James and his great uncle share the same birthday August 19th.

Largely thanks to my uncle, I am the person I am today. He is one of the funniest and broadest-minded people I know. When I was a kid, one of his hobbies was to make scrapbooks of travel magazine articles. He introduced us to The Little House on the Prairie, The Sound of Music, Tin Tin and many more warmhearted adventure and family tales around the world.

When I was growing up, everybody was so poor and we frequently had blackouts because post-war Communist Vietnam couldn’t produce enough electricity, or anything essential such as food and clean water. During those blackouts, he would gather up all of us kids, light up several candles, tell us wonderful stories of faraway lands and teach us to play with our hand shadows on the wall.

I started dreaming of seeing other places and meeting different people because of this uncle. He also has extremely good taste in music and possesses a splendidly colorful and lively fish tank which Jacob enjoyed very much when he was a young child in Vietnam.