Eruption of chaos with children and mandarin oranges and visitors and bimbim snacks and gutteral sounds and smells of chicken livers, petral, coal, incense, burning papers, pomelos, cooked rice steam and tea; cold weather and smog and laughter and misunderstandings and stilted English (theirs) and primitive Vietnamese (mine) and sweet yellow bean cake and xoi and sleeping mats and herbs and street vendors and mangey dogs and women on bicycles with billowing parachutes of balloons and flowers and chickens in bamboo baskets and orange and cherry blossom trees, bananas on the alter, sweets trays, ground peanuts, green banh chung chay, “chuc mung nam moi” and red, red, everywhere.

“Uncertainty means stepping into the unknown… Without uncertainty and the unknown, life is just the stale repetition of outworn memories…Relinquish your attachment to the known, step into the unknown, and you will step into the field of all possibilities…” -Deepak Chopra

My cousin had the above quote posted on her Facebook page (wow. You know you’re a child of the internet  when you blog about a FB posting… sigh).

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We’re starting the new year off on the right foot. It’s cause for celebration:

Another rejection slip! Make that #6.

294 more to go.

As is custom…

Happy New Year!