left behind these simple kinds of treatments to her, along with a topical wine medicine that I have countless times used on my aikido bruises and sore joints to help them heal. In poor villages in Viet Nam, most families didn’t have the money to buy Western drugs. They didn’t have knowledge of or access to the full Bananas-Rice-Applesauce-Toast-Yogurt (BRATY) diet for stomach ailments. They worked with what they had to survive on bare essentials, and through time, their DNA adapted and learned how to process these staples. Despite everything I tried to eat in Tahoe—toast, crackers, yogurt, wonton- and chicken-noodle soup—my body refused to hang onto anything. But somewhere deep in my blood and bones, it remembers the simple miracle of roasted rice. Aikido teaches me how to live, but in her kitchen that night, I was taught a way to stay alive. I brewed teapot after teapot of her rice, mixed with ginger to warm the stomach. I cooked and ate the solid grains, along with a bland soup of fresh vegetables and lean meat, as my stomach became able to hang onto food. Slowly and surely, I started to heal.

It could have been a worse trip. I could have wound up in the Tahoe emergency room if I wasn’t able to keep hydrated. I do miss the three days of training, the priceless group dinners with good conversation and great friends, the bear sighting, the weapons work in the snow. But you do learn something from every momentous passage in your life, and this time for me, it wasn’t jo awase or sudden technique epiphanies. It’s what your body truly misses and desires when it’s down. It’s a reminder that without good health, nothing else matters. And it’s these invisible tendrils, reaching out across oceans and time, that bind me to my roots, that resurface in a lesson of who I was, to shape who I am.

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.

Dome Light Installation 101

You know there's a problem when you're trying to play an interactive video game such as Wii tennis or Kinect Sports, and both you and your guests keep whacking the damn, low-hanging chandelier in the TV room in your zest to move your limbs. Yet another reason to replace a brand new, fully functional item in the house.


Because neither Tung nor I are very well-versed in the art of home improvement, we confess we almost gave up when we first cracked open the box and thought, due to the crappy instructions included, that we were missing some parts, But after getting over the wussiness of wanting to give up early, and maybe partly from the laziness of not wanting to drive back to Home Depot, we decided to give it a go.

Let me just stress that a dining chair ghetto-rigged with two Yellow Pages books for height enhancement is not the greatest way to go about installing a dome light.


We did have a ladder in the backyard but decided it wouldn't fit in the house, so for the most part of two hours, we came up with various creative (maybe stupid?) ways of enhancing our height, including me holding the parts up to the ceiling with a blunt wooden stick while Tung used both hands to connect the wires together, along with him using my wooden meat pounder and a flat-head screwdriver to chisel away aspestos bits in an effort to create a bigger hole (with no small amount of cursing involved).


Who says kitchen tools don't come in handy during home improvement? This gives a whole new purpose to P90-x arm- and shoulder-workouts, as well as the 5th bokken suburi done on repeat.

Finally, out of desperation, Tung asked to try the tall ladder, so after wrenching it free from the backyard tangle of overgrown winter weeds, I managed to fit it in the house. What a difference an extra step makes--with the right arsenal, Tung was able to finish screwing in the flush-mounted light.


Here's the aftermath of what it takes to install a single dome light for the first time:


And finally, the sweet results:


Clean and ready for some Wii whacking and Kinect volleyball!