After  our  wedding  on Nov  17,  2001,  we  went  to France  for  our
honeymoon. We spent a few days in Paris with Tuan's mom, a few days in
Saint Malo with Lanchi's auntie  and uncle. There is a local specialty
on Mont  Saint-Michel, an omelette uniquely light,  fluffy, and creamy
that  had left  permanent memories  for  Tuan, as  he tasted  it as  a
child.  After trying  the 30-Euro  omelette, Lanchi  thought  that she
would be  able to reproduce it  at home, and indeed  comes very close,
however she  is still  a bit away  from reproducing the  French almond
macaroons, despite of more than a  dozen tries. We spent the next week
in the Loire  Valley where Lanchi enjoyed much  discovering the quaint
small towns. Before  returning to California, we had  a lunch in Paris
with many of  Tuan's friends and family, which was  like episode II of
the wedding.

Back to Tuan's Menlo Park apartment, we began to spend long hours with
the  computers,  first upgrading  our  hardware,  then  there was  the
printing  and writing  of  the  "Thank you  notes".  After that,  Tuan
selected, scanned, and  uploaded more than 5000 slides  for his nature
and travel photography site,  www.terragalleria.com.  He had a goal of
reaching more  than 100000 monthly visits  by the end of  the year. If
you  are interested  in  faraway lands  and  beautiful landscapes,  we
invite you to check it out. But unexpectedly, it was Lanchi who became
the Photoshop  expert. She has  been acquiring from exotic  places and
growing nearly  700 different orchids in a  self-built greenhouse next
to her parent's home. Fortunately, they are miniature orchids, so they
don't  take up too  much room.  Unfortunately, however--as  Tuan often
likes  to joke--one  needs a  magnifying  glass to  see the  intricate
detail of the flowers. Lanchi  found out that a closed-up and enlarged
photograph was very effective at  conveying the beauty of her orchids.
To  illustrate the whole  plant in  good focus,  she needs  to combine
several photographs into  a digital composite.  And thus  that was how
we  spent  our newly-wed  time:  looking  in  the same  direction--the
computer screen--instead  of into each  other's eyes (as  some friends
and relatives  had jokingly hinted after our  long post-wedding hiatus
from social life).

In April, we traveled to Vietnam  for two weeks. There were at first a
few days busy visiting, concluded by a dinner with Tuan's large family
in Vietnam, which  felt like episode III of the  wedding. We then took
off, together  with Tuan's mom, to  travel in the  North, escaping the
high heat and humidity of the  South. After a brief stopover in Hue to
explore the Phong Nha cave, a beautiful site that one visits through a
boat ride in  an underground river, we hired a car  and driver to tour
the  mountainous North-East,  looking for  the remnants  of hill-tribe
culture.  Lanchi admired the  color harmony  of the  traditional dress
(which are  being displaced fast by  western garb) and got  a set that
she sometimes wears.  After spending a long day on  water to visit the
Ba Be  Lake, Lanchi returned to  the US from Hanoi,  while Tuan stayed
with  his  mom  for  one  more  week to  tour  the  North-West,  where
traditional hill-tribe  culture appeared  to be better  preserved from
the Vietnamese influence.  Then Tuan crossed the border  into China on
foot, and spent  two weeks in Yunnan and Szechuan where  he had a good
time in  a region  he found surprisingly  colorful and easy  to travel
despite   his  initial   worries  about   the  language   barrier.  He
particularly  liked  the old  town  of  Lijiang  with its  cobblestone
streets, wooden houses  (a rarity in modern China)  canals, and lively
local Naxi culture, and the  hike through the temples and stairways of
the lush buddhist mountain of Emei Shan.

The other  long trip  that we took  together to Kobuk  Valley National
Park in  Alaska couldn't have been  more different. If  you have never
heard of this  name before, this is normal.  Kobuk Valley, situated in
remote  North Western  Alaska, above  the Arctic  circle,  hundreds of
miles from any  road, is one of the national  parks with absolutely no
development. Besides  the native Inupiaq eskimo, less  than a thousand
visitors  a year  see  its rare  Arctic  dune field,  and witness  the
migration across  the Kobuk  River of the  400000 head  strong caribou
herd.   We first  flew to  Kotzebue, the  largest eskimo  community in
Alaska (population 3000),  then to the small eskimo  village of Ambler
where  we  deployed  the  inflatable  canoe  that  we  had  rented  in
California.  Despite the  unusually rainy weather, we had  a good time
paddling down the Kobuk river and  camping on the sand bars and bluffs
before reaching  the eskimo  village of Kiana,  about a  hundred miles
downriver, from where we flew back to Kotzebue. Back in Anchorage, the
prospect  of spending  another half-week  in the  wilderness  in rainy
conditions didn't appeal much, so we rented a car and toured the Kenai
Peninsula.

Kobuk Valley  was the last of  the US National Parks  that Tuan hadn't
visited in his project to  photograph all 57 Parks with his cumbersome
5x7  inches camera.  Previously this  year, he  visited the  second to
last, the National  Park of America Samoa, home  to a rapidly changing
local culture  set among  tropical forests and  reefs spread  on three
small volcanic  islands in the  center of Polynesia.  There  were also
the revisits of  the Parks for which he didn't  get enough good images
in previous  trips, including the sub-tropical parks  of South Florida
(Everglades NP, Biscayne NP, Dry  Tortugas NP), Hawaii Volcanoes NP to
observe a new molten lava flow, and Parks of the Colorado Plateau with
their  ever changing  interplay of  light  and stone  (Zion NP,  Grand
Canyon NP, Capitol Reef NP,  Petrified Forest NP). In addition, Lanchi
came along  to explore the  coast and forest  of Redwood NP,  plus two
backpacking  trips to  the  curious Waterwheel  falls  of Yosemite  NP
(which lives up to its name) and the alpine Dusy Basin of Kings Canyon
NP. (By  this time,  you might have  noticed that  there are a  lot of
numbers in this letter, can'nt help it, because Tuan works with number
besides his camera)

Work had  been slow for Tuan at  SRI International (to get  an idea of
what he is  doing, see www.ai.sri.com/~luong). Because of  the lack of
research contracts, he had been on leave without pay for a significant
portion of time during the first  half of the year. This let him spend
some time, besides the trips, trying to grow his photography business,
which went  fiscally official  last year. He  reached his goal  on the
web, but this did not translate to income. On the other hand, work had
been  busy  for   Lanchi  (she  is  a  chemist   working  at  Argonaut
Technologies, a  small company producing instruments  and reagents for
the pharmaceutical industry) who amidst a wave of layoffs was promoted
to a senior position.

At the end of the year, we began to move back to the house of Lanchi's
parents in the Evergreen district  of San Jose. This will allow Lanchi
to  be closer  to  her family  (that  we used  to  visit almost  every
week-end) and greenhouse. With the real estate market still overpriced
in  the Silicon  Valley,  and  our savings  severely  affected by  the
collapse of some stocks, we were not willing to tie ourselves to a new
house. We  spent much of our  holidays amongst piles  of moving boxes,
but now are  beginning to get organized and look  forward to this year
of the Goat.

We wish to  you and to all  your loved ones a year  full of happiness,
health, prosperity, and success, and hope to hear some news from you.

Tuan and Lanchi
3159 Ravenswood way, San Jose CA 95148, USA
(1) 408-223-8419 or (1) 408-274-2227