Yesterday (September 30th) marked the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. It was a day for all of us to listen, to learn, and to understand the truth of this country. There is no reconciliation without truths. 

I gave a short talk before our stand-up about my experience as an immigrant, a newcomer to this land, how important it is for me, and how humbled I have felt, to learn about the past of colonization and all the wrongs that have been done to the Indigenous people of this land – and the land herself. I wanted to use my voice, and my experience as an immigrant, to connect to my technical engineers who might not always be in front of these conversations. It felt important. 

Tuesday was a challenging day. There was a major org change and everyone is kinda freaking out a little (or a lot). So between taking care of the team’s mental health and stabilizing the business unit, it was pretty tough to take a breath. And we ran into a coworker (who happened to be indigenous). She had a beautiful beaded lanyard on. As I complimented her, she pulled out another from her purse and gave it to me. It was such a simple act of kindness, of pride (in her culture), and a connection that happens in an otherwise fucked up week. It feels… hopeful.

I went to the Starbucks across the street from the office, and there is a sister with a gorgeous afro, braided and cornrows, tied behind her face. She calls me “honey” and she always remembers my order. On her hand, there is a band with a trans flag. It’s subtle, but it’s beautiful. It made me smile. I see her. I see her seeing others in our community. Our trans brothers and sisters are at risk. Our community is under attack. We are not safe here. We are not safe in Canada. And I will (physically) fight every cis gays out there saying that the fight for progress in Canada is over. The gay bigots can go fuck themselves. 

My brother is doing standup comedy again. And he’s gaining some traction. I don’t want to jinx it quite yet, but I’m genuinely excited for him. He’s doing something he loves. His eyes light up when he talks about it. A random audience member saw him, and tried to reach out to his network of artists, and offered him a very minor role in a show. I mean, a random stranger with a random act. It might not go anywhere. But it is also a testament to hard work, to the hustle, to honing your talents, and to putting yourself out there. 

A co-worker reached out. She is from another business division and we only interacted twice, but she looked up my title and she wanted to ask my advice for her career growth. A bright young black woman navigating a traditional corporate environment. Of course, I’d help. It was a lovely conversation and even a lovelier connection. I hope she will find success. I hope she will have her champion and her sponsor and her mentors. So she can grow in a world that is very much still not seeing people like us at a leadership table.

I’ve been teaching 2 courses at a local college (Project Management in Software Development. Oh the irony) and the students have been calling me anything from Prof. Jason to Mr. Ho to Mr. Instructor (So anything between a hip-hop artist to a noodle brand). They asked me for advice (sometimes not even related to the course). They told me they liked my content (I guess they really wanted that A+). But it feels nice, to be helpful to young hopeful people. 

So the world continues to be a dark place. Our provincial government is still anti-science and corporate puppet. Our federal government is incompetent and is about to be taken over by Neo-Nazi. The world is … well… a shit show. But there will also be good people, with good acts of kindness. 

These little moments might just be enough for us to feel warm and fuzzy and loved, as we watch the comet slowly plummet to the earth. 

I will never take for granted the privilege that my Canadian passport grants me. It takes less than 3 minutes to clear customs (“Where did you go?” – “Why did you go there” – “OK, bye”). It wasn’t long enough to finish an Ariana Grande song. I’ve said many times, that I am still getting used to it. I told Kelly this morning “Without this passport, I’m just a brown Vietnamese guy that they love to “randomly select” to harass.”

The funny thing about time is that sometimes it doesn’t feel very linear. Kelly got a reminder on her phone yesterday about our meeting in Helsinki 9 years ago. We were reminiscing about Lyon last year, and Haiwaii 10 years ago. Flashback, 13 years ago, Jia En and I had a conversation about leaving Singapore and where we will end up. Apparently, years later, in Switzerland. 

“Do you think I’ve changed?” – Kelly asked, introspectively. Of course, she has. Of course, I did. For once, we did all get older. We are all more “set in our ways” (aka stubborn af). We value our comfort way more. We are also more certain about ourselves, about our lives, and about the choices that we continue to make.

“What do you think about Switzerland?” – Jia En asked. “Small and expensive” – I said – “and people are cold and distant”. To be honest, it’s like an overpriced Calgary. I mean if I was to be overlooked and ignored (or tokenized) by white people, I’d rather do it affordably from the comfort of home in Calgary. If I am to feel isolated and disrespected, I’d rather do it with the big blue sky and spacious backyard where I can grow flowers and vegetables. The Swiss milk and cheese are good, but I’m lactose intolerant, anyway. 

“I will never understand it. But I will always be happy for you and I will always be rooting for you” – I said. 

And I guess that’s the point, about connections, about friendships, about love. It’s never about understanding. It’s about acceptance. I will never understand why I fell in love with a conservative Christian French Canadian with a beard, but I do. I will never understand why he chose to stick with an anxious ball of hot mess like me, but I am grateful he still does. I will still forever have a hard time believing in “forever”, but I can now picture it. It has his face on it. His very beardy French Canadian face.

I don’t have many friends in my life. I don’t make meaningful connections easy. But I’m forever grateful to know I have connections all over the world that I can go to, and connect with, across time and distance. I am forever grateful for the connections I’ve made in my life, in Vietnam, in Singapore, in Philadelphia, in California, in Chicago, in Boston, in NYC, and in Canada.

So I am sitting in the Montreal airport, waiting for my connecting flight (in 6 hours, which is agonizing). Montreal is the Canada connection, for me. My 2 uncles were boat people and now they live here. Montreal was the first Canadian city I visited. It’s my port of entry. It’s my connecting place. But Calgary is home. It is flawed. It feels isolated and disconnected at times. But it’s home. 

“Mảnh đất giữ chân một người khi nơi đó chôn cất một người thân hay đang sống một người mà mình yêu thương”

 “When destiny calls you, you’ve gotta be strong. I may not be with you but you’ve gotta hold on” – it’s been a while since I listen to that song. I guess the perk of traveling on a road trip is the rediscovery of old things and new alike.

I guess it’s almost a tradition now that once a year I’ll leave my hubby at home and go frolicking with my international friends. Vancouver and Ottawa in 2021. Chicago and Boston in 2022. Now Geneva and Santorini in 2023. Some of his co-workers said to him “you’re so great to allow him to go by himself” (which I find ridiculous since we’re both grown ass adult men. We can go wherever we want. Marriage is a combination to 10x each person as an individual, complete person; not a co dependency between two halves like some sort of parasite). Anyways, I digress. I do truly appreciate how chill and how loving he is about letting me do whatever I want as long as we communicate with each other.

Traveling solo comes with its fun and foley, of course. Especially for an anxious flyer like me. I guess my whole life as a brown person holding a Vietnamese passport have gotten me used to expect the very worst of flying. I did have to try to get used to my Canadian passport and just go. What a change in experience. The privilege that a country and a piece of paper can bring you. 

We went on a road trip in Switzerland. In our twenty years of friendship, travels and road trips have been a hallmark of many laughter, many bickers, and many many amazing photos. It’s hard for friendship to come by in life, much less that one that transcends continents and decades. There are things and decisions we don’t quite understand from each other, but the love is there and the love is real

I couldn’t help but be grateful. I mean in my melancholy of my repeated fail attempts to get ahead, to grow in my personal pursuit, in my career, I often forgot how far I’ve come and how incredibly lucky I’ve been. The world has gotten smaller and closer for me. The friends have gotten fewer but closer as well.

And in this lonely planet we call home, I found my home. I found not a place, but a person, a being that is there for me when I need to return.

Home, then, is not a physical place. It’s a state of mind. It’s a state of being. Being next to you.

The person that I leave once a year to explore the world around me, and how much lonelier it would be without you, no matter how pretty it is.

I’m traveling solo, but I’m not traveling alone, for my friends are here with me around the world, and you are with me in my world.

Home is where we are.

As we were trying to explain to a coffee shop owner in Bern (a bit of a himbo) our friendship and where we met – 3 Asians from different South East Asia nations (Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam) who met in school in Singapore and now live in Canada, Geneva, and Zurich – I couldn’t help but think about the wonders of chance and how small our world really is. Sure there are many people around the world that have international friends in school. Sure there are people around the world who go on road trips together. But how many of them travel to see each other for special events, for weddings, for anniversaries, once a year or so. 

There was a heat wave while I was here (yesterday was the first day of rain in a week). Canada is burning. Hurricanes and floods hit California. The ice is receding. The ocean is rising. The green is burning and turning into ash. As politicians continue to bicker about tit for tat, as “world dictators” kill and fight for lands to satisfy their fragile ego, as the people continuously stick to a con man who is constantly indicted of crimes, the land is dying. We were having fun and being joyful, cautiously anxious about how many more years left we had of this living condition. “I want to see Venice before it sinks to the sea”. “there might not be a Jakarta tomorrow” 

I couldn’t help but wonder, as the book I’m reading on Indigenous culture has stated, Western world science and logic focus on human superiority and humans’ ability to “innovate”. But what if what we need right now is the belief in the spirit, belief in the harmony of the earth, the sky, and the water. What if what we need right now is not better, bigger, 10x, etc. but a livable world for all (8 billion) of us. 

What if the real marvel of life, the true miracle, is not about humans’ superiority, but about our ability to meet, to form friendships, to empathize, to connect, and to transcend borders and politics, and be together.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

This is a story about a girl, well, a woman, who has been a major part of my life. We have been friends for 2 decades now. Half of a lifetime. The funny thing is, we don’t spend a lot of time together in the same place, but I always think of her with admiration and with love.

So here to you, my bestie.

20 years ago, I was sitting across a giant dining hall table in our residence, bitching to my fellow freshman friend about their poor communication has led to us being in Singapore a whole week earlier, and the aspects of culture shock I was experiencing. There she was, listening in and joining in our conversation. She was a sporty gal back then, with pigtails and athleticism that wowed all the seniors (she proceeded to become team captain of multiple sports teams years following). We became fast friends. We became really good friends. I tutored her in Maths. She spent a lot of time in my room watching TV shows. I survive multiple generations of her boyfriends 😆

I went to Philadelphia. I came back to Vietnam. I went to Canada. We didn’t spend as much time as we were in a physical space anymore. But whenever I was back, we were back. We went to South Korea together. She came to Vietnam to visit. I met up with her every time in Singapore. We made a pact to try to see each other once a year in a different place.

10 years ago, we met in Hawaii. It was significant because we had not been together for a while. It was our 10-year anniversary (as we told the tour people). I came out to her, one of the very first people in my Singapore/Vietnam circle that I have done so. And she came to our wedding pre-pandemic. Well, she was my maid of honor and the witness signature on the marriage certificate. 

So this is a story, about a girl, 20 years on, that we still stick with each other. We bicker like an old married couple. I know I annoy her so. I love her and I can’t wait to see her in about 20 hours or so. 

Isn’t it magnificent, in a life as short as ours, to have someone who knows you, who loves you, and who trusts you, as you are?

Here to many more years of love. 

I know time is just a construct and calendars are just a convenient way for us humans to mark the milestones in our life. But the past 4 years have been … well … real. I mean life has not been perfect, but it has been kind. A pandemic, two job changes (for each of us), and a gazillion arguments over what to make for dinner later, we are still here. It’s been a tough journey, but it’s been lovely. It’s not been perfect, but it’s been very real. 

I saw an old couple holding hands, walking the path the other days, and I told you “Ewww, old people being in love, gross. I want to grow old and be gross with you”

Our promises still stand. You are my anchor, my rock, my mountains. I am still a ship, a restless wave, an ocean of hopes and dreams and ideals. 

Our difference is what brings us together. 

As I said during my wedding vow. “I’m not one to believe in Forever or Permanent things, but this I can promise you. I will not fuck this up”

Here’s to many four more years, and then Four-ever more years ahead of us

(and who cares if anyone ever reads or know those stories at all)

In Vietnamese proverbs, there is a saying “No mud, no lotus”, which means the challenges in life (the mud) give us the condition to rise above, shine, and be pure-hearted and beautiful, like a lotus. These days, with the literal forest fire and all, I don’t feel very “rise above” at all. It’s mostly just “barely surviving”. It’s more like flowers in a forest fire. They may be resilient. They may be surviving. But they don’t fucking like it.

I won’t talk about the election, and the general anxiety that the country that I have chosen to move to and become a citizen of, has started on a path of slow decline into extreme-right-wing-Christo-fascist. I won’t talk about my work, which generally feels “safe”, and “comfortable”, but it’s slowly getting back to this “Alberta large corporations that move conservatively and as slow as possible with my processes as possible”, and yeah, with all the work and accomplishments I put in last year, my year-end assessment was “meh” from senior leadership. I won’t talk about my personal life, which is generally safe and comfortable, but I don’t have friends, and any efforts of making new friends naturally ended up in rescheduling, people have better plans, and/or people have more fun friends. I won’t talk about all the (white) fabulous people on social media celebrating Pride month and touting how much they care about the community who will ignore racial minorities and continue voting for anti-trans and racist politicians, because, you know, tax cuts. I won’t talk about the state of the world, which is literally on fire at the moment, and it seems like anything meaningful is reserved for the rich and the powerful.

And so I just ended up not talking. Well, maybe to my therapist. But a brown gay man pays a black woman to complain to her about his burdens. 

Well, let’s not talk about that.

So I don’t know what else meaningful we can talk about. Because there’s no meaning in anything anymore it seems.

Just a bunch of flowers, resilient, stoic, quietly burning in the fire of life.

(Trigger warning: Political views)

(Originally written May 2019 – Repost since the feelings are the same in May 2023)

I heard recently from an Albertan

 that they voted for the UCP

 (a government I believe to be racist, homophobic, 

 anti-choice and uncompassionate)

 because they have suffered, 

 because of their economic anxieties

 justify their choices to do it

I hope you get your wishes

I pray your pipelines get built

 out to sea waters,

 stretched as far out as the open Alberta sky.

 I pray your oil barrels get out to sea

 to foreign lands and to open markets

 spread limitless

 as the mountains and the prairie and the meadows 

At least you get your wish

 At least, hopefully, your economic anxieties, will be addressed

I hope all the corporate tax cuts trickled down to you 

 overflow your tables once again, heating up your home 

 (while the homeless trans youth trembles on the street) 

 I hope all the investment in the war room 

 makes you warm and happy and defended 

 (while offending the rest of the world)

 I hope the oil-sand get bought, and the pipeline get built

 (on the land of the First Nations they now deny to acknowledge)

 I hope your children can go to a good school

 and your health is taken care of

 (by the people that we think don’t deserve a living wage)

 I hope whenever you and the people you know are ready for children

 (you will never have to be afraid of not being ready

 and having to ever make the choice

 and be judged for it)

I hope you still feel like home

 I hope you still always feel safe

 I hope your economic anxiety is soothed

 (At least, for a few in all of us

 you can still feel like home, you can still feel safe)

This is not my home.

 And that’s ok. 

But if it’s yours

 At least I pray you have your wish

 So at least all our sufferings would have been worth it.

(I used to believe if I can be Canadian, at least I can vote

 Yet, I’ve never felt more helpless

 Because, here, the vote of people like me never mattered)

Because your economic anxiety trumps all of us.

I don’t know if there are any more lonely questions than “What is the point of this anymore?” 

The past feel weeks have been…weird. We hit some major roadblocks with immigration for my brother (I called racist officers). Three of my friends/acquaintances (from completely different groups) are going through a divorce. Work has been a rollercoaster. The provincial election is hopeless. The country is facing a choice between incompetence and fascism. The forest is on fire and the heat waves start in May.

I guess the pandemic is really over over. People have traded in their kindness for routine discrimination. People insist everyone gets back to the office. People trade in their walks and their quiet with the noise.

Even joyful things like gardening feel like a chore. Even relaxing computer games are not relaxing me anymore. I wanted to talk to someone, but quite frankly there is no one to talk to.

I’m tired. It feels like a pandemic hangover. It feels like this sense of hopelessness. No, worse, this sense of aimlessness. I’m not even restless anymore. 

I am at the point of quitting trying. And quite frankly I don’t know what is worse. 

The thought of a quiet beach town, a place at the end of the earth, where no one is there, and this aimless loneliness actually makes some form of sense, suddenly becomes so appealing. And I don’t know if it’s Buddhism or escapism. 

And that also doesn’t feel like it matters to me anymore, the distinction of anything.