All Things Yummy

My parents were here in the Bay Area - there’s bunch of pictures taken in San Francisco and Monterey.  The weather was gorgeous the entire weekend and I think they liked seeing the mountains, hills, and greens which can be hard to spot in Texas.

While they were here, my dad was showing me all the Korean websites - Korean equivalent of Yahoo, Facebook, and the like.  While clicking around, though, we stumbled upon a club for the 6th grade, 4th class of the Dong Sin Elementary School graduates of 1995… which I left halfway through to move to Canada.  Although the club was originally formed in 2001 and last post was made in 2005, I managed to get in touch with a friend (over the archaic device known as the phone, no less).  It’s a life left so long ago and it’s more than a little surprising to run into threads of connections like this.  And from my friend’s point of view, I wonder what thought went into her mind when her cellphone rang with an unknown international number just to hear a name dusted off from the deepest depths of her memory.

In any case, it truly is a small world.

Just got back from Vancouver where I participated in the Alcan Dragonboat Festival and caught up with bunch of friends.  Vancouver has changed so much in the last decade or so that I don’t even recognize the skyline anymore!  The Harbour centre, mainstay of must Vancouver postcards from my era, is completely obscured by the new soaring condos dotting the grounds around the Science World.  As I walked around, I was in a constant sense of deja-vu as familiar things were mixed in with new, unfamiliar buildings and structures.  In any case, it was good to go back and reconnect with some of my roots again.

Here are some pictures from the dragonboat festival, some from around Vancouver, and while we’re at it, some pictures of Santa Cruz All Sports Kickball session and Livermore Rodeo from a while back.

At the end of the day, openness is America’s greatest strength. Many people on both sides of the political aisle have ideas that they believe will keep America strong in this new world—fences, tariffs, subsidies, investments. But America has succeeded not because of the ingenuity of its government programs. It has thrived because it has kept itself open to the world—to goods and services, ideas and inventions, people and cultures.

The column by Dr. Zakaria fairly long but is well worth the read. I’ve met my fair share of people who seem ashamed of being an American and no longer realize “that America is freedom - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs protection” as President Reagan eloquently stated in his farewell address. Perhaps it’s one of those things that are easier to see once you get a chance to step out and look in as opposed to look out from within it… but I do sincerely hope that America returns to becoming the shining city upon a hill as Reagan saw it:

But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.