Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.  (Albert Einstein)

For you see, each day I love you more

Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.  (Rosemonde Gerard)

I’ve fallen in love many times … always with you.  (Author Unknown)

Without love, the rich and poor live in the same house.  (Author Unknown)

Sometimes we make love with our eyes.

Sometimes we make love with our hands.

Sometimes we make love with our bodies.

Always we make love with our hearts.

(Author Unknown)

When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony

(William Shakespeare)

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.  (Victor Hugo)

It never too late to fall in love.  (Sandy Wilson)

Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own home.

Give love to your children, to a wife or husband, to a next-door neighbor.

(Mother Teresa)

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.  (Robert Frost)

When there is love, there is life.  (Mahatma Gandhi)

Love is not finding someone to live with,

It’s finding someone you can’t live without.

(Rafael Ortiz)

When there is great love, there are always miracles.  (Willa Cather)

At the touch of Love every one becomes a poet.  (Plato)

The only thing we never get enough of is love;

And the only thing we never give enough of is love.  (Henry Miller)

Words by Larry Kusik and Eddie Snyder and Music by Nino Rota

A time for us, some day there’ll be
When chains are torn by courage born of a love that’s free
A time when dreams so long denied can flourish
As we unveil the love we now must hide

A time for us, at last to see
A life worthwhile for you and me

And with our love, through tears and thorns
We will endure as we pass surely through every storm
A time for us, some day there’ll be a new world
A world of shining hope for you and me

For you and me

And with our love, through tears and thorns
We will endure as we pass surely through every storm
A time for us, some day there’ll be a new world
A world of shining hope for you and me

A world of shining hope for you and me

Love Story Theme Song

Where do I begin
To tell the story
Of how great a love can be
The sweet love story
that is older than it seems
The simple truth about
the love he brings to me
Where do I start
Like the summer rain
That cools the pavement
With a patent leather shine
He came into my life
and made the living fine
And gave a meaning to
this empty world of mine
He fills my heart
He fills my heart
With very special things
With angel songs
With wild imaginings
He fills my soul
With so much love
And anywhere I go
I’m never lonely
With him along
Who could be lonely
I reach for his hand
It’s always there
How long does it last
Could love be measured by the
hours in the day
I have no answers now
But this much I can say
I’m going to need him
’til the stars all run away
And he’ll be there

By Shirley Bassey

Speak softly, love and hold me warm against your heart
I feel your words, the tender trembling moments start
Were in a world, our very own
Sharing a love that only few have ever known

Wine-colored days warmed by the sun
Deep velvet nights when we are one

Speak softly, love so no one hears us but the sky
The vows of love we make will live until we die
My life is yours and all becau-au-se
You came into my world with love so softly love

(instrumental interlude>

Wine-colored days warmed by the sun
Deep velvet nights when we are one

Speak softly, love so no one hears us but the sky
The vows of love we make will live until we die
My life is yours and all becau-au-se
You came into my world with love so softly love

Andy William’s lyrics

I planned to blog something else; however, instead of doing that I grabbed the smartest 401 k book that I had borrowed from the library yesterday with the intention to read it so I can easily fall into a nap.  After a few chapters I started to feel uneasy because the book made me fearful of my plan so I got up to retrieve my file and started to compare with what the book said.

Disheartening!

I post here some notes I took as I read the book.  See if you can pat yourself in the back because you are financial investment savvy or learn from mistakes as I do.

The Smartest 401k Book You’ll Ever Read by Daniel R. Solin (Financial Columnist for the Huffington /Post and International Bestselling Author of The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read)

On the flap of the book it says:

If you are one of the 70 million Americans counting on your 401(k) or 403(b) plan to usher you into a comfortable old age, you are likely to be bitterly disappointed.  Most of these plans are not designed for your benefit.  They reward employers, brokers, investment advisors, fund managers, insurance companies, unions, and lobbyists.  Employees are stuck with high-cost plans filled with undeperforming investment choices that make it extremely to reach their retirement goals.

Choose lower operating cost.

Do not go for active manage fund .

Invest in Index funds.

Ignore the hype in the financial media.

Market returns are superior returns.

Simply aim for market returns using index funds.

Don’t engage in stock picking or market timing.

Don’t try to pick “hot” mutual funds.

Do not confuse activities with progess.  Activity increases costs, which can reduce returns.

If you donn’t take risks, you will only earn saving account returns

Your portfolio should consist of a mix of different classes of stocks and bonds.

Standard deviation measures the risk of your portfolio.  Make sure your portfolio’s standard deviation isn’t too high for your tolerance for risks.

Diversifying your portfolio offers protection against risk.

Chapter 12:

Hold investments in a group of funds that, in turn, have investments in all the securities (stocks or bonds) in particular index.  Hold investments in funds that represent three broad indexes:

1.      An index fund representative of the U.S stock market in its broadest terms;

2.      An index fund representative of the international stock market in its broadest terms; and

3.      An index fund representative of the U.S. bond market it its broadest terms.

When constructing a portfolio, nothing is more important than your asset allocation.

I always sleep on my left side.  If I wake up at night and want to know the time I will lift up my head, just slightly to pass his shoulder and glance to the right.  There I will see the red glow of the digital alarm clock.  If I look straight, out of my bedroom window, above all the trees without leaves, very far up in the sky, I always see a lone star if the sky is clear.  Even when there is moon light I still can see it.  Bright.  Twinkle.  If I look at it for a long time, I may see it moving up and down or tilting side way and tilting back.  Sometimes I see two stars, but that is because my eyes are blurry by sleepiness or maybe I mistake with the light of a plane.  The same star but it has two names.  In the evening before I go to bed, it is “Hôm” or evening star.  When I wake up its name is “Mai” or morning star.  I forgot the name of the poet, but remember a verse “Buổi tối anh là sao Hôm, buổi sáng anh là sao Mai, và em mơ theo anh suốt sáng suốt chiều.”  Literally it means “In the evening, you are evening star, in the morning you are morning star and I am dreaming of you from morning to evening.”

This morning I did not see my star because it was cloudy.  My back yard had a thin layer of snow but my drive way was totally black.  I sat on the train, snow fell steadily.  The trees were white.  The tracks were black at certain locations such as the bottom of the rails or the gaps of the ties where snow could not get in yet.  The air was gray and misty.  But in the city, streets were wet and snow flew horizontally.  At lunch time I stared outside of my window, Manhattan was dark.  All the buildings were behind a dark grey curtain.  A whole day I was very tired.  I wanted to find a corner with a thick blanket and doze off.

When I got home, snow fell steadily and more heavily. It was wet, soft, and fluffy.  All the trees and bushes were white.  I snapped a few pictures as the light was waning.  There were about two inches of snow on my car.  As I cleaned it up I tested the winking lights.  My 106000-mile car is not very healthy.  If it is too cold or too hot the flash lights do not work.  They worked, tonight.

In Vietnam people have to go up to the mountain and only once in a while up in the mountain they see snow.  Some people will be very happy because it is a special occasion for them.  Local mountainous people will be miserable with the cold because they do not have warm clothes.  This year here we have a lot of snow.  It snows almost every week.  The snow last week still covered the ground.  There is so much shoveling and I am always afraid of falling and break an arm or a leg.

Everyone have different feeling toward snow.  Orhan Pamuk  in “Snow” saw snow as pure, innocent and poetic.  Khaled Hosseini in “The Kite Runner” talked of the muffle noise, and fluffy snow tapped into the window made him feel peaceful.  The snow in the Lord of the Rings of Tolkien always made people think of misery, war, and death.  Robert Creely heard the caw of a raven and the sound of snow falling out of the branches and his feeling about previous situation changed.  Another poet said the difference of the prose and poetry is the same as seeing a bird gradually covered by snow.  One minute it looked like a handful of snow.  The next minute the handful of snow flew up into the sky.  Some people are happy to see snow.  Others think of all the cleaning and shoveling await tomorrow morning.  Snow brings us all that is within it: beauty, danger, hard work, peace, etc.

 

Customarily, in celebration of lunar new year, Vietnam opens its Flower Market.  It is a display of various kinds of flowers from inexpensive kinds such as marigolds, vincas, or chrysanthemums to the rarer kinds such as orchilds, hydrangeas, dahlia, etc.  Vietnam is a tropical country.  The normal, seasonal flowers we have here are considered  rare, quite expensive, might be seen as exotic there.  Besides, Vietnamese with practical minds tend to grow more fruits than flowers.  The dragon fruits are quite exotic to us but increasingly common in Vietnam.  It was not popular in earlier years because it tastes very bland although looks pretty.  People would buy them to display in Tet.  I use the word customarily, but I tempted to use the word traditionally because as long as my earliest memory allows, the flower market has been there. 

When I was six my mother took me to the market with my niece who was 3-year younger.  She stopped by a stall, which was a tough plastic sheet spreaded on the street, where it sold cheap, molded plastic dolls with unmovable limbs that stuck together, to buy a doll for my niece. She assumed that I would be wise enough to stand behind her and waited for the transaction to complete.  I was never interested in playing with dolls because they looked weird and ugly; therefore, I walked on and on until I got lost.  I cried for a long time and a fat man who owned a stall that sold sugar cane juice asked me what had happened.  I told him I was lost and asked him to help me by getting a pedicab for me.  I told him my address and I said my sister would pay the fee.  The man laughed and said: “little girl, you just have to stand here by me and your mother will come and get you.”  I did not believe him so I asked, “How do you know that my mother will come and how can she know that I am here.”  The man said simply, “I know.”  Not too long, my mother called my name out loud and with much fear on her face she came my way.  The man laughed and told my mother about me asking him to get a pedicab to bring me home.  I grew up dislike dolls and secretly disliked my niece.  I blamed her for that incident and perhaps there was a jealousy that she got my mother’s attention to the point that my mother forgot my existence, temporarily. 

That was the flower market decades ago.  Although it is still called a market, it just displays flowers, emphasizes on artistic characteristics of the flower show.  All the selling and buying take place in different locations. 

I supposed to post these photos a week ago but was distracted with different things.  Vietnamese believe that people who are born the year of the ox (or water buffalo) will have such characteristics of an ox.  An ox often will work hard on hard works.  If an ox person is born early in the morning, when an ox has to work on the field, he will be very more industrious than an ox person born in evening, when an ox will go home and be fed.  In general, they believe an ox person is gentle, industrious, but can be stubborn.  In astrology, Vietnamese have two verses about the person born in the year of ox such as:

Tuổi sửu con trâu kềnh càng

Cày chưa hết buổi lại mang cày về

Literally translated:

Born the year of ox, an ox is huge and slow

has not finished plowing but already went home.

My generation is familiar with the song “Em Bé Quê” (or peasant child) with lyrics such as

Ai bảo chăn trâu là khổ

Chăn trâu sướng lắm chứ

Ngồi mình trâu phất ngọn cờ lau và miệng hát ngêu ngao

Vui thú không quên học đâu

Nằm đầu non gió mát

Cất tiếng theo tiếng lúa đang reo

Em đánh vần thật mau

Litterally:

Who says herding water buffalo is toiling work?

Herding is quite leisurable

Riding the ox, waving the reed flag and singing.

Having fun but do not forget to learn

We lie on the hill enjoy the breeze

sing to the sound of rice field

and learn spelling really fast

You probably wonder what is going on with the waving the reed flag?  Long ago, there was a young peasant who wanted to unify Vietnam.  Everyday while herding the buffalo he gathered his friends to practice fighting.  He claimed to be King and bundled the reeds to make his flags.  He grew up to become a great King who fulfilled his dream of united Vietnam and started the Dinh dynasty.  The song composer borrowed this history to imply herding water buffalo is like a playing king.

The song carries the philosophy of Taoism which praised the life frees from material desires.  If you have enough to eat and free from worrying that is happiness.  It is true, if we have enough and how much is enough?  The life of a young peasant is often not having enough to eat.  I think the song is deceiving, though unintentionally.

Perhaps, I am similar to a buffalo herder.  The buffalo represents my work, for example, company’s projects.  I have enough to eat and if I can eliminate worries and material desires I can go up the hill behind my house, lying and singing in the breeze and call that an ultimate happiness.  My worry at this moment is if I can keep my buffalo and for how long this buffalo can be kept in this kind of market weather.

I wake up and get ready for work.  At 5 am the sky is still dark.  Last night I heard that it was going to snow.  I look out from my bedroom window.  The roof of my garage is white.  Snow texture is smooth.  It snows and is snowing still.  I change my mind, decide to call in and take today off.  It is going to snow all day and I do not want to negotiate with any hassles from the streets and parking lot and commuting.  I can’t navigate my hilly and slippery street anyway.  Happily to be snowed in I will have some fun such as do some writing and update Xanga.  The ground is so bright while darkness still envelops the house.  You have to live in an area that has snow to see what I am talking about.  Snow on the ground in darkness seems to have light in itself.  It radiates and suffuses so subtly and makes the surrounding more mystic.

I have not updated Xanga frequently.  It is not that I do not have anything to say.  To the contrary I just have too many things to talk about and too many thoughts running in my head.  I can’t decide what I want to put down in the white sheet on the screen in the little amount of time I have.  And after awhile I start to wonder if they are worthy to take up my time and your time.

First, it was Tết.  I did not cook anything extraordinary.  My love bought a whole salted chicken from Chinese supermarket and asked me to cook some sweet rice with mungbean so called cơm nếp đậu xanh.  He cooked sweet mungbean dessert or chè đậu xanh in Vietnamese.  While I went to work, he stayed home to put food we had cooked on the altar; to serve food means to worship ancestors and to celebrate Tết.  I had wanted to post some Vietnamese music and poetry to celebrate the first day of the year but I got distracted by a DVD that I borrowed from the library: “Wild China” made by BBC.  It is a very good documentary and travel program.  If you have not seen it, I recommend it.  The DVD comes in a set of two disks, take about 6 hours to watch.  I have to watch the DVD part by part.  Each time, I stop watching with reluctance.  Even deep in my heart I resent the government that has invaded Vietnam territory, I still have to mavel the beauty, mystery, and extraordinary diversity of China.  You will see birds, monkeys, rivers, mountains, Great Wall, and many wondrous things.  Things such as 18000 kinds of flowers in China’s jungle and 3000 species are not anywhere in the world.  You will see fishermen dance and chant while sending birds to hunt fish for them.  You will see some moutainous people go to the market with mules and nice white dress and children go to school daily.  The remarkable thing is that they cross from mountain to mountain by hanging on a hook that hooks onto a cable and sliding across the mountains without a basket.  Sometimes they sit on a pig that was put in a bag to be sold at market and off they, human and pig, go sliding, the way you could believe that only Wonder Woman, Zorro, or Harrison Ford in those action movies could have gone.  In this DVD you can only see landscape and the wild nature.  I guess BBC has to do another set about architectures and culture of China.  I would love to see all the temples on all the steep mountains hanging to a cliff.

I got hooked on listening to novels.  After “The Abortionist’s Daughter” I borrowed from the library “The Life of Pi” and “Water for Elephants.”  Knowing “The Life of Pi” is an award winning book, but I did not expect that the book is so philosophical about religions and way of life, packed in thorough observation about animal life.  The book has about 100 chapters and I am up to chapter 54.  It seems I cannot stop listening.  It draws me in.  At this moment Pi is drifting on a life boat with a tiger.  The narrator voice at times pondering, sometimes witty, and sometimes is wisecrack funny.  

There are a few things I want to do.  Write a book review of The Abortionist’s Daughter for a publisher in Vietnam.  I already got the book.  It now sits squarely on my table.  I bought a book about Western Civilazation, I need to supply myself some knowledge that I lacked off.  I want to read a little bit about Hinduism and Khmer civilization to prepare for my travel in August.  I already finished two books about Andy Wyeth and I had wanted to write a short piece about this famous artist on the realism paintings.  Oh yeah, I promise Da Mau magazine to translate an article about the passing of John Updike, the great writer who just passed away yesterday.  I just remember that I promise another editor an write an analytical piece about the characters in another book. 

I just plan too many things and do not know if I can get through.  And I think I get a cold because I am sneezing and my eyes water and I have a headache.

HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!

 YEAR OF THE OX

CHÚC MỪNG NĂM MỚI – KỶ SỬU

The picture was taken when I visited Vietnam in 2005.  The group of people is a minority group whose name is Red Dzao, identified by the read turban they wear.  They live in Sapa, province Lao Cai, up North Vietnam near the border.