In the last post, I wrote about traveling in the back of a jeepney with my classmates. You might have wondered where we went taken. In fact, the jeepneys dropped us off at a community center near one of the villages at the outskirts of Manila. We spent the morning working with a non-profit group called Gawad Kalinga to paint houses and play with children.

Immediately upon walking into the community center, we were greeted by several wide-eyed children. They grabbed our hands and immediately tried to lead us to their playground.

I was impressed by their energy and aggressiveness. I feel like in America, kids are coddled and sheltered by their parents. As a result, many of them grow up afraid of the world and unwilling to take risks. The kids at the community center were basically living on the streets… and as a result had developed incredible street smarts. Most importantly, they weren’t afraid to ask for things aggressively. Piggy back rides. Shoulder tosses. Spinning in a circle. You name it, they asked for it.

You may have noticed that I’m wearing a Vindictus t-shirt in the above photo. Nexon, you’re welcome. I await your checks.

More after the jump.

As I mentioned earlier, our mission was to paint houses and entertain a bunch of kids. I was assigned to one of the houses at the end of a narrow alley. The owner wanted a pink house so I did my best to cover his house in pink. However, the paint was unnecessarily watery and as a result, I had to paint multiple layers.

Minnie told the homeowner that I was a great professional artist (not true…) and as a result, the guy gave me free reign to draw whatever the heck I wanted on his wall. My original plan was to draw red lanterns and yellow fireflies. However, I ran into two problems. First, I did not have a small paint brush. Second, I did not have any primary colors.

With such meager supplies, I wasn’t able to draw the fancy mural I had created in my mind. However, I left a small signature in the lower right corner in the form of blue and yellow flowers. I’m sure it will wear off in a few months.

Painting flowers with a big thick brush proved difficult. At one point, a kid handed me his toothbrush and I used it to detail the flowers. After half an hour, one of the locals finally figured out from my pantomime that I wanted a thin brush. He asked around and found one for me along with a slab of wood to use as a palette. There are only so many colors you can create with pink, cyan, and yellow, but I tried my best.

For lunch, we ate a traditional Filipino meal called chicken adobo. We ate with our hands, a concept that freaked me out considering I had suffered terrible stomach aches in Thailand just a few days earlier.

I washed my hands three times with soap and ventured forth. It was difficult to clump the rice with my hands. However, I noticed that the natives were very good at creating balls of rice and tossing them into their mouths. On the flipside, I kept getting food all over myself. Later, when I played the kids, they kept laughing at me and picking rice kernels from my shirt.

All in all, it was a productive and fun time for all. I truly envy these kids and their energy. I picked them up and threw them around as best I could. But in the end, old man Kevin needed to rest after only 20 minutes.

See the rest of the pictures here.

Anyway, I put together some new designs.

Home: I reverted to the shiny blue and gold colors seen in costumes circa 2005-2006. For the pants, I decided to incorporate a thick gold stripe with Yale blue outline to draw attention to the players’ legs and showcase their speed.

Away: I lightened the Yale blue from the current costume to make it pop and lengthened the shoulder stripe. I also replaced the gold pants with blue (and a thin white stripe). I considered making the white stripe thicker. But then, I thought about those terrible all-white uniforms from the recent 50-0 loss against USC and quickly changed my mind.

After Gold Cohort dominated the Golden Egg competition and crushed our fellow cohorts beneath the heel of our boot, I immediately went to work designing a shirt to celebrate. A grand plethora of ideas swirled in my brain. At one point I even considered making a tongue-in-cheek jersey that said “NCAA Golden Egg – National Champions!” Sadly, that idea fizzled.

Several failed concepts and wrinkled pages later, I settled on a simple idea. In “Problem Finding, Problem Solving” class, we learned that sometimes it’s best not to over-think things. My final design incorporates our victory chant: “Hey ho, go Gold!” and a subtle ‘golden egg’ inside the ‘O.’

I ordered the shirts from CustomInk. They’ll arrive in a few weeks. Sadly, by the time people actually receive the shirts, Gold Cohort will have disbanded.

The Fall semester is coming to an end! Gold Cohort is going to disband soon! I’ve grown quite attached to my friends and am a little sad that we’ll be taking different classes come spring. It doesn’t help that the spring cohorts are incredibly lame. They’re named Cohort 1, 2, 3, and 4.

The final event in the Golden Egg competition is called Walk Off. Named after a funny scene in Zoolander, the event requires the four Haas cohorts (Gold, Blue, Axe, and Oski) to put together creative skits with the theme ‘Hassily Ever After.’ My Cohort (Gold) decided to put together a parody of the Wizard of Oz.

What was my contribution? Since I can’t sing or act, I managed the background music and drew the wizard (seen above). He’s green and angry like in the movie.

Yes, Oski ended up beating us. To be fair, their skit was pretty creative and included a dance number. But despite the temporary setback, Oski could not overcome Gold Cohort’s massive lead in the much larger and much more important Golden Egg competition. At the end of the night, the judges tallied up all the scores from all of the events throughout the year (Cohort Olympics, No Shave November, etc.) and announced the winner: Gold!

What did we win? Nothing much. Only a party bus and eternal glory!

We wanted to tackle the taboo of sex in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

I had to create a cover that was both visually interesting and tasteful. This meant avoiding nudity or suggestions of pornography. It also had to be sensitive to Asian American issues. In other words, I couldn’t put a geisha girl behind a fan to suggest sex because that would be considered an exploitation of Asian women and contrary to our mission.

In one of my previous covers, I wrote “Asian American Studies Now” but with the T, U, and S blotted out. “Asian Americans Die Now.” It was based on a photo of a defaced sign from the Claremont Colleges. We had good readership that quarter.

After much brainstorming, I came across a famous Rolling Stone cover:

That’s Yoko Ono being ‘mauled’ by John Lennon. I refer to this position as ‘the koala.’

After discussing the idea with the rest of the staff, we agreed that recreating this iconic image with two Asian students would be a good way to draw attention to the issue. The guy would wear pants, of course.

We found two volunteers without having to kidnap or bribe any friends. The photo shoot was done in Kerckhoff Hall. For those of you who are wondering, I was not the male model. The entire campus would have gone blind if that had happened.

After the issue went live, I discovered that most people on campus didn’t understand the Rolling Stone reference and thought the magazine went “too overboard” with its sexual content. Some even called the cover pornographic. In retrospect, I should have put a tank top on the male model and placed a copy of the original Rolling Stone magazine at his feet.

We often distributed the magazine outside local businesses in Westwood. When we brought the magazine around, some of the business owners refused to carry it.

I learned a very valuable lesson from this experience. Pop culture references are double-edged swords. If your audience understands the reference, you seem like a genius. If they don’t understand, you seem like an idiot. We took a risk and it backfired.

You may be wondering why I’m writing about something that happened in 2005. Today, while cleaning out my Gmail inbox, I noticed that I had old Pacific Ties emails archived. When my hard drive crashed, I lost a lot of photos and art from my college years. I’m glad that I had emailed the images to myself (probably for printing) and unwittingly backed them up in the cloud.

Viva la cloud!

Google Grants is an awesome program that enables non-profit organizations to get free AdWords advertising from Google. These organizations submit applications online and then are paired up with account managers, no strings attached. I worked with a small portfolio of non-profit organizations and built their campaigns.

I love that the climbers are chilling at base camp, playing chess, and generally unaware that their comrades are being terrorized by a yeti.

Everest, Annapurna, and Base Camp are three levels of awards given to Google Grants volunteers. I don’t remember what prize the volunteers received, but it wasn’t all fun and games. Google Grants is about helping others… and the prizes reflected that. I want to say that the top volunteer received a few days off work and a ticket to some foreign country to work on sustainability projects. However, don’t quote me on that. My memory is hazy.

The project: make a ladies’ handbag by hand. That’s right. No sewing machines. No rulers. No thimbles. Just a few needles, a spool of thread, and some denim.

Okay, that was bull.

The real story is that I was at Target with my lady friend. We saw a bag on sale and I decided I would make her one. So afterwards, we drove over to Jo-Ann in Cupertino to buy materials. I had thread and needles from working on the Scarecrow mask I made for Halloween. So it was really just the denim, which cost $2.50.

Six hours (and a calloused index finger) later, my friend now has a really cool handmade handbag. Go me.

Click to enlarge:

Last night’s episode of The Office will possibly be the last of the season due to the WGA strike. I predict they’ll split the hour-long episodes into 30-minute segments on the DVD to create the illusion that there were more episodes this season.

I first heard about the show during my interview at my current job. After our initial one-on-ones, we broke for lunch. I chatted with the recruiters and they started telling me about The Office (specifically, the ‘Basketball’ episode from season one). This exchange involved a lot of head nodding and laughter. But truth be told, the only things I really knew about the show were Internet talking points about how the UK version is (supposedly) funnier. I told them I’d definitely start watching the show after I returned to Los Angeles. That was a lie.

My coworker Justin bought a Dwight Schrute bobble-head and put it on his desk. The toy’s square-shaped head made me oddly intrigued. ‘The Office,’ imprinted on the box, remained in my subconscious until one lonely weekend…

…I found some episodes online and started watching out of sheer boredom. The first episode I ever watched was the ‘Sexual Harassment Training’ episode. It was hilarious. Since then, I’ve gone back and watched every episode at least twice.

I eventually watched the UK version too, but found it quite unfunny. David Brent’s a jerk with no redeeming qualities and the rest of the cast sort of sits there and mopes. This is in contrast to the US version, which actually features character development. The internet talking points were wrong. Feel free to debate.

I hope the strike ends quickly and positively. If not, the actors should make clips in character and put them on YouTube. Since they’re striking over unequal compensation for online content, why not cut out the studios and participate in some revenue-sharing programs? I mean, I’m sure the fans won’t cry over a few pop-ups and text ads if it means a fresh dose of Michael, Dwight, Jim, and Pam. I know I wouldn’t. Plus, the writers would have some money as leverage for a better negotiating position and to pay the bills during the strike.