Category Archives: Personal

Breaking News

BehaviorThis is going to be a hard post to write, so I’m going to keep it as short as I can, but forgive me if I run long. After pouring so much of my blood, sweat and tears into Behavior, I’ve decided that the time has come for me to leave this terrific company that, with a little bit of cash and a lot of ambition, my partners and I co-founded in the dark days of late fall, 2001. My last day at Behavior will come just a little more than four years after we legally opened doors — as of 31 December I’ll no longer be a member of Behavior LLC.

This decision is no cause for alarm; my departure is on completely amicable terms, and my partners at the company have been kind and gracious enough to wish me luck in my future endeavors. By the same token, I wish them great continued success too, and I’m absolutely confident that there’s lots and lots of great design work still to come from Behavior. I guarantee it.

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Post-Trip Wrap-Up

Viet NamJust a word to say that I’m back from my trip to Viet Nam. Technically, I’ve been back since about 11:30p on Sunday evening, when my plane touched down at the end of 22-plus hours of transit. But I’ve been dealing with the inevitable jet lag, as well, which accounts for why I’m writing this post at 6:30a (and I’ve been awake for two hours already!); in case I hadn’t mentioned it before, Viet Nam is exactly twelve hours ahead of New York, so you can imagine my body clock is completely off. Somewhere between the haze of insomnia, walking catatonia and catching up with work, I also managed to corral all my trip photos together into a Flickr photoset, and this morning I went through them all and added titles and captions, so if you’ve browsed through them already, it might be worth another look for more back story. More posts as soon as I’m all caught up on sleep…

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Sleepwalking Abroad

BalloonsThere’s a lot of family stuff to be done while I’m here in Viet Nam, leaving me with scant little time to try and provide the tourister narrative that Jason Kottke did such a good job with during his trip here. I’m probably not the best such guide in any event. My experience here is fairly atypical, I think, due in part to my stranger/familiar status as a Viet Khieu: a returning Vietnamese who, quite unfortunately, doesn’t speak the language very well at all, but who looks just Vietnamese enough for the locals to expect a certain level of fluency I just can’t manage.

It’s frustrating, because I do make an effort to communicate in what is ostensibly my native tongue. Members of my extended family encourage me to speak it more frequently so that my skills will improve… but ultimately their own mastery of English is sufficiently superior to my pathetic mastery of Vietnamese that they all speak English to me anyway. I’ll never learn, it seems.

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First Day Back

As much as small things have changed each time I come back to Saigon — roads laid with gravel now paved, broadband Internet now almost commonplace, newer, taller and more gleaming high rises towering over old construction — the city is basically the same as it was when I first returned here eight years ago. Undeterred by progress, it remains a mess of human traffic, diesel exhaust and unkempt and unregulated commerce everywhere.

I can’t resist it. Its disjointed clicks and whirrs are in sync with a romantic idea of home that I nurse very tenderly: so too the omnipresent and melodic sound of spoken Vietnamese — nasal, drawling, bearing hurt and satisfaction at once.

I was born here but I left when I was three and a half. So just being back, in the midst of the quotidian and the unremarkable, is profound in a very private, intimate way. It’s more than just being a visitor to a place one cherishes; it’s like playing tourist in another course of events, sightseeing the attractions of a life I might have led if it weren’t for, you know, global politics and war and all. Everywhere and everything is a could-have-been for me, superficially strange and foreign but, in an emotional way, also deeply familiar. It’s weird, it’s fun, and the food is amazing.

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Away from My Desk Right Now

A quick housekeeping post before I head out to Newark International Airport: as mentioned earlier in the week, I’m leaving for Viet Nam this evening. I’m bracing myself for the day-long plane ride that it’ll take to get my feet back on the ground in Saigon, but it’ll be worth it. Like a dutiful digital dork, I’m toting along my digital camera and my PowerBook, so if I find the time and the Internet connection, I’ll post pictures on Flickr and updates here. Otherwise, I’ll be back in New York in early December. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Get Away from It All (with Your Computer)

On Sunday night I’ll be leaving for a long-delayed trip to Viet Nam to visit some family: aunts, uncles, cousins and my dear grandmother, most of all. I’ll be back in early December, at which point the year will be practically over, save for the customary holiday craziness. In the spring I went to see my mother, sister and nephew in California, and of course I also just returned from a week visiting my father in France.

With relatives in so many far flung locations, I spend most of my vacation days each year simply traveling to visit them. With the balance of those days, I try to get away with my girlfriend as much as we can — and that’s basically all the time I have away from my desk between January and December.

I’m not complaining about the way I spend those days, because I enjoy the time with my family and the traveling my girlfriend and I do together. But I’ve started to think also that I should perhaps be devoting some portion of my holidays to just me, specifically to some personal growth.

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Teach Your Dog to Swim

Like a lot of people, when I first adopted my dog I made a solemn oath not to succumb to the temptations of absurdly over-enthusiastic pet ownership: no dog sweaters, no canine birthday parties, no pet manicures. This was a point of pride more than anything, a line drawn in the sand to convince myself that I am macho and that I can in fact keep it real.

I haven’t completely given up on that oath, but the reality of having a dog is something else entirely: before too long, the dog’s irresistible, ingratiating ways break you down, and you begin wanting to treat him or her essentially like a furry child. It’s a very difficult impulse to resist.

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European Vacation

These days, I seem to be doing less blogging and more getting out of the house, which includes leaving tomorrow for a one week holiday in Paris, France. Joy and I are going there to visit my father, who moved there late last year, returning decades after having grown up there in his teens and early twenties.

I’ve been to Paris four times, each visit separated by at least five years, and I’ve enjoyed each visit quite a bit. It’s hard to resist Europe in general, but I’m wondering if France can really top my visit last year to Italy — our trip to Sicily was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable getaways I’ve ever had (so enjoyable, it seems, that I never got around to properly blogging about it). I was reminded of this recently when I watched the Criterion edition of Pietro Germi’s “Divorce, Italian Style” — hilarious and well worth the rental, definitely. Anyway, I’m sure Paris going to be fantastic all the same — I have very little cause for worry.

We’ll be gone for a week, with a side-trip to Amsterdam, but at this point, having both been so busy just trying to clear our plates to be able to leave, we have no agenda. If you have any interesting ideas, please let me know. Until then, the posts here will be sporadic — or at least very continental.

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Paragraph in The New York Times

ParagraphRun out and get a copy of today’s New York Times and turn directly to the Sunday Styles page for a big feature article all about Paragraph, the writers’ space recently opened by my girlfriend. It’s a huge, early win for her and her partner: an in-depth piece that talks about writers’ spaces in general, but that prominently features Paragraph and quotes from both Joy and Lila. I’m kind of beaming, if you can’t tell.

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