My niece was visiting us from Peru. So we had an active holiday week showing them around in San Francisco. She brought her 1 year old baby daughter along. I setup some old infant gear for her. It all worked out quite well.

This is the first time Tatchee has a baby visitor. I'm delighted to see him act like a big brother. He spontaneously bring her toys and other stuff for her comfort. Other times I saw him act with a sense of fairness. When the baby try to grab things from him, he hold it away from her and told her that you shouldn't grab things from others. Tatchee is a little boy to us. We only realize how much he has grown up when he is together with his little niece.

2010.01.02 [personal] - comments (0)

I have a phone call with my dad this evening. We talked about some issues in handling of family properties. At the end of the conversation my father mentioned sometimes he feels he is counting days. He is in his mid-80s so it is not a complete surprise. Since my mother passed away last year my father is living alone. Actually this is something already on my mind, perhaps subconsciously. But we have seldom talked openly about it.

It started when my mother was departed after a short struggle with cancer. I feel I have lost a part of myself. I have not lived with my parents for quite some time. When I was young I want so much to get away. I moved out to the dorm when I went to college. I was so happy to have a place of my own. Later I started working and I have moved across the Pacific to San Francisco altogether. I was mostly focusing on myself, seeking a good career and to make the most of my life.

Often people don't think much of something until you lost them. Parents are always there. I can always go back to them once in a while. Well now my mom is no longer there. And many conversations between us will not happen anymore.

I have never regret coming to San Francisco. It is a fulfillment both careerwise and personally. After spending almost 1/3 of my life in this city, I come to see it as my home town even more than my birth place. Most things I have done I will not choose differently if I were given the choice again. But it is also true that by moving away I have become somewhat cut off from my family and relatives. My mother was often the bridge between myself and my relatives. Now that she was gone I become even more isolated.

My uncles and aunts are all in their 80s and 90s. They are all going to depart fairly soon. Our redemption is in the next generation. But the picture is grim. I have written about low fertility rate on a macro level. On the personal level, it means several of my cousins have well passed marrying age but have remain single. We were once children growing up together. Now it seems we won't have enough children of the next generation growing up together like we once did.

Having say that I must not complaint too much. Having Tatchee is already a great blessing for us. But if one child is good, then two must be better. But it seems the prospect of Tatchee having a sibling is diminishing. My system engineering side tells me that we should have redundancy. What if he contacted a deadly disease? What if he were hit by a car? What if Tatchee does not has a child of his own? I am looking ahead to the day when I die. Would that leave him as the end of the gene line? Who is going to burying him when Tatchee too has aged and die?

Back in my childhood in Hong Kong my mom has given me a rich network of family ties. Something I've never learned to appreciate until recently. And what do I provide to Tatchee in my turn? To think about he will inherit my social isolation, and not to mention a world of global climate change, I start to feel ashamed.

2009.12.28 [personal] - comments (0)

Monday is Tatchee's preschool's day off. I brought him to my office for a few hours so that I can work there. I brought the Totoro DVD to entertain him. And I also brought along some toy cars. One of them is his favorite police. I was worrying about its siren and the sound it can make. I warned Tatchee not to make noise it in the office. Once he was there he understood that noise is not appropriate and voluntary put this car away. Finally, I bring him along to an hour long meeting. He played quietly in the meeting room the whole time. People are fairly impressed by him. I'm happy that the day turned out quite well and he wasn't too bored.

Later I talked to my neighbor about this. She told me when she was very little her mom brought her to her office one time. To this day she still have a vivid memory of that trip, like the typewriter that impressed her. I'm writing this down so that I can chat with him when he gets older to see if he remember this day :)

2009.11.30 [personal] - comments (0)

This week I am visiting my parents in Hong Kong. I have grown up in Hong Kong and lived there for most of my life. But since 13 years ago I have moved aboard. During the time I make regular visit but otherwise have not spend too much time here. I have left long enough that I feel out of touch with my birth place in many ways.

There are seas of change during the past decade. Large scale development and infrastructure work following the opening of the new airport have changed the physical face Hong Kong. New batch of youngsters are refining what's chic and fashionable. On the other hand a lot have remained the same. My home in Mong Kok is still the busiest commercial district. Flashy new building and shopping center sprouts all around, standing side by side with dusty old building, the kind of old building that I know so well when I grown up. People seem to busy working everyday, just like way it was as always.

I have undergone many personal change as well. My son has turned two and I'm learning everything about parenting. Seeing my aging parents also evoke a lot of my own childhood. So many things we have done in the past that will only remain in memory because time has changed.

I find myself become very reflective these days. It is an odd for me to find this adjective to describe my state of consciousness. Indeed I am reflective enough to be aware of myself being reflective.

2008.05.14 [personal] - comments (0)

Like many others I was drawn by the story of the disappearance and the search for the Kims family in the last few days. I was following update of the rescue effort almost in real-time via the news website. It was a big euphoria at first when the mother and the girls were found safe. But at the same time it was all the more urgent to find the missing dad who has left to seek help but has failed to return. When bad news finally came back that he was found dead, I was deeply saddened.

I was thinking why do I worry so deeply about a family I have not met? Why do I concern about them on a personal level? Because they are good, family people? Because I am also a new dad myself? Or is it because they were stuck in the wild waiting for us to save them?

The recent passing of my friend in another tragic circumstance still leave a heavy heart in me. Usually I am the optimist. In tragic situations I can see beyond the present sorrow and set my sight to the future ahead. From suffering I can often find compassion and catharsis. But these are tragedies that overwhelmed me. The losses are irredeemable.

2006.12.07 [personal] - comments (0)

I am having great fun making a VCD home movie for my baby. Initially I was looking for a way to sent my mother our collection of video clips. She is tech illiterate and does not have a computer. So YouTube is out of question. VCD seems to be a great option. Just put it in the player and press a button to play. Even my mom can do it.

I have used two programs, the iMovie bundled with a Mac for authoring and a trial ware iVCD for conversion and VCD burning. iMovie has a wealth of editing functions for an amateur. I mixed still and video clips, tried different transition effects and then added sound tracks. I was bitten by the film editing bug and was toying with things like choosing between 1/3 second gap versus a 1/5 second gap between stills (1/5 second works great to get a slide show feel!) iVCD just works (for the most part), i.e. it burns a VCD from the film made by iMovie.

Before that I have spend several days and destroyed many blank CD in failed attempts to make VCD with various Windows programs. I have tried open source programs, freeware and trial wares. I have learned more detail about different video format and the chain of video production tools than I have thought. Nothing work as wells as the freebie iMovie and the $30 iVCD. The only drawback? For the first time, I want more speed from my tiny Mac mini.

2006.11.21 [personal, video] - comments (0)

I was in a coffee shop one day. I saw this man in his 50s. His look aged. His hair grey and thinning. One thought flashed though my mind. I saw my son Tat Chee aged like him.

Mind you my son, now two months old, is the cutest baby in the world. He just starts to sleep through the night. He cries a lot but also smiles sometimes. He can babble and we are expecting to hear his first legible word. Then there is child care and school in our mind. Nobody would have associated old age with a baby. I should really concerned about myself with all these middle age issues like hair loss striking close.

But then... one day... Tat Chee would indeed become an aged man. Surely. Inevitably.

O impermanence.

2006.04.21 [personal, philosophy] - comments (0)

Our baby, Theodore Tat Chee Tung 董達之, has arrived on Feburary 1st! His name Tat Chee means make achievement.

2006.02.14 [personal] - comments (1)

One and half years ago I started this blog. It was not too clear what this would achieve. Is it going to be another collection of worthless personal mumbling? Is my writing worth anything? If I build it, will they come?[more...]

2004.11.27 [personal] - comments (0)

Finally this website can be searched from google using the keyword tung wai yip!

2003.06.07 [personal] - comments (0)