The Legend Continues...

A successful draft for the Gators thus far. Cornerback Joe Haden was selected seventh overall to the Cleveland Browns, making him the first top ten pick from UF in quite some time. Center Maurkice Pouncey was also selected in the top twenty by the Steelers. And of course, the huge surprise of the evening, quarterback Tim Tebow was selected 25th overall and will be playing for the Denver Broncos! The legend continues!

I am One Educated Mofo!!

And now, after ten years of post-secondary education at the University of Florida, including the most recent three years in which I've worked on my Master's degree of Engineering Management and my MBA, I am finally done with school and can move on to the next phase of my life!

Comparatively speaking, this last set of exams was quite a bit easier than the other exams we've had to take over the past three years. However, the energy was unlike any other.

I hitched a ride with Tarang to Gainesville, who was also nice enough to let me stay in his hotel room on Friday night, and spent much of the three-hour drive looking over our notes for the last actual test we had, the final exam for Strategic Management. After arriving in Gainesville, Don, his fiancee Tara, Ryan, and Larry picked me up from the hotel for some dinner at Ballyhoo's before we turned in for the night.

The next morning, Don, Ryan, and I picked up our regalia first thing in the morning. Shortly after, we took our aforementioned Strategic Management exam (which felt pretty easy - but let's see what I get on it!)

After the exam, I took Larry, Kat, and Ryan over to Broward Dining Hall to get their first experience of UF's cafeteria food! I found it surprising that Kat had never been before, since she did her undergrad at Florida too, but it's never too late to try Gator Dining!

Following our all-you-can-eat lunch, we headed back to Marketing class, where all the groups delivered their last presentations for the program. I delivered our presentation on our brand audit of Blockbuster. It was somewhat of a late decision, but in the end, I thought it went a lot smoother than it had actually played out in my head!

Once all of the presentations were done, the class went to get our official class photos taken, in full regalia. Several of us ordered photos, but I figured that some of the photos will show up on Facebook at some point or another.

After our photos, most of our other MBA classmates were done, but Tarang and I had one more task left. We had to defend our Capstone project on our Dynamic Pricing Engine (or DyPE for short)! We scooted over to Weil Hall, where we met with Dr. Richard and several of his doctorate students and proceeded to deliver our presentation. Due to the slowness of the computer there, it dragged on a lot longer than we had initially expected, but about an hour after we started, we, too, were done done!

Tarang and I split ways, and I headed over to the stadium where Cherry and my dad were going to pick me up, when who did I see but Larry and Don taking some photos with Don's parents by the stadium! Kat joined us soon after and we all took some shots. I'll have to put some others up when I get them but for now here's a shot of me riding the Bull Gator!

 

Cherry, Dad, and I finally hooked up and we headed to our hotel, which, ironically, was the same hotel Tarang was staying at! So I didn't even have to move my stuff that far! After a brief rest, we went to get dinner at Stonewood Grill, which was good, but in all honesty, not really THAT good.

Early next morning, we all headed to the Phillips Center to get ready for our commencement. I made the mistake of not getting any photos with Cherry and Dad in my regalia! Regardless, the ceremony itself was pretty good. Our very own teammate Kat had the honor of presenting the Distinguished Instructor award to our Professional Writing professor, Dr. Fiona Barnes, on behalf of our I1MBA10 cohort and did a great job amongst several other strong speakers from the other cohorts!

After the ceremony, I went outside (without my regalia, unfortunately) to get some photos with Dad and Cherry. I still had my cap though!

Then, we were off to the free brunch at the O'Connell center! Cherry, Dad, and I sat and chatted with Don, Larry, and Ryan and their families. Finally, the whole team got together to take some photos before parting ways.

It's been a long three years, but the experience has been a fantastic one. My family, especially Cherry, have been great support through all three years, and I am also grateful for my partners throughout the entire program. My original OEM group, Stephanie, David, and Phil made the Engineering Management program enjoyable. I could not have finished my Capstone project without my partner and co-worker, Tarang. And of course my I1MBA team, the CLAMS, will always have a place in my heart!

Now, after three Master's degrees, I finally get to relish some free time!!

MSAMA: The Next Generation!

These past several months, I've been meeting up with Arun, an old member of the Meihua Student Association of Martial Arts (the kung fu club I started way back in 2003 with kung fu brother Kir-Wei). He still lives in Gainesville, so basically I've been visiting him whenever I take Cherry to Gainesville to take a test.

These meetings have not been in vain. I have taken full opportunity and learned the fundamental Chinese Broadsword form that has been missing from my kung fu repertoire all these years. And now, now that I have the Tiger Tail Broadsword form, I finally feel complete!

In exchange for his help, I taught Arun the Dragon Spear, so I don't feel too bad about forcing him to teach me Tiger Tail Broadsword!

This past visit last week, I managed to get to Gainesville early enough to hang out with the new generation of MSAMA. I didn't recognize any of the people there, but I found out that one of the newer members is the younger sister of one of my younger brother's friends from high school! Yeah... I feel old now!

It's pretty cool to see how far the club has come along now. There are a lot of new members (obviously, since I didn't recognize any!) and they've gotten a lot of new equipment (such as a drum and a lion for lion dancing!) and are learning some pretty cool stuff! Arun was teaching someone Kwan Do! I'm so jealous!

Tim Tebow NCAA 2011 Cover Athlete

Some really nice high quality videos covering Tim Tebow at the Cover Athlete shoot for the NCAA 2011 game! I love the comments about him playing NCAA against his brother and friends!



Keep watching past the first break to see all the footage of Tim!

Mom and Dad's 30th Anniversary

This past Sunday was my parents' 30th anniversary.  To celebrate, they came over to our house. We had a whole bunch of things activities planned!

Mom, Dad, and Melinda arrived Friday evening, and we went to have dinner at Chili's. After dinner, we headed over to the mall where a carnival was being held to savor the bright lights and maybe go on a few rides of questionable build quality.

There were a number of interesting activities, mostly familiar mainstays such as the Ferris wheel and numerous games. One of the more eye-catching activities was the one where they put you in a big bubble and let you run around in it while floating in the water:

Mom, Melinda, and I managed to get on just one ride that night - this rotating, rocking swing. It was quite dizzying:

We had another set of tickets, but we wanted to save them for a ride that was shut down because someone lost their dinner on it! So we decided we would come back on Saturday night to finish the job!

That night, we watched the movie Hachi, with Richard Gere. It is a modern retelling of the story of Hachiko, an Akita dog who in the 1920s, following his masters' passing, continued his custom of waiting for his master at a Tokyo train station every day for almost a decade. So impressed with his loyalty were the people that they erected a statue of Hachiko near the train station. Cherry spent pretty much the entire second half of the movie in tears, deeply moved by Hachi's undying love for Richard Gere's character. As for me, I was familiar with the story of Hachiko because of the video game, The World Ends With You, where the Statue of Hachiko is a prominent landmark in the game's Shibuya district setting.

We had breakfast late on Saturday morning by continuing our new tradition of having pancakes on the weekend (we've had pancakes on the weekend ever since having pancakes for breakfast every day on our visit to the Great Smoky Mountains last year). After breakfast, we hung around for a bit before setting off to the Brevard Zoo. Cherry used to volunteer at this zoo when she was in community college, but it has seen a few additions since then! For a small zoo in a small city, it has a pretty good spread of animals, including cheetahs, giraffes, and rhinoceroses. It's especially impressive when you consider that Brevard Zoo was built completely from charity donations and its own operating profits!

 

Apparently, we aren't the only people to appreciate our little zoo - that day, there was a wedding reception being held there!

After the zoo, I thought it would be a good idea to head over to Cocoa to visit the planetarium at Brevard Community College. However, it doesn't open until 7PM, so we first checked out the ever crowded Cocoa Beach.

After a soaking in the sun and the sights, we took off for BCC's planetarium, only to find out that it was closed for the Easter weekend! It was a bit of a shame, since the night was really clear and would have been a great opportunity to check out some stars. Plus, Mom kept on lamenting that we missed out on some tasty looking seafood restaurants by Cocoa beach all for naught!

Since we were no longer busy for the night, we headed back to the carnival to conquer the Zipper, the ride that had caught our eye the previous night. The Zipper is basically this big rotating bar with cars that are on their own spinners, latched on a chain that in turn was pulled around the main bar. This setup causes each car to whip around the Zipper as it rotated, causing spinning and dizziness in three different ways!

As scary as the Zipper was (and as nausea inducing), it apparently wasn't the most dangerous ride there. Nearby, there was one of those trampoline setups where they used a bunch of cable pulleys to help customers jump even higher. However, we saw one lady's pulley lose tension, sending her crashing down! Fortunately, she wasn't hurt too bad, but that just goes to show that Carnivals are "play at your own risk"!

On Sunday morning, we had a big brunch at Cracker Barrel. I'm not sure why, but I've developed an affinity for country cooking this past year!

After brunch, we hung out at the house for a bit, playing Wii Sports Resort. It was pretty funny watching Mom play Wii for the first time in over a year!

Finally, it was time for Mom, Dad, and Melinda to go home. So, Cherry and I took out the gift we picked out commemorating Mom and Dad's 30th anniversary - this snow globe featuring a groom and bride and engraved with their names!

Check out all the photos from the weekend in the Mom and Dad's 30th Album!

Heartbeat!

We went to the OB/GYN for the third time this morning. No pictures this time, but we did get to hear the baby's heartbeat! It's fast! Like a rabbit!

Hilarity

Courtesy of high school friend and fellow blogger Lia: iPad, out of the box!

2010 Asian Food Festival

I meant to post this earlier, but a certain credit card fraud event among other things stymied my attempts to do any moderately good writing these last few days. However, better late than never!

Last week, Cherry and I headed down to South Florida to visit my mom and Melinda while my dad was away on business. Among the events planned was a visit to the annual Asian Food Festival, where Melinda was supposed to perform some traditional Chinese dances. However, due to illness of one of the other performers, Melinda was too nervous to perform, and as a result, their entire dance troupe withdrew from the festival.

However, having seen Ed's photos from last year's festival, I still wanted to check it out, so we headed to the festival anyway. We still had the tickets that the event coordinator gave us, so we were able to get in for free despite not going through with the performances.

There was quite a bit of food there, mostly food of Indian/Bangladesh origin, since the event was held by a Bangladesh association. Some of the food was pretty tasty, but the main thing I came to see were the performances.

We got there quite early, before most of the spectators had arrived, and the early performances were, shall we say, mediocre. Mostly some older ladies dressed in garb of their southeast Asian nation of origin doing some slow solo dances that seemed to require little to no skill or talent. However, they did go up there and do something they enjoyed, so I have to respect that.

However, as the day went along, we got to see some very nice performances indeed, such as this belly dancer/fire eater and Taiko drummer couple:

Both schools of the Lee Koon Hung Kung Fu Association were there as well. I finally got a chance to meet their Head Instructor (and also my Sisuk, or Martial Uncle), Joe Keit! They put on a pretty good show.

There were also several other dance troupes that actually were pretty good and looked pretty coordinated (unlike the solo acts from earlier in the day.

However, easily the cream of the crop was the Chinese Acrobatics troupe that was invited over from Orlando. They were probably the only true professionals at what they did, but they definitely stole the show, performing for over two hours at the event. They performed tricks that are now familiar to me, but never really get old, including spinning plates on poles, balancing acts, spinning an umbrella with just the feet, Chinese yo-yo,  and extreme hula hoops.

 

The event was well worth the $10 we would have spent, had we not had free tickets!

Click on the link for the full photo album: 2010 Asian Food Festival

The Plot Thickens

A few days ago, I got a phone call from Chase bank, alerting me of what appeared to be charges to my credit card at various establishments in Kansas. Fortunately, Chase caught the discrepancy and I was not charged any money.

Over the next several days, I noticed what appeared to be an epidemic of credit/debit card fraud amongst a bunch of my co-workers. Charges up to and in excess of $1000 dollars were being made in such exotic locales as Brazil, Las Vegas, and Homestead.

The common denominator? We had all recently eaten at this local El Chico's restaurant.

Elementary!