Our family photos, as well as an archive of our family letters, can always be seen at http://www.terragalleria.com/family

We are fortunate to have made it through the pandemic unscathed so far, and hope you and your family are well too. We took an excess of precautions since Lanchi's parents, who live with us, are over 80. They have now received their first dose of vaccine. Lanchi, as their official caretaker, has already been fully vaccinated. During the year, we had a few moments of alarm, for instance, when Lanchi's brother Y, who also lives with us, got potentially exposed, or when he developed a fever. This led him to be quarantined each time before a negative test - he's had quite a few now. We even quarantined Vi-Van after we observed her on a recorded video. She had failed to wear a mask while at her cousin's house with another person not within the family. The one who didn't make it was our last chicken. She was taken out by a predator. 

After the year 2019 full of cross-country and international travel, between an outing at a beach north of Santa Cruz in March 2020 and another one in January 2021, we didn't go anywhere as a family. The San Francisco Bay Area had the earliest shelter-in-place orders in the country. From what we could see locally, compliance for mask-wearing and social distancing was high, but this did not seem to curb the virus's spread that much.  We spaced our grocery shopping at intervals of two to three weeks. Our extended family had a tradition of getting together each Saturday evening. Instead, we contented ourselves with a few backyard gatherings, grouped by family. We also formed a "bubble" with Lanchi's sister Landai household next door to us, and that alone did much to alleviate the isolation. August brought some of the most sustained heat waves in memory. With no air conditioning, Tuan had found a bit of relief by sleeping out on the deck, but he had to retreat inside because of smoke and falling ash. For almost a week, the sky was red from air pollution, and the air quality rated "unhealthy." Our home was less than a mile away from the evacuation zone for the SCU fire that grew to the second-largest in California's history. Fortunately, we did not have to evacuate, and the fire was eventually contained. 

The children had their lives impacted the most by the shutdown, as their school closed in-person instruction. The charter school that they attend, Summit Public Schools, is unique among high schools in that their entire learning platform is online. Therefore, the transition to distance learning was relatively seamless. Yet, it exacerbated Minh-Dan's tepid motivation for school in the 10th grade as distance learning requires more discipline and focus. We made satisfactory results a requirement for him to keep using electronics with only limited effect. Vi-Van did better by hanging out over the phone with her friends for support while the virtual class was happening. Once the classes were over, she did not hang up the phone, though, often staying up talking till late in the night. When the school year ended in the summer, she switched to a schedule of being up all night talking, watching movies, playing games with friends and then sleeping until mid-afternoon. After his previous well-liked Karate instructor retired, we tried to sign up Minh-Dan at a different karate studio, but he disliked them so much that we allowed him to quit just before the shutdown. Vi-Van was getting slightly more comfortable with the White Stag program as a junior counselor for the outdoor summer camp that she attended before. However, Lanchi and her were concerned about the risks due to the virus, so this got canceled too. 

Lanchi found as a silver lining to the lockdown that she didn't have to keep track of the children since they were kept at home. You'd think that this resulted in more interactive family life, but it didn't turn out that way. To compensate for everything they missed, we lifted restrictions on screen time that before was strictly timed. Minh Dan had been wanting a gaming computer system for a while. He had thoroughly researched minimum acceptable technical specifications like CPUs. We had planned to allow him to take a summer job to earn it, but since that possibility vanished with the pandemic, we bought one for him. Vi-Van, more practically minded, got a new Apple laptop. She resumed playing Minecraft with her friends in her room - where she could be loud. Lanchi joined Netflix and shared the subscription with the children. Since there was no eating out, we also let them order food through home delivery services such as Doordash. All of this resulted in them spending most of the time in their rooms. Some days, we barely talked to them. 

Although social-distancing put more restrictions in those activities, Vi-Van continued to bake elaborate goodies for her friends, go biking in the streets with a bit of geocaching thrown in, and go with her cousin Nhu to buy houseplants to fill her room with. She dyed her hair and shopped for fashions (1970s style) at thrift shops and online sites. Her friends also inspired her to take up playing the electric bass guitar. They are quite the progressive group, passionate about things such as transgender rights and the Black Lives Matter movement. Even though a firm man of the left, Tuan was surprised by Vi-Van's political positions. She insisted on participating in a local protest in downtown San Jose, after which we put her in semi-quarantine, and Tuan wrote a BLM statement ( https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/black-lives-matter/)

As a very picky eater, Minh Dan also started to cook for himself, elaborately. He would shop for choice meats, organic spices, special cooking utensils, search for recipes...and made the best steak that Lanchi had ever tasted (Tuan wouldn't know, since he is a vegetarian). He let his hair grow long and walked around the house shirtless, caveman style. Besides playing video games and video chatting with friends, he special ordered individual components and custom-built mechanical keyboards. Once in a while, he took a long walk all by himself as an antidote for stay-at-home fever. 

Being antisocial introverts working mostly at home, Lanchi and Tuan were not affected by the shutdown that much. As all of Lanchi's art fairs got canceled, she suspended her woodturning. To make up for the loss of revenue, she turned to day trading stocks. The general uptrend of the market, plus some wild fluctuations, provided excellent opportunities. Lanchi got skilled enough at trading that it turned into a more lucrative activity for less work, so it felt a bit like a vacation with no work pressure for her. She could work in bed rather than in her uncomfortable workshop subject to seasonal temperatures and fine particle pollution that required her to wear full protective gear. Because of the latter, she had a large stockpile of N95 masks to pass around at the start of the pandemic, when they were sold out everywhere. Although it required her to get up each morning at 6am to prepare for the opening of the New York stock exchange, by 1pm, her activity was finished. Lanchi's mail-order plant business also helped fill her days, as demand grew from homebound customers, leading to dozens of packages needing to be sent weekly. 

Tuan's minor day-to-day adjustment was that instead of running on various trails in the South Bay, he went on local streets. It was easier to keep his distance from others on a suburban road than on a trail. The steep hills in the neighborhood provided plenty of exercise and the satisfaction to discover locations close to home, like a network of miles-long paths hidden in a semi-developed property. He missed his lectures/book signings and a planned trip to Washington DC to receive an award for his National Parks project. Otherwise, he was able to squeeze in four road trips  (https://qtl.us/3b66lq1). National monuments are public lands of adventure and solitude, no less beautiful than national parks, but subject to fewer regulations and much lighter visitation. That made them great places for social distancing. As Tuan is publishing a new book about them in September, he would be grateful for any help to pass the word around, so please contact him if you are interested.

We wish  you and all your  loved ones a  lunar year 2021 (of  the ox)
full of happiness,  health, prosperity, and success, and  hope to hear
some news from you.

Tuan, Lanchi, Vi-Van, Minh-Dan, Peanut
3373 Meadowlands Lane, San Jose CA 95135 (+1) 408-706-0894