Family vs. Partnership

Today we had lunch with Michael’s colleague, who mentioned how nice it was to have her nuclear family back together for the holidays as her kids are now grown-up and living elsewhere.

Suddenly, I felt that I could picture the day when Winston is off to college, leaving an empty house behind. Well, the house is not empty, as Michael and I will still be here just like before Winston’s birth. But it will not feel the same as a family.

It was then and there that I realized the difference between a family and a partnership. Before kids, a family is not really a family – it’s more like a partnership. A kid completes a family. After a kid’s departure to college, the family kind of goes back to a partnership. When Winston grows up, one of these days, he will feel that his nuclear family is no longer his parents, but his own family, with his own kids, even though in my view (if I am still alive then), he remains the core part of my nuclear family.

My heart already aches a little bit from this thought...

Goodbye 2010

It is really the last day of 2010 now. I made an “end of year resolution” and how did I do?

No. 1 - I have written more blogs than 2009. Check.

No. 2 – I have filed the lawsuit, which was a cumbersome and annoying process. Ironic that this unpleasant matter could somehow give me a sense of accomplishment. Everyone who has heard my story about this real estate agency has been horrified to learn such people exist. I also filed a complaint with the San Diego Association of Realtors. So check this item as well.

No.3 – I have done fairly well, I think. I lost my temper once, but generally I have focused on things that do matter.

So my “End of the Year Resolutions” worked!

Now can I say a happy goodbye to 2010 then? What major events have happened in 2010?

1) My company was acquired in early 2010, with most people considering it a success, although it fell short of my expectation.
2) Winston turned 1 year old, with a great birthday party hosted by David. And he's looking healthy, happy and strong.
3) We moved into our nice and sunny house near Stanford.
4) I am starting a new company.

They all sound pretty good, but the following happened as well:
1) The nanny who started in November 2009 left all of a sudden in June, which led poor Winston to go through my parents-in-law, my mother, and another 3 nannies in a matter of 2 months.
2) I went through 2 months of househunting in the peninsula area, which was tiresome – that was before we got the Stanford house eventually.
3) My attempt to start a new company right after the first one did not take off immediately, and I was feeling down for a while.
4) The stress associated with two demanding careers and being new parents to a baby boy that seems too perfect to be true have led to a lot of arguments between me and Michael.

Overall, I have come to understand and appreciate what the writer/architect Lin Huiyin famously said, “Life is all about experiencing all kinds of things. We live to experience and feel."In that case, I feel content about 2010.

Right now, as I am writing a farewell note to the year 2010, Winston is fast asleep in his crib for his afternoon nap. He looks like an angel. He is an angel.

Different Perspectives

Since I did not go anywhere over the holidays, I have had some time to watch some movies, mostly on Neflix Instant. I especially liked the two foreign movies which incidentally provided two very different perspectives on World War II.

One is a Japanese movie “Kabei – Our Mother”, based on the memoir of Teruyo Nogami about how her mother raised her and her sister during the height of nationalistic frenzy in Japan when their scholar father was imprisoned for his radical antiwar position. While Japan was the aggressive country in World War II, this Japanese family was ultimately a family of victims as they did not believe in the war.

The other one is a German film “Nowhere in Africa”, based on the autobiographical novel of Stefanie Zweig about her and her Jewish parents escaping from Germany in 1938 to live in Africa for the next 9 years. Clearly, they were the lucky ones, as they did not go to concentration camp as their other relatives who stayed did. Nonetheless, it was also hard for them, being far away in a foreign land without any of the luxuries they were used to before andwithout knowing what would happen to their loved ones left behind. Surely they were victims of the war, although they stayed far away from the war.

All these different perspectives on essentially the same event – World War II – have made me realize that really there is never any justification for war, unless someone has declared war first to take away your happiness, freedom and life, in which case there is no choice. Unfortunately, this position does give the evil side an upper hand, as perhaps was the case with Adolf Hitler. However, had he been attacked first, he might have commanded even more fanatical support from the German people at that time.

I have always been a believer in education, in that more education and more enlightenment might lead people to see different perspectives and therefore prevent tragedies like World War II to happen. But that in itself is clearly not sufficient. When people are desperate, angry or fearful, they lose their reasoning power and look for emotional outlets. And those who were evil enough to prey on people’s negative emotions will almost always succeed, to varying degrees, despite how much history has taught us.

Now that is not a positive note to end the year, so stay tuned – I will need to write an upbeat one to finish 2010!

A Wet Christmas

I have always believed that Christmas should be associated with snow covered quaint little villages tucked away somewhere in the Alps. That’s what a real Christmas is like. Here in California, however, instead of a white Christmas, we usually have a green Christmas, as the hills turn green in the winter after the winter rains. In fact, as I am writing on Christmas day with Winston fast asleep in his crib listening to the raindrops, it is very wet and very green outside.

Earlier in the morning before the rain started, I took him to the nearby playground and Escondido Elementary School. He was so energetic that he walked all the way to the school and then ran around to almost every corner. His nose was still runny, and combined with the rosy cheeks and that crew haircut, he really looked like a country bumpkin boy!

A friend’s family came to Bay Area from Boston area, where we lived for 10 years before moving to California. They spent a few days in downtown San Francisco, and is staying for a couple of days in Palo Alto. Since the nanny is taking off a few days and I have not cooked for years, I was thrilled to find out that Buca di Beppo is open on Christmas Day. In fact, I had wanted to go to a Buca di Beppo in Bay Area since we moved to Bay Area from San Diego. The one in San Diego is always packed and lively and the food is great.

We met at Buca di Beppo in downtown Palo Alto at 11 am for lunch. It was of course Winston’s first time in Buca di Beppo and I think he was fascinated by those photos on the walls, of Maria Callas, Sophia Loren, Mario Cuomo, Marlon Brando, and of course many anonymous people from decades ago looking so cheerful and so Italian! We ordered a ton of food, including my favorite garlic bread. Winston ate his fettucine with such gusto that my friend could not help commenting on how much he ate. Afterwards, we came back to our house and they had some coffee. Their only daughter is already in highschool, and was looking really bored, after almost 2.5 hours of listening to things that she did not care about. Her phone also ran out of battery, so she wanted to go back to the hotel so that her phone could be charged. Indeed I could not help wondering how bored Winston must be if he has to tag along as a teenager to his parents’ gatherings.

We are such delinquent parents that we have not even bothered to set up a Christmas tree or do any decorating inside. But coming next year, when he’s old enough to understand what a holiday is, we won’t be able to escape this duty. And we will probably have to take him to more parties, as well as host more parties.

Winston's Last Cold (Hopefully) in 2010

After 3 parties over the weekend, Winston came down with his last cold in 2010 – hopefully! I was certainly getting too complacent, seeing him healthy for over a month. His nose is now running like river, and it gets congested when he’s sleeping that he would wake up crying. My poor little darling boy... Is he going to have a runny nose for Christmas?

In the end, he has caught on average one cold a month since September. I was secretly hoping to beat the odds, but alas it was not to be the case.

Now he’s sound asleep in his room. Looking at the screen of my computer (we call the infrared camera installed on his crib “WinstonCam”), I can’t help but smile a little bit at his pudgy cheeks. He’s so cute and adorable. Earlier in the day when we took him to Stanford Shopping Center, he was having so much fun playing in Pottery Barn Kids, which is understandable, and then Louis Vuitton, which is not. After I finished making a phone call on my cell, I noticed that he and the nanny were still in the Louis Vuitton store. I said to Winston, “alright, there is nothing here for you. Plus you cannot afford to buy anything here.” The nanny then answered on his behalf, “well, we would like to check it out just in case there is need to buy one for the future girlfriend or wife.”

I still cannot imagine Winston having a girlfriend with that runny nose and those protruding cheeks.

Career Women Trapped in Housewives' Roles

One of my friends from Harvard is now married with two boys. She has two jobs and works from home. In the morning she trades stocks, and in the afternoon she runs her own baby attire business (baberoo.com).

Needless to say, I find her capacity and capability downright amazing. I have a live-in nanny that works 6 days a week, and I work from home, albeit not full-time. And I feel that I am stretched to the limit!

Come to think of it, it is not that I am busy all the time. But it is the requirement for vigilance and patience with respect to a small kid that is emotionally and mentally draining. In her case, she has two little active boys who want attention. She said, “they drive me nuts if I am the only one at home with them when they are sick from school. I think I am really a career woman trapped in a housewife’s role!”

I can totally understand that sentiment. Usually those who have such sentiments feel guilty about having such sentiments. I recall reading about Lin Huiyin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Huiyin), the Chinese architect and writer. She lamented in one of her letters to a friend that so much time would pass in mundane housework and trivialities that she feared that her life would just become that of a mother and mistress of home. She would often get impatient with such tasks, but then regret her impatience when the kids fell sick. Back then, probably there was no such term as “career women”, but she surely was a “career woman trapped in a housewife’s role”.

I often think that the conservatives may be right that women who were raised to believe their subordinate roles in life are probably much happier. After all, it is much easier to be content if you don’t aspire to anything. A career woman who also wants a family with kids will inevitably lament about being a “career woman trapped in a housewife’s role”, and lament about having such ungrateful complaints.

The Next Big Thing

I wonder what most people will say if they are asked, “What do you think that will be the Next Big Thing?” Obviously, my professional endeavor implies that I agree with the sentiment of the recent New York Times article on Diane Von Furstenberg “Diane Von Furstenberg and China – A Perfect Fit?” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/fashion/19Diane.html)

“Ms. Von Furstenberg isn’t about to miss the Next Big Thing. She graced the cover of Newsweek in the 1970s. She was part of the Studio 54 crowd when disco was in style. And she sold dresses on QVC, the home shopping network, when retailing first migrated to live television. Now, her brand is migrating to the most populous place on earth.”

A few years ago on a business trip to Geneva, I stayed in a nice quiant hotel built entirely with wood. In the library of the hotel, I saw an autobiography of Diane Von Furstenberg, and ended up reading most of it when I was jetlagged. Prior to that, I had never heard of her, or any of the Miller sisters, or for that matter, most of these people who are not movie stars or singers but are celebrities of a more “exclusive” nature.

While I was reading that book, I remember thinking to myself, “so this is how the rich and famous aristocrats live”. For those who are familiar with contemporary Chinese history, it is hard not to notice the parallel between the Soong sisters and the Miller sisters. They all came from money and status. They were all educated abroad. Their marriages were all high-profile. I watched the movie “The Soong Sisters” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soong_Sisters_(film) - at Wellesley College when the director went there to promote the film, since Wellesley was Soon May-ling’s alma mater. I was much into melodramas, and therefore loved the tagline of the movie - “Revolution is a kind of love, and love is a kind of revolution.” Now that I am thinking about it, it really makes no sense! Somehow, at the time of watching the lives of the three sisters intertwined with the tubulent times of China, I found it “utterly profound”!

Of course I also remember the opening of the film, “Once upon a time in China, there were three sisters. One loved money, one loved power and one loved her country.” Again, anyone who knows a bit about chinese history would know that the one who loved money married H. H. Kung, who was one of the richest people in China. The one who loved power married Chiang Kai-shek and became Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. And the one who loved her country married Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who was a widow for most of her adult life. It is interesitng how these three sisters were eventually defined by their marriages, and of course one would expect that for women from that period.

Now, the Miller sisters were raised in privilege and married into more privileg. Pia married a Getty, Marie-Chantal married a Prince of Greece, and Alexandra married Alexandre Von Furstenberg, the son of Diane Von Furstenberg. While they are not well-known as the movie stars, the movie stars often wish that they could trade places with them, especially if these stars themselves came from trailer homes, never finished school and spoke no foreign languages and therefore were forever self-conscious about making faux-pas.

As China became more and more of a player on the global scene, I sometimes encounter thinly-veiled anti-China sentiment in the form of snobbery. It is a bit akin to how the “unsinkable Molly Brown” was viewed by her fellow first-class passengers on the Titanic. Nouveau riche is a condescending term describing those with newly made money but no class or taste. The Chinese may speak English, but with a Chinese accent that is decidedly not as classy as say a French accent. And no matter how much money they make, they still do not have class.

Well, in addition to the arrogant Anna Wintour who started visiting China, now the aristocratic multi-lingual Diane Von Furstenberg is knocking at the doors of China. Perhaps in the face of the Next Big Thing, no one can afford to care about class.

Now I write like a fanatically nationalistic Chinese! :) To be honest, I am not, but I am decidedly against snobbery. Those who resist the wave of the future (a term so unfortunately made infamous by Anne Lindbergh) certainly will be buried under the wave or pushed into oblivion.