E-mail from Ngin-Ngin

Me, Ngin-Ngin, and Yeh-Yeh

In December 1994, my Ngin-Ngin (a child's way of saying the Chinese word for paternal grandmother) got e-mail. My dad hooked her up with a clunker of an old 486, and ran Prodigy for DOS on it.

And so, she sent me e-mail. i was in Santa Barbara at the time, working in the library on the campus of the University of California there.

Anyways, i could get all mushy here and talk about how i cherished her e-mails, and yadda yadda yadda, but whatever. It was cool, because hey, my grandma had e-mail, i bragged to my friends. They were surprised that she spoke English, much less sent e-mail.

Hey man, she *taught* English, i'd tell them. Yup, graduated from the University of Hawaii, and taught high school (i think) for a while.

Anyways, it's funny reading about my brother Josh taking her out to lunch and on errands, because really, i guess all my memories of her are as a kid, staying overnight at her house, taking the bus and BART to Oakland A's games, accompanying me and my Yeh-Yeh (grandfather) to early morning tennis at Washington Park.

i mean, i never really got to know her once i was grown-up. Except through e-mail, i guess. Which is pretty cool.

Anyways, she passed away on December 20, 1996. She was 87, i think. i had to ask Josh for the exact date, and in fact, i had to dig through old e-mails to get the right month. Kind of bad, i know. But these e-mails of hers... they really help me remember her when she was alive, which is a good thing. :-}

So please, check out: E-mail from Ngin-Ngin