Across the Pacific a few weeks earlier, Aster's father painted a slightly different picture, remembering how his daughter once chided him for missing soccer games and a violin recital. Peng mused over a frozen yogurt in Winbond's featureless cafeteria, where he often eats. Peng's life revolves around work, bolstered by a group of astronaut comrades who work in Hsinchu and eat, golf and play tennis together. Scattered papers and golf magazines cover a coffee table, stray items of clothing drape over chairs, and a few dirty dishes sit in the sink in Peng's tiny kitchen. He hones his golf technique on a narrow strip of AstroTurf in the living room.
Meals are the worst time.
One of Peng's closest astronaut colleagues once wound up alone and hungry in Hsinchu during the Chinese New Year, a traditional time for family gatherings, when he couldn't find a single open restaurant. Peng is in daily e-mail contact with his family, but often doesn't have time to respond during working hours. Loneliness, disapproval Wife has found support in 3 friends in the same boat When Peng first left Los Altos, Amy admitted, she felt occasional pangs of loneliness at the sight of other couples. But she doesn't discuss the family's situation with anyone else. Once she heard several non-Asian mothers at a school where she volunteers talking disapprovingly about the wife of another astronaut.