Aujourd’hui, j’ai passé du temps avec Rae, Anne, Céline, et ses familles à Mountain View et à Palo Alto. EIles se sont arrivées il y a quelques jours après avoir assisté au mariage de Jean-Laurent et Grace à Orange Country. Les enfants d’Anne et de Céline sont devenus temporairement mes neveux et ma nièce quand nous vitrinions à Stanford Shopping Mall.

C’était bien amusant de jouer avec les petits aujourd’hui, mais je ne sais pas si je puisse le faire encore jour par jour. Je pense que c’est parce-que je ne suis pas pret d’avoir les enfants. Un jour peut-être, mais pas en ce moment!

Demain et le lendemain, Anne, Céline et ses familles retourneront à la France. Amusez-vous bien avec les photos suivantes.

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I met Jean-Laurent through his sister, Hoàng-Mai, when I was living and studying in Paris. At the time, neither Anne, Jean-Laurent, nor their two other sisters, Céline or Nathalie, were married. The past seven years have seen some big changes in the Huynh family, with Jean-Lo now joining Céline and Hoàng-Mai in the marriage department.

It was about a year ago when I ran into Jean-Lo at the neighborhood Safeway. He was telling me he was on a grocery run before heading to the airport to pick up his girlfriend. Several months later, I received an email saying that he and Grace were engaged! Fast forward a few months later to August 24, 2002, and here I was at their wedding!

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Yesterday night, I went to the San Diego Padres game at Qualcomm Stadium. My Dad and I were accompanied by Colin, one of my parents’ friends. The game was exciting up to the fifth or sixth inning, when the lead bounced back and forth between the Braves and the Pads. Unfortunately, former Padre Gary Sheffield took charge with his two home runs and RBI double to push the Braves over the top. John Smoltz came out in the ninth to preserve the 6-3 win and got his 44 save of the season.

We had clubhouse tickets, which meant we had access to the more exclusive Charger Gold area. The restaurant served up yummy spicy hot dogs and hot sandwiches. The pasta and potato salad wasn’t that bad either. This isn’t the kind of food one should eat on a regular basis, but every once and awhile, it’s fine.

Next year (if there is a next year for baseball), the Padres will be better! Then the season after that, the new downtown stadium will open on April 2004. Keep the faith! Go Padres!

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Friday night featured the opening reception for the GOT ART? Showcasing Works by Emerging Asian Artists exhibition at the Chinese Culture Center. The CCC is a “major community-based, non-profit organization established in 1965 to foster the understanding and appreciation of Chinese and Chinese American art, history, and culture in the United States.” It is located on the third floor of the Holiday Inn in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The exhibit runs until Saturday, August 24. The center is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10am to 4pm.

Rae has two of her large charcoal drawings on display (see right), and I have three prints on exhibit (shown below). The first two images are also on display in Oakland’s Jack London Square at Water and Washington. That exhibit runs till the end of September, so if you aren’t able to make it to the CCC this week but would still like to see the prints, you’re covered.

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The sixth meeting of the Canon/Camera Owners of the Bay Area was a great success, thanks to the excellent presentation on studio lighting and flash techniques by Casey Cheung and Eliot Khuner. Casey and Eliot are professional photographers in the Bay Area, focusing on wedding, portrait, and event photography. On Wednesday night, they brought along their studio lighting setups, consisting of Dynalite power pack lights, Photogenic monoblock lights, Photoflex soft boxes, PocketWizards wireless transmitters, diffusers, umbrellas, optical slaves, lightstands, and much more.

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A number of Rae’s friends are from San Diego, and one of them is returning back to the hometown after several years in the Bay Area. On Friday night, we went to Suzanne’s place in Berkeley to wish her well on the eve of her departure. The last time that I was at Suzanne’s place was for Kai’s Bye Bye Party back in January.

Prior to heading up to Berkeley, Rae and I worked furiously getting our art pieces framed and ready for exhibit. We’re showing our work at the Chinese Cultural Center in San Francisco from August 16 to August 24 in the center’s GOT ART? exhibition. After several hours of cutting, matting, and framing, we delivered the pieces to the CCC just before they closed. Phew!

Afterwards, we hung out in Berkeley for a few hours, making sure to check out the Greek Theater at one end of campus. I’m thinking of using that location for an upcoming film project of mine.

Suzanne and Bart are both from the same San Diego suburb that I grew up in. I also found out that Bart and I went to the same elementary school! We were three years apart, but we did share some of the same teachers, including Mr. Fox! It was great fun to swap stories of the yummy tatertots, Mr. Kidd and Mr. Love, and more with him!

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FANTASTIC! THE ART OF COMICS AND ILLUSION is running until October 17, 2002, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at Mission and Third in San Francisco. On the first Tuesday of each month, appropriately known as Free Tuesday, the galleries at Yerba Buena and the SFMOMA are open free to the public. This month’s sponsor is Banana Republic. I’m thinking that this is all one elaborate trick to make us forget about the company’s supposed use of sweatshop labor in Southeast Asia, no?

Rae and I met in the lobby area at Yerba Buena at 3:15 pm. Earlier, she was hanging out with her friend Janet at Yes Yoko Ono exhibit at the SFMOMA. It was interesting to hear her retelling of how Yoko Ono first met John Lennon at the 1966 Indica Gallery show in London. Fortunately for the museum visitors, Ono’s screeching and screaming was not part of the exhibition.

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This afternoon, I was sitting in front of my computer, when the familiar smell of something burning wafted into the room. I turned around and saw the entire park outside of my house enveloped in smoke! I grabbed my camera, strapped on my cleats, and rode the bike down the street, using my nose to track down the point of origin.

It turns out a grassfire was running loose in an area just off of Highway 101 in Mountain View. A number of fire trucks and police cruisers were on the scene. Because of a lack of a nearby water main, the fire department kept radioing for trucks from Palo Alto and Los Altos to provide a steady supply of water. I noticed two photographers, one from the fire department, and the other from nearby Moffett Field (judging from his fatigues). It’s all about access. Like a good map, access can get you in and out of a lot of places. Don’t have access? Then you get to stand on the other side of the road!

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Crystal is leaving the Bay Area to work in Shanghai for the next few years. On Saturday, friends and family gathered at her home in Los Gatos to wish her well.

Crystal’s dad cooked up a seemingly neverending supply of scrumptious and delectable food for everyone at the party. From bbq chicken to spareribs to tri-tip to baked salmon to spicy pasta, the food kept on coming and coming! The only thing that temporarily stopped us from gobbling up all the food was a pack of equally ravenous and frenzied yellowjackets! Fortunately for us, Crystal’s sister Josie came up with a novel way to ward them off: Bounce fabric softener sheets! Apparently, wasps react to Bounce the same way that vampires cringe at the smell of garlic and the sight of a cross! Store that tip in your memory for your next BBQ!

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