Philippines | Click here to view photos on Flickr
After our week in Manila, my mom and I went to Iloilo, where we reunited with most of my mom’s side of the family and met my three-year-old adopted sister, Loren. She’s very cute, smart, and has a phobia of any room or building that looks like a hospital. (She had a traumatic experience in one.) After spending a week there, we went back to Manila, where we reunited with my mom’s aunt and uncle. We stayed at their house for a few days, went to an open market, and took lots of pictures of my mom’s aunt’s cats and roosters. Back in Manila, I met up with Audrey, who I met on the Muse messageboard. We met up twice – the first time, we had lunch; the second time, we walked around a nearby SM (their chain of huge malls there), since traffic and weather foiled our original plan of going to the zoo. The day I came home, I had a scratchy throat, which usually means I’ll be getting a cold. My suspicions were correct.

(I should mention that I have another sinus infection. A month later. My immune system sucks. And no, it’s not the swine flu.)

Las Vegas and Grand Canyon | Click here to view photos on Flickr
A week after arriving from the Philippines, I flew to Las Vegas with Yvonne and Jon – two good friends from high school – and my sister Lori. It was our Memorial Day weekend vacation we had planned out for ourselves; it was my sister’s first time on the mainland. (She’s traveled to Europe before traveling to the mainland!) We stayed at the Sahara. We rode the rides and did an old-school Western-themed photo studio session at Circus Circus. Got to see a Cirque du Soleil show (Ka) at MGM Grand and the Tournament of Kings show at Excalibur. Spent half a day at the Bellagio, taking photos, relaxing and enjoying dessert at Jean Philippe Patisserie. Sunday was our road trip day to Grand Canyon; driving back took longer because of traffic at the canyon and at Hoover Dam and we ended up missing Dane Cook’s show at the Palms. (My sister and Jon were particularly looking forward to that one.) We spent the last day checking out the California Hotel to see what the buzz was about with that place; it really does host the entire Hawaii tourist delegation. They had a good breakfast buffet and I actually won $1,000 at a couple of their slot machines there. (My luck has been unusually decent these past few months…) We walked around Fashion Show mall, where outside, facing the Strip, the iPod Touch ad featuring “No You Girls” played in an almost continuous loop. Good thing I like Franz Ferdinand and Apple. If it was any other ad, I would’ve been really annoyed. By the time we left to check out Paradise Island across the street, I was… borderline annoyed. From the new logo to the change of its feature show (pirate fight replaced with siren musical?!), I found it strange that Paradise Island (“P.I.”) has been obviously trying to add a dose of “hip” to its image.

Back Home | Click here to view photos on MobileMe
Back at work… been making websites. After six months of being in my office, I finally hung up some framed posters and a couple of nice boards with photos from my recent travels. I’ll post a photo later. I’ve been taking driving lessons with Kermit Brown, who is an awesome instructor; my road test is on Monday. Saw Up and Star Trek with some friends and my sister. Had some good food a couple of times with Tracy, who I met at the Franz Ferdinand gig. My good friend Yvonne announced she was moving to Florida, so some friends and my sister (I take her around everywhere!) celebrated with a day of bowling, Fun Factory, and seeing Up in 3D. (Yeah, I saw Up twice. Good movie!)

So as you can tell, it’s been a fun-filled month or so! Lesson learned: I need to update this blog more regularly to prevent making summary posts like this!

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.

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!