It has been a week.
 Finally I've got my own time,
 a quiet few hours when my mind needs no rest,
 when I get to sit in my own space
 to write about the feelings that have lingered.

 This past wedding weekend was the first personal-time-off I have taken
 off work this year.  Ten months of work and chores and the first time off
 , leaving for a place that I haven't been and meeting many friends I
 have never met.

 It was a blast: ever since the moment I stepped down the plane,
 scurrying in the busy hallways of the Friday night Philly airport,
 trying to make to the just-started dinner; driving in the winding roads of
 Philly at night (the Cobbs Creek that took turns unexpectedly; the
 Joseph next to me digging as much out of Yahoo maps as he could); and
 finally arriving at Tran's door with Ikuko's opening the door,
 welcoming us (needless to say, I missed a hug there. :P)

 From that moment on, the grace of Ikuko, the unbeatable, unbelievable
 funniess in Mel and John, the friendliness of Tomoe, the warm chat
 with Rachel, the hospitality of Mr. Chau and Tran's family, the kind
 spirit emanating from the family guests (Mark the pastor and his wife
 et al.), to the highlight of seeing the all so agreeable Tran and
 meeting Yasu, for some inexplicable reason, like pieces of a puzzle
 that fit perfectly and seamlessly together -- whose effects were
 combinatorially so surprising that each alone couldn't deliver --,
 they enkindled and unleashed a fountain of energy in me that I
 thought, as tired as I was those days, did not have.  The ensuing
 24-hour of wild, unstoppable fun, puntuated by the beauty behind the
 scenes, the earnest preparation of the groom and his mates on the
 quiet, gray-morning Philly street -- the careful, solemn Vietnamese
 ceremony to the exuberant, cheerful American ceremony --, provided
 images so vivid in my mind that I could still feel what I felt then as I
 recollect and play back those moments.

 It must be a long time since all cylinders inside that engine of mine
 relaxed so and clicked in such harmony and with such abandoned energy.
 For this, I thank you -- for being there to be such an unforgettable
 piece of my memory.

 As I drove to work on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings this past week
 -- which, for some odd reasons, were particularly cloudy yet offered
 a quiet, appropriate ambience for a reflective mood --, a host of
 feelings hit me: about life, about friendship and about us at this
 stage of life.  About how days like those were pretty much the
 essence of life: a generation of late-twenty and early-thirty
 friends, in the transition from school, single lives to years of
 work, career and family ahead, gathered unexpectedly together yet
 meshed so well that each moment, one cheered another, laughed
 uncontrollably because of the others and completely let down of all
 exterior emotional guards and gave in to the inner, relaxed, almost
 child-like foutain of fun that lived deep in us.  We didn't
 think much as each moment got by: we simply acted, and reacted -- to
 whichever inspired us and came our way.  We jumped; we yelled; we
 GTO-ed; we remarked whatever came of our minds so spontaneously that
 we laughed so hard.  Yes, we paused and rested in between.  Yet we
 lived the moment, cheered up the floor with all our might,
 forgetting about ourselves, and danced till the light went off and
 literally, all guests left.  We hesitated none and enjoyed all.

 As I drove to work and started -- back to the -- busy chores of work
 and daily life, I thought about these few days, thought about all
 that I know about life, about what makes human life worth living and
 enjoyable, and I knew: this is it.  For a bunch of twenty-
 and thirty-somethings, this is as good as it gets.  And I know, any
 number of years down the road when I look back, I can all so
 comfortably and satifiedly say: I have lived.  For I have experienced
 a part of twenty and thirty somethings of life that is as good as it
 gets.