Going to College in the USA

Written on October 18, 2021 and revived on December 2, 2023.
In old time, if a person went away from home, it usually took a long time for that person to go back because of the expenses and the transportation. Even calling home was a luxury and so writing was essentially the way, but I seldom wrote.

After 4 years in college in Taiwan, I went back to Malaysia in the summer of 1970. Before I went back to Malaysia, in the Chinese New Year of 1970, I visited my wife’s family in a southern town called Gangshan. We took pictures inside a nearby elementary school where my wife had attended (left picture).
In Malaysia, I stayed longer than one month. It was a big deal for the whole family, my 2 step sisters had joined our family and I saw my brother’s 1st daughter for the first time. Below 1st picture is the birthday party for my step-Mom shot at home and another picture (in the beginning chapter earlier) was shot in front yard with my brothers and parents. The 2nd picture was shot at Singapore airport when they sent me off.


Our family timber business was doing very well and they took me to Kemayan (see my previous write-ups), about 180 miles from home, to see it. Later we went to Kuala Lumpur to meet an American business man coming from Hawaii at a hotel, I learnt that he eventually defaulted on bringing in investment capital.

After I came back to Taipei from Malaysia and moved to Keelung, I started to go into the color photography by taking pictures in both places. Every year’s spring, azalea flowers bloom on NTU campus, not too far from Shida, with many bright colors. It is a popular place to take pictures (1st picture). Keelung is a rain city and is good for growing plants. I also found good azalea blooming in Keelung. Below right pictures show the spring time of sport field of Keelung’s Girls Senior High School where I was teaching.



Teaching in Keelung was not my career but it gave me the time to apply for financial aids to attend a US university. Without financial help, it was very difficult for most students to come to USA. Surprisingly, I got an offer from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Other schools did not give me answers.

I don’t think I had much money at that time but I took a flight from Taipei and landed on San Francisco on August 8, 1971. I didn’t get out of SFO but continued my flight to Milwaukee. The life was simple and quite safe in USA at that time that people still hitch-hiked on the road and didn’t necessary locked their doors at nights.

I rode a bus at Milwaukee airport in the afternoon and it took more than an hour to get to the university campus. I cannot remember that how I was settled in a student dormitory on campus. It was summer time, there were no other students. It was a shock to me because in Taiwan people were anywhere regardless of days or nights. You could buy food even when it was very late and people, including women, went out at nights. Here it was almost no one around at this time.

It turned out my brother’s classmate in Foon Yew, one year higher in grade, was studying in the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The next day I went to visit him and it was very nice of him to take me riding a boat on the lake next to the campus (below 1st picture).

Then I went to visit my own 2 high school classmates studying near Toronto. I stayed at Toronto for a few days and really enjoyed the city. We did many things and I barely remember. The most interesting thing is they took me to visit the world famous Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. Now I only brought back my memory by starring at my old pictures and, surprisingly, they are in good colors. Below 2-4 pictures were shot at Niagara Falls. It is strange that I don’t have their pictures taken with me at the time.



There was a young Chinese Physics professor on Milwaukee campus. Don’t know how he found out me and invited me to his house for dinner. He found out that I was also applying other universities and University of California at Davis was one of it.

At that night, he helped me to call one Physics professor at UC Davis who verbally promised me a financial assistantship. I really owe to this professor at Milwaukee who helped me and even advised me that California was probably better place for me. So I flew to Davis, California in days and this totally changed my life path.

Some old volunteers picked me up at Sacramento airport and I didn’t know it was quite far from Davis campus. I was settled at the UC Davis dormitory with cafeteria open but very lousy food. I just wondered how I could survived on these food and a physics Chinese student came along to move me out of the dormitory and share apartment with other foreign students.

It turned out there was a Chinese Student Association on campus that would help new comers. After that, there were many things happen in Davis. However, I want to submit this story first because there is a deadline, and I can add more later.

The time was in 1971, which is still long time ago, and I need to look at my old pictures to bring back my memory. Left picture is the certificate awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Davis during the picnic in a park to foreign students before the school started. It was quite a very considerate thought which seems not likely happen nowadays.
When I arrived at Davis, I realized that many people, especially the UC Davis students, were riding bicycles. It is widely known as the bicycle capital of the world. As a student without car, it was so convenient for me to ride to school and around town.

Since I only have few pictures during my early years in Davis, I found these pictures online from the City of Davis to celebrate its first bicycle lanes officiated in 1967, four years before I arrived at Davis. The scenes looked very familiar to me because I was doing the same thing on the same streets. So I posted these pictures here as my experiences in Davis.
Below first 2 pictures were shot on campus after I arrived at Davis. I had an office in Physics building. Roughly after 1-2 years I moved to Applied Science Department. Once a while, we ventured out to other places because some foreign students had cars. Below 3rd and 4th pictures were shot at Golden Gate Bridge and some place in bay area or in Sacramento.

Life in Davis, California

Written on February 4, 2022.
When I arrived at Davis in the August of 1971, I did not expect to stay there for 13 years which is longer than anywhere I lived before coming to America. After I obtained my PhD degree in 1978, I was kept by my professor to stay to continue my research on nuclear fusion, more precisely laser fusion, which was envisaged for the future as abundant clean energy source. As the feasibility to achieve its goal was less obvious, the research money became less. In 1984, I found a job and moved away, and finally settled down at Piedmont in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I was accepted in Physics Department in UC Davis with financial aids. I finished my master degree in 1973 and had been looking for financial aids to continue my graduate study and was so lucky that I got it from a professor in the Department of Applied Science (DAS) after I took his plasma dynamics courses.

At that time, the science professors were more respected, unbridled enthusiasm for science and aspirations of their students regardless where they came from. DAS was located in a small space on the second floor of Walker Hall which was originally built in 1928 for the Design Department. For people below professor ranks could only had office in the trailers behind the building (see below pictures). We worked days and nights and I could always park my car at the back.



It turns out DAS was created in 1963 by Edward Teller who is known colloquially as “the father of the hydrogen bomb” to strengthen the links between the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and UC campuses. Nuclear fusion is a peaceful use of the explosion of hydrogen bomb.

Because of this, we received funding from the Department of Energy and were provided the use of the state of the arts supercomputers via the Livermore timesharing system. To avoid the peak time, I always stayed late at nights to run my programs. Sometimes I had to drive on a hilly countryside route to Livermore, which is about 80 miles away, to pick up my computer outputs. DAS provided a lot of computer learning at the time Computer Science was not quite popular yet.

In the spring of 1977, my wife and I went to Livermore to attend the dedication of the newly completed Hertz Hall, as it became known as “Teller Tech” and located just outside the fence of the Lab, by the post-vice president Nelson Rockefeller. Because of Livermore’s weapon research, there were many protestors outside. I did not visit the Livermore that much due to my foreign student status.

I later found out that the Atomic Energy Commission was worried about allowing DAS to use its facilities if foreign students would be enrolled. To meet this objection Teller agreed to limit the number of foreign students. DAS was discontinued in 2011. Now the Walker Hall at Davis is under new renovation (see above pictures) and will house a Graduate Center. Slowly, the name of DAS will be forgotten.

In our time, Asian countries were much poorer and most students could not afford to come here without some financial aids. Most tried to work outside in summers to make money to pay for the tuitions and shared rooms outside the campus and cooked themselves to save money.

The first year I lived with 2 Indian students and a local graduate student in an apartment in the west side of campus. The Indians cooked curry almost every meal and they were good. After a while I started cooking curry too and they did not complain.

In summer, the contract renting the apartment expired and I moved to some fraternity where students had left for summer in the north side of the campus. Someone got me in and I cannot remember I paid rents. I got a painting job on campus.

Unfortunately I suffered from having a kidney stone and received a surgical operation in the university clinic. The cut seemed big in today’s standard and my body could not stretch straight for months. It was strange that seeing me walking bended when school started.

In second year, I lived with 3 students from Hong Kong, including Martin Yan as my roommate, in a 2-bedroom apartment on F Street in the east side of the town. From Monday to Thursday, each person cooked a dinner for everybody (see left pictures). On Fridays and weekends, we were on our own or got invited to eat at someone’s house.

Once a while, we went to Sacramento to eat because it had better restaurants. Very few occasions, we organized a group to go to San Francisco to eat more authentic food at SF Chinatown. I still do not know how Martin felt about my cooking. During this time, Martin found a position teaching Chinese cooking classes in the University Extension so he could make some money.
After I secured my financial aids in DAS, I took an educational leave in the spring of 1974 to go back to Taiwan and Malaysia. I married my wife at the city court in Taipei. It was a simple wedding without any direct family member present. I needed to go back to Malaysia to see my family and inform them about the marriage.

I stayed more than a month there and made up my long time away from home in the US. My step mother gave me some jewelry to bring back to Taiwan for my wife and she really wanted to have our wedding ceremony to be held in Malaysia. However, this was not possible because my wife had to finish one-year teaching before she could apply for a passport and leave Taiwan. We have a big wedding ceremony at Gangshan, the hometown of my wife’s family (below pictures).



I went back to US before summer because I could work full time in summer and got paid more. My wife joined me in the October of 1974 after she obtained her passport.

In UC Davis, we were qualified to live in the Orchard Park, the married student dormitory which costed $130 a month. It was a very nice 2-bedroom apartment (see below pictures) and had some empty land outside the complex for students and spouses to do gardening. That sounds very cheap nowadays, however my monthly pay was $300 and we only had $170 to live on. My sister, Cheng-fun, also had came to the US and lived with us. She was going to Davis High School.

Before my wife came, I bought an old Ford Custom for $250 (see below picture) and she had to learn driving in stick shift. However, the gasoline price rose to more than 50 cents per gallon compared to 36 cents at the time I came. I rode bicycles most of the time because Davis is a bicycle city and is flat.

With that old Ford, Der-ying also went to teach Chinese cooking to some private groups recommended by Martin Yan. I remembered the first group was the gathering of the wives of the medical doctors in the nearby town Woodland. The first day we were an hour late because we did not know that there was a summer Daylight Saving Time change. At later time, we owned a more reliable Volkswagen station wagon (see below picture) and we could go farther places.



Worried about we would not be able to stay in the US, we applied for immigration to Canada and got approved. At the end of 1975, Martin Yan and we drove up to Vancouver and entered Canada as landed immigrants.

We stayed for a few days and came back to Davis and asked my professor to help us to apply for the permanent residency of the US. Martin stayed in Canada and later started his TV cooking shows in a very cold Calgary.

Left side shows my pictures taken after my PhD commencement in 1977 even though my official date getting my PhD in Physics was 1978.
In 1978, there were a group of houses for sale in more remote east of the city and many friends bought one or more. With my sister and we put down a few thousand dollars as deposit and we got a 2-storey house on Grinnel Drive. There is a big park with swimming pools and a big slide that the kids remember very well. This place is very close to Sacramento, the state capitol, and Xinru was born in 1979 and Youxi in 1980 in the Kaiser Hospital in Sacramento.



In 1982, my sister got married and moved out to San Francisco. In 1984, I found a job in San Leandro in Bay Area and our whole family moved out in 1985. We settled permanently in Piedmont in the east side of the bay and over the time, our Davis memories become vague.

Living in Piedmont and Traveling

Written on December 20, 2022.
My original plan was to write about my early life living in different places and quit writing at the time I left Davis. That should have covered most of my early past which I barely remember. However, I am living most of my life after I moved to Piedmont in the San Francisco Bay Area. During the years of 1984-88, I worked in Physics International Company located in San Leandro. Then I worked for Lockheed Martin Company located in Sunnyvale, which was a long commute for me, during 1989-2007 until I retired.

The era living in Piedmont is the most important part of my life, where our two kids grew up and went to colleges, and our moments of life were better recorded and passed around in digital images and internet. I should have a big writing on this part of life, however, I will briefly make some remarks with some pictures, including those taken in the trips. Below the 1st picture is in front of our Piedmont house in 1985, the year Der-ying's parents also visited us. The 2nd picture is our celebration of July 4th in that year in the Piedmont downtown park which became the wedding ceremony site later for Xinru and Micah. The 3rd picture is the Lake Merritt in Oakland which is not too far from our house.

Today, the Piedmont house is no different except the big tree was removed from the front yard and I planted many bamboo and banana trees in backyard (1st & 2nd pictures). In 1989, I joined LMSC (called Lockheed Missiles and Space Company at that time) in Sunnyvale and below the 3rd picture was taken in front of its main building 157. The company is pretty far away from our house and we did not relocate because Piedmont is a good school district.

Because of the changes of jobs and living locations, we did not travel back to Asia to visit relatives for some time. In 1986, we went to see the World Expo held in Vancouver in Canada (below 1st picture) where my Shida classmate lives. In 1988, We went to southern California (2nd picture) for vacation. My niece Cherie had come to study in USA in 1986 and the 3rd picture was taken when she graduated from San Francisco Golden Gate University in 1990 with with Cheng-fun, Sidney and their kids living in San Francisco.

During this period, we only took vacation in nearby places in the US and did not have enough time to take longer trip. In 1987, Sidney went to Malaysia and Singapore to visit our family members. One of his pictures is the 1st picture below which shows my father and sister Cheeng-li who usually seldom showed up. Near the end of 1987, we went to Taiwan to visit family members (2nd & 3rd pictures). Because of the time constraint, we did not go to Southeast Asia which requires longer traveling time.

In fact, before we moved to Piedmont, we made a trip back to Malaysia in 1982 to celebrate Chinese New Year (some pictures had been posted in previous chapters), and below 1st picture was our family reunion, including my father, at JB downtown Sultan Garden in view of Singapore across the Johore Strait. In addition, we also went to Hong Kong and Taiwan (below pictures) and the kids were very young at that time. Earlier in 1979, Der-ying had also brought Xinru (who was a baby then) back to Taiwan.

After we moved to Piedmont, in December of 1990, we made a trip back to Malaysia and Singapore to see our family members, long after my father and step-mother passed away. My mother came from Singapore to see us in Johor Bahru and also my step-mother’s 1st daughter came from Pahang (below 1st & 2nd pictures). This was the last time I saw them. After that, we went to Taiwan to visit the relatives there (3rd picture).

In the summer of 2017, after 32 years, our family with grandkids except Micah came to visit Davis. Below is a family picture in front of Putah Creek on campus and another one showing the grandkids trying to play on the big slide which looked the same and was considered very scary when Xinru & Youxi were young.

In 2019, we took a family vacation to Singapore and Malaysia. The trip was fantastic and is fully documented elsewhere. We have a family reunion in Singapore and almost every family members were there (below 1st picture with Chinese names). We got to swim in a 57-storey high infinity pool (4th picture) in Marina Bay Sands Hotel. In Johor Bahru (more JB pictures in previous chapters), we went to look for our old stilt house (not there anymore, 2nd picture) and the one on Indera Putra which was still vacant (3rd pictures). We also went to Rawa island (5th picture), Kuala Lumpur and Malacca (6th picture) in Malaysia. The trip gave the kids the views of the places in southern Malaya where I grew up.


At the early 2020, pandemic started and we did not travel outside USA. In 2022, we had a birthday dinner party for Der-ying on a hilltop restaurant in Los Angeles and had a professional friend taking nice pictures (below 1st picture). In summer, we had a family vacation in Grand Teton and Yellow Stone National Parks. Surprisingly, we took a white water rafting at Snake River near Jackson Hole (2nd picture).

In the Christmas in 2022, we flew to Utah to spend time with Xinru’s family. It is a white Christmas that we never had (below 1st picture). During this time, huge storms and heavy rain called ‘atmospheric river’ came to the northwestern part of USA and were hammering most states in the country. Southwest Airlines canceled our flight back to California. Then we joined the kids driving south to Las Vegas and sunny Palm Springs. It was a very nice vacation. After Palm Springs, we drove to Los Angeles to join Youxi’s family and went to a stinky tofu restaurant. Not every body could enjoy the dishes (below 2nd picture).

We had a New Year countdown in the Toluca Lake Youxi’s house. It turned out Youxi and Jessica had offered to buy another house in the nearby Studio City and we got to see the front yard and backyard of the house on New Year day. After we went to a nearby Mexican restaurant and the food was very good. Notice Kooper the dog was in front of the house. (below pictures)

Final remark (4Mar.2023): Today, when I am about to finish my writing, proofread the content and submit for publication, I heard the news that there are big floods in the area of Segamat, Labis and Chaah, the place where I was born and grew up. My maternal uncle’s home in Labis was badly flooded in 2007 and 2010 (on newspapers) and wiped out most family documents.