Alan

Sacramento

I was in the Boy Scouts from 1968 to 1969. I did not stay in long enough to become a First Class Scout. The main place to earn merit badges for that was at a Boy Scout camp in the Sierras. When I went there, I chose the option of going on a backcountry backpacking trip. Most of my friends stayed in camp and earned a lot of merit badges, so I fell behind.

I had my first job as a busboy at Scheidel’s Bavaria (1968 to January 1970) when I was 13 to 14+ years old. My Uncle Willie Berg worked there as a cook and my mom knew others there who had come from Germany. It was near our house and was like a center for the German immigrant community in Sacramento. Every time I worked, I got a free meal and my favorite was wiener schnitzel (breaded pork cutlet).

I never felt comfortable in that job because, because of my shyness, I was never sure what I was supposed to do. I would mostly wait for the waitresses to tell me what to do. The older bus boys seem to be more confident than me. But I was also the richest kid among all my friends because of my tips and wages. Later, I worked as a dishwasher for a short time at an Italian restaurant. I quit after a while because it was so overwhelming on busy nights when the wait staff would need to help me out because the dishes got so backed up.

I attended an all-boy Jesuit High School my freshman year, because that is where my closest football friends were going. I received the Most Valuable Player award for the freshman football team. That was because I reached my peak height in 8th grade of 5’ 8.5”, which is the same as I am now, and I weighed about 175 lbs.

For my sophomore year (age 15, Fall 1970s), I left Jesuit High School (which cost money) and attend Encina High School. By then, other kids were getting bigger than me, so while I was still always on the football field, I was not as much of a standout. 

I recall one game against El Camino HS in which they were able to pick up a change in my body position indicating whether I would go left or right as a defensive lineman. When I went left, they would run the ball to my right, through an opening that my move enabled. After this happened 3 times, I figured out what was going on. So I made my body look like I was going left, but instead I went right, which plugged the hole and stopped the runner cold. To this day, I am quite amazed that the other team was able to pick that up -- and that I was able to figure it out. 

In my senior year I was clipped from behind on one play, when someone fell on my left achilles ankle. The following day, a doctor put my ankle in a cast. My coach was angry that he did that, but I was out for the season. After 8+ years of being on the football field, I was actually very happy to be sitting on the sidelines and in the stadium watching the games. 

At the public high school, I was good at German, and I became very interested in photography, taking classes every year from Mr. Botello. I also made some simple movies with friends using our family’s 8mm and Super 8 cameras.

Encina High School also introduced me to recreational drugs, drinking, and smoking, which did not help with playing football. Despite my shyness, I attended a lot of parties. Fortunately, I was smart enough to maintain a “B” average through high school without having to try too hard, which kind of annoyed some of my friends.

My mom says I was always interested in politics and was curious about other countries, though I don’t remember that. She also says I had a 10pm curfew until my senior year when I could stay out later. And she said I had many friends, though I only remember having a few. A friend’s mom called her son (Rett Smart), two others friends (Dave Valle & Marty Buckles), and me the “Big 4”. When we added another friend (Mike Crosby), we became the “Big 4 plus 1.” Dave and Marty attended St. Philomene with me, as well as Encina High School, and they are both friends on Facebook today.

I met up with several of those old friends in summer 2023 for an informal 50-year HS reunion dinner as I was passing through Sacramento. That same trip, I met Dave Valle in Reno, NV, where he lives. Interestingly, he told me our old friends in Sacramento were all conservative supporters of Donald Trump. Dave and I, the two who left Sacramento, were the only liberals, although Dave seems more like a traditional socialist based on his Facebook posts.

I missed Driver’s Ed class during the semester and took a private driving class in Summer 1971 (age 16), getting my driver’s license soon after that. One of the first things I did was to take my parent’s pickup truck camper to Santa Cruz with 4 friends. At that time, you could park your camper anywhere in town and we parked next to the ocean a little north of the Boardwalk. Another place that I liked to go camping with friends was Dillon Beach, which is a private camping place across from Point Reyes, with a lot of sand dunes. I also went backpacking a few times in the Desolation Valley Wilderness Area near Lake Tahoe. And I skied most of the ski resorts in the Tahoe area in high school.

Growing up, my mom would take us to children’s matinee plays in downtown Sacramento. We would get to meet the actors after the plays. The first concert I attended was to see Donavan when I was 14 in the 8th grade (1969). Over the years, I have seen The Beach Boys, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Yes, The Grateful Dead (in San Francisco, Stockton, & Reno), Buddy Miles, The Elvin Bishop Band (2 or 3 times), and Chick Corea (jazz), among others. We got tear gassed at a concert at Stockton’s University of the Pacific. Lauren took me to see the Steve Miller Band at NAU.

I could have graduated a semester early but did an internship with a professional photographer my last semester in high school (Spring 1973). I mostly worked with his assistant in the dark room. The photographer always seemed nervous, which I think was because of the potential that something could go wrong at wedding shoot, of which he did many. That experience convinced me that I would not want to be a professional photographer.  

I was glad high school was over. I always felt awkward and uncomfortable in high school. While I attended a lot of parties in high school, I do not look upon those years fondly.

My party lifestyle continued into my freshman year at Sacramento State College. I still had a few of the same friends from High School. I joined a fraternity (TKE) and served as its “Histor” (historian, taking photos) in my second semester. At the start of that semester, I learned Transcendental Meditation, which some others in the fraternity were already doing. It was very popular in those days, though many did not continue it for very long. I did, and I credit TM with completely changing my life for the better. 

I could not figure out what to major in. I tried psychology (not interesting) and accounting (too hard). In the summer (1974) after my freshman year, I went with a fraternity brother (John Dykman) to northern Idaho, where another fraternity brother was trying to move along with a couple of his friends. Their place was kind of crowded, so I left there and hitchhiked to Jackson Hole, WY, where another fraternity brother (Gary Pike) had just moved to. I shared an apartment with him next to the number 1 chairlift for the ski area. I worked in a laundry and was planning to stay and work at the ski area in the winter.

After a few weeks, Dave Valle, one of the “Big 4”, showed up at my door. He had been working at Yosemite National Park. He left there and hitchhiked up to see me. He had called my parents to find out where I was, and they told him I needed to return to Sacramento because the University of Hong Kong accepted me as an exchange student. So, I quit my job and we spent a few days backpacking in the Grand Teton, which was amazing.Alan at 1 year old

 We then hitchhiked up to Seattle and down the coast (Highway 1) back to Sacramento.

I spent a couple of weeks in the hot Sacramento sun helping my dad put a new roof on our house. The next thing I knew, I was on my first ever airplane ride, flying from San Francisco to Hong Kong. 

Hong Kong

Sometime before I changed to Encina High School, I had a book with the titled “Know Your IQ”, or something like that. It contained about 15 to 20 IQ tests. I did all of them because I enjoyed doing things like that. But success in life has little to do with IQ, but for what it’s worth, my overall average IQ score based on that book was 117.5, which considered “High Average”. I think that is right. On the other hand, I bet I would have a below average in SQ (social intelligence) and EQ (emotional intelligence) because I was so shy and unsure of myself. 

I blamed my shyness on being Chinese. I had mixed feelings about being Chinese. I liked the food, exotic culture, and red wraps (lei see in Cantonese, hung bao in Mandarin). But I did not like being shy. Although I did not look Chinese in my facial features, I identified psychologically much more with my Chinese lineage than my German background.

My attitudes toward being Chinese changed completely when I went to Hong Kong in September 1974.

I went to Hong Kong because my Chinese grandparents said they would pay for any of the grandkids to go there to study. I had found a University of Hong Kong school catalog in the main Sacramento City Library and wrote to them asking about being a foreign exchange student. I had forgotten all about that until Dave Valle showed up in Jackson Hole, WY.

When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I hated it. I stayed with some distant relatives before I moved into the university dorm. It was too hot (no air conditioning), too humid, too crowded, and there were too many mosquitoes. The dormitory they put me in was not the one I asked for, which was coed. Instead, it was an all-male dorm in an old Franciscan monastery.

All the medical students, who were the most stressed-out students at the university, were in that dorm. They had a required old-fashioned fraternity style program for new dorm members. I got a short haircut, had to wear slacks, a white shirt, and tie, and had to address all the senior dorm members as “sir”, for example. There was a lot of hazing, and I broke down crying a couple of times.

The senior students decided I did not need to go through that, and most of them ignored me for the rest of the year. Although a couple of them asked me at one point if I could explain the lyrics to Don McLean’s “American Pie” song, which I could not do. My two roommates were architecture students, who were the friendliest students on campus because they needed to pass a personality interview to do that major.

I took first-year classes in geography just because that seemed to be the most interesting subject I could find in their catalog. They taught using the British system, which meant a few classes that lasted an entire school year, plus small group tutorials with professors. I was not the best student. I took two classes (I think three classes was full-time). At the end of the year, I failed one class and passed the other. That was the only “F” I got in college, although my grades at Sac State were not very good.

I attended the TM Center for weekly meditations and talks, which is where I met Liz Chan, my first girlfriend since 2nd grade. TM became a big part of my life, and I meditated regularly the entire time I was in Hong Kong. I attended my first TM weekend retreat at the Trappist Monastery on Lantau Island. Even though alcohol was legal for 18 years old in Hong Kong, I rarely drank. My only vice was cigarettes.

Because I was a visiting student, the UHK Geography Department invited me to go on a soil geography field trip to Thailand with 3rd year (final year) students. The soil portion included counting plants in a mangrove swamp transect in southern Thailand, where I also visited the famous beach on Phuket Island before they built any hotels there. We also visited Chiang Mai in the north for fun after the fieldwork. That was an amazing adventure, though I have few photos to remember it by (they were destroyed by mold in Hong Kong).

By the end of my year at UHK, I had fallen in love with Hong Kong. It seemed like every day was an adventure. There was so much to see and do, with surprises around every corner. I stayed (with permission from home) and enrolled in full-time Cantonese classes at the Yale-China Chinese Language Center (Summer 1975), which was part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, but located in Kowloon Tong (near the old Hong Kong Airport).

After the UHK semester ended, I had a room in an apartment in Causeway Bay. One of my UHK roommates, Damen Lam, had a room in the same apartment with his girlfriend. When Damen moved out of that apartment, I did as well. Liz helped me find a very basic barn-like house for US$30/month in a village in the New Territories (Clear Water Bay Road), outside of the city, but not too far by bus from the language school. 

The village was “Sheung Yueng” (upper ocean) and it was a Lau (Lew) village, where everyone had the same surname as me. In 2001, I went back to that village with Mable. Modern two-story houses replaced all the old houses. And the house on the site where I stayed had a “for rent” sign in the window.

My Cantonese got pretty good. The only thing that bothered me was that people would say I sounded like a Christian minister. That was because my classmates in the advanced Cantonese classes were Christian missionaries. In the beginning level classes, there were more non-missionaries, including American Born Chinese (ABCs) wanting to learn Cantonese. But most of the non-missionary students at the school studied Mandarin instead.

I had no American friends and was one of only a handful or Euro-American students at UHK. There were more Americans about my age at the language center, mostly studying Mandarin. I only socialized with them occasionally. I became good friends with Miles Briner (a grad student from Stanford University). For the 4th of July 1976, he and I went to Taiwan for a vacation (we could not visit China in those days, even though I tried).

At the end of 1976 I ran out of excuses to stay in Hong Kong. Liz went with me to the Philippines where we vacationed for a couple of weeks before she returned to HK, and I went on to the US.

My first year back from Hong Kong (all of 1977) I lived in San Francisco and attended SF City College. I got A’s in all my classes, taking 17 and 18 units a semester. By this time, I had completely given up alcohol, though I still occasionally smoked cigarettes.

I was never good at finding jobs. I wanted to work in San Francisco in the summer of 1977, but I did not know what to do to find a job. Instead, I fell for a pitch to become a door-to-door book salesman for the Southwestern Company. They recruited college students to sell their single volume encyclopedia book. After the training, they sent me and two other guys to Loraine, OH. (A friend from SF City College rented my studio apartment while I was gone.)

I did that for about 4 to 6 weeks, then quit and took a Greyhound bus to visit and stay with my distant cousins (David & Samuel Chan) from Hong Kong, who were now living in Boston. To return, I got a cross-country bus ticket to San Francisco that allowed unlimited stops. I took a slow, zigzagging, route back to San Francisco via Sacramento. I saw the sleazier parts of American cities that way.

Liz also visited me in later summer in 1977 and we corresponded frequently before I met Lauren’s mom in Summer 1978. (Liz became a TM teacher in Hong Kong and last I heard she was in a special TM center for women only in New York state where they meditate almost non-stop—like a nunnery/monastery for TM meditators.)

I applied to transfer to UC Berkeley, but my application was partially rejected. They wanted me to take a basic English class before they would let me in. So, in December 1977, I moved back to Sacramento and got a job as a taxi driver (like Dave Valle was doing) and I took a creative writing English class at American River Community College. I saw a lot of the underside of Sacramento doing that job for about two months. I quit before my mandatory union dues came due.

Lauren’s Mom

[speaking to Lauren]

I met your mom (Patricia Jane Hall) in 1978 (probably early summer) through the “TM in China” program. That program was to train ethnic Chinese to be TM teachers to influence China to become a better place. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi believed that being Chinese meant we had a special influence on China that non-Chinese TM teachers did not have, even if we were not in China.

I never cared much for the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I thought they were shallow and mostly not interesting. But I did like the TM technique. It felt it had changed my life. I had applied to the TM in China program mostly because of Liz in Hong Kong.

Your mom had also applied for that program, and she contacted me through that. We first met in Nevada City, CA, which was half about half-way between Tahoe City, where she lived, and Sacramento, where I was living waiting to attend UC Berkeley in the Fall. 

I had attended two week-long TM retreats before I met your mom in the Napa, CA area. They were $1000 each and luckily my mom agreed to pay for them. I stopped smoking cigarettes completely after one of those weeks. 

After I met your mom, she and I attended a week-long TM retreat at Squaw Valley just before the Fall 1978 quarter was to start at Berkeley. It was there that we became engaged. I mentioned something about how our relationship might be different if we were married, and she assumed I had asked her to marry me. It was not my intention, but well, it happened. (One rule they tell you is that you should not make any big decisions on a TM retreat.)

We married toward the end of 1978 at your grandmother's (Mabel Hall) house on Ulloa Street in San Francisco. My mom and grandmother attended, but my dad did not because he opposed our marriage.

Starting with my dad’s not attending our wedding, we soon became estranged from my family. Your mom blamed my dad for that estrangement because he did not like her. My perspective was that I was married to your mom and so she is the one I should support through this. I was basically being in the “Here and Now”. And so, for that period, the “Here and Now” did not include my parents. 

I entered the Asian Studies program at Berkeley in Fall 1978. While I liked the campus, for various reasons I did not really like my classes (Korean Buddhism, Asian history and politics, Asian art), except Mandarin (which I was good at) and a Geography of Southeast Asia class.

After two quarters at UC Berkeley (a school year has 3 quarters), we decided to moved to Hilo, HI, using the wedding gift money we received from Mabel Hall. We arrived on March 22, 1979. I became a geography major at the University of Hawaii at Hilo (starting Summer 1979). Of all the schools I attended, UH Hilo was my favorite. There were 4 geography faculty and 12 geography majors. And the Big Island offered fantastic field trips.

While at UH Hilo, I worked in the camera department at JC Penney’s, using my high school knowledge of photography. One manager there did not want to hire me because they thought locals would be prejudiced against buying from a haole (non-local) guy. But the camera department manager liked me. I encountered no problems with prejudice, at least that I could tell. Your mom worked for a short time for a lawyer in Hilo, but she quit because of health issues. That was the last job I can recall her having during our marriage. 

Lauren

[speaking to Lauren]

A gynecologist in Hilo said your mom had endometriosis. The primary way to fix endometriosis is pregnancy. Although it was an emotional decision for her, that is when we decided to get pregnant.

From the very beginning, I had this feeling that we were not in charge of what was happening. That the person (or being) who was in charge of that entire episode was you. I was convinced that you really wanted to be born to the two of us at that time and place, and you would not take “no” for an answer. 

Your original name was Asia Pialani Lew. We first thought to name you Pele, after the Kilauea Volcano goddess. But we thought we should consult Mrs. Balesteros, who channeled Pele in Honolulu. She would have intense fevers whenever the volcano erupted. I called her and asked about the name, and she said to wait, she will go ask Pele about that. She came back and said Pele said it was not a good idea because the name is powerful and if the child is not strong enough, it would be bad.

We later asked about the name Pialani and she said Madam Pele supported that name and would look after you because we had consulted with her. We met Mrs. Balesteros (also known as the "Lady in Red") on one of her many trips to Kilauea Volcano to make offerings for Pele. We gave her a bottle of gin and some flowers to give to Pele for us. 

For many years, Mable and I would make offerings of gin and flowers every time we visited Kilauea during our visits to see Uncle Mike in Captain Cook, HI. We did not do that in 2021 (for Kolin Wong's wedding) because the National Park and locals had many signs posted asking people to stop making offerings that were polluting the environment.

You, Lauren, were born in Hilo (May 20, 1980). You had a lot of hair at birth and your teeth came in quickly. You also started walking sooner than most kids. I would carry you on my back as I studied and did homework at a small desk I had rigged up in our place in Hilo (86a Ululani St). (When Mable and I visited that place in Summer 2021, the yard had been paved for parking and it was a doctor’s office.)

One day we were pushing your stroller through a park in Hilo and some kids asked what your name was. We said “Asia” and they laughed, saying "isn’t Asia a country?" After that, your mom decided we needed to change your name. We chose Lauren, after your mom’s best friend in Hilo, Lauren Okano. She was a mainland haole who married a local boy, and her son was the same age as you. They lived in the apartment complex next to our house. 

I graduated a year after you were born, and we moved to the University of Oregon in Eugene. Hawaii was nice, but we could not afford to leave the Big Island and I had “island fever” after two years there.

The University of Oregon was the best graduate school I could have attended. Everyone at the university was on a first name basis, with even undergraduates calling professors by their first name. It was just a tradition there.

They fully supported me financially the entire time I was there (Summer 1981 through Summer 1986). And I got extra summer work teaching classes in the Geography Department and doing planning consulting jobs through the Planning Department.

You were clearly a gifted child. That was obvious from very early on. You were reading before you started kindergarten. And you always won the class competitions to see who would read the most books in primary school. In primary school, they put you in the special gifted programs, though your teachers said you really did not need that extra challenge because whatever the assignment, you did it with enthusiasm and were never bored.

Your Montessori pre-school teacher was the first to say, in 1984 (after Singapore), that she wished she could take you home with her. And that is what your 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade teachers also said, plus your Stanford professor at your wedding reception. They saw you as the perfect student, intelligent, personable, always happy to do what they asked, and always willing to help other students.

I loved hanging out with you because it was fun, and we got along well. I enjoyed asking you mind bending questions because you understood the twist on words that they often entailed, and I could see them expanding your mind in new directions. Your Montessori teacher commented that the teachers would sometimes make more adult-level jokes, and you were often the old child to get the joke.

In June 1988, Mable, you, and I made a month-long cross-country trip in our minivan. We went down to New Orleans, up to Cincinnati, OH (where Grandma Wong was staying with Uncle Lou), across to the Northeastern US and Canada (with Grandma Wong), and them back to Flagstaff. I did that to collect slides to teach a Geography of the US class in Germany.

In April 1989, I went to the University of Tubingen in southern Germany to teach for a semester while a professor from there taught at NAU. You and Mable joined me on June 6th, after your school term ended. The three of us traveled around Germany and nearby countries for two months and visited Dusseldorf with my mom and dad (your grandparents). To me, the most memorable places we went were Prague, Czechoslovakia (still behind the Iron Curtain then); Pag Island in Yugoslavia (now in Croatia); and Venice, Italy. 

We were always proud of your academic and clarinet accomplishments in school and tried to support you as much as possible. Although, I should mention that Mable’s psychic in Phoenix told me you were probably sneaking out of the house and partying more than you should in high school.

Skylan reminds me a lot of my dad. Chynna reminds me of my mom sometimes and Mable sometimes. And you are almost my twin. People also thought you resembled your Aunt Ronnie.

One thing that was very different between you and me was that you were very good at supporting yourself through school. You had part-time jobs in Flagstaff, and you got a Flinn scholarship to support your undergraduate education, including a semester in Yunnan, China. And then you received full support for grad school at Stanford University. 

I was happy that you chose Stanford University and stayed in the Western US. And I was thrilled that you met Jefferson while you were there. You two make a wonderful and interesting couple. I was very nervous at your wedding at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix (December 28, 2006) because I was to say something at the even, and I did not want to blow it.

It surprised me you ended up in the UK. I was kind of hoping you would stay in the western US, closer to us. But I fully understand that Edinburgh was the best choice for you. Jefferson and you seem to have adjusted very well to the culture there, if not the climate. 

I don’t have much of a desire to travel overseas these days. I am perfectly happy staying at home. But I do hope we can spend more time with you, Jefferson, Isla, and Liam in the coming years. I would love to take all of you to Asia, especially Singapore, and to Hawaii someday.

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On September 25, 2024, Mable and Alan attended Lauren' "Inaugural Lecture" at the University of Edinburgh, which is a public presentation and celebration of her promotion to Full Professor. Her department at the university has over 40 faculty members, and she said most have no idea she does in social linguistics. Her presentation was a review of her work to date and current projects. You can see a recording of her presentation here. - You cannot see her, only hear her and see her presentation slides. The first 10 minutes are an introduction before Lauren starts. 

- Click on "Photos 8" below to see a couple of photos from the event. 

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Singapore

[speaking to Lauren]

It took me 8 years and 7 different schools to graduate with my Bachelor’s degree. I made up for that time by getting 2 Master’s degrees (Urban Planning & Geography) and my PhD (Geography) in 5 years. 

One day in the Spring of 1983, I saw an announcement on a bulletin board about a special Fulbright program for graduate students to do research in Southeast Asia. I had always thought Singapore was interesting because it was so similar, yet different, to Hong Kong. The application process included an interview and the professor who interviewed me was impressed with how much I knew about Singapore, even though I really didn’t know much—I just got it all from books!

I got the Fulbright scholarship and the three of us were off to Singapore in October 1983 for about 8 months. The money was to support just me for 12 months, although it included airfares for all of us. We had to rely on Mabel Hall to help us through that time in Singapore. Of the places to live, we chose the cheaper one on Seletar Airbase at the north of the island, and I rented a car for the entire time, which made it a little more expensive in the end.

That was an amazing year of food and cultural diversity. Nothing I had proposed to study made any sense once I got there, so I started over from scratch, spending a lot of time in the National University of Singapore library learning all I could about tourism in Singapore. Your mom became friends with Jessie Wee through the Buddhist Library. Jessie and her sister Polly are still a good friend of mine today.

I came back to Oregon and put together a dissertation on the spatial evolution of tourist attractions in Singapore. I graduated in 1986 and applied to several geography departments in the Western US (I had no interest in moving East). I was interviewed by San Diego State University (who did not offer me a position) and Northern Arizona University. 

Before my first semester at NAU was over, your mom decided she liked her Asian Religions professor (Bruce Sullivan, your stepdad) who she was taking a class from. So, she moved out, leaving you with me because “Lauren always liked you better”. 

I reconnected with my family after that. I took you to San Diego at Christmas to visit one of my friends from Hong Kong (Francis Chu). We went to Disneyland and drove to Ensenada for a day trip, having a scary evening trying to find our way through Tijuana and back to the border in the dark. We also visited my sister Ronnie and her boyfriend Mark in Venice Beach, where we tried to come up with a name for the funny ball that Mark’s brother-in-law invented. We did not come up with the “Koosh Ball” name that it was finally called.

I went to my dad’s village with my parents and two sisters in May 1987, about a month after I first met Mable. I had bought my first camcorder and videotaped the experience, which included two full roasted pigs that my dad had order for offering at his grandparent’s grave.

Mable & Me

[speaking to Skylan & Chynna]

Several months before your mom [Mable Kim Wong] and I met, some friends of hers took her to see a psychic in Phoenix. The psychic said she would meet a guy who was really into computers, her mom would like him, and they she would be married before the end of 1987.

Your mom got her Ed.D. in 1986, the same time that I got my Ph.D., and she took her mom (Grandma Wong) to China in summer 1986. There was a lengthy article about their trip in the Arizona Daily Sun newspaper, which I had read.

I thought I would like to meet her, since my dad was from the same county in China (Toisan) as her parents. But I was too shy to do anything about that. Lauren’s mom, who was not shy, was feeling guilty about leaving me, and to make up for that, she contacted your mom and arranged for us to meet.

Your mom was opposed to blind dates and was suspicious about an ex-wife introduction to someone with a kid. But for some unknown reason, she agreed to meet me. Like when Lauren was born, it was something that had to happen beyond anything that either of us could do about it.

We met for dinner for the first time on April 2, 1987. We had a lot in common and immediately connected (at least I felt that way). Her mom liked me, which was the first time she liked someone your mom dated (because the others were not Chinese). I would call your mom on the phone at 8:30pm, after I put Lauren to bed, every day that we did not see each other. We would talk for 1 to 3 hours. It seemed like we had so much to share. Fortunately, it was near the end of the semester for me at NAU, so I had time to do that.

I like to think of your mom as my “root chakra”. She is the one who maintains balance and stability in our relationship, while I am mostly in my head (“crown chakra”) getting into mischief, as my mom said when I was little. I think we are still like that today.

Your mom and I were engaged on June 12, 1987. We were married at Aunt Karen’s church at 5034 Curtis St., Fremont, CA, on December 26, 1987, just like the psychic predicted. We chose that date and location because your Uncle Mike and Aunt Karen lived in Fremont, and they were hosting a Wong reunion for Christmas. And since my parents and siblings all lived in northern California, it was easy for them to attend as well. Mable wore a Chinese-style dress that I had custom-made for her in San Francisco’s Chinatown when I went there in October 1987 for a GIS conference.

The wedding was small, with only immediate family members, plus my dad’s cousin (my Uncle Andy) who worked for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I was very nervous, hoping that everything would go OK. (My dad arrived late, just before the ceremony, because he got lost, for example.)

Your mom had bought her house on 2864 Oakmont Drive in 1977. In 1990 I suggested maybe we could build a new house on the 716 W Aspen Ave property. I was teaching AutoCad for city planning at NAU at the time and so we sketched a house plan, which we then gave to a contractor to build. We sold the old Aspen Ave house for $500, which was moved to Mountain Dell, south of Walmart. Because it was a very snowy March, they got stuck moving the house off the lot, photos of which made the front page of the Arizona Daily Sun on April 2, 1991.

At that same time, your mom was nominated twice for Arizona Teacher of the Year, in 1990 and 1991. She was a finalist in the 1991 nomination and traveled around the state giving talks in early 1992 until she could not do that because of her pregnancy with Skylan.

Your mom has always been more health conscious than me. When we met, she was taking Karate and aerobics classes and playing tennis. I was taking an Aikido class in Flagstaff. We stopped because we got too busy. But she started taking Taekwondo in Fall 2007 because Chynna wanted to learn a martial art. Skylan and I joined later, and we all got our black belts in 2011.

Your mom and I left Taekwondo when we felt we were getting a little too old to get beaten up by younger kids. After that, we did some kickboxing and Krav Maga, along with Chynna, for exercise. Your mom then started taking Tai Chi classes, which I later joined. But it was too slow for us. She started taking yoga classes in 2012 and I joined her starting in 2014. Eventually we were going to The Yoga Experience (TYE) every day. It was a great stress release when I was Department Chair for the second time before I retired in 2019. 

Skylan

[speaking to Skylan]

We moved into the new house at 716 W Aspen Ave on September 26, 1991, shortly after we had stopped the fertility treatments that were not working. Grandma Wong said our new house was a lucky house. Seven months later, you were born.

You were two months premature, weighing 986 grams (2.17pounds). According to my dad (your grandfather), in China they call a 7-month preemie a “7-Star Baby”, which is considered luck (if they survive, at least). Grandma Lew said that in Germany, they considered babies born at 7 and 9 months luckier than those born at 8 months.

You were born in the Phoenix Children’s Hospital where your mom was flown by helicopter. She went in for a doctor visit and they diagnosed pre-eclampsia, and she had high blood pressure. They were concerned that you would be premature, and the Flagstaff Hospital was not equipped for premature births. Plus, there was a big snowstorm heading for Flagstaff. So, to beat the storm, they flew her that same day (March 24, 1992) to Phoenix. Of course, she could no longer teach at Christensen School, either.

You stayed in the incubator in Phoenix until April 30th, when they airlifted you and mommy back to Flagstaff by airplane (your first airplane ride). The Flagstaff Hospital had a brand-new premature baby unit (the Special Care Nursery), and they placed you in an incubator there until you finally came home on June 15th (your original “due date” was June 17th).

Your mom and I spent a lot of time looking through baby name lists trying to find something that we liked. She had a favorite student named "Sky", so we thought about that and finally came up with Skylan, which sounded better to us. We wanted to keep the tradition of double initials that my brothers, my mom, and I had. My dad picked your Chinese name of Yiht (sun or day) Jong (or jung; loyal, faithful, or devoted). Note those are Cantonese pronunciations). So, we took the English word “sun” and merged it with the Chinese word “jong” to get “Sunjong” for your middle name.

Others really liked you, both when you were small and as you grew up. You were very smart and did well in school, which was a concern because some preemies have a hard time with that. You seemed to be drawn to befriending and helping kids who were struggling in school.

When my parents visited us in Singapore in 1997-98, my dad commented on how you and Chynna reminded him of himself and my mom, both in the way you looked and in how you interacted, especially when arguing with each other.

It surprised me you did not want to learn to drive when you turned 16. I could not wait to drive at that age. It wasn’t until you had to drive, maybe when you started working at the Geekery, that you finally started driving regularly. About that same time, I told you I would pay for all the parts if you build your own computer, which you did. I had been putting together my own computers since I was in first in Singapore with Lauren in 1983-84 (a cheap Apple clone with CPM card operating system).

Now that you and Taylor are married, you clearly have more motivation to seek the best life possible for the two of you. And I am very confident that you both will do well. Taylor is very smart, though it may still take a bit of time and adjustments for you both to find your perfect careers and place to live. We will, of course, always be willing to help you out to do that as best we can.

Chynna

[speaking to Chynna]

You were born 19 months after Skylan. It surprised us how easy it was for your mom to get pregnant with you. You were delivered at the Flagstaff Hospital by a cesarean section on November 30, 1993, three weeks before your official due date.

You got your hair and skin color from my mom (Grandma Lew). I also had brown hair when I was little, which later turned black. Your strong will, independent nature, and occasional stubbornness came from both your grandmothers, more than your mom and me. Your outgoing personality (now that you are older) also reminds me of my mom.

Grandma Wong (Hu-Hu) passed away two months before you were born. But it thrilled her that we were going to have a daughter.

We named you Chynna after the country of China, since you are ¾ Chinese and I am a geographer. Kymberlee comes from your mom’s middle name, Kim. In Chinese culture, it is not appropriate to name a child after a relative, which is the opposite of my mom’s German culture. So, we changed Kim to Kymberlee.

Like Lauren, you were walking well before your first birthday and showed signs of being intellectually gifted at an early age. By age 2, you knew your ABCs, our address and phone number, and could spell your name and Skylan’s name. But you also preferred eating with your fingers more than using a spoon or fork, which I found interesting. I wondered what previous life that came from.

Throughout your early childhood, your mom and I often thought you would grow up to be a lawyer because or your ability to use words and to argue opposite views from what we expressed. You were very good at that, and we often had to think twice about how to best respond to the arguments you would make. You’ve probably heard many times how when your mom asked if Skylan was being a nuisance, you said, “no, he is an old-sense”.

When Lauren was born, I was still a student and could spend a lot of time with her. Unfortunately, when you and Skylan were born, I had far less time to spend with either of you because of my busy schedule at NAU. Your mom was much more involved in your lives, as she still is today. She was a “supermom”, teaching, raising you guys, cooking, and managing our house. I could help some, but that became a real problem when I became the Department Chair in Fall 2002. The workload overwhelmed me, and so your mom took an early retirement.

Like your mom, you were very athletic. In addition to Taekwondo, I enjoyed learning scuba with you, something I had always wanted to do, even though you did not get fully certified until we were in Hawaii in 2009. You seemed to have psychically picked up the creepy energy of the scuba instructor we had in Flagstaff.

It impressed your mom and me when you took a solo trip to Europe in 2014, which is the kind of thing your Grandma Lew might have done. You were about the same age as my mom was when she left Germany for Canada, and the same age I was when I went to Hong Kong as an exchange student.

I find it interesting that you fell in love with Portland, Oregon, when your mom and you visited there after your high school graduation. I think Portland is a very different from any other city in the western US. It reminds me more of cities in the Mid-Atlantic region (NY-NJ area). Your move to Portland in 2016, and the way you seemed to fit right into that place was impressive.

When you and Kevin were married, Shane described you as someone who could walk into a room full of strangers and be best friends with all of them by the time you left. That sure differs from when you were little. But again, it reminds me of my mom.

You and Kevin seem well suited to each other, and your mom and I wish you all the best that this universe can bring in your future.

Family Travels

[speaking to Skylan & Chynna] 

Chynna was only 2¼ and Skylan not yet 3 years old when we made a trip to Hong Kong and our villages in China, in March 1996. Lauren was 15, and we went with, with my parents, your cousin Nathan, and Auntie Tina Kennedy (a colleague of mine from NAU). For the two of you and Aunty Tina, it was your first trips outside the US. It was very cold in southern China, and we were all bundled up. Everyone we met thought the two of you were very cute.

In the mid-1990s, I started getting funds to travel overseas. Since either NAU or another university often paid for my travel, I felt I should try to take you along with me, as the overall cost of the trip would be much less than it would otherwise be. Lauren would join us when she could, but being older, she was not always available.

The biggest trip was to Singapore in May 1997. Our year in Singapore was quite an adventure for all of us. You were exposed to Chinese, Indian, and Malay cultures and food. And you visited Sidney, Australia, and the South Island of New Zealand on our family vacations. In the Fall, Chynna started Kindergarten 1 (more like pre-school) and Skylan started Kindergarten 2 at Kinderland, which was a private school on the ground floor of our apartment complex (our address: Pandan Valley, Block 3, apartment #11-304).

Because Singapore is always hot, the two of you spent a lot of time in the nice swimming pool of our complex (which was being remodeled when we first arrived). Skylan especially got very tan at the swimming pool and had noticeable white rings around his eyes from his swimming goggles. Teletubbies and Barney were your favorite TV shows there.

As the two of you got older, you did not always want to go on our summer trips because you preferred to spend more time with friends. That was especially pronounced when you said you did not want to go on our grand tour of Australia in 2006 (starting in Melbourne and ending at a conference in Brisbane, with Ayers Rock and Cairns in between). And as you both got even older, you started working and could no longer travel with us.

The California coast, especially north of San Francisco, has been my most favorite place to live since I was a kid (though Flagstaff is pretty good as well). Hawaii is my most favorite place to visit, because it is kind of exotic and not too far. Although I often said Taiwan was my most favorite place in Asia, I think I have changed my mind recently. I now agree with your mom that Japan is the most interesting place to visit outside the US.

But your mom and I have traveled little since the pandemic started, even though I am retired. All but one of our trips has been to see family. The one trip that was something else was a yoga retreat in Silverton, CO, (September 2022) where we both caught Covid. Your mom had it for a week, but it took me two months to get over it (long-covid). That makes me even less interested in traveling. I figure I have seen much more of this world than most people. Beyond family-related travel, I would rather not make my carbon footprint much bigger than it is.

But remember that the both of you, Lauren, your spouses, and kids are always welcome to join us on any of our trips. We should try to do more things like that in the future.

My Career

I was very lucky to land a job at NAU. Many of the people I knew in Graduate School had to move to the Eastern US to find jobs because they were so hard to get in the West. NAU was a teaching university and did not require professors to do much research when I arrived. That changed over the years. I did a lot of research and writing because that is what I loved to do. As a result, I was the most published person in my department, by far. I was not the best teacher, though. I always had too much information for students.

I was very technology oriented, buying my first computer in Spring 1983 (a RadioShack “Color Computer”). When I first came to NAU in 1986, I taught GIS/Computer Aided Drafting and set up the first GIS at NAU in a closet. I also taught GIS when we spent a year in Singapore (1997-98) but stopped teaching it after that so I could focus more on tourism. I published the first issue of my Tourism Geographies journal after the Singapore trip in 1999. In 2022, it was the top journal in tourism studies and the 2nd ranked journal in geography worldwide. (I had transitioned out of the editor-in-chief position for Tourism Geographies in the years 2019-2021.)

I was one of the first to teach an online course at NAU in 1995, and eventually all the courses I taught were online. I mostly taught urban planning and world geography classes at NAU, even though my research specialty was tourism studies. I served as the Department Chair twice (2002-05 and 2017-2019).

When I came to NAU, I was told that they focused on the Colorado Plateau and did not encourage international activities. So, I did a lot of consulting with Indian tribes and local communities in Arizona. That was through contracts that others at NAU had secured. They were good at getting contract, while I was good at finishing them.

In the early 1990s, NAU changed its policy and started encouraging international travel. That was when Lauren and I went to Bali and Balikpapan (Borneo) in Indonesia (1995). That was the first time NAU funded an international trip for me. Soon after that, I was making several international trips every year. I came to travel internationally more than anyone I knew at NAU.

I recently calculated that I had been to China 32 times, Hong Kong 16, Taiwan 10, Malaysia 10, Singapore 9, the UK 8 (including visits to Edinburgh), Indonesia 7, Japan 5, and Germany 4 times. Those include both work and personal trip. Altogether, I have lived in Hong Kong about 3 full years, Singapore about 2 full years, and Malaysia and Taiwan about ½ to 1 full year each. 

I retired at the end of June 2019, just before the pandemic broke out. I was supposed to go to Hiroshima University in Fall 2020 as a visiting professor, but that got postponed because of the pandemic. I eventually did it online only for a couple of semesters (Fall 2021 & Spring 2022). As far as I can tell, I am now fully retired from my academic career.

I always considered the job I had as a professor to be the best job I could ever have because of the freedom it gave me to pursue my interests. But now that I am retired, I have no desire to get involved in academic activities.

My Retirement

[speaking to Skylan & Chynna]

When I started traveling internationally, your mom and I started talking about how we would travel domestically in the US after I retired. But I have also lost interest in traveling. It just seems more of a hassle that it is worth. As mentioned previously, almost all our travel now is for family things, and that is what I expect from now on.

My research and writing the last few years as a professor gradually shifted to what I would now call “spiritual” topics. That started with a conference paper in Beijing on “the role of tourism in global understanding” in 2016. Prior to that, my focus had been on “community resilience” and “tourism and placemaking”. Global understanding eventually evolved into “global consciousness”, which is more spiritual.

At first, I was unsure about bringing metaphysical, consciousness, and spiritual topics into my academic presentations. Those were not topics any of my colleagues ever mentioned. But people seemed to really love what I was saying, which was encouraging.

My interest in metaphysical and spiritual (not religious) things goes back to when I first learned Transcendental Meditation as a freshman at Sacramento State College in February 1974. I did a deep dive in New Age and Eastern spirituality when I was in Hong Kong and have maintained that as a side interest ever since. My global consciousness presentations and writings brought me back to that, along with my growing interest in yoga, starting in 2014.

When I was 20 years old, I read Seth Speaks, a book channeled by Jane Roberts. Seth is multidimensional being who famously coined the phrase “you create your own reality.” It was one of the few books I read more than once, and it was the one that I felt had the strongest impact on over the years. In retirement, I became interested in Seth again, and in 2018, I took a lucid dreaming class online based on the Seth material. After retiring, I started reading other Seth books on Amazon Kindle. I was also listening more and more to New Age channelers and Buddhist/Hindu teachings on YouTube.

As my retirement neared, I started getting interested in gongs, which I first heard at our yoga studio. I knew I had to get one, though it took about 6 more months and full retirement before I would buy my first gong. After retirement, I bought more gongs, took lessons, and set up EarthGongs.com as a business in Flagstaff in January 2020. The pandemic promptly stopped that in March 2020. At the same time, I got Mable to join me in a 200-hour Yoga teacher training class in Flagstaff. 

Today (Fall 2022) I mostly play gongs and teach yoga on Saturday morning at a donation-based community yoga class in the Tree Park in Flagstaff when the weather is good (Spring, Summer, & Fall).

I discovered Medium.com in Spring 2020, when I was looking for a place to write/blog about some ideas I had related to the newly announced global pandemic. Those ideas came from my global consciousness and tourism interests. But by Fall 2022 I was writing about a lot of different topics related to New Age spirituality. An article on the Spiritual Dimensions of Reality has had the most views (about 250,000). That was something that I was trying to make sense of because so many people described those dimensions in different ways. Lately, I have been writing a lot on Nonduality.

While I am no longer the editor for Tourism Geographies, I am now the founding editor for New Earth Consciousness, an online publication on the Medium.com platform. I see that as a natural evolution of my pre-retirement academic interests.

My Beliefs, Values & Life Lessons

I believe we exist in an infinite universe

- Anything is possible in an infinite universe -

I believe the most important moment is always right now

- What we experience right now is always complete and full, and infinitely so -

I believe it is impossible to know why anything happens

- We create stories that may satisfy us, but they are never the full story, there is always more -

VALUES & LIFE LESSONS

-- Remember that everyone is doing the best they can at this moment in their life --

-- For me, meditation was the most valuable tool I ever learned --

-- Experiences are more important than things. Contentment is more important than experiences --

-- Be frugal as much as possible, but don’t miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity --

CHRISTMAS CARDS - 2005 to Present

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to see our past annual family Christmas cards