I’ve known Flash since the early days of the Stanford Newton User Group. When I heard that he got engaged to Olga, I remember saying to myself, “Woo hoo!” Flash held a party with his friends at his place in Palo Alto on the 27th of September to celebrate the engagement. I saw some old faces that I hadn’t seen in a long time, including Kenneth Albanowski (used to work with him at Palm), Zander and Rebecca, and Glen (though I see him more frequently at SNUG meetings). I met Zander’s parents as well as Christopher and Olga, along with their children, Timmy and Nicholas. They were playing with their GameBoy’s nearly the entire night, and it was interesting to play some of those games. When I was growing up, we didn’t have such advanced pocket-sized gaming consoles! Now, the games are coming out on your phone!

Overheard a discussion with Chris and Ken about Leapfrog, makers of educational toys. It was interesting to note because a few days later at a DVF Seminar, Steve Wilhelm mentioned Leapfrog in his presentation. I was searching through my brain for where I heard that name Leapfrog until I remembered the party. I need an application which can collect my thoughts in one place and allow me to search and make relations between these thoughts. Hmm…

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So, the first week of the Stanford school year 2003-2004 is under the belt. The week started on Wednesday following six days of orientation for the Class of 2007. Not to sound like an old man, but back in my day, we only had five days of orientation. Not only did we not have that extra day, but we didn’t have Freshman Seminars, Sophomore College, and a host of other opportunities. I guess the college experience is always going to get better as time goes by, you know?

I had planned to take a couple of classes this quarter, notably STS 279, Technology, Policy, and Management in Newly-Industrializing Countries. I got to the class on time at 11:00 am, but there were only a few students in the room and no professor. A few minutes later, Joe comes in and sits down next to me. We chit-chat about classes as the time goes by. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes pass until everyone in the room is coming to the realization that something is amiss. A couple of students come in saying that they came from another building where the class might also have been held at (Terman 156). We end up going to the STS office only to learn that the class has been cancelled. The professor is out of the country and can’t get back in!

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APAture 2003 Film Night was held Thursday evening at the SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco. I was last at SOMArts for a butoh performance by Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance Theatre.

Rae’s documentary narrative film, Jingwei Girls, was selected along with 10 other works from filmmakers around the Bay Area. Here’s a list of the other artists and their works:

• Spunk Patrick Epino (4 min., experimental/narrative)
• 50 G’s Omz Velasco (7 min., drama)
• The Question Ramsel J. Ruiz (4 min., experimental)
• Jingwei Girls Rae Chang (10 min., narrative)
• Troo Bloo Debbie H. Ng (4 min., drama)
• Regret Bruce Cheung and Andinh Ha (6 min., experimental)
• Lockjaw Gayle Romasanta (19 min., comedy)
• Gone Natalie Mai-Ly Newman (3 min., 17 sec., experimental)
• The Skyflakes: Bad Thoughts Dino R. Ignacio (5 min., animation/music video)
• The Scapegoat Darren Ng (23 min., comedy)

It was neat to see Rae’s film being screened in front of a wider audience. We had shown the film to friends and family back in March, but that was on a small TV screen; this was on a giant screen! Woo hoo! I also really enjoyed Darren Ng’s The Scapegoat, which was a silent homage to Buston Keaton. Darren did a great job as a Berkeley student who, by no real fault of his own, gets chased around campus by a jealous white boyfriend and his pack of Asian brothers. Regret by Cruce and Andinh was quite haunting, a backwards (and sometimes forward) retelling of a suicide on campus.

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Today, the DVF group took a tour of the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve just outside of the Stanford campus. It was hot, hot, hot! I had never gone to Jasper Ridge when I was a student, though I knew of it through Alex Rubio during my senior year on campus. He was in some class that allowed him to mountain bike some of the trails, from what I remember (or maybe he was a docent?).

Here’s a far better description of the preserve from the Jasper Ridge web site than I could possibly write: “Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is located near Stanford University’s campus in the eastern foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. An undeveloped jewel set amidst a rapidly urbanizing area, the Preserve provides refuge to native plants and animals, rich educational experiences to students and docent-led visitors, and a rare natural laboratory for researchers from all over the world.

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Facing East’s dance performance, HELD SO CLOSE…remembering the poets of Angel Island concluded its run on Sunday evening. We had a much bigger crowd than the previous week, which was certainly a good thing. Perhaps the article in the Bay Guardian helped, or my flurried posts to a variety of lists and web sites I frequent did. Thanks to everyone who came to either Sunday’s event or Saturday’s event, including Auntie Mei and Uncle Peter, Edna and Erik, Randy, Cristina and Wilson, Scott and Nancy, Cathy, Susan, Petrice, and Judy!

Once things settle down a bit, I’ll run through the rest of the unpublished photos from the 2-week performance and post the best ones. I stayed in the back near Cecily and Ryan, where I was videotaping the performance on the VX-2000. For dance photography, you really need to be close to the action. The 28-70mm lens on my 1D just wouldn’t cut it for anything other than establishing shots.

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AQW moved into their new headquarters in Sunnyvale this past week, and on Saturday night they held their christening party. Javi, Osv, Daniel, and Felix, along with Mark, Randy, and the rest of the gang assembled quite the guest list of their friends and co-workers. They did not, however, inform all of their new neighbors, some of whom were put off by the noise and registered a complaint with the police. Shortly before midnight, the cops came and encouraged the reduction in noise. The music went down and people started coming into the house, which quickly became a sauna, from what I heard.

It’s too bad that the party fizzled out by 2 am (I had left around midnight), since it was shaping up to be a worthy sequel to Clubertino from a few week’s prior.

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Dardy held his end of the summer party on Friday night. Notable people that I ran into included Aileen Chen, whom I haven’t seen in ages (and she’s been in SF this whole time!) and Tony Lo, a graduate from 96 who looks vaguely familiar. There is a connection that can be gleaned from our shared Stanford history, but I don’t know it at the moment. I found out from Tony that Dardy’s roommate Alan was on the Stanford swim team. I would have never of known that, since he’s built much more like a wrestler than a fish! It was nice to talk with Aileen, who’s now a computer programmer for an Internet company in the area. “Didn’t you used to be hum bio?” I asked her. Indeed she was, but following college, she discovered the joy of programming. Cool!

Tried my hand at tasting some of Dardy’s liquid concotions. The jello shot tasted the best, although too many of them would no doubt have proven to be dangerous.

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IDEO University kept the DVF fellows busy for Thursday and Friday of last week. I once took a class with the founder of IDEO, David Kelly, at Stanford. CS447/ME296 was my first experience with working in a multi-disciplinary group. My group designed SportsScope, the video for which you can view on my web site. Dan Kim and David Northway were two people who were in the class at the time with whom I’m still in frequent contact with. Dan also works at IDEO these days!

The workshop was helpful in stirring our creative juices. It’s been awhile since I’ve done a real brainstorm or designed something quick in five minutes. The processes and methodologies that they outlined will likely be used throughout the course of the Fellowship this year.

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Facing East Dance & Music is holding the final two performances of HELD SO CLOSE…remembering the poets of Angel Island this weekend. It’s being held at the McKenna Theatre at San Francisco State University at 8:00 pm on Saturday (9/20) and 7:00 pm on Sunday (9/21). Prices are $22 general admission and $18 for students/seniors.

“Two years in the making, FEDM presents their third multimedia, dance and live music production exploring the emotions of Chinese immigrants held at Angel Island’s Immigration Station during 1910-1940. Choreography/Direction by Sue Li Jue, music composed by Jeff Chan, sets by Richard Jue, costumes by Colleen Quen, text by Lisa Wallgren Okuhn, video by Robert Yee, projections by Thomas Wong, sound by Ryan Drury and lighting by Cecily Chow.”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Angel Island and its place in the history of the United States, please see my earlier report when I visited the Ellis Island of the West.

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Today, the DVF troupe went to the Intel Museum in Santa Clara. Dave Libby was our tour guide through the museum, which explores the history of Intel from the company’s beginnings in the 1960’s to the present day. Moore and Noyce were going to name the company after themselves, but the name Moore/Noyce sounded a little too familiar to “More Noise,” which is not a good thing to have in the semi-conductor business!

We had a blast looking at the one-page business plan that Noyce wrote for Intel. I’ve seen business plans for companies that looked like books! Those companies have come and gone in the dot-com bust, but Intel is still going strong, with 3 billion dollars in revenue last year on sales of over 26 billion dollars. Wow.

I had a blast trying on the bunny suit, which is the outfit that the clean room engineers must wear before working in the fab. Sadly, they didn’t have the bunny suit helmet, so I was unable to complete the outfit.

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