VASCON LOVE

VASCON4 Online Survey

2008-05-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

Dear VASCON4 Lovely Attendees, Please take the time to add your input. Any and
every heart-felt response is welcome. [link] We thank you for being patient on
waiting for this survey. We will send updates regarding next year's conference
at the appropriate time.

Help fight Post-VASCON depression!

2008-04-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

Saddest face of the conference

So here we are basking in the Post-VASCON glow. Lots of packing, driving, flying, and hangovers. It isn't until now, looking back over the weekend do we start to get why they call it VASCON Love. The whole thing takes an abundance of care and passion to put together. We'd like to thank the VASCON 2008 E-Board for inviting us into their work and letting us throw in our two cents. These guys do a professional job for free and all they ask in return is for you to have as much fun as possible. The connections we make at these confrences with luck will last for many years to come. And yet over the upcomming days and weeks as we sink back into our home routines we'll start to lose that energy, those heads full of new ideas for the asian school orgs back home, and that glow. That's why so many students come to these confrences year after year, to get that recharge. That and to do something silly in a hotel hallway at 2am. So over the next few months we'll be working hard, rounding up as many pictures and videos of the confrence as we can, getting feedback about VASCON from you guys via Poll questions and comments section, working along with the website and Facebook group, and more. So check back in every now and than as we'll be updating this blog regularly, or subscribe to the rss feed. And remember, only 11 months 'till VASCON5!

Day II

2008-04-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

8:15AM: MetroRail from Arlington to Rosslyn. Apparently Northern Virginia is one big spread out suburb of DC and anyone who walks for transportation is booed and taunted. However due to our missing one of the free buses to campus from Rosslyn Station and the next one not being due for 20 minutes we decided to ruff it over Key Bridge.

Nice View

...up the Stairs Of Mordor...

Fun Fact: these are the stairs from the final scene of The Exorcist; appropriate since you feel like death after climbing them

9AM: Had planned on checking out some more workshops and "Owl and the Sparrow" but alas, the volunteers need help and we showed up just in time. So for a few hours before lunch and a good while afterward we helped out setting up the equipment for VASCON LIVE and assembling the centerpieces for the Gala.

12:30PM: Lunch! Finally got to meet up with some of the home crew from the University of Pittsburgh and mingle a bit with some new friends.

Fun Game: Which of these VASCON attendees from Pitt is actually Vietnamese?

All this was eaten in like 20-25 min.

1:30PM: Back to preparing the centerpieces. I hope you guys appreciated the TLC that went into those at the Gala, especially since they used up all the yellow long stem roses in the Northeastern United States. VASCON love

This isn't gay at all

6:30PM: Gala & VASCON LIVE

VASCON LIVE video coming soon

10PM: Help the sound equipment guys break down the stage. Are all university kitchen's connected to a labyrinth? Anyway, below is a pic of just a handful of the micro-army that works behind the scenes to make things like VASCON LIVE possible. And they rock hard.

11:30PM: Party! And now your moment of Zen!!

VASCON MIC

2008-04-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

6:30PM – 8:30PM: Keynote Addresses

Well it’s your eye in the sky Jason here working the Light and Soundboard up in the ICC Auditorium control room. In fact if you attended the Keynote Address Friday, odds are I was staring at the back of your heads from on high.

If all life is just high school replayed, as is my personal belief, than we’ve been sequestered to the Audio/Visual Club.

7:13PM: E-Board intro, US and Vietnamese national anthems

7:33PM: Dr. Dan Porterfield-Vice President for Public Affairs and Strategic Development, Georgetown University

7:40PM: Adrian Hong-Executive Director of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK)

What, an asian conference without Adrian? Pure silliness

7:50PM: Keynote Speaker: Duy-Loan Le-Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments

If you've been in an Algebra class or higher than you've probably seen the handiwork of Mrs. Le, who made history in 2002 by becoming TI's (the calculater manufacturer, not the recently incarcerated rapper) first and only woman and Asian American to be elected rank of TI Senior Fellow, a title held only by 4 other people. Perks of this title include higher pay, more respect and a morpher coin that summons the powerful Megazord. Duy-Loan holds 22 patents and 8 pending applications, and yet over the years she's still found the time to be a mother to two children. Needless to say, much of her Keynote Address was dedicated to finding the balance between ones career and ones personal life. Apparently the key to this is patience, patience, and some more patience. "Get to know your parents, in our haist to gain to gain independence when we go to college we too often sever the ties that bind us to our family and our past." Best question of the night: 'Is America more racist or more sexist?' The majority of hands were raised for the latter. Which reminds me, to all the ladies reading this, you are beautiful, you are talented, and I live to serve you!

8:30PM-9:30PM: VASCON MIC (sorry, videos of MIC Night comming up soon)

9:35PM: Ami and I are chased out of the skybox by a big angry black guy, apparently they're supposed to be screening Sweeny Todd five minutes ago. That's right, we got booted for Johnny Depp.

Ami: Cancer Research Specialist

2008-04-04T23:18:00.000-07:00

Ami Hobbes blogging live from the control room at VASCON MIC!

Just so you know, setting this up was crazy: laptops, karaoke videos, cds, cd players too old to play them, ninjas, guitars, pianos, projectors, and a whole bunch of song titles that I can’t read.

But its all good, Eyes had my back, and so did the board members (who later on, solidly rocked out the Vietnamese National Anthem), and we got it all hooked up, MacGyver style.

But let’s take that and rewind it back. I didn’t stop moving all day, if you saw a blur of dreadlocks whip by, that was definitely me. It might have been the Jamaican bobsled team, but it was prolly me. I stay hustling kids. For more on this topic, check below posts.

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah.....

The highlight of my day was Christina Wadhwani talking about the victimization inflicted on the Vietnamese Community by Vietnamese Gangs. My girl took a minute or two to explain that gang members themselves are also being victimized by the disadvantageous situation. This hit home for me because, coming from an area of LA that has both a lot of Vietnamese people and a decent gang problem, I’ve seen that some of these guys join gangs because their backs are to the wall, and they feel they have no other option (and the gangbangers I knew didn’t have to deal with things like language barriers and immigration, just cops.). With so much negativity surrounding the concept of gangs, it’s important to remember that everyone affected by them suffers, and they all need our help. So some personal thanks go out from me to Christina, and I hope you all enjoyed her presentation as much as I did (if you woke up early enuf). GO SIGN HER PETITION.

Runner up moment of the day: Makin the T-shirt.

In the viral marketing workshop me and my team of marketing wizards came up with an ill slogan for VOICE, and threw it on a t-shirt.

It’s crazy hot. Like….One Eye Left hot.

I can’t let you see it yet cause we’re still perfecting it like Blue Steel, but I have cleared it with the higher ups that you can see some early concept art from the project:

WHOEVER DID THE ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER IMPRESSION IN MY FIRST WORKSHOP IS A PIMP. If I don’t see at least 15 women grinding on him at the party tomorrow then there is no justice in this world. Adrian Hong and I will then start an NGO to remedy this immediately.

Quote of the day:
"I want to share my VASCON love by giving you all my sweetness!"
- Vudoo Soul (good look on the starbursts)

”Red Bull, we’re going to need lots of Red Bull”

2008-04-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

Jason waking up to his evil alarm clock at 7am this morning. At least that’s how it was supposed to go in theory. Eh, getting a full 8 hours of sleep is overrated anyway. Having stayed up most of the previous night moving boxes from one place to another with the board and stuffing those sweet goodie bags you got this morning with registration overnight rest was few and far between.

In fact you can usually guess who is on staff at these conferences just by looking for the dark bags under their eyes. That and the frantic running. Anywho, expedient traveling behind us (one interesting part involving a Segway, Dean Kamen’s anti-climax) we rushed past the sign up table

and made it to the workshops.

3PM-4:15PM’ish: Hoang Sa/Troung Sa- South China Seizure and the New Generation of Student Protests

For those of you not in the know, the Hoang Sa/Troung Sa (or Spratley and Parcel Islands if you want to be like that) are the McGuffins in a three-to-five way tug of war among China/Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Malaysia and Brunei. All countries involved lay claim over the chain of islands as a historical right. Unrest in the area has been going on for hundreds of years and at times make the similar dispute over the Liancourt Rocks between Korea and Japan (a subject I’m a little more familiar with) look rather silly by comparison. Despite this the reasoning for the territory disputes in reality are rarely about history and more about the highly lucritive fishing rights to the area. Anyway, that’s was my interpritation of the events after the workshop visuals (where would Powerpoint presentations be today without Google Earth?). One espicially cool part was when the presenters actually got a student in Vietnam who works with the Hoang Sa/Troung Sa dispute via Skype. Now normally I would have to edit the dialoge to save the privacy of the interviewed student but lucky me, I had no idea what was being said anyway since the whole thing was being spoken in Vietlish. Here I am spending 2 hours trying to connect to the Georgetown Wireless and she’s Skyping with Saigon…I really need a Mac. After that we went into a short Q&A section, ranging from the Summer Olympics in China and the ensuing torch relay to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN (proof that an affinity for acronims isn’t just for college asian organizations). Below are a YouTube vid that illustrates the subject further (apparently Hans Zimmer did the soundtrack) and links to websites that give further background.

Truong Sa-Hoang Sa-Ta La Mot-Vietnamese are one

360.yahoo.com/tuoitrevadanchu

www.vietwill.com

4:15PM’ish-5:45PM: grab a quick bite to eat at the Subway in the student center

5:45PM-6:15PM: Icebreaker

Video to come

6:15PM-6:30PM: VASCON MIC prep

Ami: Red Bull > Sleep

2008-04-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

First day of VASCON!! Today is not the day for Asian Standard Time. We got mad runnin around, mad people to meet, and I gotta keep to the schedule.

Shurrrrr.

Alarm didn't go off and I’m runnin on AST like a mother. (Later on I realized that everyone else was too, and then I felt less insecure) Two trains, a bus, and a hijacked segway later, I arrive on the scene.

Since I have ~~expert knowledge of the campus~~ a phone with GPS, I was given the honor of escorting other late people down to the opening ceremonies. That walk was far. Like mad far. Like Lord of the Rings far. On the way back (also far), I ran into some girls giving out kisses to fight cancer. Now, I’m not a doctor (I’m only pretend Asian), and I'm not saying kissing girls cures cancer, but I am saying the idea is worth further research.

Quick shout out to Radio Free Asia, for spreading some truth where it isn’t heard very often. I spend so much time watching MSNBC, I sometimes forget that there are people all over the world that don’t even know that Hillary is behind in the delegate count.

We’ll be back later on after the workshops icebreakers and whatnot. We couldn’t attend every workshop, but we can put you up on the knowledge we gained in case you didn’t happen to be around. Tune in later tonight (if you have the energy/sobriety) for interviews with Vudoo, my good buddy Steven, our beloved staff members, and highlights of the day.

Ami: Official VASCON Blogger/Time Traveler

2008-04-04T01:23:00.000-07:00

I am a greyhound warrior. The people you meet flying first class are the ones you may someday play tennis with or broker deals with, but the guys you meet on a bus are the ones who are gonna let you crash on their couch. My name is Ami Hobbes. I am a greyhound warrior.

Greyhounds always remind me of being on the run. And Street Fighter. Back in the day when I was nerdy enuf to play videogames for a livng, my crew and I would buy one way tickets from LA to dallas or chicago or wherever was having the biggest Street Fighter/Tekken/whatever tournament and hope that we could win enuf money for tickets back home, and, if we were all having a good day, some rent. Life is a hustle kids, if you aren't hungry then some of us will eat your food.

Put a pin in that, we'll come back to it later

Greyhounding is the modern day version of train hopping. (why doesn't anyone do that anymore? Its not like we stopped using trains.) Civilians may not be up on this, but all my fellow secret agents know that Greyhound is how you disappear. As I look around this bus I see two renegade NSA agents, a couple of witness protection program newbies (you can tell by the way they use their new names in every sentence: "John, please pass the water","Here you go Nancy.") and at least three people with briefcases handcuffed to their wrists. But deep down, we are all alike. We all share that relief in our shoulders that one gets after a clean getaway and the hope in our eyes for a new tomorrow.

What am I running from? Pittsburgh. And boredom. I have grown weary of the nonstop action that Pitt provides and my brothafromanothamotha Jason Eisensmith AKA Professa Fingaz, heretofore known as “Eyes”, requested that I come down, attend VASCON, get current on some important issues, drop a few truth bombs of our own via the internets, and kick it with some quality people (you guys do like to party right?) so here I am, on bus #6999 (i know) reminiscing on the good old days of being an outlaw video gamer, and meeting great people.

People I met on the bus today:

I met a soldier who said to call him "Roland" that had been to Iraq, we compared bullet wounds and ex girlfriends. He was on his way to DC to talk his way out of being stop-lossed. He said he had good friends in the government, and they'd hook him up. We talked about the war for a while but he kept talking about roller coasters and sunsets. He didn't want me to take his picture, and could have crushed my phone in his hand, so yall just gotta imagine him. (ladies, calm down)

Here's Gus

Gus just become a grandfather on Tuesday, and is on his way down to Atlanta to meet his granddaughter. His family had emailed him pictures of baby Danielle but he couldn't open them. I helped him open the pics on my cell phone and he got to see his granddaughter for the first time! Id show you a pic of the baby but she was all wrinkly (and I didn't want to say anything)

And this dude, who was like this for the whole trip and I never got to meet him. Make up your own back story. (I like to think he either witnessed a mob killing and had to get outta town, or he just figured out he is black and ran away cause he thinks his parents won't understand when they find out)

These are good people. My people. The salt of the earth. We are The Greyhound Warriors. And as we roll into DC, my iPod blasting Danity Kane (don’t hate), I can see the Washington monument poking above the trees (I know), and I realize that this weekend is gonna be insane, and when is all over, many of you will be welcome to crash on my couch.

Things I’m into tomorrow:

Yoghurt wrestling

The Viral Art workshop (Im already on the internet, so now I just have to learn to be contagious)

Food (wheres the chicken at?)

Icebreakers (I hate ice, you can call me a racist but it’s just how I was raised)

Piggy Back Rides (im talkin to YOU, Ms. Grabby)

Red Bull

Vu & Kristine’s workshop on getting your music hustle on

Hotel Room Crashing (pillow fights optional)

Come holla if you’re down. Eyes and I will be chillin all weekend, makin music, doin interviews and getting testimonials and phone numbers. Get at us. I’m the guy that looks like this:

De ghet!

Trailers for the Viet Wave Film Festival

2008-03-31T14:52:00.000-07:00

Owl and the Sparrow
Directed by: Stephane Gauger

Dust of Life
Directed by: Le Van Kiet

Oh Saigon
Directed by: Doan Hoang

Campus/Travel/Entertainment Info

2008-03-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

Wondering how to get to campus? Pondering where to eat and where to go for fun after the days over? The helpful folks at vasconlove.org (perhaps you've heard of it?) has assembled info on all that and more at the Travel Arrangements section. Link at the jump.

So about the weather...

2008-03-31T12:02:00.000-07:00

I'm working on getting a weather widget on the blog but in the mean time check up on the tab Pre-Game for weather updates and other helpful pre-conference tidbits.

Friday

Mostly cloudy with a 50 percent chance of rain. Highs in the lower 60s.
Precipitation is probably going to be an on-going theme this weekend to be sure to pack an umbrella. Most of the conference is going to be indoors but you will have to venture out in between workshops and for lunch.

Friday Night

Mostly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of showers. Lows in the lower 40s.
Dinner on your own at 4:15 PM and Walking to the Monuments at 9:30 PM so pack clothes for chilly drizzly weather.

Saturday

Mostly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of showers. Highs in the lower 60s.

Saturday Night

Mostly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of showers. Lows in the upper 30s.

In The Begining...there was a blank blog...

2008-03-31T11:06:00.000-07:00

Welcome welcome users of this series of tubes that is the Internets. My name is Jason Eisensmith (an old traditional Vietnamese name I assure you) and I, along with several others over the next week will be posting entries in this blog to help you get ready for the glory that is VASCON. Before the conference we will be working 'round the clock to get you background info on the many workshops and speakers VASCON is hosting as well as weather updates, tips for newcomers, maps useful for navigating the chocolate city with a marshmallow center that is DC, and all sorts of other goodies. After the conference gets underway this blog's second mission will start, which is to give those of you who can't make it to VASCON in person a way to be here in cyber-spirit. Pictures, videos and workshop/event breakdowns will be updated live through out the whole weekend. Feel free to leave comments/suggestions here so we can better give you the info I know you yearn for. Well that's it for right now, can't wait to see you guys at the conference and let's get this show on the road.

Feelin' the love.

2008-03-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

"Refugeography" Album (liner notes) on VASCON:

"You Bring Out the Vietnamese in Me, recorded live at the Vietnamese American Student Conference, University of Texas, Austin - This is by far the most recent live recording that made the CD. All the other live recordings are at least 2 or 3 years old, but this one was just a few months old. To tell you the truth, the sound quality is horrible (I recorded it myself by placing my minidisk recorder and mic in a chair in the audience), but that show was truly amazing, in terms of the audience and the fellow artists who hit the stage, you could not believe the energy and love in that room. So many raucous Asians, most of them Vietnamese, full of spirit and pride and laughter and love - it was one of those nights that made everything seem perfect."

-- BAO PHI / www.baophi.com