Who have I met from TIP since TIP, excluding the ones I normally see (at school)? Joy and Katie, Chenxia, David, Marcus, and now who? Masaru!

Yes. We had a math competition at Rice in Houston on Saturday. We faced really tough competition from homeschoolers and others. We only got sixth this year (a question away from third). But we did meet Masaru, who was tired from the track meet he had just come from.

Who was in the mini-reunion? Alex T., me, Masaru. What did we do? We 1) wandered around, 2) talked (about memories of TIP and otherwise), 3) played cards, 4) heard Masaru speak Japanese on the phone with his parents (really cool), and 5) listened to our results for the competition. There wasn’t much to do besides what we did. We were at Rice, not at his house, not at my house, not at Alex’s house, not at a mall, and not an arcade!

There is a lot to be said, but I don’t feel like saying everything, and I feel that what I’ve said is… sufficient. Now, before you say “pics plz,” I will post a photo. Just watch!

– From left to right: me (Stephen), Masaru, Alex.

“Until next time!” (I’ll see him again in half a year? Or a year? Or more?)

I really wish I had more time to blog whenever I wanted to… but as I said, this would be a post on Braveart.

This is the Braveart 2005 logo (based off the phish logo), as seen on my shirt. What is Braveart? It is our school’s arts festival type thing. On Thursday (of last week) we went to the University of North Texas to visit their visual arts department, their film, radio, and TV department, and their 1′o’clock jazz group, their (best?) concert choir, and their symphonic orchestra. Every year we go visit somewhere for that first day of Braveart, and UNT was selected this year. While I was there, I took the opportunity to meet with Jimmy for lunch. He was wearing his JFL shirt! Whoo!

Friday of Braveart is the workshop day. Last year, I did Photoshop and Argentinian Tango. This year, they had neither (and I probably wasn’t going to take exactly the same things anyway), and I did Marbling and Ancient Board Games. (Actually, they’re not all ancient board games.) I got the last slot on Ancient Board Games and was the first to sign up as a sophomore! Yay! We played games like Merills, Hex, Go, Viking Chess, Mancala, and Cathedral. After school (not really school), I went to Nickelmania with Michael Montoya and Alex Tong. We played DDR . Obviously. We also played Beatmania, and it was really hard… Afterwards, Montoya and I headed back to Cistercian for the annual Braveart movie discussion thing. This year’s movie was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, hosted by Mr. Saliga. He gave lots of good background info, and the movie was good as well. (I’d never seen it before.) It was… a bit too noisy though. =/

On Saturday night, there was Braveart Coffeehouse. Yes, I had Starbucks coffee as provided as well as some good snacks too. I played “Don’t be There” by Switchfoot with Tim Williams and Alex Tong. We did all right. I didn’t perform with Naveen’s band (I’m not in his band now… wait, I don’t think he has his own band anymore!). There were a few really good videos/movies and some decent performances.

Well, that’s it. That’s what I have to say about Braveart this year. It was fun, of course!

International Departures

I hope you like that banner above that I made. It’s a photo I took at the Incheon/Seoul Int’l Airport in South Korea. It was originally more bluish, but I messed around in Photoshop to get it oranger/redder/browner to match the color scheme I have more closely. Then I added the “pax asiana / since 2003″ in the corner.

I also registered on del.icio.us recently, and you’ll eventually see an RSS feed of it on the side instead of my link blog. Here’s my account.

Anyway, off I go, to study for the history test tommorow. From school, I will be heading to Rice with other people in Math Club, and hopefully I can meet Masaru.

Now Playing: Armin van Buuren - A State of Trance 185 (02-25-2005)

On Monday I was given a Luffy figure (not an action figure) to put on a stand that comes with it. It’s really cool! One Piece is awesome! The bottom picture is the bottom side of the box it came in, with the Mugiwara Boushi Kaizoku-dan (Straw Hat Pirate Crew) logo on it!

Thanks to Mom for buying this for me, and to Daniel for finding it!

The next entry is “scheduled” to be on Braveart (but no, it will not be excessively long… or long at all!).

Now here are some relevant music lyrics…

One Piece opening music #3, lyrics for the first stanza + translation

The Babystars - Hikari E

boku wa ima sagashi hajimeta mizushibuki agete
hateshinaku tsudzuku sekai e
afuredasu jounetsu o mune ni doko made mo yuku yo
mada minu HIKARI motome

I’ve just now begun to search, over the splashing waves
For the everlasting world
With this overflowing passion in my chest, I will go anywhere
Seeking the light yet unseen