The Standing Ovation

As a very involved performing artist, I have seen many musical and theater performance. Additionally, I have also been in many performances. Now, I know everyone has their own opinion and everyone has different tastes, but one thing that slightly bothers me is the phony standing ovation.

Like stated above, I know a thing or two about being on the stage side of a performance and I can remember a few concerts that I have had the privilege of participating in that have been honored with a standing ovation. For example, this past January, I was playing with the district honor band under the direction of Allan McMurray, director of the Director of Bands in the College of Music at the University of Colorado in Boulder. We played "An American Elegy" by Frank Ticheli which is in memorial of the victims and the families and friends of those involved in the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. If you have never heard this piece before, it will change your life. Each note and tone is symbolic and meaningful (listen to this specific performance here). But anyways, that's a whole tangent for another time. My point is that that piece and the performance the band had was something we were proud of and did in fact receive its own individual standing-o. An it's a great feeling knowing that you did your best and and more importantly, that it spoke to and touched the audience.

However, it bothers me that nowadays, or at least at the high school level, that standing ovations are just something given out of courtesy. Don't get me wrong, I am all about giving props to anyone who has put in the time and effort and courage and practice to get up on stage and preform and I will always clap and acknowledge someone's great accomplishment, but I feel like now, a standing ovation follows every performance, even ones that it is clear are mediocre. In contrast to my other example above, I have also been a part of many disappointing performances but still people rise and cheer even though it is clear that it really wasn't anything special. I understand why people stand - to be nice - but when you stand for every thing, it diminishes the significance of the standing ovation when so actually witness something spectacular.

That's just me on my soap box, sorry for the rant.

Congratulations?

In today's world of short-lived marriages, whenever someone tells me how long they've been married I always feel the need to congratulate them. I am most sure if it is our of encouragement or praise or recognition or what, but I always do. However, after doing so I always feel slightly awkward. It's as if in saying that I show doubt towards their marriage or marriage in general. That's not what I intend but I feel that it can come off that way.

It's sad how short marriage seems to last these days. Is it weird or in appropriate to congratulate those couples who have made it 5, 10, 20, 30+ years?

Those Asian Kids, Ep. 1

First Episode of Those Asian Kids!

The De-Articulator 5000 replays your voice back into your ears at a delayed rate making it so you physically cannot talk!

Song we tried to sing: "Five Years Time" by Noah and the Whale

Music: "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" by Vampire Weekend

Progressive Dinner

In response to my good friend, Tim and his recent blog post, I shall tell you about the grand adventure of our best and last Progressive Dinner with our youth group.

Once a month, our youth group does an event which we have titled SNL (Sunday Night Live). The high schoolers in the church meet on the first Sunday of the month and we get together and hangout, do a fun activity, etc. This month, we had a progressive dinner. If you do not know what a progressive dinner is, basically, it is a multiple course meal in which you eat each course at a different location. For our dinner, we had four courses and thus traveled around town to four different houses. Usually, these things have a theme and you can come dressed up and make it even more fun than just eating (but let's be real, eating is already pretty fun.....). This time, the theme was "Black and White: Wear as little color as possible." Now, initially, I was just going to wear a black and white dress and call it good, but then Tim called me and was like, "Hey! I'm going to use face paint and make it look like I walked out of an old black and white film, want to join me??" Um, Tim, HECK YES I WOULD!!

So Sunday evening, me and two other of our friends spent an hour painting ourselves grey and channeling our inner 1920s-30s selves to shine through in our new found appearances. Unfortunately  we ended up channeling a little bit of zombie too.....

Needless to say, we turned quite a few heads when we walked up to join the others...

The night was fun and fantastic and now, I know what my Halloween costume will be for next year....

Ode to the Centennial Sate

An ode written for my English class last month.

Ode to the Centennial State
Kristina Lu


O Colorado – The Mile High State - eclectic and relaxed,
Thou soaring mountains are like majestic abstracts;
From the peaks to the plains, a reminder of God;
The subtle browns and soothing greens, there is no greater laud;
A statement of thy culture, a statement of thy beliefs, a statement of thy vitality;
O Colorado, what a home you are to me!

And how art the exuberant colors of your light;
The sunrises, the sunsets: I need not exaggerate;
Each day, a stunning, aurulent greeting;
Each night, a colorfully regal final meeting:
A silhouette of cinnabar and brilliant peach,
The mauve range against a flammeous speech,
Starry night; O what a home you are to me!

We natives are so lucky, proud, and spoiled;
Our state! Our land! A place so beautiful without toil,
Dear bright Colorado, you treat us well:
How healthy are we, a tribute to you;
Kick back, relax, take a hike or two;
The powder’s great and so is the view!
O Colorado, a happy home you are to we!

And yet the world is grand and vast,
A place full of many other scenes to make the past;
Some far more eccentric and others less blessed,
A world worth seeing nonetheless.
But no matter the venture where or when,
There’s a place of returns, the Traveler has an origin;
O, Colorado, you are that place of home to me!

And down-to-Earth, thou art so rad and free!
You embody the power of our canyonous River,
You capture the freedom of a noonday skier;
A leader of Green and an attitude to match,
A spirit of adventure and limitless acts;
Diversity – an encouragement; unity – a fact;
O dear sweet Colorado, what a perfect home you are to me!

Booth Birdies

Since yesterday's post was so long, this one shall be short.

Working in a quick service restaurant, I see all types of people - young, old, moms, dads, babies, teenagers, etc., etc. Some take their food to go, others eat it in; but the best part about those who eat in are the things you subconsciously learn from them. These are the people that have time, or have made time, to slow down and enjoy their meal and spend time together (granted that they are in a party greater than 1) and not rush right out the door and eat in the car. I do not mean to shed any sort of negative light on those that have to take it to go - I am occasionally one of them - but I admire those that slow down a bit despite our rushed, time-conscious culture in America.

With that being said, my favorite stereotype of in-store guests are what I am now affectionately calling "The Booth Birdies." Booth Birdies are those couples who will consciously choose to sit on the same side of the booth together just so that they can be near each other. I see this a lot with elderly couples who have been married for decades, yet they still desire to be near each other even when they are just enjoying a chicken sandwich together. Here, they have plenty of room to spread out and even each have their very own bench! But they still choose to sit side by side.

I'm sorry, but to me, when I see this it is the most adorable thing and symbolizes an act of true love that I hope to one day find. I am in no rush to find the love of my life, but when I meet him, I hope that we can be Booth Birdies together anywhere and everywhere we go.

A Day at Keystone!

Yay! The WiFi is working again which means I can post about my awesome day of snowboarding yesterday - this is going to be a long one!

Spring skiing. It's always a bit of a gamble, but when it's good....it's good. Yesterday was one of those days. My dad and I day-tripped it up to Keystone Mountain Resort in Summit County for a final "hurrah!" before the season comes to a close. We left about 7am and arrived up at the resort somewhere around 9am. Depending on where you're from, two hours may seem like a lot of time or nothing at all, but either way, it was time well spent. I absolutely love spending quality time with my dad. We always have the most interesting conversations about anything and everything. He is one of those people who gets you thinking critically but does so in an engaging and non-aggravating way (unlike those who just like to play devil's advocate just because they can). Others may find our conversations mundane and uninteresting, but they're definitely things I will miss when I move to Boulder for college. Yesterday, we talked about all sorts of things, one of the topics being how we look at the topic of efficiency in our everyday lives and our work lives and how sometimes we can try to do things too efficiently and in turn make them less efficient. Stuff like that. Some of our most memorable and interesting conversations have been about the phenomena of the "tipping point" and the "the economy of free." But anyways, that's another post.

We arrived at the resort and were ready to hit the slopes! The day started off beautiful and sunny and around 37 degrees Fahrenheit and fortunately, the runs were not that slushy! Perfect weather!

 

First, we hit the back side of the mountain in the Outback where there was gorgeous glade skiing and soft but not slushy snow along the main runs; nice base, too. There was virtually no one on the mountain due to the fact that the season is in its last week and the majority of the state had its spring break the week before. We rode those slopes for the majority of the morning before turning in for lunch about noon-ish. About this time, a storm was rolling in and the clouds made the sky so dark!

Nonetheless, we turned in and had a pleasant sack lunch (which I consequently crushed during my shenanigans on the slopes) at the Outpost lodge on I believe the 2nd Mountain. Somehow I managed to use a soda can as a cookie cutter on the side of an apple during one of my epic, unintentional flips when I biffed it hard for no good reason what so ever. But hey! Who cares? The soda didn't burst and I still thoroughly enjoyed my mangled ball of a squished PB&J. I honestly cannot remember what else I ate for lunch, but who really wants to hear about my meals anyways? That's right, very few. But, even the sorely disinterested cannot deny the interest in........wait for it........BAM! Cheesy fries!! No ski trip is complete without an order of fries, cheesed or not. 

No ski trip is complete without fries!

By this time, it had been snowing hard and the outside accumulation had amounted to about 1+ inches in a matter of a half hour. But it was fantastic, for once we got back out there, there was all this fresh new snow on all the runs, ungroomed and begging to be taken on. The sky was terribly cloudy and the snow was falling pretty hard, but there was virtually no wind which made riding through the snow, freakin' fantastic! The only downside was the lack of contour definition in the snow due to the little sunlight that came through. This caused my downfall time and time again throughout the day, but more on that later.

After lunch, we had the pleasure of meeting up with one of my friends from the Springs, Ben, and his buddy Alex. They took me (Dad went back to the car to exchange his sunglasses for goggles) to see this secret fort that a friend of theirs had built earlier in the season. Now, I shall never reveal the location of this fort, but let's just say it is hidden somewhere in the trees and is made out of loads of broken tree branches and pure architectural genius. We spend the remainder of the day riding the front side of the mountain and eating up the fresh snow (figuratively). The snow was not quite powder for it was slightly sticky, but fresh enough to definitely change the dynamic of the day in a positive way.

We soon made our way over to "Area 51" aka, the terrain park. Now, I'll preface this by saying, I suck at jumps and I let my brain take too much control when it comes to boxes and such. Sounds illogical, but seriously, over thinking a jump is like writing your own death sentence. You've just got to go for it. This is a skill I have not yet mastered... Typically, Ben, Alex, and I avoided all of the rails and ramps and doo-ickies that those crazy kids fly off of, and we headed straight for the jumps in our naive aspirations to at least be able to catch some air and effectively land it without killing ourselves (at least this was my mindset). Needless to say, Ben and Alex were much better than me, but we each had our own spills. The first round of jumps, I actually landed mine! I was so surprised and excited! Unfortunately, that was our practice run and we didn't film any from that first time. By the second run, my dad had met up with us and was willing to do the filming in addition the filming I was to do for Ben with his phone (I don't have that footage). I'll just let the video speak for itself (I am the first one, Ben second, Alex third):

Aren't I just the most graceful thing you've ever seen?? Alex was the only one who had a perfect run though on this take; Ben happened to biff it pretty hard after the second or third jump which you can't see on this video. Totally worth it, though.

                                  

                                            Ben on the lift

      

Dad at the summit of the Outback.
That's Breckenridge in the background.

After that, they closed the terrain park lift so we headed for the base (it was almost 4 o'clock by this point). Just before, however, I managed to face plant over small ridge I couldn't see due to the lighting and slammed my head on the ground and slid for a few feet. The fall did disorient me briefly, but I quickly recovered and was fine. I later found, though, that that fall had caused my shirt to rub against my stomach so abrasively that I ended up getting a small "rug burn" on my stomach. I like to describe in terms of using a strip of carpet as a slip-n-slide.... Ok, so it wasn't that bad, but still, I have about three dime-sized burns on my stomach right next to my belly button. That's no bueno for anyone!

By the time we reached the bottom it was past 4:00 and we were forced to retire. During the regular season, Keystone offers night skiing but unfortunately, they were done with that for the season and so our day came to a satisfying end. We said goodbye to Ben and Alex, packed the car and headed for I-70 to take us towards Idaho Springs for some delicious grub. We stopped at Beau Jo's Pizza - Colorado style pizza - and enjoyed a pie together before trekin' it on home!

Colorado style pizza = massive crust meant for honey dousing

That was the end to our perfect day at Keystone and some wonderful father-daughter time, doing one of the greatest things Colorado has to offer together. Can't wait for next season!