Now back to our scheduled program……………..
Sat. Feb. 1
Spoke at UCI’s 18th annual Asian Pacific American Awareness Conference (APAAC) on the behalf of MANAA. Had to improvise a bit since Edwin’s car was having problems and he had the MANAA video. And I had planned the workshop with the video in the beginning and I was under the impression there would be more MANAA members, so I had to stall. On the workshop I would only give myself a 7 and I’m being generous. I couldn’t believe what Edwin said in our workshop. But we had a bunch students stay afterwards and talk. Meet some cool people from SDSU. So I guess we weren’t too bad. Afterwards had to clear the air with one of the students due to a misunderstanding, but was glad he approached us about it, then let it go. Dialogue is good and too often doesn’t happen enough in real life.

It’s weird now that I’m older, I know more speakers, than students. Well, I did help John with getting a couple of the speakers' contact info. Ran into Shazeen, Manjuri, Dennis, and as well Sunny, who was back from China. Hopefully she’ll kick some sense into these UCI students.

Tues. Feb. 7
Was invited to speak at UCLA’s Thien Minh Ly’s commemoration at the last minute. Meg had given one of the organizers my contact info. Was wondering why they didn’t contact APALC but I found out thru Dennis, they had also contacted him at the last minute too and he couldn’t. Traffic on the 405 wasn’t too bad, so I was happy.

Man, Westwood and UCLA has changed a bit. BTW I am so outta shape, was walking to Kerckhoff from behind Ackerman and those steps killed me. Probably would have been worse, if I hadn’t been going to the gym. Anyways, ran into Jenni, had a nice lil chat with her, she was giving a spoken word piece at the end. That girl, is still such a sweetie. Also found out that they had also invited one of Thien Minh Ly’s friend Mai Pham, who was very active and helped get the word out about Thien Minh Ly’s death to the UCLA campus since the Daily bRUIN didn’t do their job. It was great meeting her; I hope I never lose someone close to me like she did because it still hurts for her. Found out the Thien’s family still lives in the same house in Tustin and that his sister and her husband are stationed in Kuwait. So please pray for that family since they’ve gone thru enough tragedy. I think I did a better job giving a presentation this time than UCI, though I wonder if I was too aggressive. Found out one of the organizers was ALSO a classmate of mines, can’t remember what class though. Got to meet the rest of the VSU staff, great bunch. Also ran into Kim To, as well as someone that knew of OCAPICA thru Shawn.