Category: fatherhood
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In 2008 we took a family trip to Canton. Tony was in his shorts and exercise shirt phase. -
On my 50th birthday, at 6:27am my father at 81 years old, sent me a happy birthday message! He has been my role model, his quiet way of being there for the family, showing and doing rather than talking, his love for me and his expectation that I should reach my potential and his beaming pride of his son; I am the man because of his love. I thank my dad for showing me the way, taking care of our family and also that I feel his love for me every day. 
My mom sent me a message as well. I thank you for how she is kind and generous with people and situations and her calmness is what I aspire to learn. I feel her love for me every single day. On my 50th, I will celebrate with my wife and daughter. I will also celebrate for the next 7 days
Day 1: I will join the ACM lifetime membership. A true engineer, I will fully embrace this part of my life, I am proud to be able to give back to others because my engineering training and 30 years of practice. I will spend the day with my family, with no work. 
Day 2: I will spend the day with the love of my life.
Day 3: I will start a new bullet journal for my 50th birthday year.
Day 4: I will help my nephew learn Python programming.
Day 5: I will send an email to 9 people who are most important to me in my life telling them why they have impacted me. (TBD)
Day 6: I will contribute to AntennaPod towards my goal of becoming the top 10 contributor in 2021.
Day 7: I will setup a scholarship for Chinese immigration children in highschool who want to combine software programming and art, music, prose to contribute something that is meaningful and inspiring for others. (TBD)
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We do not have to conform to the norms of bread winners.
We can communicate our weaknesses to our children, show vulnerability and strength.
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Dear daughter,
For your 18th birthday, and on my 48th year, I wish to write down something for you to refer back to in the next 30 years.
I wish to tell you a few simple thoughts to help you to build a life for yourself that 30 years later, you would look back and be proud of the person you have become at 48 years old.
- Don’t be scared that you don’t know your exact future, life cannot be planned exactly.
- Make decisions based on a long term view, it’s okay to have fears and doubts, but frame a decision based on whether this is the right decision 5, 10 or even 20 years later.
- We all have only one life, live your life on your own terms, but do seek advice from several people you trust. Then make the decision and trust your gut. You have made several big decisions that way and it has worked!
- Live your life with no regrets. Sure you might have made a different decision looking back. If there is something you wanted to correct, do it now. If you cannot change the past, forgive yourself.
- You will always be your worst critic, make sure to be kind to yourself.
- Always be creating, art, writing, or something else. This is you!
- Lastly, you never know who will say YES, until you ask. Everyone has fears. I know you have fears. I live with fears all the time.
Dad
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For the last 18 years, my identity is primarily a father and a software engineer. My daughter is going to be 18 years old in a few days and I wanted to remind myself that a large part of my identity is not lost, but changed.
In order for her to be a fully formed adult, I have to learn to let go. Let her find her own path, be her own person without being in the shadows of her parents and her adult guardians.
My opinions should have some weight, but it maybe should weight less than her good friends, her teachers and her future co-workers.
Her mistakes are no longer wrong, it might be just a learning experience. Maybe her father doesn’t need to rescue every single one, until she ask for help?
In the next few months before she is off to college, I still want to spend as much time with her. Just to be with each other. To remember, recall 18 years of traveling, day to day interactions, ways we learn to communicate with each other and the times we each said something that we regretted.
On the one hand, I mourn the lost of this part of my identity. On the other hand, I am so proud of this caring, talented adult who knows exactly who she is, who her friends should be and such a loving person.
Thank you C8. I love you. Onward and upwards.
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This week I learned something new about myself. I learned that what I’m thinking in my head, when not explicitly told to those I love, is not necessarily known to those love ones.
This seems like a very obviously point, but I often make this mistake. I think this could be that I am an introvert by nature and I like to bounce thoughts in my own head. Also I assume my love ones can feel what I am thinking because of my actions. Actions speak louder than words right?
Wrong.
Sometimes words are more powerful than simple action.
- I am reminded to tell my child that I accept her no matter what path she chooses for herself.
- I am reminded to tell my child that I think about her future. That as a parent, I have obvious biases. That I worry about her future. I worry that if she doesn’t choose the obvious path to success, that she will struggle in life. I tell her that I don’t know the right path for another human being to take. It is up to her to decide on her future. Success is not guaranteed, happiness is not necessarily the end goal. Fulfilling work, self expression and realization of your own talents is a worthy goal of life as well.
Sometimes random conversations with a child in a car leads to interesting learnings about myself and my child.
I love you.
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I have this fantasy of playing badminton with C. as a mixed doubles team. The C.+Tony dynamic duo! She is 12 years old, flying at the birdie in front of the net. Father Tony jumping and smashing from the back. We are both enjoying executing what we’ve been training to do during our weekly badminton training sessions. Father and daughter filling in the gaps for each other as any good doubles team should be doing.
Now back to reality. C. is 6 1/2 years old and we are hanging out at the local badminton club :-)
This morning is the first step to that fantasy as I bring C. to the GGBC badminton club this Sunday morning. She refused to play for the first 2 hours, citing that she would rather play in the basketball courts close to my apartment. I spend the first 2 hours practicing serving 100 birdies into a bucket across the court. Then when her battery ran out for her MacBook, she came over and said she was bored.
She brought over her racket and I started to practice with her, by throwing birdies over the net and she was hitting them nicely across the net as I clown around bouncing the birdies on my head and my foot. She was loving it!!!
There was a badminton class that was going to start in 15 minutes but the coach was late. So I substituted for the coach and I helped coached 3 other kids along with C.. The other kids were 10-12 years old and I had C. return drop shots from the kids as I trained the older ones and made them run, swing the racket and sweat… Kate had a wonderful time and when we got home, she asked for more badminton training..
I think my fantasy will become reality one day. C. was coming up with our team name already. C&T badminton team
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Father’s day turned out be to more than just Kate and Me at the Broadwalk. My entire family came along and I’m glad they did. My bro-in law rented a van and the 6 of us hopped in and off we went. We got there at 9:45 and Kate and headed immediately to the beach, especially when Kate saw the sand.
Kate: I want to do go the sand
(we are coming up to the broad walk)My Mom: Should we head over to breakfast?
Kate: Now, I want sand now!
Me: Uhh, I’m not hungry, drop us off here and pick us up later. BTW, my Treo is out of batteries, please try to find us.
9:45 am, I get a pager message from Yahoo! News that we had 404’s on the site, my Treo runs out of batteries. ARGGG, my parents already drove off.
I digged 5 inches down into the dry sand and open up a 8 foot wet sand pit for Kate. She and I built sand castles for 3 hours. The sun was nice but the beach was actually quite cold. I did a 200 sand push ups to keep warm. I tried looking for Aurora playing sand volleyball, didn’t see her but she was out there today.
I get found by my parents at 12:30pm and I ran over to the car to get my Treo charged and dial into work via bluetooth. I figured out the problem was with the MYSQL database and suggested a fix to my trusted comrad Glen and told him that I trusted him and I loved him (I didn’t really say that).
Thank god we hired some bad asses for Y! News.
After Kate had 6 turns at the Merry-go-around and a nice big ice cream cone, we head back home and had ourselves a kick ass BBQ. I let my sister play with Kate for the entire day (what a nice father’s day present) and I watched some DVD’s (Hoosiers) on my 17″ powerbook, had tons of Korean short ribs.
On a more personal note:
I also connected with a family friend who suffered from depression for several years and was reluctant to take drugs. But when she finally started taking drugs, her whole outlook on life changed. I think I’ll start taking meds for me to relieve my depression for a period of time. I’m a little sick of my mood swings.
Tony Tam 