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!

HPU’s representatives include team leader Christina Failma, HPU Akamai Advertising Club president Liberty Peralta and senior advertising majors Karen Joy Gaspar and Cassie Johnston.

The entire campaign development team includes Keisuke Takahashi, Kuo-Ping Huang, Make [sic] Ueda and Tsung Yang Hsu.

HPU will compete against teams from:
- California State University at Chico
- California State University at Fresno
- San Jose State University
- University of California at Berkeley
- University of Nevada at Reno
- University of San Francisco

The winner of the district competition advances to the AAF NSAC Nationals held in Atlanta, Georgia in June.

The American Advertising Federation headquartered in Washington D.C., acts as the “Unifying Voice for Advertising.” The AAF is the oldest national advertising trade association, representing 50,000 professionals in the advertising industry. The AAF has a national network of 200 ad clubs located in ad communities across the country. Through its 215 college chapters, the AAF provides 6,500 advertising students with real-world case studies and recruitment connections to corporate America. The AAF also has 130 blue-chip corporate members that are advertisers, agencies and media companies, comprising the nation’s leading brands and corporations.

Posted 04.07.2008

I’ve always been uncomfortable with public speaking, especially in high school, where I would shiver like crazy whenever I presented in front of my classmates. It got much better after I took courses in acting and public speaking at HPU; I took both intentionally last spring so I could improve on my speaking skills. After all, I’m a communication student.

I still have a problem with those crutch words, though, and I really need to hone in on minimizing that for our advertising team’s presentation at the National Student Advertising Competition next month in San Francisco. If I had known about Toastmasters earlier in my college career and had shown initiative earlier to improving my public speaking skills, perhaps I would have joined the club. I’m thinking the intense practice our team will go through during the couple of weeks after spring break should be of significant help, though. And it turns out Wai‘anae has a Toastmasters chapter that meets at the Wai‘anae Coast Comprehensive Health Center twice a month, so I could join that club, since it’s closer to home. I wonder if I know anyone in that club.

I had my phone interview with the International Radio and Television Society Foundation on Wednesday. They’re the folks hosting the New York City fellowship/internship. (I’m a finalist.) I was expecting it to be very formal, but the woman who interviewed me was very friendly and upbeat. I should be finding out whether I’m going to NYC or not by the end of next week. We’ll see how it goes!

Pics courtesy of Angie and Tash:

Yvonne and me.

“Da Crew”: Yvonne, me, Keala, Angie and Tash. Tash strategically set the camera on the trunk of her car and put it on automatic.

Me, Yvonne, Angie and Keala.

Me, Yvonne and Angie. Peace!

Then, on Veteran’s Day, I went with my sister to the 28th Annual Rainbow Invitational at Aloha Stadium. Lots of great high school marching bands, but I was a little disappointed Waianae’s band wasn’t there. I’m sure my sister was, too… she’s in it! Their band is too small for the minimum 25 members needed to make decent formations on the football field. Oh, and UH’s marching band is kick ass! They closed the show.

Afterwards, Mom picked us up and took us to Zippy’s. Mmmm… won ton mein… again… (the last pic is the happy face the chef or waitress made out of the mustard)

Below are pics from that night. I forgot to take out my phone until the third band, Kailua, performed, so I didn’t get pics of Campbell and Nanakuli. =(

It looks Photoshopped, but it’s not!

Kailua High School

Aiea High School

Farrington High School

Kapolei High School… their theme was Blues Brothers. They later brought out two cardboard cop cars and a cardboard car with two Blues Brothers, complete with car exhaust, lol.

Castle High School… they did a Grease theme. Heehee.

Roosevelt High School

Leilehua High School

Kalani High School

Kaiser High School – their theme was Guitar Hero… in this pic, the band is coming out of the Guitar Hero video game box LOL.

Mililani High School

Kamehameha Schools. Their theme was “The Gates,” so of course, the orange things on the field are gates.

Pearl City High School

Moanalua High School – their band is HUGE… bigger than UH’s band and I suppose the largest high school band in the state. Jeremy says the band has about 150 members!

Punahou School – another huge band

UH Manoa’s band… complete with a baton thrower!

Representatives from each band receive their participation plaques.

Smile!