https://thepolyphoniclife.com/ A personal site about family, health, photography, audio, travel, architecture, and philosophy — written by Thinh Le. en-us Thinh Le Fri, 29 May 2026 15:44:59 GMT 1440 https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/garage/how-this-gets-to-you.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/garage/how-this-gets-to-you.html Tue, 26 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT garage A reader asked how this site works technically. The honest answer is more encouraging than the internet makes it look — a website is files, a place to put them, and a way to get them to people quickly. Here's the full picture, with a diagram. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/health/pcos-keto.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/health/pcos-keto.html Sat, 23 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT health We got married in 2012 and tried for years. Doctors gave us a diagnosis but not an answer. Then we found a video about insulin resistance, went on a ketogenic diet, and six months later Thao was pregnant with Meghan. Four kids later, here is what actually causes PCOS — and what we did about it. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/travel/lucky-goat.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/travel/lucky-goat.html Sat, 23 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT travel A birthday is a strange thing when you look at it plainly. The earth completed another lap around the sun — that's it. What makes it real is the decision to do something specific. This year that was an iced matcha latte at Lucky Goat Coffee in Jacksonville, and I would not have it any other way. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/photography/wedding-photography.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/photography/wedding-photography.html Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT photography Ten years. Two Nikons. One 200mm f/2. A Dominican Republic beach, the cliffs of Mendocino, the painted hills of Oregon. Then 2020 arrived, Claire was born, and the math of weekends stopped working. This is the longer version of why — and what I still miss. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/photography/fujifilm-x100vi.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/photography/fujifilm-x100vi.html Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT photography A 40MP fixed-lens compact with IBIS, a built-in ND filter, and the best straight-out-of-camera skin tones I've shot in any light. The camera you actually have with you is better than the one you left at home. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/alan-watts-backwards-law.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/alan-watts-backwards-law.html Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT philosophy Try right now to fall asleep. You can't — the moment you try, you've already failed. Alan Watts spent his career showing that this backwards quality runs through the most important things in life. A philosopher from England explained the Mekong Delta to me better than anyone who grew up there. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/art-of-not-forcing.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/art-of-not-forcing.html Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT philosophy Wu wei doesn't mean do nothing. It means stop applying force in a direction the thing doesn't want to go. The woodcarver finds the grain first. The judoka uses the opponent's momentum. The photographer is there for the moment rather than manufacturing it. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/genesis-is-now.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/genesis-is-now.html Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT philosophy Try to find yesterday. Point to it. You can't — it exists only as memory, and memory is happening right now. Watts says the past is not the cause of the present. We don't arise from the past. We arise in the present, and deposit what we call "the past" behind us as we go. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/road-to-hell.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/road-to-hell.html Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT philosophy You know something true. You can see someone you love hurting themselves slowly. You know the mechanism. You have tried every angle. And they will not hear you. Alan Watts understood why — and the answer is harder to accept than the problem. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/everything-for-a-reason.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/everything-for-a-reason.html Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT philosophy The same midwife delivered both of us. Thao and I grew up one village apart in the Mekong Delta and had no idea the other existed. Alan Watts on what it actually means when people say everything happens for a reason — and why the honest version is harder and more interesting than the comfortable one https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/architecture/tao-of-architecture.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/architecture/tao-of-architecture.html Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT architecture Amos Chang's slim 1956 book asks one question: what is a building actually made of? The answer, via Lao Tzu, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Alan Watts, is not the walls. It is the void the walls create. This is how I think about every building I enter. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/curious-life.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/curious-life.html Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT family The Mekong Delta is a landscape that doesn't forget anything. Rivers branch and re-branch across flat land, carrying silt from mountains a thousand miles away, depositing it into rice paddies and fish markets and the particular slowness of life near water. I was born in Dong Thap, in the lower delta https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/beautiful-tangle.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/beautiful-tangle.html Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT family We met in the United States. That's the ordinary part. Thao and I came together the way many Vietnamese-Americans do — through the overlapping social networks that form when a diaspora settles into a new place. You know people's families. You know where they're from, roughly. You don't know everythi https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/notes-middle-life.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/notes-middle-life.html Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT family I turned 43 this year. I also just had my fourth child — a boy named Cody. These two facts, arriving within months of each other, have produced a particular kind of reckoning. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/nuna-triv-review.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/nuna-triv-review.html Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT family We're on our fourth child. By now, we know what a stroller actually needs to do — and what sounds good in a review but evaporates in a parking garage at 11pm with a sleeping baby in one arm. The TRIV Next mostly gets it right. One thing, it doesn't. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/audio/hd600.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/audio/hd600.html Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT audio Seventeen years ago I bought a pair of headphones I didn't fully understand yet. The HD 600 is still in my top three, alongside the Warwick Bravura electrostats and ZMF Atrium. This is what seventeen years and a succession of better equipment teaches you about the same headphone. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/audio/lta-aero.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/audio/lta-aero.html Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT audio $3,950 for a chip that stopped production in 1999. The LTA Aero uses David Berning's ZOTL circuit, a non-oversampling AD1865 R2R ladder chip, and two 12SN7 tubes in a zero-feedback Class-A output stage. On paper it loses. In the room, something else happens. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/present-moment.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/philosophy/present-moment.html Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT philosophy Re-reading "The Wisdom of Insecurity" for maybe the fourth time. Today I took the kids to the park and actively tried to not photograph anything. Just watch. Just be the father watching his kids. It felt strange for about ten minutes, then it felt like the point. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/veer-cruiser-review.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/family/veer-cruiser-review.html Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT family Somewhere around child number three, a stroller stops being sufficient. The Veer is what comes next — a wagon built the way wagons should have always been built, with foam tires that go anywhere and a basket that holds everything. https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/travel/victoria-bc.html https://thepolyphoniclife.com/posts/travel/victoria-bc.html Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT travel The ferry from Vancouver takes 90 minutes. Victoria is the kind of city that feels like it was designed to be visited slowly — Butchart Gardens, the Inner Harbour, afternoon tea at the Empress. We were already in Vancouver. Next time, we take the boat.