2013

December, 2013

With heavy hearts, we begin this annual update with a tribute to Peter’s late-father.  Peter’s Dad, Allan, passed away suddenly on 26 November, in Toronto Canada.  Peter who has been traveling regularly to Toronto to visit his parents was present when it happened.  Peter’s Dad was 93 years and 25 days old.  He passed away without illness or suffered any pain, peacefully at the hospital.

Peter’s Dad lived a glorious, happy and healthy life that was full of love and joy.  There were few occasions which he partakes, that did not end with screams of laughter and happy participants.  He loved his wife dearly and always put her needs and desires first.  He treated his children with love, kindness and respect.  And he loved all of his grandchildren  from the heart and unconditionally  supported their interests or endeavors.  He treasured the multiple family gatherings that we have each year, each time fearing that may be his last.  Dad loves his friends and church as well, making the Sunday service a highlight of each week.   He gets along with everyone, from CEOs of major companies to store clerks and restaurant waitresses.  We love him dearly, we miss him, and we are grateful that we have been a large part of his life. 

Now here are some highlights of the 2013 FungYehs. 

10. Through his initiative and hard work, Nick brought Online Model United Nation (“O-MUN”) to Taiwan and was selected to represent O-MUN to participate in the Hague MUN (THIMUN), the biggest MUN conference in the world.  He was the first representative to THIMUN from the Taipei American School.

9.  Matt was selected to TAS’s varsity tennis for the third year this fall.  In addition, he made the JV Softball team for the second year in a row this spring, playing short-stop and won the Coach’s Choice Award;

8.  Felicia finally went on her trip to Israel with her Church group this spring.  The trip was originally scheduled for Thanksgiving of 2012, but was postponed due to unsettling events in the Gaza Strip.  Felicia had a wonderful trip and urges all Christians and non-Christians alike to visit!

7.  After years of going to Sunday services and participating in Youth Worship, both Nick and Matt were baptized at Taipei International Church this spring.  God bless!!

6.  We returned to Tokyo for the first time in nine years!!  We went to all of our old favorite restaurants, parks and hang-outs.  We even went back to our “old” house to pay a visit as well as to Setagaya Koen (Park) to ride the mini steam engine chu-chu train!!

5.  Apart from receiving an award for Nick’s services to the Taipei American School, Nick received the Jan McDowell scholarship as an outstanding student in the Political Science and Forensics.  He was awarded this scholarship for his contribution to  the MUN program, including creating a set of protocols to run the OMUN programs onsite, for bringing Online MUN to Taiwan and...etc.  We are very proud of him!!

4. Peter’s golf game:  Thanks to Matt who has all of a sudden decided that he wanted to play golf.  Peter got to play A LOT of golf this summer:  over 30 rounds!!  His handicap has dropped to around 25 and he even shot a round of 89 for the first time in his golfing career!!

3.  Nick at Oxy:  After some deliberation, Nick decided to attend Occidental College in Eagle Rock, California.  In case you are not familiar with Occidental, it’s the college that Obama attended, though he later transferred and graduated from Columbia University.  Nick intends to study “Diplomacy and World’s Affairs,” and maybe economics and/or history.   Lastly, it’s true that kids do change when they go away for college, even if it was just three months.  All of a sudden, they have become adults – in a positive way!!

2.  Peter and Felicia celebrated their 20^th wedding anniversary..separately from two continents.  Peter was with Matt and family in Moraga while Felicia was with Nick in Taipei, packing up for his move to the U.S.  They did celebrate together with family, a day later, in Moraga.

1. Felicia, Freda and their Dad are the first members of our family to venture down to South America.  After a year-long planning process, The three of them plus Felicia’s Godparents went to Rio, Brazil.  First, a 3-day tour of the Iguaçu Falls on the Brazil/Argentina border followed by an 11-day cruise from Rio to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  Felicia joined the family in Moraga on 23 December, to celebrate Christmas with the Yeh-clans.

It has been an eventful year, to say the least.  We hope you all had a wonderful 2013 and we wish you a very happy and healthy holiday season and 2014.  If we didn’t get to see you in 2013, we are certainly looking forward to catching up with you in the coming 12 months!!

Love,

Peter, Felicia, Nicholas and Matthew

 

2012 -- a year in review

December, 2012

Greetings from Taipei!!  At the time of this writing, we have entered our tenth year of living in Taipei.  It has been another busy year at the FungYeh family.  Below are some highlights that we have selected to share with you:

10.  Matt flying solo:  Matthew’s Uncle Howard and Auntie Joyce invited him to go skiing with them during Spring Break at Whistler.  Matthew, who turned 15 in April, flew solo for the first time, and made it without a hitch.  While the flight was interesting, the skiing at Whistler was spectacular.  Matt and Uncle Howard were able to ski up to four times as much as they did in Tahoe!!

9.  Nick as a Senior:  Nick is now a senior at Taipei American School.  Busy as ever, Nick is not only taking six AP/IB classes, he is also running theater tech for TAS’s musical and dance project, an active MUN participant, Swimzone instructor, Photo-ops team member,…,etc.  Nick spends so much time “volunteering” that he was mistaken for TAS faculty/staff on several occasions!!  In his spare time, he is also the leader of the Taipei International Church’s Youth Group.  On top of all this, he is applying to get into a college in 2013!!

8.  Peter and Aleve:  No, Peter doesn’t have a girlfriend named Aleve.   Following last year’s tennis elbow, Peter strained his right knee this year, hiking with his brother-in-law, Howard.  Now, he is dependent on Aleve (pain relief medication) for his biking, tennis and golf games,... 

7.  Matt’s six instruments:  Following piano at the age of five, Matt has since picked up Clarinet, Saxophone, bassoon, drums and guitars.  He regularly plays guitar or drums during his church’s youth worship on Saturday evenings.  Now that he stopped taking piano lessons, he has been playing more piano than ever!!  He is teaching himself new songs and plays a few bars of music for us regularly.

6.  Playing golf with Matt:  Out of the blue, Matt decided to take up golf this summer.  After a few rough rounds, Matt has picked up his game quite admirably.  Now, he just needs to control his power and keep the balls on the course.  Fortunately, there are plenty of “lost” balls around our course in Moraga, so Matt has an unlimited supply of golf balls to use.

5.  Matt beating Peter in tennis:  this week, for the first time in his life, Matt was able to beat Peter in tennis.  As a second year TAS varsity tennis player, he has improved his power and consistency and was finally able to overcome his Dad’s trickery and psychological warfare.

4.  Fiddler on the Roof:  In TAS’s fall musical production, Matt starred as Yussel the Hat maker while Nick made cameo appearances as a Russian priest and a soldier.  Nick was also the master carpenter (he helped build the prop and set for the show) and the backstage manager. 

3.  Felicia’s dedication to Christianity:  Felicia’s growth as a Christian has grown exponentially this year.  She regularly attends at least two prayer meetings and two/three services each week.  She has also enrolled in an intensive theology studies each Sunday evenings to further her understanding in Christianity. 

2.  Nick going to The Hague:  Despite of a lack of support from TAS, Nick managed to put Taipei American School and Taiwan on the Online Model United Nation (OMUN) map.  For his effort, he was invited to the largest MUN program (over 4,000 delegates from around the World) to be held at The Hague in January 2013.  He will be the first ever representative from Taiwan attending the “ThiMUN”  and he will represent OPEC in the Special Political Committee. 

1.  Ka-ching!!   The boys have finally attained “cashflow positive” status, albeit for a brief moment, over the summer.  Nick and Matt worked as tennis instructors for the 9 and under for the Moraga Country Club Summer Tennis Camp.   Both worked hard in the hot California sun and made “four figures” for the summer!!  With their new found wealth, Nick bought a fancy camera and Matt bought an electric guitar and quickly went into deficit again!!

There seems to be a disproportional amount of news from Matt, mainly because he is around us more often.  Nick has been doing quite a bit on his own.  He went to Singapore this Spring to attend a Model United Nations conference, he traveled to California this summer on his own, in order to spend an early birthday with his friends in Taipei.  Given his busy schedule, we rarely see him other than in the early mornings and during dinner.  But such is the life of an upperly mobile young man and we will just have to live with it. 

"I am FREE!!"

"I AM FREE," shouted Nicholas, in an triumphant "victory pose."  You would've expected this from someone who had just served a LONG prison sentence or someone who had just won the Lotto.  But, this is our Nicholas who has just finished checking in at the Taoyuan International Airport and ready himself to leave for The Hague on 26 January, 2013, to attend the THIMUN or "The Hague International Model United Nations" program.  Apart from being excited to be the first student from the Taipei American School to attend the THIMUN, which was entirely made possible by his own effort, he is just excited to be AWAY from us for one week. 

While both Felicia and Peter are happy that they have raised a very independent, self motivating, intelligent and confident child, they were nevertheless taken aback for the eagerness of their first born to LEAVE--AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!

This is not the first time Nicholas has spent time away from home.  He started with the school camps which begun in Middle School.  Spending time "alone" with complete strangers started when he was 13 or 14 with the summer program at Stanford.  With each passing year, he had gained more independent and wanted more.  In the past few summers, he insisted and was granted independence to travel alone to come back to Taipei and to fly to California, on his own. 

In another eight months or so, he will be leaving for college.  It will be interesting to see his reaction at that time.

Singapore

*Draft was forgotten, now published...

It has been just about two years since our last visit, but Singapore seems to have gone through a major transformation during that time. It seems to be more modern, more cosmopolitan, more grand and definitely more expansive. With Singapore dollar, appreciating close to 20% since our visit two years ago, everything is more expensive for the visitors.

Our visit this time took place between 29 January to 3 February. Apart from the four of us, Felicia's Dad, Freda, Frank, Annie and Jonathan were also there to celebrate the Chinese New Year holiday. While we know we would be visiting Singapore during the "raining season," this year's raining season was very different than ones we have experienced during our four year plus in Singapore. Rain was non-stopped during the first two days of our visit. The rain also brought comfortable temperatures of mid to low twenties Celicious.

Food, as usual, was a highlight of our trip. We started off with seafood at Long Beach on the night of our arrival. The Sunday Brunch at the Equinox was memerable, mainly for the foei gras and caviar, but also for the view from the 70th floor of the Swiss Hotel (formerly the Westin Plaza). The breakfast at Tiong Baru was also special as it brought back a lot of happy memories for Felicia and Peter. The major disappointment was the DB Bistro which is a Daniel Boulud (a three Michelin star chef) restaurant at the Singapore Sands resort. While the menu looked promising and the prices relatively reasonable, the food was not particularly inspiring. Peter had the DB Burger which was a burger made with sirloin, short ribs and foei gras. Peter found the burger to be rather bland, terribly underseasoned. The steak frites was also very ordinary as with the lamb cous cous. Most disappointing was the cheese plate which was a collection of rather tasteless cheeses (imcomparable to the cheese spread from the Equinox). This disappointment was made up partially from the Chicken rice and Indian food at the Far East Plaza next day. The Brazil Charusco or Brazilian BBQ on Sixth Avenue was as good as it's ever been. Almost everything we tasted there was great and the food was abudunt.

Visiting Singapore also means seeing our friends, Rosa, Kwan, Glenn, Lisze, Clarence and Roseline. These were our closest friends while we were in Singapore between 1996 and 2001. The timing our trip this time, however, prevented us from spending too much time together. We spent about two hours with the Koos on Sunday evening. We did have dinner with the Wongs and the Lees, but it was short and sweet. Rosa and Kwan, as usual, were the most hospitable. Inviting us over for repeat visits and allowing the children to spend some times together. Catching up with Peter's old colleagues Nick and Peter was quite good fun as well. It has been a few years since we met up and it was great to bring everyone up to date.

Walking around the streets of Singapore, especially around the Botanic Garden and Nassim Road, brought back a lot of fond memories. Apart from Taipei, Singapore was a place were we have spent the most of our time together as a family. While Singapore has changed a lot as a City and a Country, there are still a lot of Singapore that have remained the same.

Cooking

I have always wanted to write about cooking, the why, when, where, what and how about cooking.  The reality, the "how" to cook books are too hard to write as all the measurements take the fun out of cooking.  Furthermore, I don't have many "original" recipes.  Mostly, I steal them off TV shows, restaurants, friends and the Internet. 

The "when," "where," and "what" questions are also too boring to discuss.  I cook when I am hungry, or when my family members or friends are hungry.  Likewise, I cook anywhere and everywhere.  I love cooking in a nice kitchen and BBQ on a nice grill, so my favorite place to cook is in our California home.  I love my oven, my stove, my utensils and my large counter top space!!  Of course, I also love the Webber grill that I got two summers ago. 

There are many reasons why I cook.  First and foremost is that I love to eat tasty food.  After my parents immigrated us to Toronto Canada, I spent many after school  hours (we get off early) watching cooking shows.  The Galloping Gourmet was one of my favorite as with Julia Child, Jacque Pepin, Martin Yan and an assorted other TV chefs.  My brother, Bob, who was effectively my guardian at the time as my parents were still living in Taiwan, was great at cooking all kinds of food.  Nothing was too difficult for him.  He tried to cook everything including making "yu-tell" the Chinese fried dough, and "bao-zi."  Though he may not succeed every time, we ate everything he put on the table.  To this day, I think he has a larger repertoire of dishes then I have, at least in Chinese cooking. 

My cooking activity really took off during University.  Bob had moved out of the family house and into his own house.  So I had begun to cook occasionally for myself and my sister, Joyce.  I always helped Bob in the preparation whenever we have a big dinner party or BBQ at our house.  Cooking became a necessity after business school when I was living on my own.  With my meagre salary, I couldn't afford to eat out on a regular basis.  This is when I tapped my Mom for all of her recipes, for the "lion's head," "chow nien-gao" or stir fried rice cakes, to stewing beef or fatty pork.  Soon, I begun to learn the tastes of different ingredients, sauces and spices.  This skill enable me to "steal" recipes from restaurants and friends. 

After a while, I have developed enough recipes in my head to throw my own dinner parties in my tiny little loft in New York.  The cooking continued after I married Felicia who also enjoys cooking and entertaining.  Our friends in Singapore, Rosa, Lisze also inspired us with new recipes and delicious food. 

Nowadays, we cook almost every weekdays, Monday thru Thursday and on weekends if we are entertaining.  When we are in Taipei, we cook mostly Chinese.  When we are in California, we cook mostly Western food. 

Cooking is fun, most of the time.  It is always satisfying to taste the food afterward and have it turn out exactly how you wanted it to turn out.  So far, my fan base are fairly tolerant to my occasional over- or under-seasonings.  But learning from my mistakes can also be rewarding.

2011 Christmas

December, 2011

At the time of this writing, we have entered our ninth year in Taipei. Instead of our usual letter, we decided that we should do a FungYeh “top-ten” list of 2011. Here they are:

10. Matthew starring as Friar Tuck in the Middle Schools’ production of Romeo and Harriett. Matt auditioned and was cast as Friar Tuck in the School’s “tragical-comedy” play during the last semester of his 8th Grade year. He was terrific in the role and performed his entire performance with a “British” accent.

9. Matthew making the TAS Varsity Tennis Team: to everyone’s surprise, Matt made it to the Taipei American School Varsity Tennis Team this fall as a freshman. While Matthew didn’t play very much tennis this fall as he started Upper School, he was fortunate enough to be
selected. He will now try to work extra hard over the next two months in order to make it to the top-eight and play for the team in Malaysia against five other international schools in the region.

8. Nick picked as Chair in Model United Nation events: Nick has been attending Model United Nation conferences since he was a 7th grader. This spring, apart from representing TAS in the Tai-MUN event in Taichung, he was selected to Chair the Middle School MUN event in TAS as well as a MUN event in Singapore. He will also be this year’s Middle School MUN’s Deputy Secretary General.

7. I-fly in Union City, CA; Have you tried indoor parachuting? It’s a lot harder than it looks. The boys tried it with their friends this summer. In a sealed room with a huge fan below, flyers are “blown” into the air and fly!!

6. Eating/College tour in East Coast: On the guise of giving Nick an early preview of US colleges, we did a mini college tour on the East Coast to start our summer. We started in Boston and ate our way down to Orlando, Florida (see above). The obvious highlights were the Dolphin (Boston)’s Clam Bake and the Lobster buckets at Joe’s Crabhouse in Orlando. Oh, the colleges were interesting too. Nick certainly has a better idea of what kinds of colleges he like and
dislike.

5. NYC day tour by train, subway, buses and by foot: While in the East Coast, we did NYC in
fourteen hours. We started the day on the NJ Transit from Princeton. A quick change in Penn Station and we headed to Harlem on the subway. After a brief tour of Columbia, we took a bus down to Time Square, followed by a walk up Avenues of the Americas and lunch on
the sidewalk (street vendor). We than took a stroll to Rockefeller Center before heading up to Central Park. A short walk across town to Second Avenue and hopped on a bus downtown with a stopover on 42nd Street where Nick and Peter hopped off and walked over to see the UN Building. We continued on bus to Wall Street and took a quick stroll around Ground Zero. A
subway ride took us back up to Midtown where we had Korean BBQ followed by the train back to Princeton. We slept very well that night…

4. Disney/Universal Studio: Six days, six parks!! Thanks to Peter’s brother-in-law, Howard, and Nicholas’s meticulous planning and strategizing, the Theme park team which consisted Howard, Nick, Matt, Kimberly (Peter’s niece), Victoria (Peter’s niece) and Jacob (Peter’s nephew) went to four Disney and two Universal parks in six days. Felicia was brave enough and participated three of those six parks and was awarded honorary membership to the Theme park team. Each day started with a 7:30am morning breakfast meeting, followed by duty assignment (getting Fastpasses) in the minivan. Their plans worked so well that they were able to finish most of the major rides with minimal waiting time by noon time each day. Afternoons were spent watching parades and doing the less popular rides. Everyone was exhausted but all agreed that they had a wonderful time.

3. Capsizing in whitewater rafting trip in Tahoe: Howard kindly arranged a white-water rafting
trip near Sacramento during the summer for us. In this fateful Saturday morning, we got up early and drove up with Kimberly, Nick, Matt, Felicia and Peter. Peter was initially reluctant to go as he had never really enjoyed the adrenalin rush of white-water rafting (because he’s a chicken). However, in the last minute change of heart, he decided to join his family for this trip down the American River. Unlike our last white-water rafting trip, this one was less well organized from the start. While the rapids were only rated 3 and 3+ like our last trip, and there was one rafter falling out of “Double Trouble” the day before our trip, we had no idea what was going to happen to us later that day. The first few rapids where hard, but we managed to get through them without too much trouble. Our guide pointed out the “mistakes” made by the previous day which caused one rafter to fall out while going through “Double Trouble.” Apparently, we made the same mistake also. Felicia fell out of the raft, shortly after we entered “Double Trouble.” For some reason, she went in front of our raft as we headed into a large rapid.
Nick, sitting in the front left, decided to stop peddling and tried to save his Mom just as we ran into a large rock on the left, lifting and flipping the raft over the top of us. We briefly stayed under the raft before all popping back up. As we were all wearing safety flotation devices, there were no real danger involved and we were all picked up within the next 5 minutes. The water was
FREEZING COLD, and it would definitely be a memory of a life time for all of us.

2. Nick’s independence: Nick turned sixteen this summer and he has been pushing for independence for several years already. He’s traveled to Cambodia twice with the church as well as several weeklong camps away from home. This summer, he wanted to return to Taipei from California a day ahead of our scheduled return. Our treat for him, after having him suffer through six weeks of SAT cram course was 24 hours of independence. He left one day before we did. Checked himself in at the SFO airport, before boarding the flight to return to Taipei. He spent his day of independence going to the beach with friends.

1. Four more years!! This is not a political message for Obama. In two years, Nick will be in college and in four; Felicia and Peter will be on their own – just Four More Years!! It is truly amazing how time has really flown by. We moved to Taipei in 2003 when Matt was in First Grade and in another blink of an eye, he will be off to college!

As we were writing this list, there turned out to be a lot more “highlights” this year than we had anticipated. “Honorable mentions” were that Matthew is no longer the shortest person and Peter is no longer the “heaviest” person in the FungYeh Klan; Felicia, Nick and Matt has made great strides in their spiritual growth in this past year with Nick taking a leadership role in the church’s
youth group; Peter celebrating a combined 200 years old birthday with his three buddies, Hong, Kenny and Geoff in Vancouver; Thank you for reading through this LONG list of the 2011
FungYeh “highlights.” We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy 2012!!

Love,


Felicia, Peter, Nick and Matt

Passing 50

The big five-O, a half century, five decades,...etc. Whatever you call it, I have passed my fiftieth birthday recently.


Turning 50 has not really hit me in any specific way. It's really no different from turning 40 ten years ago. Ten years ago, we lived in Singapore and we spent Xmas in Puhket with everyone including Bob, my brother, and his family. Apart from the changes in venue (living in Taipei and spending Xmas in Moraga), and different participants (minus Bob and my mother-in-law but including Howard's parents), physically I don't feel too different then when I was 40. I still play tennis and golf, not too much better or worse than I did ten year ago. I do workout regularly but have probably gained about ten pounds since 2000. But I feel good generally and look forward to continuing my active lifestyle.

Ten years ago I was with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers working in Singapore but planning our move to Tokyo in a few months (February of 2001). The work was relatively easy and the pay was good. Work wise, Tokyo was more challenging and I was quite relieved to have been offered an early retirement option in Fall of 2002. I was spending too much time on non-investment related activities and I was enjoying work less and less by the day. I was happy and ready to retire when I finally stopped going to the office in February 2003. I am very thankful to have Felicia's support for me to stop and allowing myself time with the boys. While we have always spent all of our non-working hours with the boys, being at home 24/7 was still a real treat. I get to walk Nick to the bus-stop each morning, then Matthew to the NK. Pick-up Matt in the afternoon and play with him before picking up Nick at the bus-stop later in the afternoon. I started biking a lot more, riding to the City and to Choufu (ASIJ).

We are now in Taipei, going into our eighth year. I am still retired. In fact, Felicia also left her job as head of equity at Merrill Lynch in the summer of 2006, joining me in retirement. We both volunteer a lot of our time at our children's school, the Taipei American School, she as a Board of Director and I as a worker in the PTA Bookstore. I still bike, around Taipei and along the bicycle paths near our home. Our freedom has enable us to take better care of our family. I was able to spend some quality time with Bob, who fell to pancreatic cancer in 2005 while Felicia has been able to take care of her Mom who had suffered from a stroke in 2000, a fall in our home in Moraga in 2006 and leukemia in 2007-2010.

My parents have remained in good health with Dad turning 90 in November and Mom turned 84 in August. They do both move slower than they were ten-years ago, but we are thankful that they are still relatively healthy and especially enjoy the canasta games we play when we get together. My freedom from the corporate world has allow me to spend a lot of my time with them and this makes me very happy.

Changes in our children over the past ten years, however, have been dramatic. Nick is now fifteen and a half while Matthew is thirteen and a half. Nick is now bigger than me physically while Matthew has still retained some of his boyish charm. We often have arguments, but generally still enjoy each other companies (though at the age of fifteen, we are seeing less and less of Nick). Both enjoy their experiences at TAS so much that we may be forced to stay in Taipei until they both graduate.



Looking back in my life, I can't help myself to be thankful. I have lived a charmed life. While my parents are not the riches in the world, they have always made me feel good. It was tough moving to Canada at the age of 13 and saying goodbye to Dad. But, it made me stronger, more resourceful and more independent. I have been blessed with the wisdom to have made many of the right choices throughout my life, going to the Graduate School of Business in Chicago, marrying Felicia, moving to Hong Kong, staying with Mercury Asset Management when offered a better job in LA,..etc. My decision to retire in 2003 also felt and continue to feel right to me. Not to say if the right opportunity knocks on my door.....I will know.