Author: Ed

Saebae 2013: Happy New Year!

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In Korea, the new year is celebrated with some very special rituals and customs, and naturally we want Ruby to grow up with them.  Called “Saebae”, it involves bowing in front of your elders as a sign of respect and appreciation.  The new year is also brought in with some great food!

We first brought Ruby down to my mom’s place, dressed to the nines in full Korean regalia.  The dress, called a hanbok, was a hit with Ruby.  She kept admiring herself in the mirror, and explaining over and over to us that she was wearing a “Korean dress”.  We tried teaching her the traditional saebae saying to say to her halmoni (Grandma in Korean), “Sae hae bok manee badusaeyo”, as well.

She never quite got the Korean words right, at least not in their entirety, but she delighted in saying parts of it, like “BOK MANEE!!!”  or “BADUSAEYO!!!!”

As you can see in the first photo, though, she got the bow just right.  It’s such a beautiful picture, undoubtedly one that will be an iconic image in our family for years to come.

Ruby also learned that saebae involves considerable financial reward too!

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In Korea, the New Year is rung in with ddukgook, a hearty, delicious, and nourishing soup with rice cakes and other tasty ingredients.  I might be biased, but my mom’s is the bomb.  A couple of obligatory food shots!

And a couple pics of Ruby with Halmoni and Wonil!

After a wonderful time at my mom’s, we headed to see my dad and his wife, Grace.  In addition to the festivities celebrating the new year, January 1 is also my dad’s birthday so there was double reason to celebrate.  I regret we have no picture of Ruby bowing to my dad and Grace, but it was late in the day and Ruby was tired, cranky, and not really in the mood for photos.  Let’s just say that it happened!

And here’s the birthday boy blowing out his candles on his cake, incidentally from one of our favorite bakeries in our area, Paris Baguette. Don’t let the name fool you; it’s not a French baker but rather a Korean one. Korean cakes and pastries are a delight, with less overt sweetness than most other cakes and a subtler, sophisticated taste. We love them! Happy Birthday, Dad!

Best wishes for a wonderful 2013 from the Kims!

Goodbye, Endeavor!

The end of the shuttle program is a very sentimental event for me, and one that has affected me even more than I thought it would.  I worked from home today due to deliveries coming to the house, and I used the occasion to take an extended lunch break to see Endeavor on its last flight with Ruby. Going to LAX today to see Endeavor touch down for the very, very last time was something I expected to be an emotional event for me. After all, as a kid, the shuttle program was the single biggest thing that inspired me to learn, explore, and discover. I knew practically everything there was to know about the shuttles as I pored over books and articles about the shuttle and by extension, the space program, astronomy, and science in general. It inspired me to dream of the unknown.

And so, decades later, this chapter of American space exploration is over. Watching it perform its low pass over LAX and later land for the last time brought up so many emotions: exhilaration, a little sadness that this chapter of space exploration is over, and uncertainty over what the end of the program means for the future.

After Endeavor performed its low pass, a little boy about five or six years old sitting on his dad’s shoulders excitedly exclaimed, “I’m going to be a scientist!!” That one comment was really pretty profound. This boy felt the same excitement that I did at his age, and it was inspiring him to strive to be an agent for the advancement of humankind. But with the shuttle program over, our nation has no firm plans to develop any more manned space vehicles. We may very well not see our country send humans to space again in our lifetime. We have let the Russians and the Chinese assume the role of taking humans into space. Sure, there are private entrepreneurs trying to accomplish manned quick joyrides for those with the means to pay for it, but the shuttle program was different: we as a nation decided to utilize a good chunk of our resources for the sake of science and exploration. The symbolism behind that was significant.

I know we are exploring Mars with Curiosity and the earlier rovers, but you have to admit there is just something awesome about humans leaving our planetary boundaries. As amazing as Curiosity’s arrival on Mars was, you can’t deny that it will be 100x more thrilling and awe inspiring when the first human steps foot on the red planet. After all, human exploration IS our heritage – always has been, and I think will always be.

Anyways, I guess I’m a little sad that today’s kids, Ruby included, will not have an American manned space program to inspire them in the way so many kids of my generation were. The priorities and thus budget just aren’t there, I suppose.

I’m just so happy I got to see it fly for the last time, and see it touch down for the last time – the latter event being the catalyst for all of these thoughts. As a parent, I’ll always work to instill that spirit of discovery and curiosity in Ruby that the shuttle program instilled in me as a child. As such, I’d like to think the shuttles’ legacy will live on in that manner.

Thank you to all the men and women of NASA who made the shuttles and their accomplishments a reality. You have inspired and continue to inspire, and you all RULE!

My Second Father’s Day!

Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m a dad.  And it feels surreal that Father’s Day, a holiday that I’d observed all my life to honor my dad, is now MY holiday.  So what did we do on MY holiday?  We had fun.  LOTS of it.

Everyone knows that I live and breathe cars, but a lesser known fact about me is that I love to use alternate forms of transportation whenever I get the chance.  I also love to eat.  So, what did we do as a family for Father’s Day?  Well, we did both – and LOTS of it too!

We started off the day with an epic (for us) family bike ride (there’s our first alternate transportation for the day).  We had recently gotten a bike seat for little Ruby, who now pines for any chance she can get to go on a bike ride.  Carrie did some research to find the best breakfast burrito (my favorite breakfast food by far) within biking distance.  A joint called Golden Eagle seemed to have some serious cred, so that was our destination.

As you can see, I loved it…but Ruby, a big fan of tortillas herself, wasn’t going to leave without getting a bite for herself.

No doubt, it was a tasty burrito.  Big and tasty.  And fortunately, all that biking took the guilt out of eating such a decadent burrito.

After riding home, it was time for the next leg of our epic Father’s Day.  For a long time, we’ve wanted to get a ride on the Long Beach Aqualink, which is a fairly large catamaran that transports passengers along the city’s coastline.  It’s actually part of Long Beach Transit and costs a paltry five bucks for a really great 35 minute ride from Alamitos Bay to Shoreline Village.  Our second form of alternate transportation of the day, then!

Some awesome shots of the ride, including this awesome one of Carrie’s feet in a very Wes Anderson-like composition:

We had every intention of riding the boat back to Alamitos Bay, but a few minutes after getting off the boat and walking through Shoreline Village, it was quickly apparent Ruby wasn’t feeling well.  Yep, Ruby had gotten seasick!  So, we picked up our third form of alternate transportation in the form of the Passport bus.  Ruby was into it.  She insisted on getting her own seat.

We thought about calling it a day after this already epic journey.  Most sane parents would have.  But we decided to press on.  After all, I also happened to be lucky enough to be testing a 2012 Chrysler 300C that weekend – one of my favorite cars at the moment and in my possession!

Thanks to a recent episode of No Reservations about the food scene in Penang, I’d been craving Mee Goreng, a spicy fried noodle dish popular in Malaysia and Indonesia.  And one of the few places to get it around here is at Singapore’s Banana Leaf at the Farmer’s Market on Third and Fairfax in Los Angeles.  So, after everything we had already done, we got in the 300C (our fourth and final – and face it, the most awesome – form of transportation that day) and headed up to LA for some deliciousness.

What a great day.  I think I like this Father’s Day business a lot.  Thanks Tiger and Ruby for making it such a great day!