Thời tiết trở lạnh. Sáng thức dậy trời vẫn còn tối. Chợt ký ức ùa về. Ngày xưa đang ngủ ngon giấc thì mẹ nhè nhẹ đánh thức tôi dậy đưa mẹ đi làm. Lái xe mà ngáp lên ngáp xuống. Giờ đây ước gì vẫn còn được nghe tiếng của mẹ.

Thời gian trôi qua nhanh quá và tôi phải đối diện với sự thật là mẹ tôi không còn trên cõi tạm này nữa. Những gì còn lại chỉ là kỷ niệm. Và kỷ niệm chỉ tồn tại trong trí nhớ. Một khi mất đi trí nhớ thì không còn gì nữa.

Những ai còn cha mẹ hãy cố gắng dành thời gian với họ. Cuộc đời này không gì tồn tại mãi. Như trong mấy câu thơ của Diana Khôi Nguyễn:

When you love someone
more than you’ve ever known you could, it is
a good thing, except for the terrifying

realization that one day there comes
a parting.

From what I observed, a few customers couldn’t figure out the name of our HaH! Chili Sauce. HaH! (with an exclamation point) is a double entendre. First, “HaH!” is an expression and the exclamation point conveys the emotion someone feels after tasting our chili sauce. “HaH!” also stands for “Hot as Hell!”

To clarify our brand, I have been working on a series of parodies using music lyrics and titles. For instance, “Gotta Have Some HaH! Stuff” is based on Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” lyrics. “It’s Dark and HaH! Is Hot” is a riff on DMX’s phenomenal debut album. In my initial design, I used photos of celebrities for satirical purposes. I posted a few pieces on social media with the tag #parody. I was also in the process of creating a parody page on our site to explain that none of these celebrities had endorsed our product. Both Ms. Summer and Mr. X passed away long before we created our chili sauce; therefore, they obviously did not endorse our product. Nevertheless, a few people have pointed out that the celebrities or their estates may come after us.

I did a bit more research on “fair use” and parody. Even for satirical purposes, I am not protected when using celebrity photos, since HaH! Chili Sauce is considered a commercial entity. To be on the safe side, I redesigned the series, removing the photography and relying on typography to convey the parody. I spent a good chunk of time on Saturday working on the series. I stayed within the NaN Rage superfamily, designed by the NaN team: Hugues Gentile, Fanny Hamelin, Fadhl Haqq, Léon Hugues, Jean-Baptiste Morizot, Luke Prowse, Florian Runge, and Jolana Sýkorová. I ended up liking the new pieces more than the previous ones.

More to come later, but here’s what I have so far: hahchili.com/parody

Thứ năm vừa qua đưa gia đình đi ăn lẩu Thái Nah Mor. Dĩ nhiên, chấm với HaH! Chili sauce thì còn gì bằng?

Thú thật là ra ngoài ăn cũng ngán lắm. Không phải ngán thức ăn mà ngán tiền. Tuy nhiên vì con cái nên đành phải chịu. Ở nhà tụi nó chỉ ôm máy. Ra ngoài thì tụi nó không chịu đi đâu hết trừ đi ăn. Thôi thì vì tương lai con em chúng ta đành phải đi ăn.

I woke up early this morning to check out the ski swap. I wanted to see if I could get a hybrid snowboard bindings for Xuân.

I arrived at 9:00 am and the place was already packed. I looked around the bindings area and spotted a used pair of Flow for $10. It seemed to fit his size so I just copped it. I glanced over the boards and spotted a Bataleon Carver (158cm) for $175. The base had some scratches, but seemed almost new. The scratches could be the result of transporting instead of riding.

I had an eye on the Bataleon Carver for a while, but didn’t want to spend $550. For $175, why not? If I acquired the board, I might as well get the bindings. I came across the Arbor Hemlock for $60. It looked brand new.

I can’t wait to try this setup in the winter. I love Bataleon’s clean and simple design. I
hope its Triple Base Technology will help my carving skills.

The first time I read Diana Khôi Nguyễn’s Ghost of, I didn’t understand, but I found some of the blurry photos with a person sliced out to be disturbing. I came across these lines:

I sit at my desk, typing and deleting
words.
Twice I dreamed I fucked my brother.
I keep trying to wake up. I keep getting things wrong.
I’m ready to feel better.

The more I read, the more I realized she was writing about her brother who committed suicide:

The night before the monks came
to usher my brother out of the realm of the living,
we gathered on the same bed, sifting through photos
and stories of him.
At the funeral, his hand was warm where
my mother would not let go

She ends the collection with:

When you love someone
more than you’ve ever known you could, it is
a good thing, except for the terrifying

realization that one day there comes
a parting.

Those lines broke my heart. I am glad that I reread the collection three times.

What can I say? Well, I like the typographic treatment in Hoa Nguyễn’s A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure—even the cover. I am not sure if it was intentional, but the placement of some diacritical marks was wrong in “Tones in the Vietnamese Language”:

Ma-level: ghost

Má—high rising : mother

Mà—low falling : but

Ma. [Mạ]—low constricted: rice seedling

Mã—dipping rising : horse

Ma? [Mả]—low dipping: tomb

A few poems I understood, many I didn’t. I still support our Vietnamese-America poets.

I bought Bardstown’s Amrut over a year ago, but hadn’t a chance to uncork it. Since this bottle is limited and a bit pricy, I didn’t know if I should wait to enjoy with companions. Yesterday marked my fifteen years of service at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law, I decided to give myself a treat to celebrate the special occasion.

It was not a disappointment at all. Right on the nose, it had a nice caramel fragrance. At 110 proof, it was smooth, slightly sweet, and flavorful. The spices turned mint and lingered for a while. It’s selfish of me, but I am keeping this bottle for myself until I have guests coming over.

I forgot how much I bought it for at Costco in DC, but the price at Virginia ABC is $160. I am just going to take my time with this bottle. I am going to need it to keep me warm in the winter.

This morning, I invited my wife to join me at the Green Day Service Award ceremony to celebrate my fifteen years of service at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. My official anniversary won’t be until October 18, 2026. I won’t be writing about work on a Sunday; therefore, I want to take this moment to reflect on my journey with the law school.

When I started my position as a Web Services Developer on October 18, 2011, Đạo, our eldest son, was three years old, and my wife was still carrying Đán, our second child. It was not an ideal time to change jobs, but I couldn’t pass on the opportunity. In my new role, I had to catch up on the CMS development, which I had not worked on before, and learn about server administration, which was completely foreign to me.

Fortunately, my supervisor at the time was understanding and flexible. She trusted me to handle the website on my own, which put even more pressure on me. Learning on the job was terrifying because I could have screwed up the entire law school website at any moment, but I was glad that I did it. I took the site apart, redesigned the layout, and rewrote the markups from the ground up to make the pages responsive, usable, and accessible. On the backend, I learned to secure and speed up our servers. I picked up so much knowledge in my first year at the law school that I still use today.

With my back-end technical knowledge complementing my front-end development skills, I held a unique position in which I could bridge design and development. I could talk about typographic treatment as well as caching strategy. I could talk about color choices as well as accessibility. Although I was a Web Services Developer responsible for our main site, I expanded my services by offering graphic design solutions as well as individual websites for members of the law school community beyond the main law school website. As my responsibilities grew, I needed help. Once again, my supervisor supported my decision.

Over the past nine years, I have supervised web developers, designers, and specialists. Learning from my supervisor, I worked well with those I supervised. Aside from our daily tasks, I encouraged them to improve themselves in areas that matched their interests. Our current web content specialist cares deeply about web accessibility, and she has become our expert on any accessibility-related issues. I am grateful for her commitment to accessibility.

When my supervisor retired, my position was also shifted from the law library to the law school communications department. My new supervisor was completely different from my previous one. The website was redesigned. A new CMS was implemented. All the work was contracted out. Because of my broad knowledge of both design and development, I led the project to make sure we had everything we needed in the new CMS and that our new site would remain usable and accessible. It was challenging to ask others to do things I could have done myself, but I learned to let go. After all, my title is Director of Design & Web Services.

When I went back to school to get a master’s degree in graphic design, my goal was to become a director of design. After almost three years of late-night classes, I earned an MA in Graphic Design from George Mason University’s School of Art. I accomplished both of my goals from graduate school: I wrote a book on Vietnamese Typography for my final thesis, and I was promoted to Director of Design and Web Services.

Fifteen years at the same place is a long time for someone who works in the tech industry. I have had my ups and downs, but I have enjoyed waking up every day and taking the free Mason shuttle to work. I have enjoyed interacting with my wonderful colleagues. Many of them are still here—even longer than I have. That is a sign that Mason is a great place to work and thrive. I set goals for myself each year so that I can look forward to accomplishing them. It also makes the time go by quickly. Fifteen years have passed, and I am only halfway there. I still have fifteen more years to go.

After reading a thick novel, I retreated to poetry. I checked out a few Vietnamese-American poets and started with Susan Nguyễn’s Dear Diaspora. Reading poems for me is a hit or miss. In “Unending,” for instance she writes:

I am learning how to hold grief
in my mouth. Something alive

until it isn’t. Like a field is a field
until it isn’t, until it is just the color green.

Holding grief in your mouth sounds fascinating. While I didn’t get all of her poems, I found some quite beautiful. “If I Say My Body Is Grieving” is one of them:

after Athena Farrokhzad

Is it American or Vietnamese?

My mother said: Our country no longer exists

My father said: In our language, the same word means green and blue: xanh

My father said: To distinguish between the two,

you say xanh lá: green leaf, and xanh da trời: blue sky

My mother’s miscarriage-after-me said: What color was I?

My mother said: In our language, the same word means land and water: nước

My grandmother said: All of language is a metaphor Say what you mean

My father said: If I say I cannot live without nước, do I mean country?

My mother said: Vietnam’s body curves like the letter S: serpentine, fragile

My father said: The Mekong Delta translates to River of Nine Dragons because nine tributaries sprawl toward the sea

My mother’s miscarriage-after-me said: Was my salted mouth American or Vietnamese?

My mother said: Don’t translate me

My grandmother said: Don’t speak lest your tongue rush like a river

In the night, history absconds with us

We learn to open in darkness

My mother said: When you tell it, do I float on land and water?

My father said: Am I the green leaf the blue sky?

My American mouth cannot separate itself from my body

Dear Diaspora is a short collection. I reread three times.

Hôm trước nhận được một clip ngắn review HaH! chili sauce từ một anh chàng vừa đẹp trai vừa hài hước. Xin phép được đăng lại để chia sẻ cùng mọi người. Cảm ơn anh đã khen, và cảm ơn chị Vicky không những đã giới thiệu mà còn hào phóng tặng luôn một chai.

Mùa lễ cuối năm sắp đến, nhất là Thanksgiving, HaH! Chili Sauce là món quà “nhỏ mà có võ” rất lý tưởng cho những ai mê cay. Thú thật, ăn gà lôi mà không có HaH! thì nuốt không nổi. Năm ngoái, khi chúng tôi giới thiệu HaH! Chili Sauce lần đầu, có một cô người Nam Hàn đã ủng hộ liền 12 chai để tặng bạn bè và người thân trong dịp lễ mùa đông.

Nếu anh chị đang tìm một món quà nhỏ, lạ, và ngon cho mùa lễ này, hãy đặt hàng ở hahchili.com