Wednesday, December 30, 2009

My Holidays

Since the nanny took off 2.5 days during Christmas, we did not end up doing much either. We had a lunch gathering at home the day after Christmas, and we took Winston around a few times. Other than that, I concentrated on Winston’s “sleep training” during the holidays – it’s not exactly what one would expect to do during the holidays!

Before I had Winston, I never heard of the term “sleep training”. But now I feel that I know too much about it. Since Winston was rocked to sleep every day for the first 6 months of his life, I was told that I had to train him to fall asleep on his own naturally at some point, or else he will want to be held and rocked for a long time. As he’s now weighing over 20 pounds at just 6 months, can you imagine how heavy he will be when he’s 1 year old? Besides, babies that fall asleep on their own can easily go back to sleep on their own when they wake up in the middle of the night or in the middle of a nap. It’s true that the nanny had to hold him for a long time if he woke up in the middle of his nap, and it became quite tiring as he became more and more sensitive to his environment and would wake up the second he's put back into his crib.

A lot of parents have used the method “cry-it-out” to train their babies to fall asleep on their own. But I just did not feel that I could possibly stand listening to him crying for 30 minutes to an hour. Some friends told me that they literally thought that their babies would die, but after 45 minutes, they did fall asleep. The next night the crying was a lot shorter. And eventually they did fall asleep by themselves peacefully and happily. I admit that I am an especially protective mother, and the thought of having to endure his crying just made me shudder. So I procrastinated on the sleep training, until the night after he got his flu shots. He woke up every hour during the whole night, and I could not sleep at all. Of course, it might have been due to the pain related to the shots, but I realized then that I had to sleep train him.

I braced myself for an unbearable night. I hugged him after changing his diaper, and I held him in the rocking chair, reading him a story, while turning on the musical mobile. I put him down in the crib, and he stared at the musical mobile above him. After a couple of minutes, I turned the musical mobile’s light off and switched it to heartbeat, and left the room. He suddenly realized what’s going on and started crying. Previously, just a minute of crying at most would get him attention, so his cry was not so bad at the beginning. Then it got worse and worse, and I felt that my heart was going to break into pieces listening to him crying hysterically, intermittent with coughing. I almost could not listen to the cry and yet I would not want to be anywhere else but next to his door. So I kept looking at the clock, thinking that if he did not stop crying for another 10 minutes, I would go in and comfort him. His crying went up and down, and just when I thought that he was about to be finished, he resumed his agonizing crying, to the point that I really felt that I could not take it any longer. As I was about to open his door, he stopped crying, and my hand stopped turning the door knob at that moment. He moaned a little bit, and then I did not hear any more noise from him.

My first thought was, “oh I hope that he’s not dead.” Of course, he was not. When I went in a few minutes later to check on him, he was sound asleep. His chubby face always looks so peaceful and beautiful when he’s asleep.

Oddly, a famous line from FDR came to mind, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” I had feared sleep-training Winston for over 2 months, and when I could overcome my fear, I realized in the end that it was doable, even by a soft-hearted mother like myself. We can all overcome ourselves, if we dare to challenge ourselves.

New Year's Resolutions

Last time when I made a New Year’s resolution was perhaps in 2003 or 2004, and I can no longer remember what they were. Since it’s quite humiliating to make a long list only to realize just a couple of months later that I have not stuck to it at all, I have not bothered with another New Year’s resolution for quite a few years.

This year, however, I am thinking that perhaps I should try to come up with a list of New Year’s resolution again. Even if I fail to accomplish any of them, just the effort itself, however short-lived it might be, will be a good exercise in discipline. So what are my New Year’s Resolutions for 2010?

I was at McKinsey for just a year and it was quite a while ago, but its military-style training left an indelible mark on my thinking. Somehow, I can’t help but treat each question with an “issue-tree” analysis, complete with bullet points and dashes. So here they are – my New Year’s Resolutions:

Soft and fluffy ones:
• Be more patient and relaxed
• Be less anxious and perfectionist (isn’t this one essentially the same as the above?)
• Be more considerate, and yet at the same time -
• Be more firm and assertive

Concrete actionable items:
• Delegate more and wisely, when it comes to childcare and housework
• Practice more positive reinforcement
• Read a book every month
• Have lunch out 1-2 times a week
• Have dinner out at least once a month
• Take 2 leisure trips in 2010
• Embark on something exciting!

Somehow, as I am reviewing this list, I notice that many “concrete actionable items” are essentially things that I easily did before Winston’s birth. Now I need a New Year’s Resolution to make an attempt at them!

Of course, the most important task, which is implicit, is to raise Winston well. That will be top of the list for every year from now on.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Winston says Mama Baba!

Winston now says Mama and Baba when he's unhappy, which is whenever he is horizontally oriented.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Have I Complained Enough About This Rental House?


My answer to that question will be – it’s never enough.

The lease for this rental house is for a year in total, and now I have about 4 months to go. Maybe I will complain about this house until the day I move out, as was the case when I complained about my temporary fully furnished apartment in San Mateo, until the day I moved out. One would think that I should have learned my lesson the first time – i.e. for a place to live I should be very careful and extremely picky. But obviously all the lessons are saved for the next house, which I will buy as opposed to rent.

Talking about renting, our tenants in San Diego have caused us plenty of headache. They are surely incompetent when it comes to fixing anything, but I would think that incompetent people tend to be super careful as well, since they themselves cannot repair anything. But they are not. As a result, we have paid the handy man many times to go in to fix something, to the point that our agent finally asked for a cushion fund so that the handy man can get paid before the monthly rental check is due.

Our landlord here in Bay Area, on the other hand, would not fix anything unless he himself can check out if something is really broken. That sent me into a fury when both the washer and dryer were broken, and he insisted tossing a wet towel into the dryer for at least 30 minutes for a test. This house was built about 10 years ago, but apparently was made from cheap materials with poor design. It’s by a noisy street, which somehow I did not notice when I decided to rent this house. Poor Winston must have got woken up plenty of times when he was a newborn by the loud motorcycles in the day time. There are stairs to lead up even to the first floor, and as a result, it makes it very hard to load and unload groceries. The sound proof quality is especially poor, so that the nanny does not even dare to flush the toilet at night for fear of waking up Winston. There is no park nearby, and no downtown area accessible. The windows look either directly into the neighbors’ houses, or into the slanting slope that leads up to the street level. No wonder I don’t like to stay home if I can avoid it. While it’s got 4 bedrooms, somehow I always feel as if it’s much smaller than our 4-bedroom house in San Diego.

Out of wishful thinking, I have been looking online periodically to see where I would like to live, even though we still have another 4 months left in this rental house. Now that I have made two mistakes when it comes to housing in Bay Area, I am surely not going to make a third mistake. It has to be brand new or recently remodeled; it has to have somewhat of a view; it has to be in a warmer climate; it has to be close to either parks or downtown area; it has to have reasonable designs; what needs to be big (i.e. closets, size of toilets, dining room, bedrooms) should be big; what needs to be narrow (e.g. hallway, standing space in the bathroom, stairs) should be narrow; what needs to be strong (e.g. water pressure, showers, fires of the kitchen range) should be strong; it cannot be next to a busy street; and hopefully, it will bring a smile to my face when I get in every day, as was the case with my house in San Diego.

Is that wishful thinking here in Bay Area?

A Holiday Present

After I got home from work yesterday, I opened the mailbox and found a package. One look at the sender's information brought a smile to my face - I did not need to wonder at the content of the package. My long-awaited home-made sausages finally arrived, all the way from a friend in Boston!

She told me a while ago that she was making sausages from scratch based on the recipes from her mother. Now this is a friend whose diversity of skills and interests is on the same order of magnitude as my lack thereof. While she is an amateur photographer, as far as I can tell, she’s a better photographer than those who put up exhibitions in museums. She does pottery, and I have a beautiful vase that she made. She draws and paints and travels, and she’s a Ph.D. biologist with a full-time job. She might even have gained a couple more skills since I last saw her. By contrast, I can’t think of one thing I do that’s worth mentioning – does watching movies count as a real hobby?

I showed the sausages to the nanny, who’s from Chengdu and is a pretty good cook. She immediately recognized the sausages when I asked her to boil them, “where is your friend from? They look like the ones that we would make back home in Sichuan in the winter. In fact, right now is the time that my family would make sausages and cured pork.” I asked why they would not simply buy such things from the stores, and she wrinkled her nose, “well, I would never eat those things sold in the stores. You never know what kind of meat they used. Plus it takes just a little more effort to make something that tastes really good, so why not? You cannot find the same thing from the store anyways. If you buy some pork belly meat, I can make cured pork here for you.” When it comes to cooking, I am notorious for emphasizing the quantity and speed over quality. I would usually gladly accept worse-tasting food if it means just a little less effort.

The sausages were boiled and then sliced. True – you cannot buy such sausages from any stores. The meat was mixed with some red chili peppers and probably some other ingredients that I can’t name. In short, they tasted wonderful. If sausages from the stores or restaurants could taste like that, I would be eating sausages often myself. My only regret is that we finished them all too quickly, long before I remembered that I promised to share some with another mutual friend close by.

The next morning, I went to Ranch 99 to buy pork belly meat. Now I am eagerly awaiting the result of my nanny’s pork-curing effort.

Again, one more data point to show that people from the south are more resourceful, talented and industrious than people from the north!

The Obsession with Food


Growing up in Beijing, I don’t think I ever had an obsession with food. The reason was definitely not an over-abundance of the varieties, as my mom was not into cooking until I left home to attend college, and we hardly went to any restaurant. As a little kid, I did not like candies, cookies or cakes. My mom was raising me and my sister with her teacher’s salary, and I recall that we lived on mostly a vegetarian’s diet, not by choice, but rather by necessity. There were indeed a few indulgences in my childhood that I still remember vividly though. My mom took me to this little dingy restaurant that specialized in spicy noodles in Sichuan style (i.e. Dan Dan noodles) when I was at most 9 or 10 years old. It was so spicy but somehow I found it irresistible. Since then, I have been able to eat very spicy food. My first experience eating in a restaurant that served “western cuisine” was when my mom took me and my sister to the Tao Ran Ting Park one Sunday. We were really tired and hungry at the end of the day, and my mom decided to treat us to a meal at the “western cuisine” restaurant in the park. I was shocked at the price of a tiny bowl of chicken noodle soup, and I tried to eat it very slowly to savor the taste. Now that I have a son myself, I can imagine how my mom felt when she saw me eating the soup in such ecstasy.

It was not until I had to go to the military academy for a whole year of training after high-school that I had developed craving for food. Of course, I was not alone. The food there was so bland and so devoid of protein and fat that we all ended up gobbling down a ton of carbohydrate all the time, and still felt hungry immediately afterwards. As a result, all of us skinny girls in high school ballooned. I remember wanting to eat all the time. Looking back, the insatiable appetite perhaps was not only due to the poor diet but also due to boredom and frustration. I remember loving all the food with protein and fat.

Of course, once I returned to civilization at the end of the year, I lost all that weight immediately, as who wanted to eat so much carbohydrate when there was something else to eat? I found the food served in dining halls at Peking University “heavenly”, but somehow did not feel the urge to overeat at all. I was quite skinny again when I arrived in Boston as a transfer student at Harvard. As I was never a picky eater, I was quite amazed at the “all-you-can-eat” dining halls of Harvard dorms. Maybe human beings are naturally rather dim when it comes to deciding whether they should stop or keep eating, if there is always food in front of them. When so many varieties of food were laid out in huge quantities, somehow I ended up overeating again. I did not get as plump as I was in the military academy, but I surely got chubbier, partly due to the high calorie content of the American cuisine, and partly because I did always sample more varieties than necessary during meals. Or maybe it was the sense of anxiety and loneliness that I felt, as a foreign student in a totally foreign environment, struggling to understand what’s going on around her?

At both Peking University and Harvard, I heard others complaining about the dining hall food being really bad. Since I spent two years at each place during college, I actually found both places to be really great when it comes to food, both in accessibility and in taste. I terribly missed having access to such dining halls when I was in graduate school at MIT – an austere institution with austerity stamped on everything. I suddenly found myself having to “find” food, since I usually had no time to buy groceries and cook, and had no money to afford eating out at decent places. As a result, like other graduate students, I loved free food, not only because of the fact that it’s free, but also because it was right there, completely accessible, just like back in the college days at Harvard. This habit of loving free food would stay with me for years, as it does with most former graduate students. It’s a condition that we don’t shake off for a long time. Naturally, due to the scarcity of free food, and the fact that it takes extra energy to either cook or buy food, I lost not only the extra pounds gained at Harvard, but even some more. I was extremely skinny, and would remain so for many years.

Not until I became pregnant with Winston did I start gaining weight again, as well as a strong appetite after the first trimester was over. I did not have any real cravings, except that for a few weeks I ate a lot of bread and ice-cream. Clearly I ate more than before, and I gained almost 50 pounds during my pregnancy – i.e. an increase of over 50% in weight! I noticed that when I was having morning sickness during pregnancy, I only wanted to eat food that I ate when I was growing up (vegetables and grains) – as opposed to food that I came to like in my adulthood. Strange, isn’t it?

The other day, I rented the movie “Julie and Julia”, which has two parallel plots. The one on Julie Powell was kind of boring – it’s about a frustrated office worker writing a blog on her conquering all recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook in one year. The other is on how Julia Child became a famous cook and author, which was very entertaining, with the phenomenal Meryl Streep playing Julia Child pitch-perfect. It was a feel-good movie. I could not help thinking that while love is a theme that writers never tire of writing, food is a topic that movie-makers never tire of filming. There have been so many movies featuring food from different countries in the world – “Like Water for Chocolate” from Mexico, “Babette’s Feast” from Denmark, “Mostly Martha” from Germany, “Eat Drink Man Woman” from Taiwan, “Tampopo” from Japan, “The Scent of Green Papaya” from Vietnam, and of course many American movies such as “Big Night”, “Chocolat”, “Fried Green Tomatoes”, and of course now “Julie and Julia”. I am sure that there will be more to come in the future.

The obsession with food is like the fascination with love. Both will live on in the imaginations of writers, film makers and artists, as both reflect the fundamental needs of human beings. Even those of us who claim to have no obsession with food not only cannot live without food, but we all find the topic comforting and reassuring. On a dark rainy day or after a period of stress, what else can be more relaxing than watching Meryl Streep as Julia Child cooking a delicious-looking dish with such gusto in the kitchen? It makes me feel that life could be, just could be, as great as a feast – well, if not all the time, at least once in a while.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Does Everyone Have a Paranoia?

I have known this friend of mine since we were both just 18 years old. I recall distinctively the time when we became close friends. It was literally (as opposed to figuratively) overnight. As freshmen entering Peking University in 1989, we had to spend a whole year in military training at the “West Point” of China. We hated it with a passion, not least due to many ridiculous rules that only the military would institute. Our dorm building had to be guarded 24/7, and the two of us got the worst shift one night - 2-4 am. Since we could not sleep, and there were no enemies (or even pick-pockets) to fight, we ended up chatting. It was refreshing to meet someone who had a distinctively different mind from mine, and yet simultaneously extremely understandable from my perspective. Since then, we have been friends. It was right at the military academy that we said that we would go to San Francisco together after graduating from college. Of course, things did not go as we planned. Many things happened, but now, believe it or not, we both live in San Francisco Bay Area. In fact, our houses are 10 minutes apart by driving.

My first impression of her was that she was not like other girls, in that she was more relaxed, open and confident in a tomboyish way. Since I felt emotionally fragile as a teenager, I found her personality to be extremely compelling. Wouldn’t it be great to live with such confidence and not care about what others think, and still end up popular with lots of friends?

Years went by. She gave birth to a daughter 7 months before I gave birth to Winston. In the past few months, I have been talking to her ad nausea about my constant worry and fear related to Winston – even when he’s perfectly fine and happy, I will go on to a potential worry or fear. I told her and others that I really cannot imagine living on if anything bad happens to Winston. I do not delegate much when it comes to caring for Winston, and I fret over every little cry of his. I wish that I could be as relaxed and trusting as she is when it comes to having others take care of my child. But my paranoia makes it very hard, despite how hard she and others have tried to convince me to relax more. I simply find their words insufficient, since no one can guarantee that nothing bad will happen to little Winston.

Just today when we were chatting about stress in life, she said that she was terrified of losing her job, perhaps to the same degree as my fear regarding Winston’s welfare. She admitted that it’s really a kind of paranoia as well. Somehow, suddenly I understood her words to get me relaxed about Winston, because I understand my words to get her relaxed about her job, as well as the limit of their effects. I told her, “now I feel better.” She laughed and said, “well, everyone has a paranoia, so no one is better than others in that respect.” But I remained incredulous, “well, you and I have paranoia, but I don’t think many others do.” She said, “ that’s because you do not know others as well. Most people try very hard to hide their vulnerabilities and fears from others. You seem to be an exception to that rule though.”

So really, does everyone have an inexplicable or even debilitating paranoia?

Stereotypes of Northerners vs. Southerners

My nanny from Shenyang turned out to be a nightmare, after my mom went back to Beijing and therefore there was no one there to watch over her while I was at work. She was loud; she was lazy; she lied; she argued; and finally I realized that it was my mistake to have hired someone who could not get anyone to serve as a reference except for one woman who employed her for 2 months. Considering that she had been working as a nanny for a few years, it means that no one except for that person is willing to do it. Even that woman hardly praised her, and simply said that without trying out I would never know.

When I mentioned that I finally fired her and hired another nanny from Chengdu,, a rather irreverent friend said to me, “are you actually from China? Anyone Chinese would know not to hire anyone from the northern region of China. They simply cannot make good nannies.” By the way, both he and I are from Beijing. Another friend said, “well, at least the food from the southern region is much better.”

I brought up this topic with a friend from the southern region of China, and she observed that there was really some key difference between northerners and southerners. Having spent a lot of time with northerners herself, she said that her family’s observation was that she was now too direct or abrasive and not sweet enough. I was actually surprised to hear about it from her, since my impression is that she still IS very sweet and mild-tempered. I mentioned that while stereotypes are politically incorrect (in China, the stereotypical northerners are lazier, messier and have more of an attitude problem than the stereotypical southerners), if they are correct more than 50% of the time, we will save ourselves a ton of trouble by going by stereotypes. After all, I am not running an affirmative action shop at home! Sure, I might miss a good nanny from the north, but my chance of finding a good nanny from the south is still higher than from the north! And I only need one good nanny after all.

My friend answered by email, “Let me echo one thing on the attitude. In recent years, people around me keep telling me that my way of expression sometimes offends them. This includes my parents, my sister, my parents-in-law and sometimes my husband as well, all "southerners". Recently it dawned on me that some cultural gap does exist within the family. I've always been attracted to the culture and language of Beijing and Northern China. And I have grown closer to more friends from the north. Inevitably I pick up certain things.

For the past couple months, people invariably comment on how sweet and gentle my sister sounds. I've been amazed at first, because to me she's clearly a more assertive and self-assued person than I am. It took me several rounds of that to realize that there is indeed a way of "southern" talking and southern lady-likeness, which I lost along the way, with no regrets, of course. :) But now I try to keep this in mind when I talk to southerners so as not to cause trouble.”

Another friend from Beijing disagreed that it’s the regional difference. She said, “it’s all about how many challenges one has had to face in her life. I was all gentle and sweet before when I had no worries and no responsibilities. Now I am a lot tougher because life has trained me to be tough and direct. I think those who have maintained a sweet and gentle persona essentially have never encountered any hardships, excessive stress or challenges.”

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Because it is Thanksgiving Again

For the first few years after I came to the US, I was interested in learning about everything here, including the holidays, so I ate turkey and went to traditional Thanksgiving dinners. But gradually, I have come to detest Thanksgivng, as I wrote in my blog over a year ago about the Thanksgiving trip we took to Mexico to avoid having to spend it in the US, eating turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, which I would avoid even on non-holidays.

It is Thanksgiving again. This year, because my little boy Winston is not even 6 months old and the flu season makes me (an already obsessive mother)want to hide him in a germ-free environment for the entire winter, I did not go anywhere. I still did not have turkey though. Instead, I have the nanny from Sichuan cook a Chinese banquet and invited a friend’s family over. Meanwhile, I could not help lamenting about the American cuisine to a friend who lives in culinary heaven – Shanghai.

I wrote, “I can’t believe that the best meal of the year is turkey. It really says something about the American cuisine.”

He answered,

“Cuisine-wise, the USA has not outgrown its frontier outpost primitiveness, and will probably never do so.

Come to think of it, most Northern tier countries have bad food - UK, Germany, Sweden, Russia, etc. Deep thinking seems to go hand in hand with bad weather and bland food. People in warm weather and with good food are too busy being happy to have profound thinking...”

That observation intrigued me, and I thought more and replied:

“Regarding the correlation between cuisine and thinking, I agree with you. But how about the Chinese then? The Chinese cuisine (or cuisines to be more accurate) is very good, but the Chinese have produced a lot of philosophers too. Besides, how about the Greeks and the Romans then? They have produced a lot of thinkers too…

However, when I think more carefully, I realize that the Greek, Roman and Chinese thinkers/philosophers were all from two thousand years ago, whereas the German, English, Scandinavian and Russian thinkers were from the past few centuries. Perhaps that means most people were starving to death over 2000 years ago, and the condition for thinking deeply is to not think constantly about the next meal. That’s why where the climate was okay and the food was more abundant (at least relatively speaking) there were at least some intellectual people whose stomachs were full enough to think.

In the past few centuries, I suppose in most regions/countries, at least in the intelligentsia class, getting enough to eat was not an issue any more. Therefore, if the cuisines were too good and there were too many distractions, they would never bother to think, and they would be too happy to think, as you said. In cold climate where the food was bland, people had nothing else to do (no indoor swimming pools in Germany, no central heating in England, and no TV/movies in Scandinavia) so they ended up thinking.

That explains why the Greeks and Romans had Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, but the later Greeks and Italians stopped thinking altogether. Also, all the schools of thoughts in China (Confucius, Mencius, Daoism, etc) were all from over 2000 years ago, and after that, the Chinese culture gave away to romantic poets such as Li Bai writing about getting drunk all the time…”

I thought that I was quite clever! 

An "Intellectual" Email Discussion

These days, most of the time I do not talk about anything more profound than when to sleep train a baby, when to start a baby on solid food, and what to do if a baby is teething. But occasionally, I would have an email exchange or two on something more complex. For example, a while ago, the husband of a very good friend of mine, had an email discussion with me. He’s a well-known academic and also advises the governments of several developing countries including China, where he and I came from originally. The discussion was started by my reading an interview that he gave on India versus China. My stand was that perhaps economic growth ought to happen first before one pushes really hard for democracy, as forcing a political democracy on a destitute country without any experience with democracy might be premature. I figure - if people were starving to death, perhaps they would want to be fed first before fighting for individual freedom. Certain poor countries that went straight for a one-size-fits-all democracy (such as India) did not turn out better than countries that emphasized growth first and gradually transitioned to democracy after they became economically prosperous(such as South Korea and Taiwan).

He wrote:
“I definitely agree with the view that growth will lead to democracy. In that exchange I was reacting to the view that democracy is necessarily anti-growth, a view I disagree with. But—this is the nuance part of the argument—it is not necessarily true that democracy is automatically pro-growth either, just as the case that one-party system is not automatically pro-growth. If I have a Mckinsey one sentence, then it is, “It depends.”

On your point on starvation and individual freedom, the evidence does not support your view. There have been far more people starved to death in authoritarian countries than in democratic countries (think of Stalinist Russia and Maoist China and as many 1/3 of the population of Cambodia was eliminated. I would have thought freedom meant a lot to those Cambodians). Many people have the view you gave, which is “why should I care about freedom if I starve?” but this view is actually a result of a huge selection bias, which is that people only look at successful authoritarian countries without realizing that there are other authoritarian countries that have produced utter economic and human disasters.

Even the experience of China itself does not support the view that authoritarianism supports growth. China today is still authoritarian but far less authoritarian than Maoist period when Chinese economy performed badly (against its peers and its own potentials). As a scientist, you understand this argument well—the dynamics argument, which emphasizes the direction and the rate of change, would support the view that freedom and growth are positively correlated (with the important caveat that all else is equal).”

Very rarely do I get a chance to have such intellectual exchanges with such an intellectual professor, so I wrote back with quite some vigor:

“I now understand (perhaps just a little better) that when people seem to disagree, it's often because their starting points are different - sometimes we think we are talking about the same topic, but we might actually not.

if our discussion is simply around "is democracy better or authoritarian dictatorship?" as if we were talking about a brand new country about to be set up , there is no question that everything else being equal, of course democracy is the way to go.

if our discussion is simply around "is authoritarianism good for economic growth?", there is again no question that everything else being equal, of course it's a bad idea.

if our discussion is simply around "in general are growth and freedom positively correlated?", there is again no question that everything else being equal, yes of course it is.

my stand is that the current china is "better" than maoist china, MORE due to economic policy change (controlled economy transitioning to more of a capitalist market-based economy) than political policy change. you might argue that a capitalist economy comes with more "political" freedom anyways, and that one always comes with the other.

likewise, the current russia is better than the old soviet union for sure, but is in my opinion WORSE than what it COULD HAVE BEEN - i am not saying that they should have kept stalinist government. I am simply saying that if there could be an equivalent of a savvy leader like deng xiaoping (who's ruthless but nonetheless extremely shrewd) in russia pursuing economic reforms ahead of the political reforms and this democracy "with russian flavors" (i think russian flavors essentially mean drunken corruption and reckless behaviors - that's my very biased opinions of the russians in general from movies and novels!), perhaps the russians would be slightly better off RIGHT NOW.

therefore, my view is more around what could be the "optimal" way for a sick and poor country with long history of authoritarian dictatorship, no experience of true democracy, diverse fractions and regions and still large percentage of poor population to transition into a free and prosperous society. are we better off with political reforms/revolution first, or economic reforms/gradual evolution?

granted, if i were 20 years old, i would advocate for absoluteness - a "free" government, an "ideal" society, a "just" system. but i am 38 years old now, and it is more important to me (as well as all the living population) that whatever transition will be the least chaotic and painful and as comfortable as it could be - we only have a few decades to live after all.

Indeed my view might be similar to many "ignorant" chinese people, likely because we think from the perspectives of the following practical questions:

- what do we want most today, given that there is a long list of things we want? if there has to be a trade-off, what would we choose?
- would we want to have gone the way russians did?
- sure we would want more freedom and a less corrupt government, but are we willing to sacrifice peace and prosperity in our lifetime to fight for that?

we think much less if at all from the perspective of correlation and cause/effect, because that's too theoretical and academic to be applied to our daily lives. on the other hand, you are a notable academic and you have to do that at your level (or else you will be as dumb as the rest of us!). Therefore, it is no wonder that when our starting basis is different (i.e. a different context in which we start our discussions/debates), you will be misunderstood/misinterpreted, and you will also find the rest of us hopelessly ill-informed and uneducated. The rest of us silly people (in chinese would be "yu min") might find you "too elite and out-of-touch" - you probably recognize this accusation as frequently the American people's accusation of the Democratic party or any politician that talks in complete sentences.

To be a bit facetious (I do acknowledge that I am a bit facetious here), it's very likely that given the current population of china, if there were an american style election, they would elect a government much dumber and more extreme than george w. bush, who in turn would never assemble sophisticated and leading advisors/consultants like you to help with policy, as they would assemble a group of "joe-the-six-packs" whom they can understand easily.

By the way, I just found a quote from Confucius that explains the difference between us, and why we can never convince each other:

"The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort." - hence our different opinions, because we think of different things first and foremost! We the common people do think of comfort most of the time as the premise..."

Maybe I am a stereotype of what Winston Churchill referred to - "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Winston movies

Three new movies and an old one:







Thursday, November 12, 2009

I've Loved You So Long

For four and a half months after Winston’s birth, I did not go to the theater once or rent a movie once, although I had always loved movies. Last week, since I had a free afternoon, I decided to watch a movie in the theater. I heard that they made a movie about Amelia Earhart, and I have always loved biographical films. After checking out the show times the day before, I happily set out for the theater after lunch and after feeding and burping Winston.

I showed up at the Century Theaters in Tanforan Shopping Mall, which is close to both my office and rental house. Then I looked and looked, and could not find “Amelia” at all on the billboard. Finally, I asked the ticket agent, who told me that the last day for the movie was yesterday! Later when I told Michael about it, he laughed and said that the movie was so bad that they had to cancel the shows before the initial advertisements had finished their run.

Since I could not find any other movies worth watching in the theatre, I decided to go to Blockbuster. I recognized quite a few films that I was planning to see a few months before, so I picked “The Edge of Love” about Dylan Thomas and the two women in his life, starring Kiera Knightley and Sienna Miller, and “I’ve Loved you So Long”, a French movie starring the English actress Kristin Scott Thomas.

“The Edge of Love” is a complete disappointment, as it was utterly pointless. In a way, it was as if the filmmaker was given a homework assignment to make a movie, when he really did not have any ideas at all at the time. The only useful learning from this movie is that ALL poets in movies are selfish lunatics.

Then it took almost 3 nights for me to watch “I’ve Loved You So Long”, partly because it was a slow film, partly because I could only watch it after Winston went to sleep at night and I was usually very tired then as well. He’s such a sweet little angel that he already sleeps 10-11 hours straight through the night on most days, but occasionally he would wake up in the middle, sometimes due to a belly ache, sometimes due to a nightmare, and sometimes due to other inexplicable reasons. While he has been “sleeping like a baby”, I still wake up once or twice in the middle of the night, and I would tiptoe to his bedroom, and listen through the door.

After going through an hour of a typical French movie (i.e. nothing happens, people talk a lot, they smoke and drink and eat, and they talk some more existential nonsense), it was finally revealed why Juliette (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) was in prison for 15 years for murdering her 6-year old son, seemingly without any reasons. He had a terrible terminal disease that caused him excruciating pain, and his mother could not bear to see him suffer any more. When Juliette finally broke her silence and told her sister, I found myself bursting into tears while she was describing how she put her son finally to peace and held him the whole night after she injected him. She screamed, “I wanted to go to prison then. The worst prison is the death of one’s child - You can never get out of this prison. I was guilty because I gave birth to him and then condemned him to death with this disease. ” A movie that is perhaps otherwise mediocre did catch my attention at last because it caught the attention of a mother desperately in love with her son, as Juliette was equally madly in love with her son.

At that moment, my darling little boy Winston was still sound asleep in his crib. I thought to myself how I really have to treasure every moment of Winston’s laugh. To freshen up, I went to take a shower and wiped away all those tears for a fictitious little boy. When I got out of the shower, the very real boy Winston was awake already, with his eyes wide open, quietly lying in his crib. I looked into that sweet little face of his, and thought, “oh sweetie I’ve loved you so long and I will love you forever.” He smiled that angelic smile and his face looked even chubbier…

Friday, October 9, 2009

The Best

Since I returned to work, I have been going back home for lunch every day to feed Winston and also to check up on the nanny. As a result, I have not gone out for lunch for a long time. A business friend in shanghai will be visiting Bay Area later this month, and asked to have lunch together. He wrote, “Well, if you feel that your nanny has not passed due diligence and you don’t want to leave the baby behind, I will certainly understand. After all, given the parents, a Nobel prize or two could be at risk!”

I wrote back immediately, “ as long as he does not get sick, I can still make it to lunch. Besides, since his parents are not going to get anywhere close to a Nobel prize, I would not want him to harbor such ambitions!”

As funny as ever, my friend replied, “ well, Dad still has got a chance at physiology/medicine, as he worked for a Nobel laureate. Mom could become a nun, go to Africa and try for the prize in peace.”

Quite a few people have asked me what I would like Winston to do in the future, and I have always answered that I just want him to be healthy, happy and do something that he finds interesting while supporting himself. Frequently, that answer would meet incredulous looks. One of them flat out said that my son would be under a lot of pressure from his parents to achieve excellence in everything. As he tried to convince me to buy a house in South Palo Alto, he mentioned that the high school there is ranked among the top 100 in the nation. I said, “but it is too competitive and there will be too much pressure for the kid.” He laughed, “I bet your kid will probably raise the pressure level!”

At this moment, I am still fretting over his eczema (the nanny put too many layers of blanket on him again! Ugh…) and his stuffy nose (is it due to acid reflux or the fact that he kicked off all the blankets?) so it’s hard for me to imagine putting pressure on this chubby baby for him to be best at something.

Besides, he is already the best boy that I could have imagined…

Life is Beautiful... For Some?

This morning, I woke up to the surprising news of President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Prize in peace. My first reaction was, “the Clintons must be really pissed off.” After all, as Obama said correctly and objectively, he has NOT done much to be deserving of a Nobel prize in peace, if we believe that the prize recognizes significant accomplishment in bringing peace to humanity. - Unless we count the fact that his election has brought some peace to the minds of many frustrated die-hard Democrats who agonized for 8 years straight during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Obama has lived too charmed and too easy of a life so far, according to many people, especially those who belong to the baby boomers’ generation, such as the Clintons. Michael has always had a pet peeve on the stereotypes of generations. “The baby boomers got everything without having to earn it, “ argues Michael, “whereas we Generation Xers have got the reputation of selfishness. See, the baby boomers experienced the post-war prosperity, had a wild time in the 60s defying authority, and when it was their turn to be the older authorities, the political climate had changed decisively to the more conservative. They were at the peak of their game during the booming 1990s, and never had to experience a big setback in the critical years of their career paths.” To a large extent, I agree with Michael. Therefore, I feel rather indignant that many baby boomers would complain about how the younger people did not earn their places, when they perhaps more than earned theirs. Besides, it looks like that the most productive years of us Generation Xers are going to coincide with a long recession!

Clearly, that was how the Clintons felt with Obama emerging as a presidential candidate, and especially so after he eventually was elected. Here is a freshman senator who has not been around the block, but he thought that he could run the country better than more experienced people. He went to Ivy League schools, but did not seem to get looks of resentment from those who take pride in being “unintellectual”, as the Clintons did; he was inexperienced in national politics, but did not seem to meet as much criticism as the Clintons did when they first came to Washington; he never seemed to have had one bay day in his life, and yet people believe in his ability to deal with adversity and uncertainty with equanimity. Life is surely beautiful for him, and why does he have such a charmed life? With Bill Clinton globe-trotting for the past 8 years championing various causes in the world while Obama just started to learn about national politics, why didn’t Bill Clinton get the Nobel prize instead?

It is usually Hillary Clinton, of the two Clintons, that has given the impression of carrying chips on the shoulder. For a while, she was unhappy to be regarded mainly as Bill Clinton’s wife, and frequently reminded people that she was her own person and had her own opinions. She was understandably annoyed when she was asked what her husband would think of an issue, but her icy response that she could only speak on what she thought perhaps has reduced people’s confidence in her as opposed to enhance it. Bill Clinton, having been in the position of a “wonder boy” for years, has finally found himself in the honorable but nonetheless uncomfortable chair of “elderly statesman”, and is giving the impression that he really felt that he got the short end of the stick, by comparison to – Barack Obama. How can this young guy get everything so easily?

I have learned that we should never assume we know how easy or difficult others’ lives have been, unless we know them intimately. True – Obama did not have to fight in the trenches of a bloody war; he did not have to serve his many decades in the senate before winning the presidency; his family seems picture perfect; and his health seems to be in great condition. So life is just too beautiful for him, right? People say that because they ignore the following facts - that he was raised mostly by his mother and grandmother, that he met with racial prejudice as a black man; that his run for the US congress was an utter failure; and that there were probably heartaches and headaches in his life that felt just as painful to him as the ones we have encountered in our own lives.

The bottom line is that the Clintons’ lives were perhaps even more charmed than Barack Obama’s. But they felt that they deserve more than what they have, when they can’t have more or when others are not willing to give them more. Barack Obama, on the other hand, believes that he can do more and be more than what he is, and therefore he becomes more than what he is.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

The Happiest Time of One's Life

My mom has been telling me that she’s currently living the happiest years of her life. At first, I was incredulous – she’s almost 67 years old after all. “Well, think about it,” she told me, “I used to shoulder the burdens of taking care of you and your sister, as well as your grandparents who were getting old and sick, while working full-time as a teacher to support you both. I was spread so thin that I could not relax at all. Now, you and your sister are grown up. My own parents have passed away. I don’t have too much money but I have enough for myself, so of course I am having the time of my life.” When I asked her whether she was happier when she herself was a kid, she definitively said no, “ I never liked the idea of exams, and I really did not enjoy being a student, having to prepare for exams all the time. No, I was not that happy as a student. Now I do not have to take any exams!”

Then I had a chat with a friend on how our observations have led us to think that many people in our circle are a lot less happy than before, or just not very happy in general. Her comment was, “perhaps it is mid-life crisis, or having too many responsibilities for kids, parents, work, etc.” So my mom was right after all…

With my particular obsession with Winston, I am probably an outlier as opposed to a typical example of a working parent. This morning, when Winston woke up a lot earlier than usual, looking miserable and crying in pain (but I did not know what’s wrong with him at the time), I felt that my heart was going to break, and that I burst into tears myself as well. Maybe it is the acid reflux? Maybe it is the eczema? Or maybe he’s caught a cold since his nose sounds stuffy? After giving him his Zantac and his milk, he gradually quieted down, but looked rather subdued and totally not like his usual laughing self. I find myself thinking about him the whole time at work. The worry for one’s kid, I have been told, will never go away. So I can’t say that I am having the happiest time of my life, despite how completely I am in love with Winston. In fact, perhaps it is due to my excessive love for Winston that I have always reacted too strongly to any little discomfort of his. When he’s laughing, he looks like the happiest baby on earth. And seeing him laugh makes me believe that probably the happiest time of one’s life is infancy and childhood, although we remember nothing about our infancy and very little about our childhood.

Perhaps it is ironic that when we are truly happiest, we are not even aware of it. On the other hand, that gives me some sense of comfort that Winston will forget about all the pains and discomforts in his baby years as well. He will not have any memory of his baby years, good or bad. But I should do my best to provide that memory to him when he is older, so that he knows that he was so deliriously happy as a baby.

And if my mom is correct, Winston will know that he will become extremely happy again when he’s retired. It is when he has to care for his family while building a career that he might feel stress. But that is many years from now, so I do not have to worry about that, do I?

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Winston at 15 weeks

Winston loves laughing. He does it when being changed, being kissed on both cheeks, being bounced up and down, or clapping. Or maybe he is just laughing at his silly parents.



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Silly Baby, Sillier Mom

When I heard that Michael had set up a website for his newly established lab at Stanford, I went to take a look (http://linlab.stanford.edu/people/). Under “Future Lab Members” is a photo of a cute chubby baby boy – Winston Lin. Next to the photo Michael wrote, “Baby Winston was born on June 16, 2009. He has yet to receive a degree in anything, but is currently receiving training in sitting and eating. He may be contacted by email, but may take a few years to respond.”

People say that babies are silly, but mothers can be even sillier. I clicked on Winston’s gmail address, and wrote him an e-mail, “ my dearest darling little boy, mommy loves you the most.”

I can’t wait until I get a reply from him!

I Want Everyone to Love Winston

Before I had Winston, I would often yawn at people’s offer to show their babies’ photos. True – babies are in general very cute and funny, but do I have to look through that many photos? Almost 10 years ago, Michael and I were asked to take care of his colleague’s two kids for a weekend, aged two and four, respectively. They were super cute and well-behaved kids, but I still found myself breathing a sigh of relief when their parents finally came home. I remember distinctively not wanting to get anywhere close to the two-year old when Michael was changing her diaper.

Therefore, I must have come across as a completely different person now that I am obsessed with Winston. I notice myself paying attention to other babies I see in stores or on the street. I even think to myself, “oh his mother should have been more careful with his hands”, or “her mom should put a layer of blanket on her since she’s napping”, or “oh why is she crying so hard?” Any thought or knowledge of anything bad happening to any babies in this world could make me shudder. “Now you have finally understood,” wrote a friend who once told me how a kid would bring a lot of joy to my life while I wrinkled my nose – that was about 10 years ago.

Indeed I have finally come to understand why parents in general can be so annoying in pushing the pictures of their kids onto others. To some extent, it is as if Winston could feel happier if I can get more people to say how lovely he is. I know that it sounds completely silly and irrational.

That is why I cannot help but copying down here a friend’s e-mail response when I asked her to take a look at Winston’s photos and videos – yes, I am just another annoying parent, tirelessly trying to gather as many loving aunts and uncles for my darling sweet little Winston –

“After getting your email, I immediately went to Michael's picture website and your blog, to see baby Winston. Oh Sofie, he is so adorable! I am totally enchanted by him! It's hard to keep my eyes off him, he has such tender smiles and such innocent look in his eyes. It's so amazing that now he is totally communicative and has so many facial expressions.

Compared to the first photos you sent me right after his birth, Winston has grown so much. What 100 days can do to a new life! I giggled at Winston's grabbing of the Daffodils, and his wonder at the piano's sounds. I was also very moved by the essays on your blog, especially "Mommy's Baby," and "What every mom needs to have". I loved how you described Winston's movements -- words can indeed rescue what the camera has omitted. And I felt with you when you said you were crying uncontrollably when your mom left for Beijing. I would do exactly the same. In many occasions I had done the same, unwilling to let go of the most important intimacy in my life. You are a wonderful personal essay writer, Sofie! I think many people at our age, away from home, would find these essays expressive of our shared feelings.”

Perhaps it is a primal thing – I now feel that I almost cannot be friends with someone who does not find Winston adorable!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Following One's Own Advice

Most of us have noticed that we are often capable of offering sound advice and even wise suggestions to others, but incapable of following our own advice. That in itself is no revelation, as it is easier to identify a problem and offer suggestions without emotional involvement and without personal stake. Therefore, I wonder, why we do not simply consciously try to take our emotions out of a situation and pretend that we do not have any personal stake. Wouldn’t that lead to better decision-making for us all?

The truth is that we subconsciously believe that having a huge personal stake makes us better decision-makers, as we would then try to be most responsible. We strongly believe without even realizing it that we make the best decisions when we are most emotionally vested. So we keep ignoring others’ advice, because they do not care enough, or they do not know enough, etc.

In reality, I have come to realize that many of us make the best decisions when we are vested and involved, but not overwhelmingly responsible. Like many other things in life, if one can strike the perfect balance of just enough care, it will be ideal. That explains why big parenting mistakes often were made because the parents cared too much and did not allow the kids any room to grow, freedom to explore, or chance to fail. As a new mother, I have noticed that I care way too much about every little thing regarding Winston that I run the risk of overprotecting him. And I am perhaps not exactly an outlier in new mothers! The take-home message, I suppose, is for us new mothers to relax more, trust more and care less, as that might be ultimately what is best for the kids. In other words, I wish that the community should teach the new mothers to care less as opposed to point out everything that one should or should not do.

On the other hand, the bankers should be made to care more about the money they are playing with, as it is not their money after all. After Robert Rubin published his memoir, “In an Uncertain World”, I would frequently tell friends how I admire his life-long philosophy, “if an action carries a tiny probability of failure but I absolutely cannot afford this failure, then regardless of the potential upside and the high probability of success, I will not take this risk. If an action carries a significant degree of risk but I can afford the failure even if the worst happens and the potential upside is very big, then I will be willing to take the risk.” I thought that he was so wise.

But he did not follow his own advice when he directed CitiGroup down a path of recklessness. Did he care too little, or too much?

Do Not Overlearn Your Lessons

One day, I was chatting with a friend of mine who is a venture capitalist. I was talking about lessons I learned from starting this company, and how I have made mistakes that have turned out to have long-term consequences. He said, “Don’t overlearn your lessons. I don’t think you will ever run the risk of not learning your lessons, but I think you might end up overlearning them. Let’s face it. Most of my wins in this business happened when I invested right before the market run-up, and most of my losses happened when I invested as the market was going down. Therefore, these bigger market forces affect the outcome a lot more than you think they do, and are entirely out of your control.”

There are people who never take responsibility for anything that has gone wrong. They always point to a lot of reasons on why it is “not their fault”. Those people will never learn for sure, as they always think it is someone else’s fault, or it is just bad luck. On the other hand, there are people at the other end of the extreme, who always look at ways they could have done better. I belong to this latter category, as I believe that the right attitude to have and the right mentality to maintain is one of constant self-evaluation.

Hearing my friend’s advice on not overlearning my lessons has made me pause to think for a while. Is it possible that in my constant pursuit of self-improvement, I have actually NOT learned the one area that needs the most learning – i.e. gaining perspective and mature perception of the world and life as they are and will be – imperfect and problematic, with mistakes, germs, viruses, illnesses, accidents and even some tragic events, but nonetheless interesting and joyful. My laser-sharp focus on learning lessons from mistakes so that I do not make them again makes me a perfectionist, as my implicit goal is to not make mistakes in the future. That, of course, will not lead to an infallible person. Instead, it will result in a highly dissatisfied person, as he/she makes more mistakes as time goes by.

In fact, overlearning our lessons is learning the wrong lesson. For example, if I do not recognize that the macroeconomic environment affects the future of any startup companies, I will end up dwelling on some harmless mistakes of mine, thinking that I must not repeat those mistakes in the future. And that carries an implicit learning that as long as I do not repeat those mistakes, everything will be fine, which completely ignores the importance of the external environment. Of course, it is entirely possible that if I had not made those mistakes, the outcome would have been a little better. But thinking that things will turn out perfectly if I do everything perfectly is hugely naïve, and is absolutely the “wrong” lesson to learn.

There is a Chinese saying that says, “ it is easier to move a mountain than to change a person’s personality.” Therefore, perhaps I should not attempt to change my own personality as yet another self-improvement initiative. However, that does not imply that I ought to take a resigned attitude towards things that I can change. As my own personality tends to “overlearn” lessons, perhaps one area where I should “learn my lesson” is to not learn/think too much about learning lessons, and not to attribute any negative events or outcomes to mistakes, as many things are indeed out of our control. Instead, every time I make a mistake, I should simply stop at “not making this mistake again”, instead of beating myself up for making mistakes in general. Overlearning my lessons has perhaps prevented me from realizing that life can go on with a lot of mistakes. In fact, if one is so focused on not making mistakes in all the categories big and small, she is going to be spread so thin mentally and physically that she will end up making mistakes in the biggest category of all – to live and to let live.

What Every Mother Needs to Have

Today I was talking with a friend of mine on the phone. We had not been in touch for almost 3 years, since around the time she gave birth to her son. Obviously back then I did not know how to relate to people with babies, and she was busy with the newborn.

Her son will be three years old soon, and she said that it had been the best experience in her life. That is – even though her son was hospitalized twice for serious infections within a 2-month period around the age of 9 months, even though he woke up every 2-3 hours for a few months (until she adopted the “cry-it-out” method to train him to sleep), and even though her life “no longer had the flexibility that it once had before”.

She said that she had a revelation when she adopted the “cry-it-out” method – the baby cried like crazy and she really thought that he was going to die, but he did not. Then it occurred to her that she ought to have faith that things will turn out fine, and she should not worry about things for which she has no control. Knowing, and more importantly, accepting that there are things out of your control, can be a liberating thought, if you do not constantly anticipate doom-and-gloom. “you can’t prevent bad things from happening to your kid. But you can always give him love and care.”

She gave me another piece of advice, “ when you are in the middle of it, you probably do not realize the importance of remembering everything. But write down everything, take lots of photos, as you will forget. And the worst is to have no memory of what happened.” I thought to myself – indeed I would write about my baby a lot, but mostly in the form of emails to friends asking for advice or suggestions or just to express how I am worried. But do I write about his latest skills and favorite toys? How would I remember all these things in a few years? For example, I already regret not ever taking a photo of him showing hunger and getting ready to eat during his first two months – he would lift both arms to an almost horizontal position and bend them, with the fists almost meeting each other in front of his chest. He would start eating in that position, and as he got fuller, the arms would relax and drop naturally to his sides. Oh I never remembered to take a photo of that, and he is now too big to do that silly thing again…

So I am now taking up my “pen” (i.e. my keyboard) to write about him – yesterday, the nanny had put two layers of blankets on him for his naps despite the room being fairly warm, and his face flared up in eczema. After a whole night of sleeping in a heated room, it had got even worse. The nanny was all worried that he had developed some serious allergies, and being a worry wart myself, I also fret over his eczema even at work. I find it hard to look at his red face without feeling an ache in my stomach. His pretty plump face is now covered with red patches that are obviously very itchy so he kept scratching his face. Oh how I wish that I had known better to not have kept him too warm…

Again, I guess what I have always lacked and what every mother needs is faith – faith that babies will turn out fine, faith that despite mistakes I make and others make (which will happen on an ongoing basis for sure) my son will not be damaged, faith that while I will never stop worrying about him which is overall a negative sentiment, I will emerge a better, happier and more positive person, more mature, more understanding and more resilient. In short - faith that things will be just fine.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Winston at 14 weeks

Winston is 14 weeks old now. More videos!



Monday, September 28, 2009

Mommy's Baby

Since I left China to attend Harvard in 1992, I have been back and forth between the US and China many times. The first couple of times of saying good-bye to my mom were a bit difficult and emotional, but later on, she and I both got used to it. In addition, we would talk on the phone once a week, which is perhaps more often than some people whose parents live in the same country. In the past couple of years, as I have been working on this startup company bridging the US and China, I have been going back to China up to 4 or 5 times a year, so she said jokingly once that she got sick of seeing me so often.

Yesterday, my mom just left to return to Beijing, after staying with me in Bay Area for four months, helping to take care of me before I gave birth and helping to take care of the baby afterwards. I have not been exactly easy to live with, being an inexperienced and obsessed new mom. We had a few tearful arguments, although I cannot remember over what topic. I found myself crying uncontrollably when she was saying good-bye yesterday, and I could literally feel my heart breaking. The last few days before she left, she would periodically pause to look at Winston’s flashing photos in the digital photo album, and would mention that I should really get him a passport as soon as possible. An incredibly intense sadness swept over me as she waved goodbye to me, while I held Winston in my arms. He was very calm at the time, looking curiously around him, completely unaware of the emotional turmoil of his mother and his grandma. My mom has never been an emotional type, but she got teary-eyed as well, although she tried to stay cheerful for my sake, “Look at you. You are already 38 years old, and you are still crying like a baby. Even Winston is not crying.”

Indeed, why was I feeling so sad, I thought to myself. Perhaps it is because it is always hard to say good-bye to someone who has shared really difficult times with you for a while – it is as if suddenly you cannot imagine dealing with future challenges yourself. Perhaps it is because I know that my mom is getting old, and that I suddenly sense that mortality is a real thing. Perhaps it is because Winston will not recognize my mom next time he sees her, and will never know how much effort his grandmother has made taking care of him during his first three months. Perhaps it is because I have got used to having my mom around again, that I suddenly cannot imagine living in her absence again?

Maybe in a sense, while I am the mommy for my baby, I have myself remained my mommy’s baby. When Winston grows up, no matter how old he becomes, he, also will remain his mommy’s baby. We are all mommy’s babies, regardless of how old, mature, independent or successful we are.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

A Day in the Life of a 12-Week-Old Winston

Winston waking up:


Winston exercising:


Winston crying:


Winston being tickled:


Winston smiling:


Winston going to bed:

Thursday, September 24, 2009

The Illusive "Happiness"

The other day, a friend sent me an article in New York Times by the sharp-tongued Maureen Dowd “ Blue is the New Black” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20dowd.html?em). She talked about how women are getting more and more unhappy, even as they have more choices in life and achieve more. She quoted Arianna Huffington, “It doesn’t matter what their marital status is, how much money they make, whether or not they have children, their ethnic background, or the country they live in. Women around the world are in a funk.” To summarize, “We’re happy to have our newfound abundance of choices, even if those choices end up making us unhappier. A paradox indeed.”

I immediately forwarded this article to other friends of mine, and received quick responses.

“Happiness is reality divided by expectation. It is certainly true that the 'want it all' mentality of modern professional women has raised the expectation significantly, hence decreased the happiness level. It is true, on average, for an older man to get a young date, than vice versa, but I don't how much that helps happiness. The caveat is obvious - reality is partially a function of your drive/effort/life goal, which are functions of expectation. Otherwise, we should all be the obliviously blissful half-naked Hindu monks, begging and meditating…” – This message is from a male friend, to which a friend who knows me extremely well said, “hmm, that applies to you pretty well. You are less happy than those who don’t have much but have lower expectations, but on the other hand, had you not set up these high expectations, perhaps you would not have been able to accomplish much.”

And as if to respond to that, I got a response from another friend, who has had it all – Ivy League education, thriving corporate career, a family with two kids, stable income, great health, etc: “Maybe one of the solutions is not to be a perfectionist but an optimalist -- as Tal Ben-Shahar (Harvard Class of 96) has been preaching (http://www.talbenshahar.com/). Too bad he did not start teaching the 'Happiness' course at Harvard till 2006, many years after we were there. I just flipped through his book, The Pursuit of Perfect (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Pursuit-of-Perfect/Tal-Ben-Shahar/e/9780071608824). Many points are common sense, but using examples from his own experience and perspective has made it more authentic and more relevant than the usual self-help books.”

In the midst of this recession, quite a few talented professional women I know are having trouble finding jobs or jobs they like, even though they actually do not need to work for the sake of money. That, in itself should perhaps make one less nervous, but the fact that they are used to the idea of accomplishment, purpose and financial independence has made them feel even worse about not having a job right now. Professional women in general encounter greater obstacles at work, which I can certainly understand. One friend wrote back in frustration, “Yes, not only is a woman's life tougher than a man's, but women are easily blamed everywhere. In this society, a woman's weakness is obvious, but women's efforts and contributions are hardly visible and appreciated! Life is a ugly mess, and we need to keep some dreams for ourselves in order to survive.”

Another one wrote, “Nowadays women are taking on many more tasks, including parenting, career, hobbies...No wonder we feel more stressed out than men, since we tend to care about kids (and even the career) much more than men. Sometimes new Moms feel so torn apart between the baby and the job that they have emotional breakdowns. But please remember this is what every career woman goes through and like most other cases in life, the effort we make today will pay off in the future for sure! One obvious advantage we gain is the respect and financial power at home and in society, which in the old time women could not enjoy.”

Still another friend wrote, “too many choices, too many responsibilities.”

Of course, my very scientific husband is always seeking to understand better, as if it’s a biological or mathematical question, “Now that I know how difficult happiness is to achieve, I will try extra hard to make you happy! There is one thing about the article that is unexplained, though. If women with children are unhappier than those without, then why were women in the past happier than women now, when they had many more babies in the past? Is it because women now see children as interfering with their goals, when in the past having children was the goal? Is this true in Europe as well?”

The discussions on happiness will perhaps never end. When I mentioned to my new live-in nanny that a friend got into serious post-partum depression, she was confused, “What is depression? Why was she depressed?” In her mind, if one is healthy, can make a living and has family around her, she should be really happy. I explained that it was a mental disease, but I could tell that she still did not quite understand it. Last weekend, when I drove her to Ranch 99 to buy groceries (she has a great love of supermarkets where she would spend a long time picking out the best AND the cheapest stuff, while I impatiently wait for her to finish), I made a wrong turn and ended up driving across the long San Mateo Bridge. It was a beautiful and sunny day, and the view from the bridge was fabulous. She was happy as a bird, “Oh I love to see the ocean. Thanks so much for making the wrong turn. I have barely worked for you for two days, and you have already taken me to see the sea.”

Now that was perhaps real, authentic, undiluted happiness.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Pity the Hearts of All the Mothers

The fact that I have written nothing in my blog in the past three months does not mean that I have been that busy. But it does mean that my mind has been completely preoccupied, with my son. Now I understand viscerally how true that Chinese saying is – “Pity the Hearts of All the Parents”. Actually to be more accurate, it should be changed to “Pity the Hearts of All the Mothers”. No one except a mother can understand how it feels to love a baby and put his welfare above all. That, in itself, can become such a debilitating obsession.

After the first few days of euphoria following Winston’s birth, I have been worried over his various little problems here and there – first it’s the baby acne, and then eczema, and then his stuffy nose, and then finally he’s diagnosed with acid reflux, which has trigged a variety of symptoms, all of which are much more painful for me to watch than for him to experience. I found that I could not bear to see him crying so much, as I myself would burst into tears in that case. Sometimes he was in a good mood, but hearing his stuffy nose already broke my heart. My mother told me that I really had to stop fretting over him, as he’s just fine. Other friends have been telling me the same thing, but I stubbornly believed that they were not observant enough to notice all the discomforts that Winston has been experiencing. Sure enough, after his 2-month checkup, I found that he looked ill. He was having difficulty swallowing and he did not have an appetite. So of course we took him to the pediatrician, who said that he had an ear infection. I felt so guilty, as I never heard that a 2-month old baby could have ear infections. I kept searching for answers in books and on internet as to how to fix his stuffy nose, or whether or not there are a lot of babies who have the same thing, so that I won’t feel particularly bad about my mothering skills. It was so all-consuming that I felt no energy or desire to do anything else.

Right now, as I sit in my office, I am trying very hard not to worry over him, as the new nanny is taking care of him. But I keep wondering if the nanny will treat him the same way when my mom is no longer at home to watch over her. Will she be the same when no one is around to monitor her? When a friend tried to tell me that the worst will not happen, I argued that there are many things that the nanny might do or might not do that could do harm to him, although they are not necessarily the worst that can happen to him. Perhaps in my friend’s eyes, I am simply hopelessly obsessed.

Sometimes I wonder if my obsession with Winston will do him harm, as maybe a more relaxed me will be a better mom to him. Other times I wonder if I stop being so vigilant, perhaps I will let bad things happen, ignore symptoms of a disease, or allow a bad nanny to stay. Michael of course loves Winston very much, but he does not fret over him. While I have always understood that men and women are different, it’s only after having Winston that I have come to realize how different. Women become mothers when they have babies, whereas men remain the same as before. It does not mean that they do not love the baby, but the presence of the baby does not fundamentally transform them.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Baby Winston at 3 Months

Winston loves people, and he loves walking all over them too:


He certainly prefers that to crawling:


He also likes foot massages:

and washing his hands:

If you're looking for photos of Winston, click here.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Life and Death

Yesterday was a day of tragic news, as the world learned of the death of both Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett, the former completely a surprise, and the latter was expected for a while due to her battle with cancer. Michael Jackson was only 50 years old, and Farah Fawcett 62. Still, as I read the news, I could not help but think to myself, “life is so transient and vulnerable to so many things – illness, accidents, etc – that it’s a wonder anyone can live to old age.”

As I look at my newborn son, I have started to worry about everything and anything. Short of protecting him all the time, I feel that he might be hurt. He’s at the beginning of his life, and he really does have his whole life ahead of him. But what if I am not careful about protecting him against all the germs, viruses, evils and disasters of the world? And how could I possibly do that, short of quitting everything else in life?

Then I got an e-mail from a dear friend who has had three kids by now. She wrote, “There will be endless number of things to worry about, and it's very hard to pursue perfection. Essentially, you don't realize how messy and conflicted and beautiful a life is until now. Right now it's total immersion in the baby and you might feel some loss of your own identity, but soon it will actually expand and reinforce your idea of self.”

Death has always frightened me terribly. Now that I am holding my baby boy in my arms and feeling his life, I find it hard to believe that a life so vivid and irrepressible could ever expire. As my friend said, we don’t realize how complicated and yet how beautiful life is until we create a life ourselves. Yes, we all will die some day. But part of us will live on, through our babies, who will get old eventually as well. But for now, they look like that they possess a rather eternal vivacity. They look like that they will just keep growing, thriving and living on forever.

And that’s of course a mother’s wish for her son.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Maternal Love

It has been a week since I gave birth to my son Winston. Prior to that, I had always wondered what people meant by saying that "it's the most wonderful thing that could happen in your life". I literally could not imagine.

Now I do understand, although I lack the appropriate words to describe why. When I first held him in my arms after a very long labor, I marveled at how little he was, and also how dependent and helpless he was. While he did not exist in my life up until that moment, once he was in my arms, I felt that my life could not possibly be complete without him. Despite my wishes to raise him with discipline, I now understand why it is so easy for mothers to spoil their kids. Maternal love is supposedly the most selfless kind of love, and now I realize that in a way, while it is the purest kind of love, it is not necessarily selfless. - A baby is literally a vital part of a mother. Therefore, it is no wonder that she would do everything for her baby, including sacrificing herself if necessary. The genetic programming definitely works here, as a biologist friend commented when I told him my feelings about Winston.

Yes, indeed Winston is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life. I realize that I will probably be an overprotective mother, as I have already started worrying about everything about him.

I also understand how my own mother felt about me when I was born. Without Winston, I don't think I could claim to truly appreciate how my mother has loved me and my sister. Perhaps one can only understand maternal love when she is on the giving end, as opposed to merely the receiving end.

Friday, June 5, 2009

After Attending San Francisco Opera's Production of "Tosca"

When Michael and I were living in Boston, at least twice a year, we would take a weekend trip from Boston to New York to visit friends. We always had such a grand time, going sightseeing or visiting museums, eating out, playing cards until 2 or 3 am, as well as to squeeze in a show or two. Sometimes we would attend a concert at New York Philharmonic; sometimes we would watch a play, such as the obnoxious playwright Tom Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love”. One New Year’s eve, we had great south Indian food for lunch and saw “Proof” starring Mary Louise Parker in the afternoon. On another trip back from New York, Michael suggested dropping by unannounced to visit a friend living in Providence. We were so amused to see how surprised she was when she opened the door. That was back when we engaged often in such “spontaneous living”…. I am amazed that I still remember all these details of our New York trips!

We only started attending operas fairly regularly after we saw the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “Tosca” (the first opera we saw at the Met) – we sat so far from the stage that we needed binoculars to see the singers’ faces, only to realize that it’s best not to see them (hint – it takes great lung capacity to sing those arias, and generally skinny people do not have huge lung capacity). Since then, we have not seen any operas that rival the Met Opera’s magnificent productions, in Boston, San Diego or Los Angeles.

This past week, Michael and I attended San Francisco Opera’s performance of “Tosca” at the War Memorial Opera House. Maybe it’s because I was paying more attention, or maybe it’s because opera is considered a “higher” form of art than say, ballet, I had the impression that most of the people at the opera were not only quite old, but also very “distinguished-looking”. Of course, it is not surprising to see more old people at the operas – opera is not exactly as popular or “modern” as “American Idols”! People were dressed much more nicely at the opera than at ballets or other regular concerts – I felt really dowdy looking so heavily pregnant, and missed the days when I was as skinny as these other women wearing evening gowns. When the opera was over, quite a few limos were waiting outside to pick up old ladies gingerly walking in their high heels (yes, they were still wearing high heels).

Perhaps our tastes in music have got more selective – I remember being moved to tears by the arias sung by Mario towards the end of the opera at the Met, but this time, both Michael and I thought that overall “Tosca” was not even one of Puccini’s best. In addition, while we are not opera aficionados, we can still tell that the opera singers were not as good as the Met Opera ones. Don’t get me wrong – they still are very good, but their voices just did not grab me the way a truly great opera singer could.

Come to think of it, these traditional art forms such as opera and ballet are facing challenges from the new forms of art and entertainment every day, enhanced by technology and rendered easily accessible by internet. Michael pointed out how the seats at opera houses are so small and uncomfortable compared to the stadium seats in movie theaters. Well, I suppose that cannot be changed easily, and nor can opera houses afford to give people any more space without charging a real fortune. In a way, implicitly we are asked to put up with a lot of inconveniences to enjoy these traditional art forms – the price to pay for “acting” cultured. Being so much bigger and so much less mobile these days, I definitely find the seats a lot more uncomfortable than just a few weeks ago! I thought to myself , “I used to not even notice such things, but now I notice everything. I must be getting old!”

Leaving the War Memorial Opera House on this recent Tuesday night, I noticed how empty the streets were, with the exception of the limos and the taxis that waited outside to pick up passengers. I recall, somewhat nostalgically, that in Manhattan, when we got out of the Met Opera at close to midnight, the city was still bustling with energy, traffic, people and neon lights, even in the dead of the winter. Once we even went to get hot and spicy Korean food at close to mid-night, and it was downright fabulous and intoxicating.

Come to think of it, the Korean food (if reproduced) might not taste so amazing today, because by now we have had many exciting experiences that the bar for excitement has got higher and higher. Alternatively, it is possibly due to the fact that as we get older, we get more jaded. Back then, the ability to see a Met Opera followed by mid-night Bibimbap with freshly made kimchee could make us giddy beyond imagination. But it was mostly internal rather than external factors that have contributed to our fond memories. Back then, we were just so easily excited, amazed, surprised, and impressed, not to mention the fact that we were impoverished graduate students who had not seen the world yet.

Therefore, to be fair, perhaps the Met Opera was not really so much superior to the San Francisco Opera. The difference might be entirely in our minds. We remember the Met Opera as so much more lively, beautiful and memorable, perhaps because we see ourselves in those days through a certain filter, hopeful, energetic, innocent and beautifully young.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

The Bay Area Housing Market

Compared to a friend of mine who has kept an active blog full of pictures of places she visited in Europe (she’s currently working in England), my blog has consisted of nothing but rather boring and mundane activities, such as watching movies (I just watched “Angels and Demons”, which was downright silly but I enjoyed it nonetheless as it was like visiting Rome again), going to operas and ballets (I have already written about Tan Yuan Yuan twice and am about to see a San Francisco Opera production of “Tosca” tonight - big deal), going hiking (even my mom, who’s been here for just a little over 2 weeks, has been Crystal Springs Reservoir, San Andreas Lake, Golden Gate Park, and Portola Valley areas several times by now). I guess I can ask Michael to put up some photos he took in San Francisco Botanical Garden and the Rose Garden in Golden Gate Park, but they really are nothing compared to the magnificent palaces, ancient castles and quaint houses showcased on my friend’s blog (she had pictures of Bath, Oslo, Paris, and numerous cute little English towns such as Kenilworth, Conventry, etc) – too bad that she does not allow public access, or else I would have added a link here.

Just today I was talking to a friend about the Bay Area housing market. When I told him that for this year, I am paying $2,800 a month for a 4-bedroom, 2000-square-foot, 10-year old house in a not-so-attractive neighborhood, he said that it was fairly good deal. I have already battled with the landlord on various issues, as he does not want to spend money on professional services, indicating that he himself certainly does not feel well off enough. First I was really indignant, as I am a landlord myself, and have never interfered with my agent doing anything for my tenants in San Diego, even though my house in San Diego is in much better condition and a much better neighborhood. Then I realized that whatever I do for others has no bearing on how others will behave. Suffice to say that my experience in this rental house has not been exactly enjoyable, and I rather dislike the cold weather here – I would much prefer the sunny weather of Palo Alto and further south.

People say that the high property values justify themselves because you get what you pay for – in other words, by living in Bay Area, you get access to a lot of things that you cannot get elsewhere. In a way, in order to enjoy what the famed Bay Area has to offer, one has to seek them proactively – trying all kinds of restaurants, attending various cultural events, skiing at Lake Tahoe, wine-tasting in Napa or Sonoma Valley or Santa Cruz Mountains, hiking around the lakes and hills, etc, all of which cost money. And if one were to live in a less desirable neighborhood in a 50 to 100 year old un-renovated house in order to pay for all these things that Bay Area has to offer, well, that does not seem to be worth it really either, does it?

Therefore, no wonder multi-millionaires in Palo Alto feel rather poor! Michael and I have been discussing where we would like to buy a house in Bay Area within this year. He loves great scenery and terrific views, and can perhaps live in a smaller place, whereas I am used to really spacious house with many rooms, and therefore less insistent on the absolute beauty of the surrounding neighborhood. But both of us want to live in nicely designed and modern homes, with easy commutes. Despite the housing market slowdowns, it looks like that in order to get something that meets most of these criteria, it will cost at least $1.25 million. And it is not even in Palo Alto, the only place where the public schools are good enough for us to send our kid there. In other words, even after paying at least $1.25 million for a house, we will be paying private school tuitions, and NOT be taking advantage of the school district that presumably has contributed to the high property value.

Isn’t the Bay Area housing market ridiculous? Coming from Boston and San Diego, two places that are not exactly considered inexpensive in the United States, I find it shocking.

Then my friend in New York told me that she was about to rent a house that’s slightly bigger than ours for $5,600 a month! She and I both wondered – are we truly in a recession?