This weekend was once again the annual Dragon Boat Festival on Treasure Island. Instead of performing both days this year, we only did one (Saturday) because we don't have enough people right now. We were able to put together a good 15-minute demo, though, and the weather turned out really nice despite rain being forecasted.

 

After the demo, some of us headed back to Japantown to eat. While we were waiting for our food, Sifu told me that my nanquan finally has flavor. Those Kung-Fu instant noodles I've been eating must have done the trick. Now I just need to work on power. If only I could get my hands on an Ng Family Chinese Martial Arts Association t-shirt.

Yesterday was the grand opening on the newly renovated California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. I had gone to the original one countless times in elementary school, but my mom had never been there, so we thought we'd check it out, as admission was free. The opening ceremony was still going on when we arrived around 9 AM, but we were more concerned about getting in line. It took us 20 minutes just to find the end of it, which had looped all the way around to the back of the building. Luckily, there were a lot of trees and shade to shelter us from the sun for most of our day.

Boy, was all that standing around brutal. I almost wanted to give up and just visit it on another free admission day. We didn't even snake our way back to the entrance until about 1:45 PM. The waiting didn't stop there, though. Once we got to the front of the line, we were then given a timed entry ticket, just like getting fast passes in Disneyland. Even though ours said 2:30 PM, they had to wait for people to come out before they could let people go in, so people in the 1:30 PM group still hadn't gone in yet. As we were hungry, we decided to grab some hot dogs at one of the vendors outside and just sat until our group was called. Didn't get in until about 3:30 PM.

Then after getting inside, we headed to the African Hall first, which was basically dioramas depicting landscapes in Africa. Seeing them sorta jogged my memory of the old Academy, but for the most part, I can't remember how the place used to look. They had a new exhibit of South African penguins at the end of it, though. It was hard to see them, of course, with the mob of people around. We then caught a glimpse of the Albino alligator before making our way to the 4-story Rainforest. No surprise that we had to get a timed entry ticket for the exhibit, but the person handing them out said we could just go ahead and wait in line even though ours said 7:30 PM.

We then made our way to the Planetarium, where we had to get, yet another timed entry ticket to see the show. As ours was for 6:30 PM, we decided to grab a snack and rest for a bit before getting in line. The rows of seats in the theater were so close together that I barely had any leg room. It was worse than flying coach on an airplane. Definitely made for kids. The show was pretty neat, even though I found myself almost falling asleep at times from being so tired. It was like watching IMAX, but the screen was projected from the front all the way to the back of the room in like a dome-shaped. Almost like those 3D rides, where it seems like if you're flying through space.

That ended around 7:30 PM and on our way out, we noticed there was no line for the Living Roof, so we headed up there. Didn't stay too long, as it was quite chilly. We finally left around 8:00 PM. Can't believe we spent an entire day there. Was it worth it? Well, I wouldn't pay $25 to get in, but I would have preferred being there on some other free day when it'd probably be less crowded. My mom seemed to enjoy it, but it's not a place she said she'd be interested in going back to. All that exercise helped me work up an appetite for our early birthday dim sum feast for Sifu today, though.

The latest craze of reality TV nowadays seems to be dance. You have shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, America's Best Dance Crew, etc. I don't watch any of them on a regular basis (or much TV for that matter, but when my brother showed me Katee and Joshua's hip-hop routine to "No Air" on week 1 of SYTYCD this season, I was hooked and found myself rooting for those two the whole way.

Like Jane, I was sad when the show ended last month. We both talked about possibly going to see the tour, but all the seats available on Ticketmaster were too far away and people selling them on Craigslist were jacking up their prices. A few weeks ago, I decided to just look on Craigslist again and found someone selling two floor seats at less than face value for the Oakland show on the 30th. I emailed Jane, but it turned out she would be driving back from Vegas with her family that day. I was pretty bummed at this point because part of me still really wanted to go.

Coincidentally, the person who was selling those tickets ended up being someone I know. Carolyn was on the AATC Board before moving to the East Coast for grad school a few years ago. She had to sell her tickets because she's going to be out of town for work that day, but asked if I'd be interested in going to the San Jose show on the 25th with her and her brother, Ben. We still needed to find tickets, of course, and the odds of finding three together were pretty slim. As luck would have it, though, I found three tickets on Craigslist a week later. The price for them wasn't too bad and they were good seats, too. My brother was sweet enough to pay for mine as a birthday gift.

Originally, Carolyn and I were going to take Caltrain down, as it stops across from the HP Pavilion, but it turned out Ben was working in the city, so he drove us instead. On our way down, I found out an interesting tidbit about Carolyn. She went back to HK recently for a class reunion and mentioned being in the same 8th grade French class as some canto-pop star. When I asked who, it turned out to be none other than Edison Chen.

We got there around 7:30 PM, but the show didn't really start until 8 PM, as they began by showing Nigel's favorite moments on the big screen. Then they came out and did their group hip hop routine before introducing themselves. As San Jose is Katee's hometown, she got plenty of love from "Team Katee", a group of people who were all dressed in red and waving little signs. They bought out almost two sections of the stadium, along with some of the rows in front of the stage. Then Twitch talked a bit about their "For Real" shoulder gesture before they started doing our favorite dances from the season.

Even though I can watch my favorite dances over and over again on my computer, it was so great to finally see them live. Katee and Joshua practically performed every one of their routines. Gev had us rolling off our seats, though. There was a part where they introduced dances from different countries and he'd come out each time dressed in the same attire as one of the female dancers. He also kept trying to flirt with Courtney the whole night (as he revealed on the show, he has a crush on her, but she has a boyfriend) and at one point, Courtney actually kicked him off the stage. Poor guy.

Really glad I had a chance to go. At first, I was afraid of going deaf from all the screaming, but the crowd turned out to be more on the older side. There were a lot of adults sitting around our section. Guess they were too afraid to sit on the floor level with all the little girls, too. Unless you're by the stage, though, don't think it's worth it to be down there. If I had a better camera, I would have been able to get some good shots, as we were close enough to still see their faces. Instead, I just opted to take most shots off the screen nearby. Didn't really want to spend a lot of time trying to take pics, anyway.

Sorta good that we were able to catch them at the beginning of their tour, too, because their schedule is grueling, especially for the ones who have a lot of dance numbers. We're thinking that's why they have Thayne and Chelsea T. as guest performers, in case someone gets injured or something. 40 dances (including group and solos) x 40 shows (most on back-to-back days) in just two months. Needless to say, you definitely get your money's worth, though, and I wouldn't mind going to another tour in the future.

Click here to view some of the other pics I took.

There was nothing like seeing my name as a vocabulary word for one of my English tests in high school. What made it priceless, though, was learning the meaning of it.

I was going to watch The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor with my mom today, but canceled our date with Jet because I got an email from Marla yesterday about the Self-Help for the Elderly lion dance fundraiser. Originally, we thought it was last Saturday (when we were in Disneyland), but it was actually today. Even though I don't know how to lion dance, I figured I'd still go and maybe help with playing instruments or something. So I went down to the Jackie Chan Senior Center on Geary at 10:30 AM.

Martial arts/lion dance schools volunteered to lion dance to merchants around the city to fundraise money for Self-Help for the Elderly. Kei Lun Martial Arts and SF Wushu offered to help cover the Richmond District. Basically, people from Self-Help would come along and go into the stores and restaurants to ask for donations. If a donation was given, they asked whether they wanted us to dance inside or stay outside and if they wanted firecrackers or not. As I wasn't performing, I was asked to be the liaison between the Self-Help people and the performers, so they told me what each place wanted as we went down the street and I passed that information along to the performers.

One thing that seems to impress the older generation is when you can speak Chinese. Haha. I accidentally busted out some Cantonese at one point because I wasn't sure whether the Self-Help people understood English or not and the face of the Self-Help lady I was talking to lit up. She kept complimenting me and telling the other people how "smart" I am for being able to speak both Chinese and English. Was kinda embarrassing in a way because I'm nowhere near fluent or anything. They just said things that were basic enough for me to understand and respond to. Did make me feel good, too, though, and gave me a little more confidence to speak in Cantonese whenever I could.

The shuttle took us out to my neighborhood first and then back to Geary, where one store generously donated $500. Sifu met up with us when we got to Clement and I offered to play cymbals at this point because I pretty much had the drum beat engrained in my head. We took a break while the Self-Help people met up with the other lion dance group to see how much ground they covered. Turned out that they already finished both sides of the street, so we called it a day. 5 hours of lion dancing for a good cause.

Click here to view some other photos from the lion dances.