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Welcome to My Corner of the Internet

Family (LA Kans) Chronology

I've been trying to document my family's chronology. Most of this is told from my perspective and I've been trying to collect the timing of events from my Mom and Dad and two brothers. I've also included important events from other family members.

1934
  • May 31 - Dad (David) is born in China.
1943
  • September 4 - Mom (Sylvia) is born in China.
1965
  • Summer - Mom & Dad meet.
1966
  • September 24 - Mom & Dad get married.
1967
  • July 20 - Michael is born in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
1968
  • Cross country trip from New Jersey to Berkeley, California so that Dad can work on his Ph.D.
1970
  • April 12 - Steven is born in Mountain View, California.
1974
  • Pulse Instruments officially launched in what became my bedroom. For some reason, it had bright orange walls.
1974
  • December 8 - Kevin is born in Torrance, California.
1976
  • Grammie’s accident. Uncle George and family were all in the car when they got into a serious accident (don’t remember details). Several family members spent time in the hospital and Grammie nearly died. That summer, we had Yen, Tau, and Pei over for the summer so that Auntie Loretta could be in New York to help out with Grammie. Mom will have to fill in some of the blanks, but I do remember Yen always wanting to play the Brady Bunch (3 girls, 3 boys), but being the oldest she wanted to be Greg. Needless to say, none of the boys wanted to be the 3 girls, which always led to arguments. I also remember the 3 girls chasing Steven naked through the house and Steven threatening to pee on them.
1978
  • I graduate from elementary school and start junior high school.
1980
  • Summer in Connecticut with Ming and his family. I remember throwing crab apples of the ends of sticks, collecting Japanese beetles in jars, peeing on the compost pile, all of the fresh baked bread Auntie Phoebe used to make. Walking down to tennis lessons and stopping off at the Foster Freeze equivalent (Dippity Do?) for chocolate-dipped, soft serve ice cream cones on the way back. There was also the artichoke whacking incident, where we knocked down all of Phoebe’s plants with our willow switches. And there was the foot stomping accident in Boston where Ming had to demonstrate on his mom how people were stepping on his feet at while at the Boston market. If I recall, Ming got grounded several times that year.
1981
  • I graduate from junior high and start high school (Miraleste).
  • Summer in Hawaii (Princess Di's wedding, air controllers strike). We saw Superman II at the drive in on my birthday. We picked up a lot of mangos and papayas from the roadside to eat. Auntie Loretta put us all to work rubber banding newspapers and tossed us in the car for the daily newspaper runs.
1982
  • Trip to New York for Grammie & Gong Gong's 50th anniversary. Someone (?) had the chicken pox before we left.
  • ??? Texas (Dallas) - Florida (Okeefenokee), Cape Canveral - Denver- Zion and Bryce National Parks. Mom remembers that one place served all the orange juice you could drink for $0.25. Apparently, Steven took advantage of the deal, but suffered from diarrhea afterwards. I vaguely remember going to Disney World in the rain, while Dad made sales calls.
1984
  • Not sure when this actually happened. Maybe 1984, but this would have made ’84 a very busy year. We made a driving tour of New England: New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Bar Harbor Maine, Halifax (Pines restaurant), restaurant w/ packs of sugar of states, New Brunswick, Montreal, New Hampshire, Boston. I remember gambling on the ferry, once we were in international waters and willing $26, then promptly losing it again. I remember having to stop for gas and scraping large amounts of bugs off the windshield and grill.
  • Summer trip to Mexico. We visited Ixtapa and Mexico City.
  • Christmas in Banff and Lake Louise. Steven got into the egg nog and turned bright red. To this day, he maintains that he was sunburned. Mom remembers that 14 was the cut off for child rates at Lake Louise, but at Banff, Steven was already considered an adult.
1985
  • I graduate from Miraleste and head off to UCLA.
  • Started at UCLA. Missed staying in the dorms, even though I had a guaranteed spot, because I missed the application deadline. So I stayed in an apartment with Don Lin and 2 other roommates. This was also the year I enrolled in the ROTC program, where I got issued my first set of pickle greens.
1986
  • Basic Camp Ft Knox, Kentucky.
1987
  • Advanced Camp Ft Lewis, Washington - Upon graduation, I got picked up by the family and we drove to Vancouver for the Expo, fishing on the Campbell River, and to see Vancouver Island.
1988
  • Christmas and New Year - Hong Kong, China (Beijing, Kunming, Hong Kong). We spent the time in Hong Kong with Mom’s side of the family.
1989
  • I finally graduated from UCLA and join the "real world".
  • July - August - Europe backpacking vacation with Steven, Kevin, and Martina. We started in London, then progressed through Paris, Nice, Monaco, Venice, Capri, Rome, Florence, Pompeii, Corfu, Athens, Corinth, Budapest, Salzburg, Vienna, Munich, Zurich. Kevin remembers that we budgeted for $15/day, which didn’t quite work out in Northern Europe, but was more reasonable as we headed south.
  • October - February 1990 - MPOB at Fort McClellan, Alabama.
1990
  • February - March - Airborne School at Fort Benning. At some point, I told Mom that being jump qualified would entitle me to an extra $100/month. Mom responds that if I ever need an extra $100/month, all I need to do is ask.
  • April 10 - Arrived in Germany where I will serve for the next three and a half years.
  • June - Susana graduates from UC Davis.
  • ~ August 26 - Pouncer joins the family. As I re-read my journal, looking for the entry where I picked him up, I noticed that he was just referred to as “cat” for nearly a year.
  • October 13 - 31 - Long Strike ’90, one of the defining exercises of my Army career. My platoon plus support was tasked to provide nominal “enemy” forces for the annual Long Range Recon Patrol (LRP) exercise. Traditionally, the supporting Military Intelligence brigade had provided their own OPposition FORces (OPFOR), but this year they wanted to try something different. I think expectations about our abilities to find and capture the LRP teams was very low. All told, there were 15-17 teams from France, US, Germany, Belgium, etc, who participated. My platoon of 30 soldiers was supposed to find these commandos in the thousands of square kilometers that comprised the exercise box. By way of context, the LRP teams were dropped off by helicopter near Koblenz, spent a week watching key roads, and then had to work their way south 150 Km to a cache point and another observation point. Surprise surprise, we captured teams over the course of the exercise, which got us (the MPs) recognition all the way up to the Deputy Corp Commander level.
  • November 25 - I meet Bryan Leshinskie at a gaming convention in Gelnhausen and discover that he’s my “down-the-hall” neighbor. This is the start of a long relationship with a group of friends known as the Frankfurt Wargamers (FWG).
1991
  • January 12 - ~ February 15 - Locked down as the V Corps reaction team. 15 minute reaction string for over a month.
  • May 5 - Almost missed deployment to Iraq because I was at a game convention (Action 91) in Detmold. Wouldn’t you guess, the recall phone call came an hour after I hit the road with the FWG crew.
  • May 6 - July 18 - Deployment to Northern Iraq.
  • Long Strike '91. Based on the success of my platoon during the previous year, the entire 527th MP CO is invited to participate as OPFOR.
1992
  • Steven graduates from Harvard and goes to work for Disney Development Corp, including a project in ____ to build an ice skating rink.
  • Susana decides to be a dentist and begins the dental program at the University of Pacific.
1993
  • Steven meets Tiffany.
  • October - February 1994 - MPOA.
  • Christmas - family vacation to Cancun.
1994
  • February - PSD course at Fort McClellan.
  • April - April 2005 - Fort Bliss - discovered Magic. You can’t say much about a place when the best thing about a new duty station is finding a game store and a new game to play.
  • April - May - I made it back for 3 weddings, which took place over 3 consecutive weekends: Eric & Sandra, Seymour & Akiko, and Ning & Chris.
  • At some point (can’t remember when) Don finds out that Steven in dating Tiffany and literally falls out of his chair. Eric and Sandra might remember when this happened.
1995
  • April - Left army and decided to go back to business school.
  • June - Susana graduates from dental school.
  • September - Start business school at Haas, the only school that accepted me. Steven starts business school at Stanford.
  • Pac Rim Trip -- a Haas trip to Bangkok, Jakarta, and Tokyo.
1996
  • May - BA 297 Adventure to Russia -- Endless days in St. Petersburg.
  • Somewhere in here, I learn basic HTML mark up and begin writing my first tutorial site, Mike Kan Paint.
  • 1997 Pac Rim Trip -- a Haas trip to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. This time we took an extra week and enjoyed New Year's Eve in Southern Thailand. Kevin also traveled with us.
1997
  • February 8 - Michael met Susana at the dentist's office, a completely fortuitous event since I broke a filling, had no dentist, so started with a list of local dentists provided by UC Berkeley, and started calling from the bottom of the list until I got a real voice, which happened to be Dr. Tran's office. I hit on the front office manager, she set me up with Susana; the rest is history.
  • May - We all graduate.
  • July - Kevin gets Turbo.
  • August - started with the Mitchell Madison Group (MMG).
  • August - proposed to Susana (was I already engaged when Steven got married?).
  • August 9 - Steven & Tiffany get married.
  • 11 June - 16 July - Mideast backpacking adventure with Dan Stryker (Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, and Greece).
1998
  • August 8 - Michael and Susana get married.
  • August - Honeymoon in Maui.
  • We buy our house at 11 Seville.
1999
  • 1H99 - Susana buys her practice from Dr. Bayati, for whom she had worked for the past year.
  • August - USWeb/CKS acquires MMG (step 1) and the fun begins.
2000
  • January - Left MMG.
  • February - Joined Silver Oak, a spin-off of people from MMG.
  • March 1 - Whitman-Hart merges with USWeb/CKS and rebrands as marchFirst(step 2) and the silliness really begins. Market cap for the combined companies drops by almost 33%.
  • August 19 - 27 - Susana and Michael vacation to Paris and Amsterdam on frequent flyer miles and hotel points.
2001
  • August - Planned trip to Italy, cancelled to kick off a consulting project
  • 9/11 - I remember watching the initial hit on the news before I left that morning for Solectron. The rest of the day was kind of a daze as everyone tried to find out what happened.
  • Steven leaves the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and goes to work for Mom & Dad.
2003
  • February 5 - Matthew & Benjamin born to Michael & Susana.
  • May 15 - Left Silver Oak to be a stay at home dad.
  • October - Jul 2004 - Contracted back to Silver Oak to work for the State of New Mexico.
2004
  • February 6 - Kyle born to Steven & Tiffany.
  • July 2004 - June 2005 - Worked with Susana at office.
  • November - we buy our office at 1615 Hill Road.
2005
  • January 14 - We learned on the 29th of December that one of my cousins (Paul) had been vacationing in Phuket when the tsunami hit and he was actually in his 3rd story bungalow when the wave hit and took him all the way to the ceiling. He survived as did his girlfriend, but suffered some serious cuts and had to make the 17 hour trip to Bangkok where he spend quite a bit of time in the hospital there. His personal account is quite an extraordinary read.
  • April - Had planned to go to China with Susana's parents but cancelled after deciding it was too expensive to go, especially with a pair of 2-year olds as well as just bad timing.
  • June 22 - Joined Fireman's Fund Insurance Company (FFIC) after being recruited out of Susana's dental office. Oddly enough, Susana and I had talked about me going back to work less than a week after that initial conversation in Operatory 3.
  • August - family gathering for Regina and Neil’s wedding in Hartford.
2006
  • July 4 - Fourth of July trip to Orcas Island with Mom & Dad, where the kids got a couple of days to throw rocks, whack weeds, and hike around.
  • November 19 - 29 - family gathering in Hong Kong for Paul & Windy’s wedding. One of the wedding gifts is a red book with family histories and old photos.
2007
  • January 23 - Make a business trip out to London for FFIC and use the opportunity to take a side trip to the Splash Damage studios where I get to spend the day with BongoBoy and Wils previewing Enemy Territory Quake Wars. I'll mark this as the official launch of Enemy Territory Quake Wars 4 Newbies, my most ambitious tutorial site to date.
  • August 13 - Pouncer passes away.
  • August 31 - I start working on another tutorial site, Tip of the Week, this time focused on all of the Excel tips and tutorials I had written up for MMG, Silver Oak, and FFIC.
Unattributed weddings
  • Sarah & David
  • Sam & Jin in Hawaii
  • Yen & Scott in Boston
  • Tau & Pete in Hawaii
  • Pei & Collin in ???
  • David & Caroline
  • Michael & Sarah
  • Wei & Matt in Hartford