Ha Long Bay ... continue

I just wrote about our journeys the last two times we visited Ha Long Bay, then ten days later, a disaster struck. A few days ago, while searching the net, I found on Yahoo news that there was a tourist boat sunk in Ha Long Bay, and twelve tourists perished in that incident.

It's so sad that such a beautiful place had to witness such a terrible loss of lives. And horrifically, all of those lives were taken away from young people in their mid twenties. As I wrote earlier about the carelessness, and self-destruction of the people running the place. Sooner or later, disaster will bound to happen.

Tracking back with more research, to my dismay, I found a couple more of these incidents had happened in the past as well. Not too long ago, in the fall of two thousand and nine, another tourist boat had sunk in the same vicinity with the lost of more than ten lives. In this case, it happened to a very new and very luxury boat, which did not have a license to stay overnight at sea. To most of the local authorities during many interviews, the dumbstruck was, to them, the newer, and more luxury the boats is the safer it is as well.

On our next coming trip, we had planed to come visiting this place for a final time. But after hearing this new, it changes our plan. We now are not so sure about booking a trip there. Even if we do, I don't know I want to stay overnight in one.

This is not only an isolated incident that happened only every now and then according to the law of numbers. But they happen in a regular basis. The Vietnamese people are very friendly and fun loving people, but at the same time they are the most careless people in term of taking care for their safety and others'.

Just like every where else on this earth, Ha Long Bay will face the same fate under the destruction of human. People have done the most damages to the mother earth in the last hundred years alone. We all want to live the luxury lifestyles of the rich, but we forget one thing, and that's the high price we have to pay for these lifestyles. And soon enough, if we don't change our ways of abusing the nature, our children will have never had a chance. To a certain extend, if we don't change now, the damage would be irreversible.

Would it be too late already?

The most beautiful place in Viet Nam

Ha Long Bay is the most beautiful place in Viet Nam beyond comprehension in my opinion. The first time we went to Ha Noi in the year two thousand, we missed it because there were so many places to go. We only had five days, so that was not enough to visit Ha Noi and its surrounding suburb. The second time we went to Ha Noi, we made sure to have a tour to go there. And it was an excellent choice. We spend four days to explore the area. The city is right next to the water. We stay in one of the oceanfront hotel looking out to the bay. The good thing is Ha Long is not an industrial or commercial district. It's still very bare and one hundred percent natural. You don't see large commercial vessels running around. The fishing industry is non existent, beside a few very small fishing, and tourist boats. The weather at Ha Long Bay is pretty cool year round. There are couple thousands of islets, most of which are limestone.

Renting a luxury junk sail for a day was really cheap then, the first time we went there in two thousand and two. It costs a mere fifty US dollars a day which includes the captain and his crew. You don't have to pay anything else except tips, and ten percent is considered to be generous. They brought us to many islets and caves to explore and to take pictures. There were a few swimming beaches as well.

There were not too many tourists back then, but things changed drastically by the second time we visited Ha Long Bay in two thousand seven. The natural habitats are slowly but surely diminishing. There were much more traffic from the tourist as well as local people servicing the increased number of the tourists. I found the number of junk sails now were more than triple. At the same time the need for more hotels, restaurants, transportation, and seafood caught locally from fishing boats to serve them increased fivefold to satisfy these numbers.

A community of around sixteen hundred people live on Ha Long Bay as of two thousand and one. The majority of them live on floating houses and are sustained through fishing and marine aquaculture. This number has been increase extensively in the last few years. The real number as of two thousand and ten is staggering.

The biggest hotel in Vietnam was planned to be built on the bay, beginning from two thousand seven. When we were there at that time, its ground work had started already. Now there were more than ten hotels with more than one hundred rooms each.

With an increasing tourist trade, mangroves and sea-grass beds have been cleared and jetties and wharves have been built for tourist boats as well.

Fuel and oil from junk sails, fishing vessels, along with tourist litter, have created pollution problems, which impact on both the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem of the islands. Human waste from portable toilets erected for tourists, and for people servicing them finds its way into the soil and water surrounding the islands, once more altering the ecosystem functioning, through increased nutrient flow.

Game fishing often near coral reefs are threatening many endangered species of fish. Building and creating swimming areas destroyed more and more coral reefs, most of which had been untouched for decades before. There were a few areas along the shore of the bigger islets has been prepared for jet skis and kayaks at the same time.

The delicate limestone cave ecosystems are diminishing as tourists visiting the caves break off stalagmites and stalactites. Litter, including wine bottles, soda cans, and candy wraps are dropped into cave streams. Visitors exhale huge amount of carbon dioxide, which has a deleterious effect on the caves.

The mouths of some caves have been widened to allow for tourist access. This increase in light has led to an imbalance in the delicate links between flora and fauna, and a decrease in the humidity of the caves.

If the governments don't stop the trend now, I believe just in a few more years, the damage will be irreversible. This year we plan to go there to see it for the final time. My recollection for sure will be able to tell the damages which have been done to Ha Long Bay since our first trip there.

On our coning trip, we plan to visit this place for a final time. We'll be able to see the new hotels which were barely started the last time we were here.

We'll also travel north to the northern tip of Viet Nam, the Sapa mountains in the Lao Cay province. If we have a chance, we will set foot on the China's - Viet Nam's borders.

Celebrating the Lunar New Year ... in America ...

Today is the first day of the New Year, the year of the cat to our Vietnamese calendar. I woke up early in the morning and could not get back to sleep again. After my routine of exercise in the morning, my wife and I went to the kitchen to prepare for breakfast. Her breakfast is always the same, a big cup of coffee in which more than three fourth is soy milk. She never eats anything in the morning, and still get fat (according to her). I am very opposite. I always have a pretty big breakfast in any standard. I can eat as early as three o'clock in the morning. It could be anything ... solid. A big bowl of boiling hot noodles is the best, but for the worse, I can take a big bowl of rice with any left over would be just fine with me. I am a very easy eater.

I don't drink coffee at all. I had a terrible experience with coffee once when I was sixteen, then I never bother with it again in my life. I remembered that I had to stay late sturdy for my exam. I asked my brother to buy me a cup of coffee, and after I finished drinking it, I was not only stay awake for a few hours, but it kept me awake for almost three days and nights straight with a constant mild stomachache which could not go away. I felt so terrible during the whole time. I could not sleep even though I was extremely tired. I fell to my unconscious state on my third night due to exhaustion. From then on, coffee is not on my enjoyment list.

I did not know until my daughter came to wish me a happy new year and asked for a "red envelope"!
After that, my wife and her went to ... work as usual. What a way of celebrating the new year. In this country, if the lunar new year falls into a week day, then nobody will celebrate. Or if you live in a town which doesn't have a large population of Asian, then there will be no celebrating lunar new year either.

I missed the Lunar New Year celebration this year. We had planned for the trip back to Viet Nam in time for this, but something else came up caused us to cancel the plan. One of our restaurant needs to be renovated. We had planned way ahead, but we ran into a bunches of architectural problems. Then the coordination and accommodation between the land lord, the franchise, the architecture, and the city engineering and planning departments set us back a couple of months. We can't leave until late February. Our vacation has been on hold since, and we haven't had a fixed date yet. It's probably going to be in the later weeks of February or else the weather in Viet Nam is going unbearable hot.

My God daughter has just called to wish me the best wishes for the new year on her way to work. It's a great feeling when someone who is not an immediate member of your family still remember to call you. I can't wait to get back to California to give her a big hug. I stopped everything to call my mom and dad to wish them as well. They get stuck in Houston the last couple of weeks to help out one of my younger brother in his expanded business. Now they could not go back to California due to one of the biggest snowstorm of the century swept by the mid west of the US. They are forced to celebrate the new year way away from home.

What are we going to do on the very first day of our new year?
Nothing, my daughter asked us out for dinner tonight, and that's it.
We did not even have "banh chung" or "banh tet" to celebrate this year. Oh well, thank God for his blessing, and hope we all have a wonderful year.

Viet Nam, my motherland ...

My wife and I have had such a beautiful loving relationship with Viet Nam, our motherland, specially Sai Gon where I grew up. My parents left their own birth place in Ha Noi and moved to Sai Gon fifty some years ago. I was born in district number three, in the center of the old Sai Gon. The returning to the land of my birth is and will be always exited me. Something about it always draws me back years after years, even though the similarities of the places where I was born and growing up, has changed so drastically in the last twenty thirty years or so. The population has been exploded exponentially as well. The city has been packed tighter and tighter with more and more people. The outskirt lands are shrinking every day. The buildings are getting taller and taller. The traffics are getting worse and worse. It's very suffocating in the mean time, let alone the growth and expanding of the next ten years.

The old neighborhoods were all gone now, to be replaced with bigger and taller buildings. The main mean of transportation in the city now is motorbikes. You'll see them everywhere. It seems like there are more bikes than people. There are more than eight million motorbikes in Sai Gon and its suburb alone in the latest estimate.

I always get pretty worked up when we prepare for our trip back home. For days, I would be walking around dreaming and planning what we are going to do on our trip in my head. I draw a very detail plan where to go, who to visit and for how long. When it gets closer to the day, I would become emotional over every little we pack. Sometimes, I awake in the middle of the night, and it would take hours before I could fall back to sleep again. The thought of coming back home overwhelm me days and nights.

Every trip we set out to visit at least three big cities and a few small ones of the country. At first, we started out with those famous ocean resort like Vung Tau, Mui Ne, Nha Trang ... etc ... Later trips, we started to visit those inland areas from the very Southern tip of Viet Nam like Ca Mau, Ha Tien, and Rach Gia. Then we worked our way all the way to the Central, then to the Northern tip of Viet Nam. We had a chance to explore more and more of those less famous, and far away locations. Some of the famous and beautiful places like Ha Long Bay, and Hue, we visited twice. This year we already have had a plan for a third visit of Ha Long Bay. This is the most beautiful place on earth. Word is not doing justice in describing it. Same thing with the pictures taken from camera, because you can only see what the photographers see through their limited camera lenses. You want to know, then you have to go there at least once in your life time.

Twenty one years of my life growing up in Viet Nam, I only know very limited number of towns and cities beside Saigon. We did not have that kind of money for it. I did not know how beautiful my country is. Once I set my feet back in Sai Gon, I only need a couple days to recharge, after that we are on our journeys for a long stretch at a time. We only get back to our home for a day or two to get ready back on the road again.

Thirty day vacation seems to be a very long time, but it would never be long enough for me. This year, we plan to visit Ha Noi, Ha Long Bay, Sapa, Hue, Hoi An, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, then China, and Bangkok. If we have a few days in between, we may have a chance to visit Can Tho again.

Planning for a vacation part 3 ...

The flights from L.A.X airport to another country before a short hop to Tan Son Nhat airport in Sai Gon are super long, tense and nerve-racking. It takes at least twelve to fourteen hours non-stop in a very crowded cabin. The seats are really small and uncomfortable. The constant noises from those jet engines give you a huge headache.

The confined space surrounding a large number of people irritates me a whole lot more. The best way to accommodate this short coming is get semi-drunk and go to sleep. But sleeping in an airplane is always in a state of semi-consciousness. Your eyes were closed, your brain were shut down, but you were not in deep sleep.

The food is so terrible. On many occasions, I saw people brought with them instant noodles, cold cuts, home made sandwiches, and the likes instead of eating the food provided on an airplane.

If you sit next to the isles, you are asking for the constant prodding, touching, hitting, elbowing, and kneeing from people walking around. Worse yet, people on the inside seats will wake you up every single time they want to go to the lavatories. The seats are so narrow, and tightly packed sometimes they have to climb over you to get out. Good luck if you have an obese person(s) sit next to you. Having some kids constantly kicking on the back of your seat will make matter worse. You want to turn around and strangle the parents for not discipline their children.

The transfer flights would take anywhere from two to four hours depend what airline you book. Thai Airline is the longest because they have two stops. First you fly to Tokyo, takes twelve hours, from there you fly to Bangkok, another four and a half, then two hours from Bangkok to Tan Son Nhat for a total of almost twenty hours of flying.

Japan Airline is the next longest with twelve plus five for a total of seventeen hours.

Korea and Taiwan Airline are about the same with thirteen and a half plus three.

Hong Kong is probably the shortest with thirteen plus two and a half for a total of a little over fifteen hours of flying.

Fifteen years ago, it wasn't that bad because we were still young, but nowadays, it's getting harder and harder on our bodies for such extended and lengthy trips.

Getting through Vietnamese Airport Custom is another nightmare. The first few times we were so fed up with all the red tape and bureaucracy, that I vowed would never come back again. Bribery was everywhere, from the custom agents to baggage handlers, you could not go anywhere without folding a few dollars here and there. It was so rampage that they were so bold in asking for money to get any work done.

Things has changed for the last ten years, when the government could no longer ignore the complains from the tourists. They knew that if they did not clean this up, the tourists would never come back again.
Last year, we did not have to pay a single dollar for these agent. It took a surprising mere half an hour to get through. The airport and its workers look a lot more professional now. So if you go there, do not hand them  money in hope of getting through faster. They will not dare to ask for it, but if you put the money in there, they will not return it.

The weather in Sai Gon is almost always hot and humid. There are only two seasons in Viet Nam, rainy and sunny. From November to May, it's dry season. From June to October, it's rainy season. When it rains, it pours. It's very unpredictable. The sky was very sunny, and all of the sudden, it's pouring down like crazy non-stop for a few hours or a few days. Raining nonstop for a week in Viet Nam is a norm.

When my children were young and in school, we went to Viet Nam in the summer. It usually very very hot, it's suffocated, specially in Sai Gon with the population swelling up to over twelve million. With about billion of motorbikes spilling carbon dioxide caused you to gaff for air like fish out of the water. Beside, almost all Vietnamese men are heavy smokers. They are allowed to smoke in all public places. And most of young men are heavy drinkers as well. They work very hard between the early morning until five, when they stop working no matter what, and get ready for their ritual drinking binge every night.  

That's why a few day trip to Da Lat was a good, relax, and enjoyable time. The weather on these high mountains are always cool, fresh, and peaceful. That is one of the most beautiful and livable place in Viet Nam, in my opinion. At one time, I planned to go back there to retire, and Da Lat would be the place.

The good thing about Sai Gon is as any big city, you can find anything, and mostly the best from anywhere in the country. People are willing to pay top money for the best. That's why, you don't hafta go anywhere to find what you want. They are all brought here, the best of the best money can buy. I love to go from one restaurant to another. You can find all special dishes from anywhere in the country within fifteen minute distance. And boy, Vietnamese people enjoy eating. Food is in served every corner of the streets. They are so abundant. Fresh and exotic fruits are our favorites, some of which you can't find anywhere else in the world. Some of which, their names, you can't find in any English dictionary.

The same thing can be said about seafood. Viet Nam has more than twenty five hundred kilometer of coastline. The nearest distance from Pacific shoreline to Sai Gon is less than an hour away. Most of the restaurants in Sai Gon serve live seafood. They are as live as swimming in a tank, waiting to be plucked off and to be cooked your way, right in front of you for a fraction of the cost here with frozen ones.

You can find many different kinds of ethnic foods and price levels restaurants in Sai Gon and big citties. Some of them are as pricey as any famous and fancy restaurants you know of. In my opinion, those fancy-wanna-be luxury-looking restaurants are the copycats, they are not as good as the price tags they carried. The most authentic restaurants are the ones full with locals. If you want an easy taste for the foreigners, you can find one in the center of Sai Gon filled with foreigners.

If you come to Viet Nam from abroad, it's best to eat in those big restaurants with known signage. Nowadays, you can find any big franchise from Australia to America, from France to Italy. With these brands you don't have to worry about sanitary issues. Health codes in Viet Nam are non existence, so the best is to look for the restaurants with nice presentation and clean look.

Drinking is another issue when visiting Viet Nam. Always look for bottle drinks like water or ... beer. I skip those fancy-unknown-kind-of-exotic-fruit drinks. If you can't spell the name of the fruit, forget it. Same thing with the street vendors, many of them are pushing carts with cut and ready-to-eat fruits enclosed in a glass displays. Do not try it, because they had been prepared way ahead of time, and had been sitting in there under the scorching sun for who-knows-how-long already with the environment and temperature good for food-born bacterias. A trip to a hospital for any intestinal illness during vacation is no fun at all.

When I order drink, I'll never use their provided cups, glasses and ice. I always order the cold drink, and i drink it straight out from the cans or bottles. Most of the utensils are going through the cleaning process with contaminated water. The big restaurants in the cities are exception, because they are equipped with all of the necessities and requirements. The street vendors are a different story.

Planning for a vacation part 2 ...

We've been back to Viet Nam quite a few times already in the last eighteen years. The first trip back home was in ninety three. Back then, Viet Nam had not yet changed as it is right now. The country was in disarray, as the Communist government could not decide which way to go.

That very first visit was extremely hard for all of us. We had not prepared ourselves to deal with what we saw around us. People were so poor, they did not have enough food to eat. Young kids and old people were begging every where. They fought for the left over which the customers barely finished, left on the tables at the restaurants. The government controlled everything from big to small, from the luxury to the cheap. Nothing you could buy without rationing cards issued by the local government.

Bribery, corruption, and embezzlement were happening every where, and at every levels. People used to say: "big dogs take big bites, small dogs take small ones", and there would be nothing left. Money could buy anything, exactly anything at all. Money could even tip off the balance of justice. 

We used to be a rice export country, but then people did not have enough rice to eat, because working for "Hợp Tác Xã" run by the government gives people the same earning. Who needs to work harder for the same earning as the guys next to you who just only need to show up? Thinking about those times make my heart ached, because my wife and I had to endure a few years of it. There were never enough food for a single meal a day. And white rice was only for the rich people.

They finally found out that strict Communist's ways would not only bring the country's economy down to its knee, but also get the country into a great disorderly mass.

The "Đổi Mới", or Economy Reforms initiated in ninety six has shown the results. It's been getting better and better as the years go by economically. Nowadays, it's hard to find a beggar in any cities beside the front entrance of the church or Buddhist temple.

The people in big cities are having more and more and they start to worry about how enhancing their life styles beside feeding their children. I've seen travel agencies popped up every where like wild mushrooms after the rain. They also are looking for better education for their children. Going study abroad is a norm nowadays for the business people, and their young college bound children, with destinations like Australia, England, Singapore, and even the US.

Bringing foods to the table is no longer number one priority. Luxury items which nobody dared to dream before now showing up all over the place. Many people now own the latest model automobiles, yachts, and even small jets. Regardless of, it would cost three times more for import and luxury tax than we would pay for the same items here.

Last year, I saw it with my own eyes that there were more Bentley, Ferrari, and Porches in Sai Gon alone than in Orange County Southern California. I wouldn't say that people in Sai Gon were richer than us here, but a few of them are having a lot more money than an average Joe in America.

At first, on those travel tours I booked in Viet Nam in the late ninety, only Vietnamese who came back home from abroad called "Việt Kiều" or oversea Vietnamese could afford. Then more and more, Sai Gon people started to mix in. Now the tours in Viet Nam would have a mix of half and half, and the trips abroad would be a third of the tourists from Sai Gon, and the rest are people like us.

We used to spend around ten to fifteen US dollars for a good meals for the four of us. But not any more, like everything else, inflation and the drop in value brings the dollar down tremendously. Now it costs more than five buck for a single meal. A treat in a nice restaurant for four would cost us anywhere from forty to sixty bucks easily nowadays. I remember the first time we got back to Viet Nam. We brought the whole clan of twenty five relatives with us to a nice sea food restaurant, and after a very luxurious meal with two cases of European imported beer, and the bill was a mere little less than two hundred US dollars.

Last year, it was totally different. We had to spend a lot more for a lot less. But Viet Nam listed as one of the five fastest growing economies in Asia, could afford it for its own people. They started bringing more and more imported luxury items from all over the world. People now want to get higher education to compete with the most fierce competitors surrounding them. And they all want to equip themselves with the latest technology knowledge and understanding to perform this task. They want to catch up with those advance countries in Asia like China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. One of their advantages is the vast number of young people for all kind of labors, from intellectual to manual labors. Viet Nam has one of the highest ratio of working-age population, roughly over sixty five percents. Only a little over six percents of the population are sixty five years of age or older. It's sad to say but is true, they still have a long way to get there.

I don't like to sit still during our vacation. We've traveled a lot. I love to go to far away lands. We are lucky to have a chance to visit places like Taiwan, Thailand, Korea (twice each), Hồng Kông, Malaysia, and Singapore. We have not visited China yet, but it will be on our list this time. In our own birth country, we have had the chance to travel almost every corners of it except the very Northern tip of Laokay, and Sapa ...

Some places we have visited more than once. Others famous places we have visited more than twice. So far, we have been spending times from the very Southern tip of Viet Nam, with places like Cà Mau, and  Hà Tiên to the North, with places like Hà Nội, and Ninh Bình ...

Our plan for this trip is spending at least seven days in China, to stop by these big cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Guangdong province. There is also a short trip to Bangkok, Thailand. The last time we were there was in the year two thousand. If we could book a ten day trip to Japan, then it would complete our journey perfectly.

Within three or four weeks, we'll be on our way. Viet Nam here we come.

Planning for a vacation part 1 ...

The last few years, my wife and I spent our vacations during the Lunar New Year month in Viet Nam.

It's very hard to explain the joyfulness, and the happiness of the love ones back home when they all come to the airport to pick us up. We jokingly call this "the packages receiving day".

We always bring home gifts, and stuffs for everyone. The contents are good enough for two boxes weigh more than a hundred pounds. But no matter how carefully we plan it, there will be something missing after we get there.

Our vacations usually last for a bout a month, not counting the travel times.

The two weeks before New Year are the best. Everybody seems to slow down tremendously. Vietnamese people plan to celebrate their New Year in a big way. Believe it or not, from rich to poor, from young to old, from big honchos to low level workers, everyone would take at least a week off to celebrate the tradition January-month-off-for-the-New-Year party.

Businesses either close down or slow down. Ten day to a week before New Year, Sai Gon's population drops to a half, because people flock here for the abundant work during the year, from all over the country start to go back to their root villages to share their New Year celebration with their love ones as well. And this number is huge. It could be more than thirty percent of Sai Gon's population, roughly anywhere between three to five millions depend on which survey you are looking at.

People start cleaning their house thoroughly. After that, they start fixing, wall painting, and decorating every things from the kitchen to the main room in front. The job could take a few days. They only do it once a year, that's why.

The women have to go buying and stocking up enough food, and drink (alcohol and beverage) for a week or so. If you don't stock up, there won't be anything, anywhere to buy, because all of the businesses will be closed a day or two before, and maybe up to ten days after the first day of the New Year. Closing down the business for more than two weeks to celebrate New Year is not common, but not unheard of.

A few days before New Year are the time for the borrowers to re-pay their debts to the lenders. They don't want to carry the debt over to next year in believing that no matter how small your debt is, carrying it over will make the whole next year a bad year. In paying your debt off, the next year will be your debt-free-year. Of course, if in case you don't have any money, and you can't pay, then you have to go hiding, because the lenders will make it very unpleasant for you these days when they catch you.

The last few days of the year, the city turns very jubilantly noisy. People go into the street to shop, to buy materials for decoration, materials to make the tradition of "bánh chưng, bánh tét", "mâm ngũ qủa" those special display of fruit plates, and "tet" rice cakes. No matter how poor you are, during "tet", you have to have at least a few of these in display, and in showing appreciation of the memories of the deaths, and to share with your relatives, neighbors, and friends. Depending how big you want to show off, these tasks would take days if not weeks to complete.

There are so many tradition in preparing for the New Year celebration, it would take a few hundred pages to describe these traditions and  customary practices. I'll leave it for the professional writers.

Our plan for this year vacation won't be during the New Year. We miss it by about two or three weeks due to the renovation of our restaurant. The architecture and contractors have been dragging their feet for too long. We can only make it two or three weeks after. We'll miss all of that this year.

Was it a good or a bad sign? Will our New Year bring us luck or misfortune? blessing or damnation?
Only time will tell but I don't believe it anyways. I am a Catholic.

We always make our stop in Viet Nam during our vacations, but we don't spend too much time at our home in Sai Gon. We use it as a base, a place we can come back to after a long distant trip to recharge.

We decide that this year we have to go to places we haven't gone in the past, like China, Australia or maybe the Philippines. If time is an issue, we may have to re-visit Thailand or Hong Kong or Taiwan in shorter trips.

There's also one place in Viet Nam we haven't visited, that's Sapa, the northern tip of Viet Nam. We missed it the last two times visiting Ha Noi, and Ha Long Bay.

Thirty day spending for a vacation is long but sometimes not long enough when you have so many things you want to do. Preparing for the trip will be started soon in the next couple of weeks.

CHÚC MỪNG NĂM MỚI - MAY MẮN PHÁT TÀI (Happy New Year)

No more SNOW, at least for now ... :D

A few days ago, the local weather forecast indicated it would be at least five to eight inches of snow falling on the next Tuesday and Wednesday. The city's trucks already are running around to spray a mixture of salt and chemical to keep ice from forming on the roads. They also predicted that it would be in the low thirty during the days, and in the low twenty during the nights. Dang, will it ever be getting warmer around here any more? I asked myself.

We prepared our stores, and our employees to get ready for closing on those two days. The food would need to be rotated, and watched more closely to prevent spoilage. The schedules had to be changed to accommodate their hours worked. We know so well that our employees, most of whom Spanish speaking immigrants, depend on every hours they have every week. They live paycheck by paycheck so it will become really tough for them to adjust to the short checks. They have to worry about where or how to fill in for the missing money during those short work weeks.

People always take things for granted. Out there, many people have to count every dollar they earn, hence, if it's a hundred dollar short for the week, they'll be struggled big time to recover. Most of the times, they have to borrow for that. And unfortunately, it takes them a few weeks or a month or even longer to recover. Our workers are very hard working people, but in return they earn very little (minimum wage) due to language, and unskilled problems. Most of them speak very little English if not at all, and very few have any trade to work in any industries beside serving in restaurants. They prefer to work in the kitchen. Working long hours is not an issue to them, as long as they can find a decent or fair pay.

More than half of our workers have been working for us since we bought our restaurants. If they don't have to move out of the area, they stay with us. We know each of them individually, who came from where, and who still have family to support back home. This is a tremendous achievement because the turn over ratio for this kind of job is very very high. Owners and managers in the fast food industries can never retain their minimum wage workers for more than a few months. They come in the front and sometimes go through the back on the very same day.

Lucky for all of us, the weather getting better toward the weekend. And by Sunday night, they changed it to a single snow day Wednesday. On Monday morning, the weatherman announced that there were only light rain on both days. All of the sudden, the temperature is getting really warm to compare with the last couple days. They were in the low fifty during the days, and in the high thirty at nights.
To day is Wednesday, and it's raining lightly throughout the day. The temperature is pretty warm. Hooray, everybody back at work in full swing. Everybody is happy include this owner.

We are ready for the next step, which is the renovation of one of our stores this coming month, February. To take advantage of the situation, we are going to take a long vacation. Yoo-hoo ...

Growing up in this country ...

A long lost friend called me yesterday after a couple of years disconnected. After a short chit chat to get re-acquainted, he let me know the reason why he called. He needs someone to lean on during a crisis.
It's good to know that someone still trusts and feels closed enough to you to share their very deep, and private problems.

I wasn't only lending him an ear for a couple of ... hours, but I felt for his pain and suffering as well.
His daughter-in-law had left his son with their only child which is just barely over a year old.
They are now fighting for custody, and visitation rights. The fight spills over to both families now, and the little kid was in the middle of the storm, and I was and still am, his son's God-father. What a mess!

What am I going to say to him now? How am I ever going to see my God-son's child again? He is such a beautiful, smart, cute, and loving baby. It's hard to imagine him growing up well with only one parent, specially his mom is still a little kid herself, because she is not yet twenty years of age. The mom is still so young, of course she will one day re-marry again.

Growing up nowadays in a normal two parent family is hard enough, I can't imagine how life is going to be for the baby from now.

Not all of the children grow up in a single parent home to be bad kids, though. But it is going to be extremely difficult. We have had a beautiful girl in our lives we treat as a daughter, whom grew up in a single parent family. Surprisingly, she's grown up to be one of the nicest, and successful woman I know of. She finished her education even though she struggled here and there for self-support through school, and graduated at the age of twenty five. She now married and ready for her dream family.

Anyways, I understand for many parents of the generation-in-between like me. We are the bridges of the old people who came here, could not adjust, could not adapt, would not understand the new cultures and traditions, and the young ones who were born here, or came to this country at the very young age. Even though it's still very hard, and confuse sometimes for us to pick and choose. This is what they call, it's between a rock and a very hard place.

For example, before my daughter got married, I found out that the American marriage tradition was the girl's family's responsibility. We had to pay for everything (all the wedding ceremony's expenses). The husband to be not just only taking home your daughter, but paid nothing in return. So if you have a daughter ready to marry, make sure she asks for the biggest, and most expensive diamond ring she could get from him. Better yet, prepare a prenuptial in which you have a not-to-pay-for-the-wedding-tradition escape clause ... :).
Now lets get back to the main topic ...

With all the changes and differences between their home traditions and the new environment they grow up with, it's no wonder the generation X finds it extremely difficult to make everyone happy.
Beside, there are so many distractions they have to face, in which their parents had never had to endure. Back home, we had to worry about one thing beside schooling. That was chipping in to help out the parents taking care of the family's tasks, and choirs. We could not find an after-school job, so whatever we could do to help out, was always things that we could get done around the house.

We did not have too much free time.

There were no peer pressure, because nobody had more things than the others. We were all very poor, so having a chance of going to school, and having two meals a day was more than enough already.
There were no sex pressure. We did not know how a girl's (or a woman) body was like until ... marriage (mostly).

We never had enough money for anything so having money to buy drug or alcohol was not even an issue.

Many of us had a chance to view for the very first time, the semi-naked-body-of-the-opposite-sex only after we got married. And most of the time we were too shy to open our eyes fully to catch a glimpse of a rare display of flesh from the spouse.

Getting pregnant before marriage was a significant rarity, and was considered a fatal mistake, with which the punishments were so harsh that would last for years. Therefore, some of those girls who found no escape, had to take their own lives to get away from facing a lifelong punishments.

When I was dating my wife during the early seventy, it was very similar to what you see in "good morning Viet Nam with Robin Williams". We were allowed to go out only for two or three hours max, with supervision, and watchful-eyes by a couple of younger siblings. There were no chance to do anything else beside talking. Holding hands happened only long after a few months of dating. A peck on the cheek was allowed from the girl only after a proposal of marriage. Lips locking or French kissing were unheard of, and so yucky anyways.

That's good enough for now ... :).

Young people nowadays have to face lots of distractions at the school, and at home. They were growing up in a family that both parents are busy with working. They were in a household with only one or two siblings. Some are all by themselves. The clashes of different life styles, cultures, traditions, and moral values confuse them so much they don't know how to separate and adjust.

The amount of free times spending in isolation, and with no-supervision is posing a great danger to teenagers. This problem alone has caused so much ruin, shattering, and destruction to families that both parents spend too much time away from home. These youngsters have to deal with alcohol, drugs, and sex pressure every day of their lives without guidance.

In return, they are awarded with more money, with free access to poisonous materials in videos, internet, "smart" phones, and inappropriate magazines which promote, and glorify the unacceptable life styles of drugs, alcohol and wild sex. The trend for a young couple to move in and live together without marriage is growing higher and higher, and so with the divorce rate. Do you have any idea of the divorce rate in America in 2010?. It's close to 50%. This is the number for married couples. How about the people live together without marriage?

I am not judging anybody. I am just showing the differences between then and now. I am trying to point out the dilemmas, the predicaments, and the challenges that young people have to deal with nowadays.

Long lost ... (ex)students

Yesterday, a high school classmate found me on Facebook, sent me a want to be friend email. After my confirmation, all of a sudden, there were hundreds of Facebook links showed up. I found some long lost friends from all over. What the new technology can do nowadays!

The most interesting link is the Facebook of Christine Nguyen, my dearest God daughter from whom I haven't seen or talk to for a couple of years.

We got connected in a few hours. After that day, there were a few more showed up. They were Kim Nguyen, and Cathy Trinh. When I saw their latest pictures, i recognized how old I was. It's been more than 10 years since they were sitting in my Confirmation class.

There are few more I haven't connected yet, but I hope it would be soon.

I remember it's just not too long ago. They were all around fourteen or fifteen, obnoxious, noisy, emotional, and ... impulsive. And now they are in their mid and late twenty's. Many already graduated and have their own lives. A few are still in school for higher educations. Most are working and supporting themselves if not helping their family here and there.

It brought back all the memories. The two year programs we spent studying, and growing together in our faith and in Christ. I found some of the more than ten year old pictures I took for them in their retreats at Big Bear Mountain. They look so different now.

I was sitting here in my living room with the heater running full blast. The temperature outside dropped to the low twenty. The sky was gloomy, just like then up in the mountain. We normally booked our retreats during the weekends of earlier winter. The weather at Big Bear were usually cold and gloomy.

I remember one year I was on one of the retreats when the bus we were on, ran into a ditch, and got stuck. It was cold, wet, and really windy. The sun started going down quickly so everyone had to get off the bus and walked almost a mile in that condition to our camp without much of our luggage before it was getting dark.

Some years that we were lucky enough, we would have seen SNOW. For these kids, who grow up in a warm weather of Southern California, snow is something you don't see often, if not at all.

Oh, well, there's a saying that good things go by fast.

Fortunately, at least I have something to remember when I retired, right.

It's getting colder after Christmas

Oh boy, can it get any colder?

I had come to North Carolina a few times during the 90s and 00s, and the weather had never been this cold. I guess that just like a marriage, once the honeymoon is over, then you'll hafta face the music.

This year, the winter came during the fall. The temperature at night sometimes dipped into the low twenty. A few night it went down to as low as fifteen degree Fahrenheit.

When I see the city trucks running around to spray a brine of salt and water onto roadways to help reduce ice forming, then I know it's going to be really cold.

Late December when the snowstorms were coming in abundant, during one night, it poured down more than a fifteen inches of snow. I woke up in the morning, looking out of the bedroom's window, the whole area were covered over by a thick white blanket.

When I was young, I could handle the cold very well. But nowadays, it's getting harder and harder. I am longing for the day I could move back to California. That's the reason why I always want to have a couple of month long vacations during the month of January and February.

Funny though, when it snows, you feel a little warmer then before.
It is the most beautiful scene at night, when all of the Christmas blinking lights are on under a lingering falls of snow. Nothing can describe its fully beauty.

This year we decided that we, only the four of us, were going to share the Christmas night together, with absolutely no guess. 

We've had so much to talk about as a family. 

We've had many plans to discuss about, and of course, no outsider would be allowed, period ... :).