Welcome brave reader. Not many make it out to the digital hinterlands of our blog these days. With all the cool kids on Facebook and Twitter, we think about just retiring the ol’ blog. But every now and then (like right about now), it’s good to have a place for long-form prose.
Gasp: you, mean actually read and write in paragraphs? Yup! Here goes: see how long you last in this desert, where words stretch as far as the eyes can see before you flee for the oasis of 140-character tweets or Facebook status updates (how long can those things be, anyway?). Be forewarned: you even have to scroll. 
The Big News
This year, we remember Frank’s dad who unexpectedly passed away on October 19, a few days after his 70th birthday. We learned the news from our county’s assistant coroner and a uniformed police office who rang our doorbell shortly after midnight on the 20th. Our lives changed forever that night.
We miss him daily. I keep expecting to see him puttering around the house when we drive down to visit (he was a world-class putterer). But like all first-generation immigrants, Dad was a forward-looking man, so we remember and honor his expectation that better days are ahead. Feel free to visit his online memorial to and leave a comment or memory. We thank all our dear friends and family who came out to support out through this difficult time.
Mom's favorite portrait of dad
Every day is Precious
Naturally, each day we have seems more precious to us in the aftermath of dad’s passing. So in that spirit, we’ll share the highlights of 2010.
Frank spent his first full year learning something new every day (and some days, every hour) at Andreessen Horowitz, a startup venture capital firm located in Menlo Park, CA. He started in August 2009 and is now settling into the rhythm and lingo (“cap table,” “convertible debt,” participating preferred,” “pro rata”) of a new job.
Frank’s day job is to run the research team. He jokingly explains that it’s his team’s job to “know everything.” So we spend time nearly all our time learning about companies, technology trends, and people. It’s fascinating (people come with the most innovative ideas), fun (in what other job outside of Zynga does playing Cityville count as work?), and fast-paced (at one point, we were investigating something like 6 companies at the same time).
When he’s not doing his day job, Frank helps keep the office running (yup, IT tech support for home, work, church, and the extended family!), does some marketing & design (see the company Web site, Ben’s (the Horowitz) blog, and Marc’s (the Andreessen’s) blog), and marvels at the firm’s growth. We started with 6 in August and are now up to 23 people (!).
Outside of work, Frank continues serving on the board of Fellowship Bible Church. He’s leading the board through a vision & planning process. It’s been a slow and steady process. While nonprofits—and especially churches—are not businesses, he thinks the church would benefit from some top-down planning to complement its bottoms-up ministries. The board is making steady progress, and we hope to be able to roll out the vision to the church membership early next year.
Fedora spent much of her year helping our beloved Fox Elementary School keep running after the twin shocks of California state budget cuts and San Mateo County’s losses from the Lehman bankruptcy. She’s there so often doing so many different things that the teachers & administrators describe her as an honorary staff member.
This is the first and last year we have all three kids in one school: Cameron in kindergarten, Katye in 2nd grade, and Colin in 5th grade. How is it possible that Colin graduates to middle school next year—with his very own locker, homeroom, and carefully calculated dash from classroom to classroom?
Cameron has settled into kindergarten well. He’s learning his reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. Along the way, he’s doing the typical kindergarten boy things such as wearing out his pants (nearly all pairs have holes at the knees now) and covering his hands in magic marker (it feels like he is competing for kind of “percentage coverage” prize). He loves reading, drawing, and playing video games. God help you if are locked in some kind of 1:1 combat with him on any Wii game: he’s merciless and some sort of strange twitchy muscle condition that makes him twice as fast as most normal humans.
He is going through a “fire breathing dragon” phase in his artwork. Enjoy a sample:
Katye continues to excel academically and socially. She’s our enthusiastic child: she loves to learn, to eat (“meat!”), to play, to do just about everything (well, except for maybe Chinese school on Saturday mornings).
She’s in a mixed 2nd and 3rd grade class, which is good for her. Reading-wise, she should be probably in a mixed 2nd and 7th grade class. :-) She’s cheerfully taking two kinds of dance (ballet and modern) from Miss Teri’s Heartbeat Dance Academy and a martial arts class from a place called Fearless Fitness (which the kids like to call “Fearful Fitness”). She reads nonstop: many mornings, we’ll find her still in her pajamas, nose stuck in a book, when it’s time to leave for school.
Her computer games of choice are Webkinz World, Petville, and Club Penguin. She’s also inherited Mommy’s social intelligence: we constantly ask her for names and social relationships for kids (and parents) we don’t recognize (“Katye, what is Sophia’s brother’s name and what grade is he in?”).
Here she is with a fun project she did at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa:
Colin is growing up fast. We dutifully provided the typical Chinese parent feedback on his last report card: “what can you do turn the A-’s into A’s or A+’s?”. He loves origami and drawing and computer games; he’s okay with piano and violin and sometimes his Fearless Fitness class; he dislikes Chinese school (like his parents before him) and performing in public.
He’s able to beat daddy in increasingly sophisticated computer games: this year, he’s soundly trounced daddy in all first-person shooter-style games (Halo, Team Fortress), and is surely working his way to complete dominance in real-time strategy games (Age of Empires, Supreme Commander 2) as well.
Colin also some measure of visual talent. Daddy has been hinting at a career in video game production, though he wonders whether even those jobs are safe from outsourcing in the next few years. Here’s Colin’s specimen from the Charles Schulz Museum:
Tilting Into 2011
We wish you and your family peace and joy this holiday season. This year, we are more mindful than we’ve ever been about how precious the moments we have with each other are.
As Christians, we think of it as Paul wrote in a letter to an early church in a tiny city called Colossae in modern day Turkey:
Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful…And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
But you don’t need to be Christian to share this yearning for yourself and the world. May you extract the most love and kindness and joy available from each moment in 2011.
