The last couple days, we’ve been exploring the area we’re in now – along Aurora Boulevard, surrounding the Araneta Coliseum. Muse was supposed to play here a few years back, but for some reason cancelled. EDIT: Muse was rumored to play at Araneta as well as the Philippine International Convention Center in 2006. (Source: MuseWiki) It’s a huge arena, painted blue and yellow. Surrounding it are several mall complexes, sort of like the Ala Moana and Ward shopping areas in Honolulu.

My mom grew up in this area, though by talking to her and observing her expressions, you wouldn’t have known. It’s been a couple of decades; so much has changed. An elevated rapid transit track and brightly colored footbridges dominate the immediate skyline along EDSA (Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue). The shopping district surrounding Araneta Coliseum is all relatively new – you can tell by the fresh cement and paint.

The skyline along EDSA.

We ventured out today to find my mom’s alma mater, Carlos P. Garcia High School. After eating lunch at Taco Bell – an establishment that’s been present in the Philippines for a mere five years – we walked to the nearest bookstore and bought a map of Metro Manila. According to the map, the high school was at the opposite corner of EDSA and Aurora Boulevard from our hotel. Of course, when we crossed the footbridge to the location, a huge taro field – yes, taro – was at the corner. Neighboring it was Cubao Elementary School. Mom says the elementary and high schools shared a campus. No longer.

Random, giant taro patch in Manila?

My mom and I walked around and asked random people about the whereabouts of my mom’s old high school. From our experience here so far, my impression is that Filipinos have no idea where anything is. When we were at the SM mall in North Edsa, we asked people who worked at the mall where the nearest Philippine Airlines ticket agent was. We got different responses from different people, from “in the SM Supermarket” to “outside, down the street.” Of course, the ticket agent ended up being right outside one of the mall entrances.

But back to our search for my mom’s alma mater – from security guards to street vendors, no one knew where Carlos P. Garcia High School was. Finally, we found a tricycle driver that knew where it was. He drove us to the school’s current location: seven blocks away from where our “handy” map said it was. It must have been relocated fairly recently, in a quieter location, away from the hustle and bustle of the Araneta shopping district.

The gate to the new Carlos P. Garcia High School, my mom's alma mater. Sort of.

But no matter how much things change, certain things stay the same. The surrounding area is still pretty filthy, despite the local government’s “Metro Gwapo” (“Metro Handsome”) beautification efforts. The poor still roam the streets, begging for cash or selling goods, no matter how minor, even tiny individually wrapped candy, to survive. And despite me being 9,000 miles away from home, I’m still watching “MythBusters”. Right as I type this, in fact.

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!

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!

For my advertising seminar class, we’ll be planning a campaign for the annual National Student Advertising Competition. I ended up being team captain, which works out, since I’m also president of HPU’s American Advertising Federation chapter. Since we’re the only Hawaii university participating this year, we’ll be competing as a wild card team in the District 14 (Northern California/Northern Nevada) competition in San Francisco in April.

I’m also in the running for a communications fellowship in New York City. My interview is next week, so wish me luck with that.

For photography class, I’ll have to build a camera to demonstrate the basic inner workings of one. That’s due in March. I also have to present a case study on Apple’s “Get a Mac” ad campaign for that advertising seminar class in late February. For anthro, I’m presenting the book Things Fall Apart next week. And I have to build a PowerPoint on a new technology for my online Communication Futures class.

Outside of school, I attended the annual Hawaii Advertising Federation Conference last Thursday. Interesting stuff, but it sucked waking up so early. I was supposed to wake up at 4:30 am but I ended up waking up at 5:30 am, so I had to rush to get ready. Of course, I missed my bus, so my mom drove me to Nanakuli to catch up with it. Yeah, unfair, I know. =P

I also went to Goodwill’s annual silent auction last night with most of the Olomana crew. My feet were sore by the end of the evening because of the setup. There were food stands all over the place, and several rooms with the silent auction items. Seating was all over the place, but they were mostly taken. Other than that, I had a good time. I had a glass of red wine—not a big fan of wine—and watched the “Signing Stars.” That was cool. A group of people with developmental disabilities went up on stage and did sign language along with a Leann Rimes song.

So as you can see, I’ve been and will be pretty busy. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. I just hate being stressed out.

Preparing for anthropology was a cinch. I bought a used textbook from a student for only $10, and I borrowed the two other required books from the public library.

Preparing for the photography class… that’s a different story, especially when choosing a camera. After visiting stores and reading online reviews on digital SLR cameras, I narrowed my choices down to a Canon EOS Rebel XT and a Nikon D40. Both are great starter cameras, but I chose the Canon because:

a) I used one in high school
b) More lenses and easier to find them used
c) A bunch of people were selling them used on Craigslist

So yesterday, I bought one. A sweet deal: $475 for the camera and two lenses. One lens is 22-55 mm; the other is 70-200 mm. The camera alone is worth about $500 retail and lenses usually cost almost just as much, so a generous deal!

I just started a Flickr account to store the photos I’ve already taken and the photos I will take using my Canon Rebel.