LA Trip: Part One [From Hollywood & Vine...]

I am on summer vacation! :D It feels great. For the past two weeks or so, I've accomplished quite a lot: hung out with friends, went shopping in San Francisco...twice (but didn't purchase anything either trip), moved out of the dorms (and in the process filled the ENTIRE minivan. There was no room left over.), and now am enjoying life in Los Angeles. First with the UC Chorales and now with the cool kids of Fir 4. 


Day 1: Saturday, May 23, 2009
I've been here in LA since Saturday and will be leaving this coming Saturday. Since we arrived until Tuesday afternoon, I was with the chorales. The drive down from Berkeley was much faster and more pleasant than I expected probably because I was with the singers. We stayed at the Hollywood Downtowner Inn on Hollywood Blvd. The place is less glamorous than it sounds, but not too bad for the most part. Everything seemed to be in working order and fairly clean. A few people "didn't exist" because we overbooked the rooms to save money and didn't want the front desk to know what we did. It worked out fine in the end, but there was some sneaking around at the beginning. I ended up rooming with Katie, Lily, Esteban and Tyler.


We at dinner at Buca di Beppo at Universal City Walk. The food was AMAZINGLY good. They serve family-style Italian food meaning the plates are passed around and shared. I loved the eggplant parmigiana (sp?), the stuffed mushrooms, and the salmon with pesto. YUM! When I go back home, I am going to the one in Campbell. It is sort of price-y though so I'm planning to bring people along with me.


Day 2: Sunday, May 24, 2009
Breakfast was at the Cafe Transylvania adjacent to the motel. The owner claimed it was "The Best Breakfast in LA". I'm not so sure about that claim, but I have to say that the breakfast was pretty good compared to other complimentary breakfasts I've experienced. They served pancakes, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, and sausages or bacon.


We had a few gigs around the area and did quite a lot of singing. Sunday consisted of early morning rehearsal and gigs at 3rd Street Promenade and the Santa Monica Pier, both of which were fun. The weather was nice: sunny, but not too hot with a slight breeze. It was nice being on the beach again. My previous time at the beach was at the beginning of the year with Fir 4 at the same exact place except this time there were much more people. Nonetheless, our gigs were quite successful. There were many spectators that hopefully enjoyed the performances. During our down time, I walked around the promenade with Patrick. We grabbed some Pinkberry and went to the Apple Store. I was so tired that I fell asleep there for about 15 minutes or so.


Later that night we enjoyed a complimentary dinner at Mo's Burgers (courtesy of Men's Chorale funded by our gigs throughout the year). Each burger was gianormous. The bacon and avacado did not stay on top my lopsided large beef patty. The burger was quite delicious and the patty was cooked just right. Luckily we did not have to pay for this dinner since the average burger costs there costs around $11.50 to $11.95. Fairly pricey. Afterwards we headed back to the motel and most of them went on to watch Star Trek. I stayed back since I was extremely tired. Katie had left so Jordy joined our room.


Day 3: Monday, May 25, 2009
The days sure flied by quickly. I was having so much fun. We spent another day at the beach, but it took FOREVER to get there. I sat in Patrick's car and we followed Stacy's car around Los Angeles. Little did we know that the LA Marathon was going on and a lot of the streets were closed as a result. Thus, we went around in circles and could not reach the highway. It was totes redic and so frustrating!


This time at Venice Beach. Yes, the famous Venice Beach where a lot of films and TV shows have been filmed. However, it's not that spectacular of a place...the beach is dirty, but a lot of cool vendors and such. We did some singing and had someone join us with some of her "interpretive dancing". It was quite interesting watching her join along with our songs...This time I took a nice short nap at the beach. It was very relaxing and looking forward to going to the beach again and next time taking a longer nap... :D Hopefully at a cleaner beach with not so many people.


Dinner was at a Thai restaurant called Yai's. They had to accommodate for a party of twenty-six...and did so very promptly. The service was pretty good and the food came quickly. Mark, Lily, Katie, and I decided to order dishes and share them. Mark got the catfish salad, I got the ginger chicken, Lily got the wild boar with eggplant, and Katie got the glass noodles with seafood (calamari, fish cake, etc). All the dishes were very good. There was a nice balance between the four. The catfish salad was quite unusual. It was fried in this web type thing and served with apples. It sounds peculiar, but tasted great. Also, the wild boar was quite delicious too. Not as exotic as it sounds...tastes pretty much like any other meat.


Afterwards, a group of us took a late night Hollywood tour. We rode the Metro from our hotel down to the touristy part of Hollywood Blvd: the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Grauman's Chinese Theater. Our main purpose of the trip was to sightsee the different stations. Apparently, the Metro stations on the red line are unique and designed by a local artist. Along the way we looked at all the stars and handprints and footprints of the celebrities dating back to the 1930s and 1940s. It was an awesome experience at night time because there were very few tourists and you could take as long as you want. We also sang impromptu at the Hollywood & Vine station. The acoustics of the station were great. We had a few spectators and onlookers. :D I wished we had more spontaneous singing...these are always the funnest. 


We stayed up until 4am having a ball. The night consisted of Psychiatrist (with Mark as the psychiatrist of course) and lots of Jazz Circling. It was hilarious seeing Mark trying to figure out what our ailment was. He was SO confused because the answers were so random and some fit the question so well. :D We went on doing numerous Jazz Circles taking different quotes and lines and dissecting them and adding new rhythms and harmonies. Choralists just make life so much more interesting because you're brought together by a common bond: singing. It's such a great feeling when you're making music together and when everything falls into place. It's a feeling that other people just don't understand.


Day 4: Tuesday, May 26, 2009
This was our last day and our last gig. It was a Sherman Oaks Galleria, a really nice shopping/business complex. There was a good number of people that stopped to hear us sing since it was during lunch time, but not too much foot traffic. It was a fun experience and also sad because it was our last performance together on this trip. I parted ways and Patrick took me to Westwood and UCLA campus with Esteban (who had to get home on the train which  wasn't scheduled to arrive for three hours) and Robert's brother. I stuffed myself on my first meal. It was such a long time since I had a good dining commons meal. I took advantage of the opportunity. :D 


Later that night, I ended up playing Extreme Spoons with the floor. It's basically a turbo version of spoons. You set the spoons on another patch of ground separate from where you're playing the game. And once someone gets four of a kind, you have to run over and fight to get a spoon. We played outside on the grass and I won two out of the three rounds. Two of those rounds I was dueling against Rachel.


Day 5: Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The day basically consisted of me going to DSW with Sharon, but getting misled on the way because of bad/misunderstood directions. So we ended up going through the residential area and going around in a circle. Also went to DSW and I grabbed some In-n-Out for dinner. I know! I'm so jealous that they have an In-n-Out right next to campus. If they would only open up in Berkeley, they would generate so much business from all the students, but stupid politics and no large franchises and retailers. So how did McDonald's end up infiltrating Berkeley? They should just replace that with In-n-Out. Much more healthy and friendly to everyone.


Sharon needed shoes for banquet and I just browsed around not looking for anything in particular. In the end, she put a pair of black heels on hold and I put two Converses (both on sale!) on hold. I needed some time to make a decision if I wanted to get one or the other or both or neither. I decided to ask around for other opinions to justify my decision.


Day 6: Thursday, May 28, 2009
I sort of lost track of time...but it's been a great experience here at UCLA with the cool kids of Fir 4. I ended up going to geography with Sharon. The lecture topic was plastic surgery and ADHD with some mention of lifestyle and malls at the beginning. The class was quite interesting. The professor/instructor talked about how plastic surgery has changed over the years and how there's more and more aesthetic surgery going on as compared to reconstructive surgery. He also went on talking about ADHD and the use of medication and how it's creating a lot of controversy...I didn't see much of a connection between these topics and geography, but nonetheless it was extremely interesting to me.


I grabbed lunch at Ackerman since Jessica couldn't hang out...again. :( She had a paper to work out. Hopefully next time! And I couldn't believe how many options there were in Ackerman. they have all sorts of food options like Panda Express, Rubio's, Sbarro, Wetzel's Pretzels, Wendy's, Jamba Juice, Taco Bell, Greenhouse and so much more. This would never be able to happen in Berkeley. People would be protesting how most of these are franchises and they don't care about sustainability blah blah blah, as seen in the case of Panda Express this past semester. I ended up getting a Santa Fe Steak Salad from Greenhouse. It was really good and packaged in a clear special compostable plastic bowl with a lid. Haven't seen that before.


When I went to DSW to purchase the shoes on hold, I stumbled upon a hurdle. They had my two pairs of Converses, but not Sharon's heels. I was ready to blow a fuse. Seriously? The lady put it on hold for us until the next business day...so I went around the clearance section for nearly half an hour looking for it to no avail. I ended up looking back behind the counter again and saw that it was on hold except that the lady switched our hold tickets so of course they couldn't find it because the heels were listed under my name... Such terrible service. I ended up caving in and buying the shoes. If they had lost Sharon's shoes, I would have just left without purchasing anything.


Dinner at the dining halls was Cajun night, but they couldn't swipe guests in so I grabbed some Mr. Noodle which sells a bunch of different Asian dishes. The food wasn't too bad, not as good as Thai Basil though...and since Diddy Riese was next door, I got an ice cream sandwich. It was SOOO AMAZINGLY good. I got chocolate chip cookie and chocolate chip with walnuts cookie with cookies 'n cream ice cream. I was in love. <3 Yes. I did have the ice cream sandwich before I had dinner. Before I leave, I am getting four dozen to bring back home. The cookies are SOOOOO good. :D


At around 10:00pm or so, I played some tennis on a school night with the floor. Seriously? Yes indeed. It was quite fun since not everyone has played tennis so we just ended up hitting the ball back and forth. And tennis is one of the sports that doesn't come back to you...different from riding a bicycle or driving car. I wish it did though.


I have one full day left at UCLA and then I had back to the Bay on Saturday! I will be watching Anything Goes put on by Department of Theater. I'm quite excited to see it and my friend's roommate is on the production team so it should be good! :D Before I leave, I also need to get some Coffee Bean.

Swings on BART

I check Gizmodo, a blog about gizmos and technology, about once or twice a day using Google Reader. And today, while browsing through posts from the past couple days, I found the following link...

Pranksters Install Swings on BART Public Transit System in San Francisco

After seeing this post, I am tempted to ride the BART to see if the swings are still there. Installing swings on BART is a great idea. Wonder why no one else has done this before. You get a push whenever the train starts slowing down. It makes the trip so much more interesting and enjoyable...

Back to the routine

1:05am sitting in Main Stacks trying to study organic chemistry.

Three weekends, one preview, ten performances, much dancing, singing, laughter later, City of Angels is now over. It is time to go back to the daily routine of waking up and not knowing what to do for the rest of the day. Rather, worrying about studying, but not actually doing anything productive.

It was an amazing experience working on City of Angels. Looking back, it comprised of my entire second semester...all the way back to auditions the last week of January until now. What a ride! It was great getting to spend time with such talented cast members. Not letting anything get in the way. Each rehearsal was fun and different. I was always looking forward to going to rehearsal because I never knew what to expect.

Before every performance with Sabrina while she was doing her hair. The dance parties before, during and after the show. Singing and acting along to the songs while the other actors were on stage. Prop and set mishaps...

Now that it is over. I am starting to return to not having any motivation to study or do anything at all. Rehearsals and performances kept me going. It took up so much time, but looking back, it was worth every minute of time and every ounce of effort. To think that I originally was hesitant about committing myself to the production. For once, I made the right decision.

On the other hand, I put my academics aside and have much to catch up on. Academics essentially were of little concern. I am still working on finding the balance between academics and doing a show. It is still a learning process.

There are only three weeks left until finals. Time to start learning the information! Not much time left.

If found, please return

It is 4:44am and I just finished energy audit report. It was quite an accomplishment. Even though homework tonight took twice as long as I hoped, I finally got it done. To motivate myself, I'm creating a list of incentives to indulge in once this semester is successfully over. There is still o-chem left blocking my way. If I can conquer that hurdle, I will be a free man.

1. Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
2. Monterey Bay Aquarium
3. movies
4. Stanford Shopping Center (because sometimes I like to feel rich)
5. Exploratorium
6. San Francisco Zoo
7. Academy of Science
8. Wicked
9. UCLA (Sharon/Fir 4)
10. Disneyland
and the list continues...

Grumble...

Tech rehearsal is taking forever. We're in our third hour with three more hours to go. I am getting extremely restless. It doesn't help that my laptop battery only lasts an hour now. It only charges to 43% capacity because it's shitty like that. In addition, there are NO plugs in our rehearsal/performing space. We have a short break and I'm trying to charge my laptop so I can survive tech without falling asleep.

Tech rehearsal is taking FOREVER. We're running every single scene and adjusting and adding the lights. I'm sure I'm not the only that can't sit through it. It's so difficult to get through. There are a total of 40 scenes in the entire show. By the 2.5 hour mark, we only went through six scenes. Rehearsal today is six hours. Six hours, forty scenes. YOU do the math.

But I really need a new computer. In the beginning, I really hoped and wished for a MacBook...the ingenious designs and amazing media software (iLife - iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand, etc.) At this point, however, I'm not asking for something really fancy especially since the economy is doing poorly and the unemployment rate is at its highest in a quarter of a century. A netbook would be just fine. I just need a device that can do word processing and surf the web.

I'm extremely tired and suffering from lack of sleep. This is going to be my life for the next month. I have no time to waste at all especially since both my finals are next week. Right now, I'm just trying to get through things little by little and keeping positive about this entire situation I'm in. I'm really glad I stuck with doing the show. The entire cast has a great time. We dance and sing and do crazy things in our down time. There is a lot of amazing talent and it's gonna be a great show. Until next time...(if I'm still alive, that is)

Tonight, Tonight!

I took this shot of the Campanile about an hour ago on my way back from rehearsal... Just a short update. I have NO time at all...need to sleep now so I can wake up early to study for my midterms. Tomorrow (if I remember), I'll update about City of Angels. We start tech tomorrow!! Or today rather since it's 1:04am on Friday.

Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal!

April has finally arrived which means performances of City of Angels are looming. Performances also mean rehearsals and tech. For all of this month, rehearsal will be my life... I will have barely any time to study and do work for my classes. My psych and chem midterm are both occurring next week. The best part is that my chem midterm is right before the preview performance. My midterm is from 6:30pm-8:00pm and curtain is at 8:00pm so I will probably have to take the test in costume and DASH over to CRH.

And because of rehearsal, I'm not able to attend NUMEROUS events. This Thursday is Rotaract's cruise around the San Francisco Bay, Moonlight Masquerade. Tickets are only $20 which includes a DJ and food, but unfortunately I won't have time. It's the day before tech. The theme of Men's and Women's Chorale Spring Show this year is "The Musicals of Sondheim and Bernstein". We're singing a medley from Into the Woods and West Side Story. And with West Side Story comes Gee Officer Krupke with choreography. I'll have to miss BOTH dance rehearsals for the song and I was really looking forward to it. Hopefully Ill still be able to be in that scene.

This past Monday was the start of never ending rehearsals. I will have nonstop rehearsals until our first performances in a week and a half. So six to midnight will be blocked off for the next two weeks and all day Saturday and Sunday. Fun! Tech rehearsals start this Friday so really have to get my game on with academics. I don't have ANY time to waste. I will get through this however difficult it may be. I'm just glad that everyone in the cast gets along and we're all very sporadic. This will be such a fun show. Although rehearsing for the show takes up so much time, it is a rewarding experience.

Today, we rehearsed with the set for the first time. Tomorrow, we rehearse with the orchestra for the first time! I'm SO excited.