Yesterday was the statewide “Day of Action” march, protest and rally all through California, and I decided to check out the day portion of the event since I was on campus getting my laptop checked for some internet connection issues. There were hundreds of CSUN students, and they went everywhere around campus. They even entered classrooms in Manzanita Hall to tell the students to “walk out” their class and join the protest. They also went and blocked the Nordhoff/Reseda intersection, which is one of the busiest intersections in Northridge. Cops came to tell them to get off the streets. I left around 3 p.m., but I hear the march, protest and rally got even more crazy later at night. A professor and a couple of students even got arrested.

“Hands for Haiti” was a benefit concert sponsored by CSUN’s Unified We Serve, the Matador Involvement Center, Associated Students and the University Student Union. Many performers are of CSUN talent and other artists in the community. $10 was the suggested donation for such show, and $1 raffle tickets were also being offered. All procceeds made in the show will be donated to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake back in January. My roommate Kanie was the opening act for such show. She wrote and said her beautiful poem about Haiti. She had a wonderful vision about showing the side of Haiti that people don’t show, especially with what Haiti is going through today. Other than that, the rest of the whole show seemed to went well. The ending part where they sang “Lean on Me” was pretty awesome. It was very nice to see everyone come together as a whole to help out.

Today I went to Chinatown, Downtown Los Angeles to check out the Golden Dragon Parade with my mom and dad. The parade was scheduled to start at 1 p.m., but they didn’t start until almost 2 p.m. and it seemed to last a little more than half an hour. I was surprised to see so many people there, and they are many people from different nationalities, not just Asian. It’s as if everyone was there to celebrate and have fun. When I was taking photos, I found out how hard it was to take photos of Chinese New Year. The color red just pops out in all different shades of what I really want on the camera, but I’m sure many photographers know why it does that. It’s so annoying. Haha.

I went out to take photos of flowers again, so these flowers would be the same as last time, but they are much more in bloom. I also took these in cold light since the weather today was pretty gloomy. For some reason, I like to take photos when the weather is gloomy. The lighting is just right with no shadows or highlights. The clouds in the sky just act like a big diffuser. Haha. But yeah, here’s another round of flowers. Enjoy.

Tin, a colleague of mine in my AAS345 Contemporary Issues in Asian American Studies class, asked me and a couple of others if they were interested of going to the KABA Modern break dancing event that was at UC Irvine, and I figured it would be fun to check out, so the both of us went all the way there last night. I thought Tin was crazy because Northridge to Irvine isn’t a near drive. In fact, it’s at least 85 miles one way, so it was very nice of him to drive all the way there and then back. He had to do his project, too, so it was fair game.

Whee, zoom~ I brought my Nikon COOLPIX P80 because it was a lot lighter to carry (compared to Nikon D60), and the optical zoom is a lot farther. The biggest downfall about it is you definitely need steady hands to get a clear photo with the long range zoom.

Here’s Tin break dancing! He was asking me if I saw him do such thing before, and I didn’t. It was pretty cool. He also thought this photo looks pretty nice, so I guess I can print him a copy and give it to him in class someday.

So the event itself is actually pretty cool. There were many break dancing groups, and they were all competing each other, but I don’t know if there is really a prize in the end or what not. I just think it’s so interesting because I did a “coverage” on V.ENT because of Tricia last semester, and I entered another hip hop sort of thing yesterday, so I’ve been sort of in the scene this year. I kind of know what to expect, especially from the music, and it’s very cool and interesting to see what kind of moves do people make up.