smell of spring

Toby couldn't help sniffing on the ground while he was out today. He definitely smells spring.


We had a lot of snow this winter and the ground had been covered by snow and ice for 2 months. Even I was amazed how our driveway looked wide after snow melted just a little bit since last evening.

Unfortunately it was still cold and wind felt chilly outside so my girls still wore ski jacket and sheep skin boots but I can tell spring is around the corner!!

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Isn't it a little bit funny that we have such a short memory. Even though we have decades of life experience, the basic seasonal and climate change agitate us. Every summer all we do is complaining about the heat knowing it is supposed to be as well as about winter chill. In that sense we are one of those creatures who live the moment... but, wait..noo animals never complain about such things! they just accept things as they are. We have a lot to learn from them.

locks of love

My little one got a hair cut. It was not for herself but for somebody else.

I'll send her hair to "locks of love" organization who would make wigs using donated hair from all over the country.
She grew her hair this long.

Her stylist made several locks to cut. Each locks are supposed to 10 inch minimum to make wigs. One wig requires 12 peoples hair. She cut 11 inches

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Donating hair is not easy thing for girls. I'm really proud of her and appreciate the "locks of love" organization for giving a chance to her to do something good for people who need some help.

Helping somebody grows children as well as being helped.

Ra-ku-go night

Rakugo is a Japanese traditional story telling.

The story teller sits on a flat cushion wearing kimono and tells funny stories which have been told over and over. The story itself usually well known already but the way he tells make the story funny.

The teller use his(most of teller are men) fan and a handkerchief to express the scene. The fan can be a pair of chopsticks or the cloth can be a wallet or else.

Anyway we had the opportunity to go and see Rakugo the other day. It was fun. My younger one got bored at the last half though I really enjoyed it.

It was funny for me to experience Japanese traditional thing in the first time in here NY.

Toby? Tobi?

Our dog's name is Toby. It's registered to his microchip but not officially enough we haven't registered to our village yet.

My husband wants to convert his name from Toby to Tobi. He's heard Tobi is a common dog name in Italy from his Italian co-league.

Why Italy? We'd decided to have a dog while we were traveling in Italy, actually it was in Pisa yeah that place was famous for the leaning tower.

At first, he wanted to name him Galileo the genius who designed the tower long time ago. The idea seems perfect we can live with our summer trip memory but it might be a easy quetion why we didn't name our beautiful puppy "Galileo". It's so weird..

Well..still it will be nice to add a little Italian spice on "Toby".

The problem is we have already engrave "TOBY" on his name tag as well as in microchip. May that cause any confusion? Most of all I don't feel like changing it. Toby is a perfect name, Tobi seems so something-missing-imperfect name for me. Well...what should i do...?

Battle hymn of the tiger mother (book)

Despite her effort to make fun of herself, I or most of the readers heard only loud bragging from this book. After the blood puddling piano and violin lessons, her older one had a piano recital at Carnegie hall and the little one achieved superb reputation from world famous violin teacher.


Moreover many of the readers of course including myself are disgusted by the way she bosses and insults her own children, threatened them to burn their stuffed animals for not playing instruments well or took down the birthday card they wrote for herself saying she deserved better.



I was wondering why the book sold so well so far. This could be accused for the child abuse (verbally, saying "garbage" to the child can't be said in usual circumstances) or the author would be considered as having anger control disorder.


I happened to see the article about it on magazine "New Yorker", it says "secretly American parents wanted to have a permission to be tough on their children, tired to say good-job to their children for mediocre thing, annoyed to be afraid of hurting their feelings. It was said.



Every reader should be smart enough not to adopt her entire way of course, meanwhile we should be a parents who can say big no to our children. That's how we age 30-40's parents generation got to be raised. That may have been caused some problems such as deppression or low self estimeem, but not for everybody. Most of us survaived over the hard no-is-no parenting.


In addition I found immigrant mentarity in there. For the successful life in the U.S, the first generation doubtlessly toil super hard. They learned of course the education was the key for next generation to get up on the same stage with Americans. The most certain way for them was to have their children get the professional skills like doctors, lawers, accountant or musisian.


Time magazine shows the statistic 50% of Asian-American over 25 years old has bachelor degree or more in US. Isn't that amazing? Most of them are Chinese or Korean immigrant. While their parents barely speak English, what an accomplishment!

I myself am a mother of daughters and I'm one of those minority person in U.S. I can tell she was only a mother just wanting her girls success because that is her success. But let me tell her something. "Stop pushing so hard on yourself. You are doing great job. Be happy!" I bet she'll tell me "Don't worry, loser!". Oh, well...