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Christmas in Hawaii 2023 (dedicated to “Mommy and the Troops”)

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I wouldn’t call spending Christmas in Honolulu a tradition for us, exactly, but it is certainly lovely when the calendar for the 4 of us align and make it possible. And so it was thisyear, when we spent 11 glorious days in paradise, enjoying the sun, ocean, and surf.

The theme for this year’s stay in Hawaii was that all good things were dedicated to “Mommy and the troops.” (Don’t ask because I don’t have a good explanation.)

It was amusing when the hotel staff continually apologized for the poor weather we had to suffer through. (And by “suffer through,” I mean cloudy days with occasional rain and in the low 70s. Terrible for December. :)) Although I am forced to admit that there was one morning when the rain was coming down pretty hard. Three of us were already in the water surfing, so getting wet was a somewhat irrelevant issue.

Highlights included surfing lessons (always!), walks around Diamondhead, family time, and great food. The island aloha vibe is real and welcoming. And the Pacific Ocean (especially when it’s warm) makes all other oceans look inferior.

Jim and Jade tied for Mario Party champion, but every championship won by any member of the family was dedicated to me and the troops. Such an honor!

This is a short post because anything I can say about the loveliness of Hawaii I have already said in previous posts. So I will leave you with an assortment of photos of Christmas and of Christmas in Hawaii.

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season!! Belated best wishes for the New Year!!

surfing on Christmas morning
Waikiki
Christmas Eve brunch

Rainbows and Shave Ice (plus Lawyers, Guns & Money!)

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We returned earlier this month from a fabulous vacation in Hawaii! Highlights include:

— Visits from all of our children: Jade could only stay for a week but managed to spend a dinner explaining her research in combinatorics (which was summarized by us mere mortals as “counting triangles”). Yinan stayed for 2 weeks, and Jim was happy to have his tennis partner back. Marcus is working remotely for the summer so stayed the entire time with us.

— Visits from family and friends: we had visitors for much of the time we were there—some repeat and some first-time. We introduced them not only to the glories of Honolulu but also to Scattergories (a family favorite) and Exploding Kittens (a new family favorite). We did learn through Exploding Kittens who can and cannot be trusted, so beware!

— Surfing! No trip to Honolulu could be complete without surfing lessons. Marcus and I surfed three times a week while others surfed or didn’t surf in accordance to their preferences. The waves were lovely, and even when it’s not an optimal day for waves, there’s something about being on a surfboard in the ocean that is especially magical. The addiction continues!

— Food! And, of course, no trip to Honolulu is complete without a commentary on food. (I’ll be updating the Honolulu travel tome soon to include these new discoveries.) We returned to old favorites—The Pig & the Lady (nouvelle Vietnamese), Doraku (sushi), Sushi-sho (omakase), Uncle Clay’s (shave ice), and Goma Tei (ramen)—and discovered new favorites—Umi (seafood), Senia (nouvelle American), Scratch (Hawaiian), Honolulu Noodle (Taiwanese beef noodle soup), and Koko Head Cafe (Hawaiian brunch). We will definitely be back to all of them! Because, as the Samoans say, “Eat til you’re dizzy.”

— Beautiful scenery: and, of course, let’s not forget the reason people love Hawaii, which is the beautiful ocean and mountain views. It is a state with indescribable beauty and a true spirit of aloha. While the state’s soul and resilience will be tested in the aftermath of the tragic fire on Maui, we have no doubts that it will emerge more beautiful and stronger than before.

And, of course, our trips often have a theme song. This time it is Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.” I’ll leave it to you determine if there is a particular reason for the choice of song.

courtesy of Ty Gurney surfing school and 83 East video

Three Galas and a Photo Op

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We are fond of galas, especially ones where we (or our hosts) have our own tables and, therefore, we can chat with our friends (or make new ones). We are less fond of photo ops, but they can sometimes be entertaining, generally for reasons other than the actual photo op itself.

April/May have been a whirlwind of galas for various charitable activities. The first one up was the Folger Shakespeare Library gala held on April 29 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in DC. The setting was beautiful, and the weather was perfect. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Folger Gala 2023

In mid-May, the Freer Gallery of the National Museum of Asian Art celebrated its centennial. Festivities included an event at the Vice President’s residence (at the Naval Observatory), including a photo op with the Vice President and the Second Gentleman. Kamala Harris is surprisingly petite (she is wearing heels in the photo, and I am not). Why no heels for an event at the VP’s residence, you ask? Because the event was outside, by the pool, and there was no way I was going to risk tripping in my heels and falling in. By the way, had I known the Vice President’s residence had a private pool, I might have reworked my life aspirations. (There seems to be no better reason to be Vice President!)

Photo Op with the Vice President and Second Gentleman

There was a celebratory black-tie centennial event for the Freer as well.

WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 11: May Liang and James Lintott attend the National Museum of Asian Art Centennial Celebration Dinner on May 11, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for National Museum of Asian Art)

And, last but not least, we had friends who were kind enough to invite us to the Whitney Museum gala in New York. It was a star-studded event (maybe not by New York standards but definitely by DC standards), and we had a great time.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 16: May Liang (L) and James Lintott attend the 2023 Whitney Gala and Studio Party at The Whitney Museum of American Art on May 16, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

A deep breath taken over the Memorial Day weekend. One more gala in June, and then we are free of galas (and photo ops) until the fall!

Summer 2022

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The summer was a whirlwind, and I have not enough space to bore everyone with our activities. Highlights include the following:

A joint birthday celebration at the Inn at Little Washington

May Liang & Jim Lintott Birthday Party Shot on 20220522 in Washington, VA Photographer Laurence L. Levin www.LLLevin.com

Jade’s master’s degree (in theoretical computer science) graduation ceremony at Stanford. She is now at Georgia Tech getting her PhD in combinatorics (or theoretical computer science for those of us who don’t understand what combinatorics is).

Jim’s mom’s 90th birthday celebration in Chehalis, Washington. (Shhh, her age is a secret, as she doesn’t want people to think she’s old.) 🙂 There were over 100 people who attended, including family and friends from all over. It was a tremendously festive occasion.

Jim and I rented a house and spent 3 weeks in Hawaii. I am not sure how to start since I have run out of words to describe Hawaii (“earthly paradise” does not seem to do the place justice). The only cloud was that Jade was unable to join us (curse graduate school and its class schedule!). However, Marcus and Yinan were both able to join us for a week. It worked out well as Jim and Yinan played tennis while Marcus and I took surfing lessons.
We also had some guests join us for various weeks. I think (hope!) that a good time was had by all.
Highlights (in addition to the company of our guests) include:

Beautiful sunrises and sunsets

A visit to the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor

A visit to the Punchbowl (aka National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific)

Scenic vistas at Pali Lookout

Delicious meals, including at tbd…, The Pig and the Lady, and Piggy Smalls

and, of course, surfing lessons. Marcus (and Jade) are quite good–I have finished lesson #9 and am a work in progress… 🙂 (the video is from lesson #5)

Hawaii is definitely our zen place. We miss it already!

Spring Break 2022

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Our last spring break together as a family was in March (yes, this entry is a bit late). We really have no grounds for complaint, however. For several years, the college spring break for Jade coincided with the high school spring break for Marcus, and so we eked out a couple more years of spring break together than most families manage and feel fortunate for being able to do so.
A very wise friend of ours once told me that the way to get your children to continue to vacation with you once they leave the house is to choose interesting/fun places to go and pay for all of it. And so I bring you spring break 2022 in Los Angeles!
The kids started their spring break in San Diego visiting my parents (and eating). We then met up with the kids in Disneyland (Jade’s first trip to the mother ship!), where we stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel and spent 2 really fun days at the parks, riding rides (and eating). We then moved to Los Angeles itself (well, really, Marina Del Rey, for those familiar with SoCal) and did touristy things (and ate). We had a tour of the La Brea Tar Pits (very cool, with lots of bones and active tar pits still), a tour of the Getty Villa (it’s the classical antiquities part of the Getty—I will never look at Commodus in quite the same way again (in a good way!)), toured through the Getty Museum, and had an after hours viewing of the Griffith Observatory where we saw the Orion Nebula and an Orion star cluster, among many other things, and helped shut down the telescope for the evening. The common theme of all of the tours, for which we are immensely grateful, was the dedication and love of all the personnel we met for what they were doing professionally. Everyone was so excited about their work and loved sharing their knowledge with us. It was a good reminder to the kids that loving what you do is so important to leading a fulfilling life.
Memorable meals include Din Tai Fung (love, love those soup dumplings), Pink’s (an LA institution justifiably famous for its hot dogs), Spagos (a Wolfgang Puck restaurant that is still going strong after 30+ years), and Meizhou Dong Po (a transplant from China).
It was a fantabulously fun week with the four of us—maybe even more so because we know that opportunities like this, with all four of us together, will become scarcer as the years go on. I can’t complain—we’ve had more spring breaks together than we had expected and so each extra one is just a bonus. And this one was fun!

Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland
Cars Land at Disneyland
view from the Griffith Observatory

Christmas 2020

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In an act of foolhardiness, we decided to go to Hawaii for Christmas. This was foolhardy for several reasons: first, Hawaii has imposed some stringent covid testing requirements in order to be permitted to come; second, there were no non-stop flights to Honolulu due to the lack of flights, which added another wild card to the equation; and, third, we would have to be masked for the entire set of flights.

We decided to rent a house, feeling that it would be safer, especially for Jim’s mom, who was coming as well. It was a beautiful house in the Portlock area, right on the water, with plenty of space for everyone.

Hawaii’s testing requirements were that you have to have a negative covid test within 72 hours of your departing flight to Hawaii from an approved partner. We ended up taking 2 different tests from 2 different partners. Jim received his negative test on Thursday morning, but the rest of us didn’t receive our test results until late Thursday night (our flight to Honolulu left Friday morning). It was rather stressful. But at least we were all negative!

It was a very different trip to Honolulu than any of our others. We rarely left the house, other than to exercise or go grocery shopping. Jim and I did our traditional 7 mile walk around Diamondhead every morning at oh-dark-thirty. (Hawaii is the only place where I am a morning person, and that’s only because we don’t generally bother to change time zones.) We “rented” surfboards (and it’s in quotes because the surf shop actually just lent the surfboards to us without charge), and Marcus went out surfing every day.

Yinan and I taught everyone how to play mahjong, and we now have mahjong addicts as children. Yay for parenting!

The weather was sunny and 80 degrees every day except for the day we left. Not a bad way to spend Christmas!

view from the house

Christmas in Hawaii

Christmas star

Graduation Celebration – Pandemic Style

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We had a high school senior last year, and graduation in June happened virtually, as it did for so many others. The school did its best by having the high school administrative team personally deliver our son’s diploma and by putting on a lovely virtual graduation. But we were determined to have some kind of celebration for him in August.
We decided, of course, that the best place to celebrate such an accomplishment was at the Inn at Little Washington. We had 21 people at 3 different tables, with families generally sitting with each other. Marcus selected the menu, so it included his favorite dishes at the Inn. (This was consistently pointed out by Jim, who noted that not all of his favorites were on the menu.) The event was beautifully done (it was the Inn, after all), and the food was amazing. Jim gave a lovely toast, Rem (his best friend) gave an amazing speech, and Jade actually gave a lovely off-the-cuff speech as well. Marcus, not surprisingly, rose to the occasion and gave a wonderful, heartfelt speech, mentioning everyone there by name and explaining why he was grateful to them. It was all pretty perfect, under the circumstances. And while it wasn’t necessarily the party we would have had for him if we could, being Marcus, it was more than enough.

Halloween Week Festivities at Sidwell Friends School

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Our son goes to a private high school in Washington, DC where the academics are excellent, the kids are (mostly) affluent, and the pressure can sometimes be intense. This is especially true during the last week of October when the seniors have Early Action college applications due (November 1 is the actual due date).
Marcus (on his own) decided that the high schoolers all needed to relax, have some fun, and remember to be children again. So he decided that Halloween week needed to be celebrated. He proposed his idea to student government, who were enthusiastically in favor, and then to the administration, which gave him permission to move forward.
Monday, 10/28, was the first day. Marcus managed to convince a group of his friends to show up to the school at 7:00 am (an hour before school started) to help him decorate the high school. And so it happened.


He also held a photo scavenger hunt (e.g. take a selfie with something orange, take a selfie with someone from every grade, etc.). His first winner emailed him the photos at 8:07 am. (He decided to award 3 prizes that day instead of 1.)
Tuesday, 10/29 was Halloween trivia contest day. And Wednesday, 10/30 was a pumpkin hunt (like an Easter egg hunt, only for pumpkins) and a mummy wrap game.
But Thursday, Halloween itself, was the highlight. A costume contest was held, with winners awarded from each grade. In addition, a faculty and staff costume contest also took place. To Marcus’s delight, the hallways were filled with costumed students and faculty alike, all excited about Halloween. Trick-or-treating with student government staffed stations and some faculty during class also took place. And, at the end of the day, faculty and students alike had some fun, remembered their inner child, and celebrated Halloween together. As the Head of School said, “It almost felt like a real high school.”

We could not be prouder of him.

Hawaii: July 2019 version

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By now, there isn’t much more that I can say about this little bit of paradise than I haven’t already said.

sunrise in o’ahu

So let me just mention the highlights of this trip, which include the following:

  • Continuing our 4th of July tradition of spending it with Dianne, John, Benjamin and Isabelle (this time in Honolulu)
Dinner at Chef Mavro
  • Getting to spend the 4th of July holiday with our former exchange student, Yinan
deep sea fishing
  • Unsuccessfully going deep sea fishing (not a nibble!) and having the entire group overdosing on Bonine, much to the dismay of the non-deep sea fishing group who discovered the Bonine-overdosed group was useless for the rest of the day
  • Parasailing, which was a really fun experience (it is eerily quiet 400 feet up in the air and, of course, incomparably beautiful)
getting ready to parasail
  • Meals at our favorite Honolulu restaurants—Chef Mavro and The Pig & the Lady (let the record reflect that I am the “lady”)

We look forward to our next trip to paradise!

sunset in o’ahu

Book review: The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt

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The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The authors set up the book with 3 Great Untruths that they think are endangering future generations. These Great Untruths are (i) what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; (ii) always trust your feelings; and (iii) there is a battle of good vs evil (and you and your beliefs are, of course, on the side of good). The book posits these Great Untruths, demonstrates with data how these untruths have spread throughout society, and documents the harm these Great Untruths cause. (Among those harms is a higher incidence of depression and anxiety.)
The authors further propose solutions to combat these Great Untruths, the groupthink that accompanies them, and the institutions that cave into them.
I found this book especially interesting because the direction K-12 schools as well as college and universities have gone is in the direction of the Great Untruths, all from the best of intentions. And I especially think it is important for educational institutions to teach its children that reasonable minds can disagree and disagree with respect and civility. As the authors state, “Having people around us who are willing to disagree with us is a gift.”
Four stars and highly recommended.



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