Being a parent is a long time process. My daughter is ten years old now and it was quite different compare the years when she was very little. Especially after we moved to America from China five years ago. At that time, she was just a first-grade student and she didn’t speak any English. I did my best the teach her English beside the school did. The most important thing for me to do for her was to make feel comfortable and adapt to the living environment here. Luckily, It is not hard for a child to learn and get involved in various environments. Five years past, she is a 6th grader already. She has basically adapted to the living environment here and English is no longer a problem in her daily life.

Over the years, I have been always a nice and responsible dad to my daughter. I’ve done my best providing the opportunity for to good education at school, teach and request her to have the basic characteristics like integrity, empathy, honesty. Firstly, as parent, I must by example for her to learn. I also provide l lot of opportunity to develop her resilience and self-confidence, creativity and confidence by letting her involved a number of activities and she loves all of them. I also always talk with her sometimes exchange each other’s thought. I need to be aware of her mental state even it is already not that easy for a ten years old girl.

My daughter is doing pretty good right now. I can see that she is happy and enjoy her life. I also feel joyful to be the father as what I am performing.

One thing I’m good at and also I like to do is talking with people. Since I was young, I am a person who likes to talk to other people. I worked in the marketing department of a cable company after I graduate college with a marketing major. My job was to communicate with all kinds of people to promote the product and services that the company provides then get the contract done. I’ve been very successful and accomplished a lot in this job. In ordinary life, I like to talk with my friends and also different other people as well. I feel like I enjoy talking with different people, to express my own idea and exchange the opinion and I would learn from other people’s thought and experiences. The topics I like to talk are broad, life experience and perception, politics, religion, education, history, different culture between countries, etc. Having a good conversation with others will be joyful for me. I hope I can improve my English speaking skill fast so that I can free to talk with other people in America.

I think the most prized possession is my house. Actually, it belongs to me and my wife. We bought this house in 2014 when we just move to America from China.

After living for two months in a rental house, I decided to stay in Southern California, checked it out how does it work for purchasing a house in California. At that point, I didn’t know anything about it, so I did a lot of research online ask some friends around me even there were only a few people I knew at that time. I spent a lot of time on looking for all kinds of information about the cities in LA county and orange county, the price, school district, demography, etc, and I tried to use Zillow and Trulia these kinds of online real estate platform. I found dozens of homes on sale that me and my wife like, I contacted with a realtor from Zillow and told her about homes we would see. She brought us to see all of them for a month. We finally make a decision to buy one from over more than 30 homes that we had seen. After 45 days and went through all escrow process, we moved into the first house we purchased in America, and that was only four months after we land on this country. That was quite an experience in my life and the first day we live in our own house, the whole family was so exciting and delighted. This is the most prized possession I have ever owned by far.  

Alan Yan, he is one of the people that admire the most, he is also my best friend. I admire him because he is a talent wise and knowledgeable person with kindness personality.

He was a electronics engineer when he was young. He didn’t practice in this area for a long time, but still learning the knowledge by himself, try not to be too behind. He knows electronics stuff pretty well when people have something wrong with their electronics devices or small appliance, they always ask him to help and he can fix the problem all the time.

He is a knowledgeable person too, he likes to study not only electronics but also psychology and philosophy, even though he didn’t study these subjects in college. He has read hundreds of books about these. He is the only guy that I know who has complete read Sutra, Bible and Koran. He always shares the understanding that he has by reading these books. It was greatly benefited from talking with him and also lucky to have such a good friend like him to be with me in life.

Phuket Island, Thailand is my favorite place to be. Phuket is beautiful and famous
Island at the southern of Thailand and it is also the most popular and well-known vacation place for Asians, it is just 2 hours flight my the city where I lived in, Shen Zhen, China.
I had been there 5 times. Every time with my wife and some times we would go with our family and friend. We all had a very good time there. Most of the time we would choose the same and it is one of the most beautiful resort but different hotel along the beach from hundreds of others named Laguna beach resort. This resort was amazing, there are total seven well know hotel in the resort. We can take a shuttle bus travel to each one of them and we can also take the shuttle boat because there is a small man-made river connect to each hotel. We can go swimming in any pool in the hotel in the resort. The rooms in different hotels are very large and comfortable, and each hotel has its own unique style. We also love the breakfast buffet there because there are hundreds of items between Asian and Western than you can choose and it’s included in the hotel price. How joyful it is to have a delicious breakfast with nice garden or ocean view. We must go scuba diving every time and I’m sure to tell you that the beautiful view under the ocean in Phuket is one of the best in the world. In the evening, you can choose from hundreds of different restaurants and bars in downtown. Every time we felt that it would be to short to have just a week to stay there for vacation.

There were a lot of great memories in Phuket and it is too bad that I couldn’t go there because it is a thousand miles away from California. I miss Phuket so much and really wish to go there for another vacation soon.

Last Saturday, Me and my wife Annie and daughter Jenny and the other two families went to Pismo Beach for a short vacation. Pismo Beach is a well-known city as wineries and many beaches on the California central coast.

We spent five hours on the road because of the traffic instead of regular three and a half hours. It was already 2 pm when we get to the Monarch Butterfly grove and everyone were a little bit tired, but once we saw the beautiful beach with wonderful blue sky and the finest sand there even there are no butterflies in this season, the feeling of tiredness flew away immediately. The kids ran to the beach and start to play. The adults sat on chairs and mat, chatting with each other till the end of the beautiful sunset. We found a German restaurant for dinner. surprisingly, the wurst there was authentic and so delicious, also the German beer was as good as it supposes to be. After dinner, we back to the hotel room and played some games with the kids together. I brought a bottle of cognac and drank with my friends. we spent a relaxed evening. The next day, we went to the downtown of the city and then went to the beautiful Dinosaur Caves Park to play with kids till 4 pm. We started to drive back and went to the favorite Japanese restaurant “Akasaka” in hacienda heights together to enjoy their delicious and unbeatable sushi and scallop sashimi. Everyone was satisfied with the dinner then went back home a pleasant mood. It was really a nice weekend.

When people meet me for the first time, they might think I’m a quiet person, because I normally don’t talk too much with them. It might because of my English is not as well as much to let me speak freely or the subjects/topics I don’t like to be part with. Actually, I’m a pretty conversable person. I like to talk with people, especially the topic that I like, politics, technology, diversity culture all are the topics I like to talk about. I usually talk with my friend without a break when we have different opinions or the same idea. I would like to express my personal thought and also like to hear other opinions. I can review the idea when I state my opinions and learn some other opinions from a conversation with other people. I also like to talk after I drink. A delicious dinner with a few glasses of nice whiskey also with the right person, I will keep talking all the time without a break. So next time, bring a bottle of Scotch, let’s have a nice talk.

It was quite busy for the past weekend, I and my wife and my daughter ran all over the cities from LA County to Orange County and San Bernardino County. Saturday morning, I took my daughter Jenny to Placentia in Orange County for her piano class, one hour later after the piano class, we drove to Ontario for the recital of her dance studio. Speaking about her dance activity, she has been dancing for 2 years in this dance studio, I’ve seen her passion and talent in dancing and as a result, she has been selected to the competition team. The whole team is busy have all kind of dance competition around Southern California and they will go to Las Vegas for a national competition in the summer. So both my wife and I are doing our best to support her. The recital was ended till 3 o’clock, then we drove to walnut high school with her to attend the school district arts showcase concert, she was in the choir team and that was a great concert. It was a pretty busy Saturday but it’s so joyful for us to see our little girl participate in these art activities that she loves.

I remember when was little the elementary school and middle school, I liked to write. I was good in a composition class. I also like to read at that time, but since high school and college, I had not been the practice of writing. I had been immersed myself in playing video games, hang out around with friends and drink. I didn’t read too much either. Since I went to work, in the marketing profession, at least in China, I didn’t have too much opportunity to write. After many years, I feel I’m lack of all kinds of the skill of writing. Now I came to America, English became the primary language in my social life, and I need to speak and write in English, lack of knowledge in vocabulary and grammar, it became even more difficult for me to write. In this case, I have to go to college again to study including English writing skill, during the study by far, I fell the writing skill and ability is improving little by little, I really hope that I will have more improvement during the study to be a person can be capable to “write”.

The things inspire me are varies during the past forty years. I have been affected and educated also inspired by many philosophies from those great philosophers and thinkers, many theories and thoughts from Buddhism and Christian even I am not a religious person, and variety of experience including success and failure over the years I have been through. Also the experiences of being a father since ten years ago. All theses ideas, theories, and experiences has driven me to have a strong and diligent manner with a positive learning attitude to live with. In short, all kinds of sprites, thoughts, and experience inspire me all the way.