Liberty – What a year you’ve had! I remember the first time I really heard you speak was during the partner introductions @ the beginning of the year; that’s also when I learned your birthdate!! (Happy July 4th, by the way.) You’ve been a joy to teach—a veritable sponge, soaking up so much. Continue to search for meaning and justice, + make this world better. And… keep playing music! Come visit next year.

♥ Aysta

P.S. Beastie Boys RULE! Ha! Ha!

P.P.S. Weezer, too!

Of course, “Aysta” is short for Asa Yamashita. And apparently, I was such a fangirl, she made it a point to mention my two favorite bands at the time in postscripts.

I have a few memories from Mrs. Yamashita’s freshman honors English class. I remember reading Romeo & Juliet and how she had us reword it with dialects of our choice. Imagine the class perform the play in pidgin English. She took a piece of Shakespearean literature, which, with its 16th century language, would have meant nothing to us. But Yamashita found a way to make the story not only relevant, but engaging, entertaining, and memorable for us, as well. After all, we couldn’t translate the story if we didn’t understand it first.

The other memory I have of the class was, oddly enough, as much about life as it was about death. The assignment: 100 things to do before you die. I’m gonna rename that and call it “100 things to do in life.”

I wish I had kept my list. Maybe I’ll start making a new one. The first three line items will be from the yearbook message she left me.

I don’t know what Mrs. Yamashita would have written on her list. But judging from the turnout at tonight’s memorial for her at Waianae High School, I would say she accomplished more than 100 things in her life, as far as the number of lives she touched.

We’ll miss you, Mrs. Yamashita. Your legacy lives on.

A lot has happened to me since my last blog entry. For starters, I graduated from Hawai‘i Pacific University in May with a B.A. in Advertising. Go me!

Since September I’ve been working full time at a little media production company in Wai‘anae called Makaha Studios. There, I’m in charge of our Web site projects. My official title? “Director of Web Development.” I know, it sounds very official. Though I consider myself to be tech-savvy, it definitely is a learning process. At this point, I’m feeling a bit more comfortable with my position at the company, but a hardcore programmer, I am not. That’s why we have Bill and Kaleb! I just got my own little office this week, complete with a glass desk, white bucket chair, and blue filing cabinet that I picked out at Office Max. Plus, there are a few projects I’m excited about taking part in. I’ll spare you the details.

I’m still working at my previous job on the weekends, helping people create Web sites and other personal, computer-related projects of their own. But I’m also helping sell computers too. I like the variety of having my two jobs. I get to expose myself to the different sides of technology: creating and helping others create using technology, and convincing others to join in on the fun.

Speaking of which, if you have a Twitter account, follow me. My user name is libz.

Getting those prints done for photography class was such a chore. After my training at Apple, I went to Ritz Camera. Because I didn’t want to spend $30 on all six of my photos at Ritz, I had them print one of my photos. Good thing I did that because it turned out that the resolution was too low and it ended up looking pretty crappy. So after I fixed that on my six image files, I went to Wal-Mart the next day. (After all, it’s relatively closer to home and cheaper than Ritz… even though I haven’t been there in ages.) But when I plugged in my thumb drive into their kiosk, it couldn’t read ANY of the photos I wanted to print! So I went back home, frazzled, and changed the files’ format from .tif to .jpg. I went back to Wal-Mart the next day and the kiosk STILL didn’t recognize my photos. Of course at this point, I’m really frazzled. I returned home, saved multiple versions of my pictures, then the next morning, went all the way to Walgreens (there’s only one on the island, but I needed to be in town for class anyway) and had them printed there. The kiosk read ALL of them fine. That morning, I manage to get to my advertising class, the last class of my college career, ten minutes late. Good thing I called my prof earlier.

Lessons learned: have backup plans early (like saving multiple versions of photos)… and Wal-Mart’s photo kiosks suck!

It was also a week of mini-reunions. I reunited with my NSAC team members to present our AIM pitch presentation to our ad professor’s graduate class. It’s been almost a month since we last did it, so we stumbled on some parts, and we did have some trouble getting my PowerBook to show up on the projector at first (as usual), but otherwise, we were far more polished than the last time we did our AIM presentation for that class several months ago. Plus, it was great seeing my teammates again. We went to rRed Elephant afterwards to chat. Laura, who I haven’t seen in a while, also happened to be there, so I got to have a long chat with her, as well, which was awesome.

Yesterday I had lunch with Nat from Olomana Marketing. It was the first time in a long time I got to talk story with her at length. She cut her hair and it looks cute!

Today, my mom and I made the trek to the other side of the island via bus to check out my photography classmates’ work on display at the Hawaii Loa campus. Everyone’s photos were very impressive. I wish I had done a bit more Photoshop experimentation like how a few of my classmates did, but at the same time, I felt that the images I chose didn’t really warrant it.

This was my last week of classes, so final projects and such were due. Glad to get those out of the way. Next week is finals week, but fortunately I don’t have any finals to take. I do have to go to class on Monday for my advertising class, though. I also have to turn in my final project for photography: five prints of our best photos. I uploaded them here, actually. Let me know what you think. I have six uploaded because I can’t decide which one I should eliminate. I’ll probably just print all six and turn those in. These prints make up half of my grade—can you believe it? I think they’re among my best and I hope my professor agrees.

I have to wake up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow to head over to Kahala Mall for my Apple training… so it’s off to bed for me. Here’s a video that may cheer you up:

Thursday, April 17
None of us got any adequate sleep during the red-eye flight out of Honolulu. Funny, considering we went sight-seeing right after we dropped off our things and had a complementary breakfast at our hotel, the Embassy Suites in South San Francisco. The hotel shuttle took us back to the airport, where we caught the BART up to the Embarcadero. From there, we walked through Union Square and caught a cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf, where we had lunch. I had clam chowder in a bread bowl, of course. Right across from the restaurant was a Steve and Barry’s, which I learned was a warehouse clothing store. (There’s a Steve and Barry’s that just opened in Waikele, where the CompUSA used to be. I had no idea what kind of store it was before then.)

When we got back from Fisherman’s Wharf, we scoped out the South San Francisco Convention Center for the competition the following day. The place was a lot smaller than I expected. There were a few of the other schools there, also checking out the venue. The Chico students came off pretty arrogant. The Fresno and Reno students, in contrast, were pleasant and welcoming. After going on stage to determine blocking, we chilled out at the hotel, had dinner at Houlihan’s, and rehearsed our presentation.

Friday, April 18
The next day was Game Day. We were the second school presenting. After breakfast, we went to the convention center, where we were welcomed warmly (not) by our district coordinator. After tackling the projector issues (just like our rehearsals, we ended up having to use the S-Video output on my PowerBook), we squeezed in one final rehearsal. Our presentation went off without a hitch… except for the fact that the District 14 coordinator accidentally introduced us as University of Hawaii. She got a prompt correction from our advisers.

One of our team members brought up a good point afterwards: unlike the other schools, our entire team couldn’t attend, so when we were presenting, only our two advisers were in the audience, watching and supporting us. We did the very best we could, with the little resources and support we had.

After watching CSU-Fresno’s presentation, we returned to Houlihan’s for lunch, where we talked about a lot of things, serious and not-so-serious. After going back to watch presentations from USF (boring) and CSU-Chico (great but a little cheesy), we jetted off to the hotel to get some rest and discuss our presentation and the others we saw. Our team leader was pretty confident we had a fighting chance; I can’t say I had the same feeling, though I know we all did our very best. We returned to the convention center for the awards ceremony, where we learned who placed in the top three. Ironically, we didn’t see any of the winning presentations (we were setting up for our presentation while San Jose State presented, and took our break during the presentations from Berkeley and Reno). Chico left the ceremony early; we always sensed some pompousness coming from those guys. It was nice of a few of the students, namely from Berkeley and Reno, to tell us how great of a job we did. Some people from Hawaii Advertising Federation also came up to us after the ceremony to tell us what a great job we did, though I don’t know if they would have done so if our adviser hadn’t chewed out their president for ignoring us at the airport and not acknowledging us appropriately. Oh, and their president was wearing a UH football shirt. *scoff*

We went to a place in Burlingame called Broadway Grill to celebrate our hard work throughout the year. We were originally planning to go to another restaurant down the street (one of our team members had a list of recommended eateries), but they were super busy. Turns out Broadway Grill was a better choice, anyways. The vibe was way more relaxed, the menu had a cute Broadway theme going on, and the service was, in our team leader’s words, phenomenal. The server, originally from Russia, and the manager, Art, kept checking up on how we were doing. But it was a hilarious, colorful evening, too, watching our team leader and one of our advisers talk to the manager and staff about visiting Hawaii; the two of them were clearly tipsy. Plus, some weird, drunk guy kept hitting on our two advisers (funny!). The guy, who claimed to be Kai Kalihiki, sang “Tiny Bubbles” for us and bought us a bottle of wine. After he left, the staff told us they had never seen him before. But hey, if you’re ever in Burlingame, go check out Broadway Grill!

Saturday, April 19
The following morning, we got up at 5:30, had another complementary breakfast at the hotel, and made our journey to the Golden Gate Bridge. One BART ride, a streetcar, some walking, and two buses later, we were there. We took some photos and got on the bus to the Daly City BART. (We talked about walking/running across the bridge but it didn’t happen… we had to be back at the hotel by 1 pm.) We had lunch at the hotel, got our luggage, and took the shuttle to the airport.

When we were getting off the shuttle, one of our team members stumbled and sprained her ankle. Then while we were checking in, all five of the Northwest counter employees made themselves preoccupied with a man in a wheelchair. After making our way past the TSA checkpoint, we met up with our two advisers, who had arrived at the airport before we did, and we put ice on our team member’s ankle. We happened to sit across from a doctor at the gate, who told our injured team member to take Motrin or ibuprofen every eight hours to decrease the swelling.

Once we took off from San Francisco, I was out. I woke up near the end of National Treasure: Book of Secrets and had a short conversation with the woman who was sitting next to me; her military daughter was taking her to visit Oahu (she thought she was going to the Big Island—common geographical mistake). When we landed we saw a rainbow framing the view of Diamond Head—very picturesque and welcoming. My mom picked me up and we got some malasadas at Waikele. Ahh, home sweet home.

I miss the Bay Area, though. I wanna go back and visit Tasi and Angie! Plus, there’s so much more to see there that I want to see!