
Hainan Island
We started 2018 in Hainan China. My brother Haimin and his wife Liu Rui who have a vacation home in Hainan invited my parents and four of us to spend our 2017-2018 Christmas - new year holidays with them in "Hawaii of China"



Enjoying local food and drinks. Lina and Isa enjoyed the English translations of shop signs and restaurant menus even more.
My father decided to live an active life after discovering gastric cancer in mid 2017. He continued his bicycle rides regularly. One morning in Hainan he and I climbed up high in the Wuzhi Mountain (五指山). Another tourist was so inspired by my father's vigor at age 83 he requested a photo.
Cycling
Grandpa gifted Lina a "Forever" bicycle while we were in China. We brought it back to California. Isa, Lina and did many weekend rides, often to my Google office
Work, colleagues, interns
Work at Google with great colleagues is fun and productive. We work on advanced features of Google's flagship products. We also do and publish quite a bit of exploratory research, often together with smart and hard working interns. Perks like healthy food and gyms at work are still appreciated after 8 years at Google.
Work trips, thesis examination & university visits, conferences
CHI 2018 Conference in Montreal ~ Doctoral thesis examination in Helsinki ~ University seminars in Waterloo (Canada), Helsinki, and Pisa ~ Eurohaptics 2018 and Smart Haptics 2018 conference keynotes in Pisa and San Diego ~ Lab visits at Tsinghua U and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing ~ Google Waterloo, Google Shanghai and Google Beijing offices. Also got to see the amazing John Senders in Toronto and Don Norman in San Diego during my trips.
Swimming

Synchro, a.k.a. artistic swimming, is a big part of Lina and Isa's lives, and ours. Both Lina and Isa are members of the Santa Clara Aquamaids, a leading synchronized swimming club in the US. Pernilla spent a huge amount of time helping Lina, Isa and their teammates (being a "team mom" on trips), designing and developing the club's complex website, and serving on SCA's Board of Directors.
Lina and Isa train six days a week, many hours each day after school and often late into the evening. Swim meets and competition trips to Buffalo, Portland, Oxford Ohio and more during the year. Lina's Junior Olympic Championship was particularly tense. They beat their sister rival team from Walnut Creek Aquanuts in the Regional but lost the national gold metal to WCA's surprise new routine in the final round.
Home and Garden
New in 2018 - building a fish pond, changing part of the lawn into more eco-friendly plants, Tesla Model 3 (we are now all electric as Lina first suggested after the Paris Agreement).
Budgies
Lina and Isa's school events, birthdays, music practice and recitals, friends and parties
Isa is a 5th grader in Meyerholz Elementary School, Lina 7th in Miller Middle. Both are in bilingual CLIP (Chinese Language Immersion Program).
Family and friend visits
Grandama Siv came to visit from Sweden in April. We went to Berkeley to celebrate Isabel's graduation. Youyou and Jiang Tao came to visit from China as part of their honeymoon.
Isa, Lina, and Pernilla's summer trip to Sweden
Isa, Lina and Pernila went to Sweden for their summer vacation - fishing, berry picking, seeing grandparents.
My July trip to China
While Pernilla, Lina and Isa were in Sweden, I went to Tianshui, China to see my parents. My father's cancer began to show more symptom. He could no longer ride his bicycle vigorously.
Tianshui is an ancient city but very underdeveloped when I grew up there from age 8 to 16. The landscape changed dramatically since then. Even the hills had turned green due to successful environmental programs. The city now even has a "Red Bridge" that looks like a copy of the Golden Gate bridge!