2004 was for us the year of our first daughter's arrival.

Despite Lanchi's insistence for Tuan to find a name during the winter,
when we checked in at the Stanford Children Hospital in the morning of
March 20, nothing had been selected.  As the situation became a little
urgent, we settled  on the name Vi-Van, which  literally means "little
cloud". Tuan  probably chose  this name with  a subconscious  wish for
fair weather, since a sky full  of gray clouds, or cloudless, is never
desirable for nature photography.  Vi-Van  was born on March 21 around
2am without  much difficulty.  As is  customary in the  US, mother and
baby returned home after two days.

Tuan's mom,  who has been anticipating  that day for  many long years,
had made  the trip from France. It  turned out that March  21 was also
her birthday.  Vi-Van is the best  gift we could offer her on her 79th
year.  She  had arrived  in early March,  to be  sure not to  miss the
happy event, and  stayed with us until May,  when Vi-Van was beginning
to be a bit heavy for her  to hold.  At that point, thanks to Vi-Van's
seemingly excessive appetite,  she measured in the top  75% of her age
for weight and height.

Tuan visited  her mom in  Paris in June,  to set-up her new  iBook for
using iChat, the surprisingly good Apple's video conferencing software
that would let her watch Vi-Van gesturing and vocalizing in real time.
The other reason  for that trip was the  20th anniversary gathering of
the   X84  alumni,   where   Tuan,  despite   his  astonishingly   bad
face-recognition  abilities, was  able  to identify  many  of his  old
friends.

Vi-Van turned  out to  be a happy  baby. She  took on her  dad's trait
(according to  Lanchi) of not wanting  to stay idle.   She often plays
until she is too tired and/or sleepy to move around. However, all this
activities resulted, after she learned  to flip over and crawl, on her
weight dropping  below the  average for her  age. In case  her parents
have  other plans  for her,  she let  us know  that she  has excellent
lungs.  We  also think she is very  cute, but we'll let  you judge for
yourself this web photo gallery: http://www.terragalleria.com/family

After four  months at  home breastfeeding, and  in general  caring for
Vi-Van,  Lanchi was pleased  to be  offered a  position at  her former
company, Argonaut Technologies. It at last enabled her to work with as
much flexibility as Tuan. She even beat Tuan's records of late arrival
and early departure.  Since Lanchi's new workplace is in Redwood City,
just  slightly  further  north  from Tuan's  workplace,  they  resumed
commuting together. She  now works by the hour,  as a consultant, with
15  hrs a  week on  average.   This means  that her  paycheck is  just
enough, after paying the baby-sitter and the tax, to buy diapers, baby
clothes, baby food and a few  orchids, but at least she can escape the
monotony of being at home and feel a bit more productive.

Tuan continued to work part-time at SRI, although his activities there
are  now more of  an engineer  or consultant  than a  researcher (good
research takes a great deal of commitment and some single-mindedness).
He is concentrating his energy  on taking his photography business off
the ground, which translates into adding enhancement after enhancement
to  the website  www.terragalleria.com, which  now features  more than
10,000 images, as  well as an e-commerce infrastructure  that lets him
manage  the business  from anywhere  in the  world via  the  Net.  The
effort  somehow paid  off,  with the  site  becoming one  of the  most
visited  amongst  individual  photographer's  sites  (average  400,000
visits/month). It produced gross  revenue comparable to Tuan's revenue
from research  activities. However, net  revenue is still  lagging, as
the transition to digital photography, which Tuan completed at the end
of the  year, proves  to be  a money black  hole with  insanely priced
cameras  that  will be  obsolete  in a  couple  of  years, myriads  of
computer  hardware  (like a  dozen  external  250GB  hard drives)  and
software.

Besides licensing  images for  publication and selling  expensive fine
art  prints,  another  relatively   innovative  source  of  income  is
subscription  programs that allow  people to  download high-resolution
images to be used as computer wallpaper images.  As a friend or family
member, we would like to offer you free access to those images, should
you like to  decorate your desktop to make it  more pleasant. Just use
the username  and password "friends".  On Windows,  right-click on the
image to set it as wallpaper.

All these  hours spent in front  of the computer  screen - fortunately
helped by Lanchi  for color-correction of digital files  - in addition
with the sisyphian  task of preventing Vi-Van from  crawling under the
desk  and  pulling  on  cables,  meant  little  time  for  photography
trips. Tuan  exposed less  than 100 sheets  of large format  film last
year on two short trips.  On a two-day stop at Crater Lake in January,
the  car in  which  he slept  was covered  with  half a  foot of  snow
overnight, but the magnificent view of the late rimmed by snow-covered
pine trees made it worth it.  On his only wilderness trip of the year,
in October,  reaching the  West end of  San Miguel Island  (to observe
only  a few  thousands sea  lions  and seals,  as opposed  to tens  of
thousands earlier in the summer) required driving to Ventura (close to
Los Angeles), spending most of the day in a boat, ferrying camping and
photographic gear  twice up a steep  canyon, and then  hiking 15 miles
round-trip in a day.

However, we had the satisfaction  of taking Vi-Van abroad twice on two
week-long trips. In September, we  flew to Seattle, and explored a bit
of  the rain  forests and  beaches of  the Olympic  Peninsula  and the
comparable, but more remote, Vancouver  Island. After a couple of days
in Vancouver,  Lanchi had enough  of the city,  so we spent  the final
days of the trip looking at the impressive remnants of the eruption of
Mount Saint Helens.   In January, joined by both  of Lanchi's parents,
we flew to Puerto Vallarta where  we stayed at a time-share resort for
half  a week, before  embarking on  a road  trip through  the highland
towns of  Guadalajara, Zacatecas and  Guanajuato.  Although a  pair of
locals  got a  bit too  "friendly",  stealing Tuan's  wallet using  an
elaborate and well  rehearsed scheme, we agreed that  Mexico was a fun
country  to travel  to,  with  a rare  combination  of great  weather,
friendly people, architectural gems  set in narrow cobblestone streets
of old  towns comparable to Europe's, street  animation reminiscent of
Asia, distinctive  color, and great  food (at least for  Lanchi, since
veggies are not their forte), all at a very affordable price.

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

Tuan,  Lanchi and Vi-Van  (+1) 408-223-8419
3159  Ravenswood way, San  Jose CA 95148,  USA