2011 Garden

We are growing tomatoes for the first time in our house. It was just around this time last year that we were preparing to move in, so this year, it's time to focus on the garden! We put in some Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, Early Girls, Aces, Beefmasters, Champions, and Miracle Sweets, along with two zucchini plants. Can't wait to see how well they fare this summer.



Our herb garden consists of the existing mint, and I put in some new Sweet Basil plants and Cilantro.


To make the front of our house a little more colorful, I put in some small pink daisy bushes (osteopermums) and kalanchoes in magenta, yellow, and red.


I also planted some red, orange, and yellow marigolds in the round plot of our mimosa tree.

Napa Valley Wine Tasting

We spent a 3-day weekend in Napa Valley, our first time wine tasting. Aside from it being slightly cold, April is a lovely time to go as the hills, vineyards, and cultivated gardens are all lush and green from all the spring rain. Our first stop was V. Sattui, a great place to picnic. V. Sattui has a monopoly on the sales of food such as sandwiches and cheese--the winery was grandfathered-in after the Napa county decided to prohibit the sales of food on winery grounds.



Our next stop was Peju, a rather private winery with a quaint koi pond on the premises. The spring tulips were freshly in bloom right outside the tasting room.


Our sommelier was an old man who goes by Alan "The Yodelmeister." Not only does he yodel (which we did not hear), he also raps (which we did) when presenting the wines we tasted.



Next stop, Robert Mondavi, a popular tourist attraction known for good tours of the vineyards for beginner wine tasters. We did not taste here but toured the grounds on our own.


We also visited Chandon (home of the bubblies!) without tasting. Chandon has an impressive wine-bottle wall and has a more modern, chic ambiance to it.


Last stop for our Thursday: Silverado, a less-known and more private estate with tasting tables overlooking the beautiful valley.


I confess that by this time we were a lit-tle tipsy--everything tasted the same here, so we decided it was time to check into our hotel in the small city of Santa Rosa and call it a night.


The next morning, we had breakfast at Chloe's, a hole-in-the-wall, French-owned bakery/breakfast cafe. All the pastries and breakfast items were yummy! I had a chocolate croissant (pain du chocolat) and an apricot tart, and Tung had a breakfast baguette with eggs, bell peppers, sauteed onions, and cheese. The food was so good that we bought some sandwiches for a picnic at lunch.


We then went to Sterling Vineyards, where an aerial tram took us up to the tasting grounds.


This was a self-guided tour, and we walked around the "modern castle," getting our wine glasses refilled at designated stations while we enjoyed the magnificent view and learned about winemaking in the process.


We decided to stop by Old Faithful Geyser Park to see the natural geyser shoot off every 15 minutes as we ate our sandwiches from Chloe's.

A fun part of the park was the sizeable petting zoo, where I enjoyed petting and feeding the llama, goats (including the Tennessee fainting kind) . . .


. . . and Jacob three-horned sheep, who just had her spring lamb not too long ago.


Next major tour, Castello di Amorosa, the sister-winery of V. Sattui, built by Dario Sattui, the grandson. To me, the castle was an impressive piece of architecture with ironwork and stones imported directly from Europe.


It was fun to see the towers, courtyard, royal dining hall, and, of course, the dungeon, complete with all ye torture devices!


The Castello has a summertime Renaissance Fair for wine members only. Boy, I'd like to crash that party. Due to not yet being able to get permission from the county to host overnight guests, the only live-in residents of the castle are the small flock of barnyard animals and two cats--a blondie named Lancelot and a gray tabby named Guinevere (the English geek in me thought that was a cute and clever naming scheme).


After stocking up our wine purchases at the castle, we walked around the Town of Calistoga, regretting leaving our bathing suits at home and not being able to take advantage of the mineral-water baths that the region is known for.


For dinner, we decided on a whim to drop by a hole-in-the-wall barbecue house called Buster's Southern BBQ with a narrow ordering aisle reminiscent of Wienerschnitzel.


We were blown away by the quality of our BBQ dinner, served on modest paper plates. I tried the habanero hot BBQ sauce, and they weren't kidding when they warned me it was HOT! Tung had the tri-tip, and I had the half-chicken dinner. We loved it so much that we dropped by for lunch on the next day.


On Saturday, our last day of vacation, we visited the Petrified Forest to see trees that had been naturally petrified by volcanic eruption.


We guided ourselves through the short loop tour and then dropped by Prager Port, whose interesting interior decor includes dollar bills left behind and tagged by previous guests. Ports are too sweet for Tung's and my taste, but we did get a dessert wine out of it.


Next, we dropped by Sutter Home, home of the white zinfandel, and walked around the gorgeous garden.



And then it's homeward bound, but not before another stop to V. Sattui to stock up some more! This place gets ridiculous crowded on the weekends--the difference between our trip on the quieter Thursday morning was painfully obvious. But we did make it out with a bottle of 12-year-old Port and a Cabernet Sauvignon as a gift to Tung's family.


And finally, the stash, to commemorate our first wine tasting trip. For sure, we'll be back!

The Clues of Engagement

Note: The actual clues are the ones in red italics underneath the numbered titles, which I've included to more easily keep track of them.

1.) The First Clue


It all started with some Edible Arrangement boxes delivered to my workplace. Tucked in with chocolate-covered strawberries and pineapples is a note:

I know no ways to mince it in love, but
directly to say "I love you:" then if you urge
me farther than to say "do you in faith?" I
wear out my suit. Give me your answer; i'
faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain:
how say you, lady?


The note also explains that I will begin my quest for happiness on this day, and that the gate keeper is

“the boy that defeated a giant.”




2.) David

Tipped off by the quote by Shakespeare’s Henry V that it will lead to a proposal, I saw it coming but was unsure of where it would lead. I contacted the first person that occurred to me from the giant clue—my brother David, who sent me the next clue:

3.) The Phantom of the Opera

Great plays starts with a great overture. The object of your desire is full of mysteries that cannot be fully explained, and it shines like no others. Your first hint is located in an object that can be found in this video. Happy hunting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpmURNb449o

The video clip showed the opening scene from Phantom, one of our favorite plays, where the chandelier is put up for auction and transitions into the beginning of the story when the Paris Opera House was thriving. After watching the film starring Gerard Butler, we waited for a long time for the play to show in San Francisco, and on the night we went, a man had proposed to his girlfriend during intermission. I had mentioned that I thought it was pretty romantic, but my proposal story doesn’t stop here.

4.) The Chandelier

When I got home from work, I stood on one of the dining chairs to find my next clue in the chandelier of our formal dining room:

“Among her guests, Suyuan found the ‘best quality’ in her daughter.”



Right away, I recognize the line from The Joy Luck Club, one of my favorite books. Naturally, I thought it must be hidden in the chapter “Best Quality,” so I flipped through that book on my shelf but didn’t find anything. With some prompting, I realized the chapter described a scene where, during a family dinner, everyone gathered around the table to eat crab (naturally, a favorite of mine). Coming together for food represents unity and a time for bonding in so many cultures, and being family-oriented, both Tung and I are big on hosting and attending events like these. At my usual seat, I found, taped underneath the formal dining table, my next clue, coupled with a hex wrench.




5.) “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”

The road ahead will be treacherous.
Omnem dimittite spem, o vos intrantes

When Tung met me in college, I had a facetious license plate frame on my car: “Starlight, Starbright, Where the Hell is Mr. Right?” After we started dating and I was pretty sure I found my Mr. Right, I switched the message to “Abandon Hope all Ye Who Enter Here”—a quote from Dante Alighieri’s "Inferno" section of The Divine Comedy, inscribed on the threshold of the Gates of Hell. I bee-lined to the first Inferno that came to mind—Tung’s bathroom, trying the hex wrench on various objects screwed to the wall without finding an appropriate fit. I next tried the oven, thinking it might be a temperature reference, but didn’t find a clue there, either. Finally, with the “road” portion of the clue, I figured it would be car-related, so after using the hex wrench to pry open my back license plate frame, I found the next clue.

6.) A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

One of the first plays I took Tung to was a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Santa Clara University. Since then, he got forever sucked into the cheesy world of live performances and musicals. I recognized that line spoken by Puck right away, so within seconds, I found my next clue in my Pelican Shakespeare anthology at the beginning of the Midsummer play. A funny side-note is that Tung claimed to have spent hours looking through my various, very thick Norton anthologies to find the appropriate one in which to hide the clue. If you’ve ever owned or had to read from a Norton, you’d know the jokes about its sheer bulk, one of the favorites being that it is an English major’s murder weapon of choice (one clonk to the head, and you’re a goner).




7.) Room and Jewels

My next two-part clue led me to a specific room in the house, and then to an object in the room.

Locate me first:

Call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or any other name you please—it is not a matter of importance.

Then me:

I had brought so many beautiful gowns, so much jewelry, ornamented sandals, hairpins and diadems and headdresses.

I confess I do not know my Virginia Woolf and had no idea about the first clue. Turned out it was from “A Room of One’s Own,” which I had initially thought was the office in our house that we painted purple as a designated “writing room” for me, but it was actually the bedroom. The second quote was from The Memoirs of Cleopatra, alluding to her jewelry and ornaments, leading me to my jewelry box.

8.) Shoes

When there’s a shine on your shoes
There’s a melody in your heart
What a wonderful way to start the day.

One of the first things I put together by myself was a shoe rack for the house (astronomical talent, I know), and in one of the shoe boxes—conveniently the LAST one I managed to look in—was my next clue.




9.) “Good fences make good neighbors”

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…

From the famous Robert Frost poem, I was led to the fence that we had rebuilt, sharing the cost with our backyard neighbors. The old fence had fallen down from a storm when we first moved in, and it was one of the many repair and renovation projects Tung and I went through as new homeowners.




10.) Kitchen and Cutlery

Two American ladies wish to retain a cook -- 27 rue to Fleurus.

Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes.
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, 'Hold, hold!'

Another two-part clue, the first from The Book of Salt by Monique Truong. Salt and cooks can be found in kitchens, and the second clue pointed me to my “keen knife,” a sharp-edged, Japanese iron blade used so often to prepare our dinners. Underneath the knife tray, I found…




11.) Wood

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,
I cannot taint with fear.




During the first Christmas we celebrated in our new home, Tung and I dashed to a local Safeway on a particularly frosty night and bought Dura-Flame logs to burn in our wood fireplace. In the wood box, I found the ring box still in its Classic Rock plastic shopping bag, where the ring was purchased. Where the ring should have been was another clue:

12.) The Way of Harmony

When an opponent comes forward, move in and greet him;

if he wants to pull back, send him on his way.

Of course, what proposal would be complete without a reference to my choice martial art and how Tung and I met to begin with? In an aikido book by Morihiro Saito—my current teacher’s teacher—was the Henry V quote that started my journey, and which Tung read out loud to me:


I know no ways to mince it in love, but
directly to say "I love you:" then if you urge
me farther than to say "do you in faith?" I
wear out my suit. Give me your answer; i'
faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain:
how say you, lady?



When I said yes to him, he gave me my last verbal clue to find my well-deserved ring: “Inconceivable!” Nestled in the inner cover of The Princess Bride DVD was my ring wrapped in a microfiber cloth. Tung finally slipped it on my finger, sealing “The point of no return.”

*****

How do I define love? It’s a boy with kickboxing bruises on his shins, whom I first met through training, who showed no false pretenses and practiced aikido with me in the way it should be practiced: with commitment and practicality, and with heart. It’s a young man who took me to a Valentine’s dance in college and later rode a ferris wheel with me to see a view of the world from up high, even though I later found out he does not like dancing or heights. It’s in the little gestures like reaching out to cradle my head as he took the off-ramp of a freeway exit, to keep my head from lolling in my sound slumber. It’s long car rides where the journey meant more than the destination as we talked over things that bothered us about work, family, or school. It’s buying things together that spoke of bigger commitments—a wiggly little puppy that has now grown into a nine-year-old dog, a car, a house. And it’s someone who has been right by your side through the major parts of your life, sharing the journey with you, knowing enough to take you on a nostalgic trip down memory lane with little strips of paper containing literary clues.




When someone loves you, he remembers what you love. I’ve always felt I have not been completely true to my creative-writing nature when I took up technical writing for a living, but these old English literature quotes resurfaced from my memory and heart with every new clue that I unearthed. He said I have given him “10 wonderful years.” What say I to his proposal? That he has also given me the most memorable 10, and so much more. That I can’t wait to embark on the next 10 with him and see where life will bring us. That I have been, always will be, ready for him. Ready and waiting.

For Tung, whom I always carry in my heart alongside this poem:

If I could, I would bottle you and me.
A dab behind the ears, and suddenly
I’d have sun in my smile, stars in my eyes,
Ocean in my laugh and wind in my sighs,
Summer in my soul! In my fantasy,
I’d distill our love with alchemy,
Capture each sweet moment in amber glass—
Your flicker, my flash, your hush, and my sass…
Then I’d inhale what I already knew—
The answer to the question of love? You.

Jiyu Waza and the Limbic Brain

Sensei was discussing with me the concept of the limbic brain, the part that controls our autonomic nervous system. More familiarly, it is the system that regulates the “fight, flight, or freeze” instinct when we are confronted in a dire situation. She points out that in the wild, a lot of prey enter the “freeze” state when captured by their predator: once it feels the lion’s jaws lock in on its neck, the antelope’s body goes stiff as it mentally discharges from reality, defaulting to the natural instinct that helps keep it from feeling pain. If the lion accidentally slips, the antelope seemingly comes back to life, rigid body contorting in a few spastic shakes. Where just a moment ago its body prepared it for death, survival instinct kicks back into gear just as quickly, the nervous system pumping jolts of adrenaline to re-activate every fiber of muscle and allow it to get away.

Underneath this human skin, we are primordially the same animals, experiencing similar urges during a physical confrontation. Depending on our natures, we default to one of the three responses, and in aikido, this is arguably most apparent when we practice jiyu waza, free-form attacks and defenses. Unbound from the confines of repeating a demonstrated technique over and over, perhaps nothing is quite as liberating—and as intimidating—as being allowed the freedom to attack and defend ad-lib. Jiyu waza is aikido’s closest to a competitive martial art’s concept of sparring in that you never know what attack will come out from the person you’re facing off with, or how your body may respond. When students get to practice it for the first time, they may tense up when they see an attack coming: the instinct to freeze. Or they may back up a few steps to give themselves room to think: the instinct to flee. The first step of doing good jiyu waza, before you get to refining ma-ai and technique precision, is to mentally overcome those two instincts that come most natural. Moving instead of freezing allows you to blend with your attacker, kicking into gear those techniques that you had to practice over and over to ingrain them into your muscle memory, to prepare you for this. Going to your partner and drawing out the attack instead of backing up helps you claim that open space and dominate.

For the students new to jiyu waza, for the timid or unsure or unconfident, even for the ones that tend to be over-analytical when given free reign to respond to an attack, it could be quite a challenge to start off in the right state of mind. Your body’s screaming at you to do something other than what you think is best to protect yourself from pain. But over these primordial animal instincts is human skin, coupled with human logic and the ability to define courage, to push strength. Standing off in preparation for jiyu waza, take a moment to claim control over your limbic brain. When “hajime” is called, it’s time to fight.

Tet 2011: Here, Kitty Kitty...

Tet 2011, the Vietnamese Year of the Cat. With the high-energy charge of the previous Tiger year, I am ready to welcome a supposedly more subdued, easier-going New Year. We started off by visiting Lion Plaza earlier in the week, stopping by the fresh flower- and fruit-markets.



All around us were traditional New Year flowers, chrysanthemums a fresh burst of yellow to welcome the spring sun, red and pink plum blossoms for luck, lovely lavender orchids, and fragrant white tuberoses commonly put on altars as an offering for the spirits of ancestors, who are invited to visit their families and homes on the First of every New Year.



Fruits traditionally put on the altar have names that pun on a popular New Year's prayer or wish: "Cau vua du xai," meaning, "Hope you have enough to spend." The Vietnamese usually offer four types of fruits:

-Mang cau (Cau): custard apple
-Dua (Vua): coconut
-Du-Du (Du): papaya
-Xoai (Xai): mango

Among other favorites (some imported from Southeast Asia) are rambutans, longans, grapefruits, tangerines, and kumquats, the last typically sold as a whole tree.


In the days leading up to New Year's, Lion Plaza comes alive with vendors selling their goods. Lucky red envelopes dot the displays on tables, and the usual murmured exchange of sellers and customers is punctuated by bursts of firecrackers to scare away evil spirits.


It has become a tradition for us to shop here every year, and to buy some fresh and lucky decorations to adorn our home.


I like to think that a house gradually adapts to its owners' unique spirits the longer we live in it, and these holidays with their festive decorations are what builds a house's character, transforming it into a cozy and rightful home.



Yes, it's true, you are usually given li-xi envelopes stuffed with money until you get married, after which you, as a married couple, distribute them to your children, your siblings' children, or simply to those younger than you. Older married couples who have grown kids would often give li-xi to their elderly parents as a gesture of "mung tuoi," or "celebrating another year of life." Everyone is said to become a year older on New Year's, no matter when their exact birthdays are, technically adding another year to their actual age. This may seem strange in Western cultures where everyone strives to be young and, at a certain point, even dreads celebrating the aging process, but in Eastern cultures, the older a person is, the more she is revered for her wisdom and life experience.

That said, sure, I kinda feel pretty clever staying single to cash in on my lucky red envelopes. And our parents want us to get married and give up on all this?


Sure, maybe in another year or so. ;) Chuc mung nam moi to all our family and friends! May 2011 be filled with fortune, prosperity, and wealth for you all, and may another year of wisdom also bring with it all that you have been hoping for in life.

Vertical Impairment

I have always known the world from this petite point of view, from this five-foot frame that puts me mostly neck- or sometimes chest-level with those whom I am facing. When I need to react quickly to an attack, I focus on people’s torsos and not their eyes, anticipating how the body draws back for a punch, or how the hips shift to gear up for a kick. Used to this perspective, I do not usually notice how tiny I am until I see pictures of myself lined up with other people. Sometimes, I overcompensate by lifting my arms too high for an ikkyo, or reaching up too far when attacking with a shomenuchi. I do this unconsciously, but Sensei keeps me in check, lectures me about being sure to bring my training partner down to my level.

I guess I’ve chosen the perfect art, founded by a man who was roughly my height. In aikido, the taller person adjusts in order to do an effective technique, and the shorter person stays in his or her comfort zone. I’ve heard my fair share of short jokes, and I’ve gotten used to sassing back, “Try living off rice and salt or rationed sardines for your growing years and see how tall you grow to be.” Yes, I feel dwarfed in what seems like a dojo—and often a world—filled with giants. Yes, when someone runs at me full-forced during jiyu-waza, I fight a brief moment of panic at the idea of being steam-rolled into the mat. Yes, it’s a challenge when you’ve got less muscles and tiny hands and wrists. But just because you are short, it doesn’t mean that you’re not confident. And just because you are small, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be strong. We all have our uphill battles, things to overcome to get our aikido “just right.” The sooner we embrace the challenges, the faster we can start working on conquering them. Besides—the weather is great down here.

Legacy

Sensei's knees have been bothering him lately; he couldn't get into seiza anymore, and he'd bow the class in and out by standing in front of the shomen. He would start demonstrating a technique and then remember that he couldn't get down into a seated pin, so he'd change it into a technique that didn't need one. At the end of class when it came time for our usual closing of kokyu dosa, he'd have two Sempai demonstrate it instead of calling up an uke. After class when some of us students would get together and practice for our tests, he'd sit aside in a chair and preside over us. He'd gaze onward with a look I know well--that "being on the sidelines" look, that uncertainty of whether an injury will ever properly and fully heal, that look of longing for what his body was capable of before. It's the chink in one's armor, the realization that there exists a kryptonite to our otherwise unwavering practice.

But despite his reluctance to demonstrate seated techniques, I still see Sensei's passion in the art, his dedication toward his students, and his determination to pass on his own teacher's legacy. When a white belt was struggling with the concept of te-katana during kokyu dosa, Sensei gingerly got down on his knees to show him the proper alignment of hand blades and hips. When another student couldn't quite bend at the knees low enough to do a proper shihonage on me, Sensei had me hold on to his wrist so he could demonstrate. Mentally, I protested, "Don't do it if it hurts, Sensei." But logically, I knew the familiarity of pushing through the pain and the "inconvenience" of whatever got between you and your aikido.

I get a flashback of my grandmother's old kitchen, a dark yellow-and-brown linoleum floor, upon which rested a pestle and mortar. She was showing me how to pound the ground-pork-and-shrimp mixture, getting my wrists to learn the repetitive grinding and turning motions that transformed the solid chunks into a sticky, fine paste for one of her trademark recipes. "The texture is what makes the meatballs come out just right," she told me. I noticed her struggle in her squatted position on the floor, wanted to ask her if she needed to take a break while I continued to pound the meat, but the determination in her voice as she was lecturing stopped me. Out loud, she was saying, "Let's continue." Inwardly, she was hinting, "Let's continue because I don't have much time left to teach you this."

Last night, I dreamt I could do perfect high falls. I sailed into the attack, understood perfectly where that taking-of-balance point took place, and flipped through the air carelessly like a dolphin taking off from the waters to do somersaults against a background of sky. I landed with the grace of an ice skater, got up, and did it again and again. There was no panic at the point of take-off, no sloppy rotation that demanded more spring, no jolting pain upon impact with the mat. But then I woke up and realized that, as much as I admire them, I am still intimidated by high falls, still terrified of taking ukemi for koshi nages. I still can't do some of the jo suburis, and I'm not certain I can get through the entire 31 jo kata by myself.

Those before us will always strive to pass down their legacy, and we the students will struggle to learn and perfect it. Sometimes it seems like time stretches out before us with its infinite patience and generosity; but once in a while, a chink in the armor reminds us that we may not have as much sand in the top half of the hour glass after all. What would we be able to accomplish before the last grain falls? How much of that rich but elusive legacy could we hope to grasp and pass on to those that come after us? Tick-tock, tick-tock...