Last year, I was talking to a friend of mine whom I’ve known since elementary school about my oldest daughter, Juliette. At the time she was in kindergarten, and I was mentioning to my friend how Juliette was one of only two Asians in her class. The parallel was that when my friend and I were in elementary school way back when, we were the only two Asians in our class. A couple of months later, my friend dug up this old class picture where you can see the two of us amongst our classmates.

And here is a picture of Juliette’s kindergarten class (just the girls) where you can see Juliette and her other Asian classmate. They are actually best friends and even though, this year, they are not in the same first grade class, they play with each other during every break they get.

While I was growing up, nearly all of my school classmates were non-Asians, which was in direct contrast to my friends at church which were practically all Chinese. Juliette is in a similar situation now except that our church is a little bit more diversified being predominantly Asian American.

I don’t know that I have anything specific to say other than observations and pointing out the parallels. My thought is that diversity is best accomplished as an ongoing process of person to person interactions. It is when we describe or assume in generalities that we take peoples as a whole for granted.

My friend and I actually have two other classmates from elementary school whom we still keep in touch with after all these years. It’s encouraging to see that Juliette is friends with lots of her other classmates as well. One of my hopes for my girls is that they will be able to enjoy as long a friendship with all of their friends as long as I have with mine.

This past weekend, I attended the Newsong Men’s Retreat at Forest Home. The retreat was pretty good with speakers from the Newsong leadership team. The retreat site is well equipped and the food was slightly better than most camp food. It was a good time to connect with the men at church since most of the time we are too busy to meet each other in the regular church setting.

One of the things that we were also looking forward to was using our free time to ride the Santa Ana River Trail, which is supposedly one of the epic singletrack rides in Southern California.

We got up early Saturday morning for our first ride to do the loop from behind the post office. We were able to find the trail fairly quickly, but unfortunately, it was not as ‘epic’ as we expected. The trail condition was really loose and there were several trees that had fallen across the path, so we had to keep stopping to climb over the obstacles or walk through unridable patches.

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In the afternoon, we took a friend along for his first mountain-bike ride. Aside from falling off the trail at one point, he did great. This time, we rode further up SART from where we turned off in the morning. It had some short interesting sections, but for the most part, it was pretty much more of the same as the morning ride. One thing we didn’t account for was how quickly it would get dark, so at the end of the ride, I pushed up the fire road to get the van and drove back to pick up the guys who were trailing behind.

There’s still another section that I would like to try the next time I am up in the area. In the end, it was good to get out to ride, but SART doesn’t really standout as a destination ride.

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I’ve been avoiding riding at Aliso Woods because I can’t stand the long flat asphalt part just to get to the dirt. A couple of weeks ago, Elijah showed me a way to get into the park from the back that drops straight onto the trails. We did a quick loop that day, but figured next time we would have the time and energy to do a longer ride.

Last Sunday, a bunch of us decided to do it. We mapped our ride: up Cholla to Top of the World, then down Meadows, and across Dripping Caves and back up Mathis, then back down Rock-It and out. Turned out to be one of our best rides with a great group of riders.

Before going up for our second climb, Chik gave me a Gu pack, which helped me not to be overly fatigued for the remainder of the ride. Gotta remember that for long rides in the future.

If you download Google Earth, you can save the KML file (right-click to save and open in Google Earth) and watch the ride as it plays out.

For those of you that don’t recognize the symbol (and for those of you that should, but have strayed from the Jedi path), it is the insignia of the Rebel Alliance [wikipedia].

From what I understand from the list, I’m supposed to put down five random things about me, and considering my brain works in a pretty dysfunctional, nonlinear way, let’s see what comes out:

1. When reading a book, I don’t fold the pages or even the corners. I avoid disfiguring the book in any way, including with paperbacks, not folding or creasing the binding. My rational justification is that I am preserving and respecting the physical appearance of the book. Unfortunately, no one agrees with me and they all think I’m just nuts .
2. When eating snacks, I just take a eat a few pieces at a time, including Pringles (so I guess when I pop, I can stop). This being the case, I have collected different ways to re-close snack boxes and bags (particularly in the office setting): staples work alright, but difficult for repeated opening and closing; rubber bands, but those are just troublesome to take on and off; and binder clips, which work the best.
3. I don’t like to eat bitter melon, but then again, who does, oh wait, my parents do, hehe.
4. I like to eat fu2 zhu2 (aka tofu skin, or in Japanese – yuba), especially as a stew with pork spare ribs (which of course, my wife makes deliciously), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this dish outside of Fan family dinners, so I wonder where this dish came from originally.
5. If you’ve been following any of the hyperlinks in this list, can you tell, I love Wikipedia. This is a great online resource for learning about and referencing everything.

Let’s see, now I’m supposed to tag some people, but then again, they might be too old-fashioned or too blog snobby to do it, haha: Fanster, Crazeetraveler and Schwea.