Hien (Lucas) Nguyen

A journal about everything possible


We're 10-day away from the trip to South Korea. The weekend was not easy for the whole family. Xoài has been on high fever from Sunday, for which we suspect viral infection. We struggled the most at the time she had to take medicine. She would randomly spew everything right after, and we were always not sure whether we should let her take another dose.

Meanwhile, Bơ was still covering from her tonsillitis inflammation, which didn't help because she would be grumpy for most of the time.

When I write this, the doctor is examining her. Hopefully, she'll be recovering soon enough for the long trip.


The Day When I Don't Feel Like Writing


I woke up at 12:30am hearing her crying voice. She didn't sleep well and was having a fever of 38-ish degree. Bơ slept with her grandparents for the rest of the night.

I was worried and feel sad that she won't be able to join the water play activity tomorrow. Bơ literally shed some tears when she was informed about that. I think I annoyed Nga a bit by chasing her checks with the doctor.

Let's see if she'll get better in two weeks for our trip.


On My 3-hour-sleep Energy


Nowadays, I accompany Bơ to school most days. She always has a good selection of questions depending on who she's talking to. With Nga, it's maybe about the next trip, or about what she's going to do in the weekend. With me, it's about any random imagination.

This morning, she tried to catch a fly inside the car but failed. She then paused for a minute to think and turned to me with "what happen if flies lay eggs all inside the car"

As a normal human-being, I would never think of that reality, ever. With all the courage packed from my job interviews, I responded "it's gonna be very dirty, because, urgh, fly likes dirty things, you know"

She answered "ah yes I saw many flies on a dog poop the other day. But what happen if I slap the flies?"

"then you're gonna need to waste your hand"

"what happen if I don't waste hand?"

...

The interview continued on, until (luckily) we got to the school.

I would actually be easier for me to shut down the conversation with "forget about it, it will never happen". Well, 99.9999% it will not happen. But I'm scared of the implication that her other imagination shall never get taken seriously by an adult, and later, her supervisor. Disregarding a probability of a scenario, no matter how small, is easy. The harder part is understanding exactly why it could not happen. That's the path I want my daughters to take in the future.

On another random note, last night, I have a dream of my supervisor's feedback for my work output. It was a long one, but the only exact part that I still remember is:
"almost all underestimation is from the illusion that our recently-learned HOW will resolve the WHAT that we thought the problem statement was about"
Maybe us grown-ups, also overestimate our knowledge too much that we underestimate all possibilities that seems too remote.



On The Way to School


I've been listening to Korean learning podcast on my way to work every day. Taking metro gives me a perfect chance to not-procrastinating it.
I used to spent some times in the past to learn Korean, however only through Duolingo. The best I could do at the time was "thank you", "excuse me", and guessing the name of places in bus/metro. This time I went deeper into the language and their cultural aspects, for which I the most curious about while traveling.

I structured my learning around:
- listening to podcasts
- write words in a notebook

By adding contexts around my memory (listening to Korean in a train packed with office workers, writing a foreign language under the yellow light at a coffee shop), I hope the language would stick longer with me.

I told myself that I'm in survival mode, because the fee for my Korean 5-year-entry visa must not be wasted.


Feel like this is the person I've wanted to be

Been Learning Korean Every Morning


Nga organized a birthday party for me at Thu Hien on April 03. We were with the whole family. The food was okay, except that we don't have a plan to go back there in the future lol.

Bơ turned to me this morning on her grandpa's car and said "Dad, I'm about to go to Korea". I asked her why she had said so, but no answer from her. Looks like Nga told Bơ that on Sunday, and that somehow stuck with her. I guess she'll start counting every week, if not everyday now.

I realized that my life before 18-20 years old was pretty blur. The feeling that I could recall was peaceful and beautiful, as father and mother tried their best to keep me out of the staying-alive trauma. But the experience was insignificant and lack of novel feeling.

I could only manage to build a system that somehow works after 10 years of trial-error. It's not too late, but also not early enough to be more efficient. I believe I have to build systems that could individually work for both Bơ and Xoài before they reach the age of 10. That will give them a foundation to thrive when they need discipline the most in their academic journey.

I'll discuss this with Nga, so we can start from small steps.


After a Stressful Week


I'm 4-day away from my 35th birthday.

Morning metro rides really gave me a chance to reflect and gather thoughts on things I want to do, rather than consuming contents being generated by other people.

Similar to ten thousands other human beings, I've always wanted to write a journal on my own, especially when I had random ideas that I was afraid of being lost through the busy days. However, it was always easier to procrastinate my way through it. It's getting more tempting now that Bơ and Xoài have come to my life, for whom I wish my thoughts could reach when they are mature enough. Heck who knows in that far future, human can use journal to predict and reconstruct someone's mind (I tried not to insert the word "AI", as it's a more of a buzzword now than ever, or will ever be).

I'll keep this journal as raw as it could be, including my wrong uses of words or grammar. I'm not writing it to impress anyone anyway, which is quite a rare chance in this high-expectation world.
