social media gah!

I really like twitter. I've been on it for years. of the social media sites it was the only one that appealed to me right away. I blog already so I took to microblogging very quickly.

since I like twitter so much, I volunteer to tweet for multiple organizations. I tweeted for socal harvest for maybe a year-and-a-half. I tweet for scdbc, and in the summer I tweet from their tourney account. when I was on space I tweeted for them, and after switching teams I now tweet for xg. and of course I tweet for algalita (I am their social media manager after all).

there is a dragon boat blog that is fairly popular. I don't know when it came about but I think I started seeing posts maybe two years ago? anyway. end of last year they did this feature on like 15 dragon boat twitter accounts you have to follow, and also 10 dragon boat instagrammers you need to follow. space was on the twitter list and xg was on the instagram list.

I couldn't help but be annoyed. space tweets very infrequently. at that time maybe once or twice a month. when I was tweeting for them it was generally twice a week. I've stuck to that same frequency now that I'm tweeting for xg. obviously, quantity and quality are not the same but I don't think my posts were worse than the ones now. and seriously, how must you follow an account that tweets only once every three weeks? one of the lesser reasons I left space was that I felt like it was super clique-y. most of the leadership was dating within the leadership and they always hung out together. and the same people being recognized over and over again. at banquets it was the same 10 people winning the same awards every year. I tweeted for them and managed their blog for many years and I don't remember being thanked for it. in fact, I remember saying how long some blog banner update thing took me only to have someone else comment that it would've taken them like a quarter of the time. ...but you didn't do anything, did you? I certainly don't volunteer for the recognition, but it is nice to be appreciated after years of effort. but I eventually quit space and completely forgot about it until they were recognized for their twitter. ugh.

anyway. I tell myself that since there are fewer db teams on instagram than on twitter, that db blog probably promoted lower quality accounts in order to get a bigger spread of teams. it just so happens that my work was again not recognized. honestly, I don't think it would bother me much except for the space issue from before which I'd completely forgotten about until this happened.

really tho, none of this stuff matters. I volunteer because I like to. I try to do a good job because that's who I am. ...turns out I'm petty too, haha!

ti 2015 review 2

ti sunday morning we headed out a bit later than saturday as the whole house overslept, lol. i was hoping to get into the finish line / judges' tent but that stuff is pretty sensitive so i didn't think i'd get the chance to, and i didn't get to. which is fine since i've never done that at lb anyway, and we have a totally different camera / computer system.

anyway, most of the morning i worked at the registration tent signing in volunteers and such. that was interesting because after two minutes of training, the lady walked away to do her other stuff. lol.

later, i got to work marshaling, which is where you call teams to wait in the tents before they go over to the docks to load onto the boats. marshaling can be pretty frantic, but it's much better at ti than at lb. a lot of that has to do with venue, i think, how there is a lot more room to space things out. anyway. so there is, like, the marshaling tent with two staff there who count wristbands and such, and there is a single marshaller who calls teams over. i hesitate to call anyone the head marshaller, because it's not quite clear at ti who's in charge. anyway, so i was the marshaller who was alone. of course. because why wouldn't i be alone in a key position after only minimal training? lol, i also tried to tweet out the heats, but for some reason we couldn't figure out the password and such so we abandoned that. i would have loved it tho since i manage the tweets for the scdbc, haha. working this department was so good tho. marshaling is where i think we most need to improve at lb. (excluding behind the scenes stuff where we could improve the absolute most) but anyway, i have a few ideas about noise control which might help the lb situation. hopefully i'll be able to play around with things here.

after the tourney we helped pack up a little and at night we went to the unofficial paddler's party. i got drunk, lol. i didn't even really know until i looked back on my goodnight texts to rip. sheesh. but basically, i played a drinking spin game on a phone with some totally random people and had a bunch of beer. blech.

monday morning i spent with thaddeus helping with a little tear down. we visited two cdba practice sites: lake merced and jlac. so great that i finally got to see these place he's been talking about for years! he also gave me a tour of their equipment storage where i got a few ideas. it was very useful.


all in all i had an amazing time. i learned so so so much! the stuff that won't translate to lb is fine, because i learned how ti does it and that's a great thing anyway. i'm told that eventually i'll take over the scdbc. which is not something i'm looking forward to, but even i have to agree that currently there is no one else available, or even seemingly interested. most of our staff do their own thing and kind of keep their head down. i'm always interested in learning all i can, and i'm constantly looking for feedback. i actively want to improve our club and our tournaments. and i don't think there's anyone else as outwardly aggressive as me in wanting those things at lb.

ti 2015 review 1

ti was great. seriously. I've been wanting to go as a volunteer for a couple years now and this year I actually did. why did i want to go volunteer? ti has an excellent reputation for being well organized etc, lb does not. so i wanted to see what i could learn and hopefully bring back some changes to lb. thaddeus (cdba safety director) and I talk a lot and have been talking about cdba / scdbc steers reciprocity and he primarily came to BLB this year to volunteer steer so this was an excellent year to go up and volunteer. even better, I could leave sf directly to start my China trip a little early!

so, friday I drive up with xg. friday night was mostly the paddlers' party then some planning with thaddeus on guest steers for saturday. it was my first time going to the ti paddlers party and it was at a very pretty rooftop bar. great because I got to meet a lot of cdba people. thaddeus was staying at mabel and ben's house for the week. mabel is cdba and ben, her husband, is renegades(?) team chef. anyway, they were so kind to let me stay with them as well! it made more sense that I stay with thaddeus rather than the team at the team hotel because as volunteers our schedules are different than paddlers'. we even got our own rooms at ben and mabel's!

saturday!! we woke up DAMN early (earlier than i ever do for scdbc races, ha) and got to the site. in the early morning i worked the registration tent handing out paddlers wristbands and checking in volunteers. after the captains meeting i headed over to the dock to help out there. i'd met kerry, the dockmaster (at several well respected tournies, actually), before and he vaguely knows me (we're fb friends and he actually pm'ed me fairly recently) but i was really surprised how much trust he placed in me. i figured i would be helping people in and out of boats, easy stuff, while keeping an eye on operations in general, but instead he introduced me to the crew as co-dockmaster! pretty nice what the "safety director" job title will get you, huh? anyway, kerry explained that icdbf training is where they basically just drop you into the situation and get very little pre-training. so he did the first race, and from there i basically took over all major duties for the next 10 heats with him supervising, then he left, i think. lol. it was pretty crazy! i mean, jesus, thank god i have enough leadership skills and a strong enough personality where this worked, but i can see this type of training completely backfiring on, i think, most people!

but that's the great thing. dockmastering is a complicated job that i will not be needing with scdbc likely ever. our venues are drastically different and unless we change locations it's just not a skill that i'll need. also, i'll likely never be docking/marshalling again since i'm "moving on up." honestly, marshalling is not the hardest job. it's generally where you place the least experienced volunteers. lead marshalling and dockmastering is, of course, much harder, but i've moved away from that department. but anyway, the great thing is what i learned, and that's that this type of training is NOT an effective one. i've been to ti a couple times, but years ago, and well before i got involved with race officiating, so i don't remember the dock process very well. being thrown into the fray the way i was, meant that i learned a lot, but it was mostly me doing it as i would do it, with parameters. but since i didn't really get the chance to observe beforehand, i didn't have any time to come up with a good system, it was just figuring it out on the fly. and there's incredibly little down time, so i couldn't work out a better system. also, i'm very aware that this isn't my tourney, and i know they do things a certain way already so i didn't know how much leeway i had to change things. kerry told me that certain boats were to load from or off certain gangways so i followed that. if he hadn't given me that directive, i would've for sure done it differently. there were inefficiencies in the system that i would have fixed if i knew i were allowed to. but, again, it's not my tourney, and he has to dockmaster the rest of the weekend, so i don't feel comfortable "training" the teams to do a certain thing when he's going to do it a completely different way the rest of the time. i want to be respectful of the system already in place. but, yeah, i learned a great lesson in leadership that morning.

after lunch i was on the starter's boat with kim. who is practically "famous" for her skills as a starter. she's amazing and i learned a shit ton. i didn't get to actually do starting, but she answered all my questions in such a thoughtful way. even better, these skills will directly affect me since i'm a starter at baby and big lb. i'd never gotten any training as a starter, so this was a super valuable experience. i know i'll be better for it, and in turn, our tournies will be better too. and that was the whole point!!
furthermore i learned her philosophy about officiating which i think will be the biggest lesson i take away from this weekend. 

saturday night was mostly just resting, hahaha. 

(i didn't go too much into what i learned about specific tourney things, let's be honest, most of you don't care)

steering tests

this year we finally put our steering tests online. we have two; practice and tournament. you need to pass the practice one to steer at practices, and both tests to steer at our BLB in july. both are set at 80%, which is pretty high. but most of these questions are repeats of what's been on the tests before, most answers are in our safety manual, and at the top of the test it says that people can email me to double check their answers before they submit them. if they fail the test, they're required to attend the safety class. fail the class and don't take the test? get de-certified. if you pass the practice, but fail the tournament test and don't take the class, you'll only be tourney de-certfied.

you can read more about why we're requiring the tests on our forum. of course there's been push back on the tests. some steers don't like taking them every couple years, especially since they passed it before.

anyway, i'm mostly writing about my feelings, not about why we're making people take the tests. i'm having a terrible time with these. god. i hold my breath every time the results load because the results load slower than the updated number of people who've taken the test. i actually yip for joy when people pass. when people fail i know i have to write an uncomfortable email. ugh. getting bad news sucks. delivering bad news is worse. i'm fucking embarrassed, tho i know i really shouldn't be, because it's your stupid fault you failed! but still. i feel terrible about it. have almost come to tears a few times since i know almost all these steers.

anyway, no real conclusion / point to this post. just that i've been having a hard time with it. hard looking people in the eye at the beach later too after you've sent that email. btw, i can't even bring myself to write FAIL. i write NOT PASS. most people have been pretty cool about it. they know they took a risk and understand that it didn't pay off. i've only had a couple complaining emails. and one person who failed BOTH tests, btw, wrote an angry email back about how he'd rather forfeit steering altogether than waste more of his time at a safety class. his email wasn't at all rude, but of course still rather angry (he did actually say "waste more time"). it was a bit hard since i've known this guy for 8 years now and have always gotten along with him, tho we did have a few difficult moments n china a couple years ago. most awkwardly was that he was literally the first person i saw at a party i went to just a couple days after i notified him of his failing. i was just going to wave and walk past but his daughter basically waved me over. lol. anyway. that's life tho. as the head of the program, and certainly the most visible person of the program by far, i get all the credit as well as all the blame.

x-gen bio

i did my x-gen paddler bio thing, and here are some of the more interesting questions and answers but you can watch the video too. answers are the same, explanations are not since i didn't prepare explanations when writing out my answers so they're a little all over the place, hahah.

If you had to do one form of exercise, which would you choose… strength training or cardio? Why? - NONE! i hate exercise. i literally did not know how to spell the word correctly until just a couple years ago. even now i always have to sound that word out. idiotic. ...exercise, that is, not me :)

If you could be any animal, what would it be and why? - a predatory bird. because predators are way better than prey and cause who wouldn't want to be able to fly?!

What is one of the things you would put on your bucket list? - go to petra!

Describe yourself in three words. - volunteering, precise, curious

If you were famous, what would you be famous for? - would love to be known for philanthropy

What was your favorite cartoon growing up? - chip and dale rescue ranges, batman animated

What is the thing you are most afraid of? - falling down stairs. seriously. you will likely never catch me running up or down stairs. and skipping steps? mwaahahaha, no way! that's way too advanced for a klutz like me! (esp at sports stadiums with those aluminum benches? FUCK NO. i have visual flashes getting amputated mid-shin from falling up or down those damn things. legs going one way, me going the other. it's not pretty.)

If you were a super hero, what would your powers be? - time manipulation

Who do you admire and why? - jeannette rankin and melinda gates. jeannette rankin was the first female congressman, and she was voted in even before women had national right to vote!! melinda gates because she's an amazing woman and because her husband (bill gates) said she's the reason he's so philanthropic. she opened his mind and heart towards giving and given they have!

sd steering clinic

thanks to mike, i was referred to teaching a steering clinic for the new san diego dragon boat alliance. they've been holding tournies for a few years, but have been borrowing the sd team's boats and staff for them. they finally bought four of their own boats this year, but at their annual tournament in april, all the boats were involved in capsizes or swamping. :( mike, who was helping to run the tourney, suggested that in order to avoid capsizes and such, the steers should be better trained, and told linda to contact me about teaching a clinic down there.

scdbc had a bit of a relationship with the alliance already. a few years ago they sent a steer up here to attend a clinic, and two years ago ucsd sent two steers to be tested. i was pretty surprised they would want to drive that far for a couple hours of instruction (or for testing, which takes even less time), but hey, if they don't mind, we certainly don't either. but for a large group, it of course makes more sense for me to go down there, rather than having them all come up here.

anyway, mike said that i should teach the clinic myself, rather than sending someone else like we did for an NAC steer training session a few years ago. he also said that i should charge. i was definitely nervous, since i've never taught a clinic before (altho i have sat in on tons), but i figured that this was a good opportunity. a lot of the steers were going to newbies, so i figured i could handle that. and i've tested many an advanced steer, so i figured why not.

i won't bore you with the details of the clinic, except that i think it went well. turns out i know more than i thought i knew! and their most experienced steer has only been steering for 1.5 years and i've been steering years longer than that. i think it was a great experience for everyone involved. everyone learned something, including me. i also got to spend time with annie g, went to dan kim's wedding bbq/pool party, met his new wife, and i made a couple hundred bucks too.

also, i think in the grand scheme of things it was really good. dr chen helped the alliance get the boats and mike and gary helped them with their earlier race (and the three of us are going to help with another race in a couple weeks). and i think it'll be "useful" for the socal dragon boat clubs to be friendly with each other. steering wise, scdbc is on pretty good terms with all the other groups here in socal, but the sd alliance will probably be the 2nd largest in just a couple seasons. i don't at all mind helping them during their infancy so they don't waste time reinventing the wheel. also, an sf steering board member and i talk and have been thinking of more closely aligning our programs, so maybe cali will kind of unite as a whole (even tho scdbc will probably never be under the cdba).

not a word

i knew that space cuts out past members really quickly. and i knew it would happen. but i was stull surprised by how completely i dropped off their radar. on fb, anyway. i put up hawaii photos (cause g was in them too) and i didn't get a single like from anyone on space. it was... wow. lol. i dunno. i mean, i haven't even officially switched teams yet!

k, my neighbor, is also with space. sorta. he's thinking of retiring because competitive paddling simply takes too much time. he's missing out on his daughter's childhood, he says. so, in other words, he's not leaving because of drama. anyway, so the other day he was at the beach paddle boarding and oc1-ing with his family and he runs into space. a few of them ignore him completely. he hasn't even decided if he's leaving the team yet! i wonder if other teams are like this too? hahah, maybe i'll find out in another five years when i leave guppies for i-don't-know-what-team!

i'm really glad i took a year off between space and guppies but man oh man am i not looking forward to march when i show up at my first guppies practice. they're the practice slot after space, so i'll definitely be running into them. i haven't checked the schedule yet, but it was would be even more awkward if we end up taking their boat. ::shudder::

haiyan paddlethon

typhoon haiyan, you must've heard of it. my db club, scdbc, put on a 12-hour paddle marathon yesterday to raise money for haiyan disaster relief thru the tzu chi foundation. i only did two hours because i'm hella out of shape. but seriously, those two hours were enough. sheesh. did four laps total: two steering, two paddling and omg i nearly died. paddling was actually better than steering, tho i paddled after. hahaha. i wasn't even sure i could paddle at first cause my left bicep was sooo tired. crazy! later that night i was sitting on my bed cross legged, and i tried propping my head up with my hand while my elbow was on my knee and i couldn't. haha, my arm was shaking too much to hold up my head!

in the 12 hours we ended up doing 28 laps total and raised well over $5000. i think the first couple hours had extra boats. stronger teams can generally so a 3mile lap in 15-20 minutes but since this was a bunch of random paddlers doing non-stop paddling, we were averaging about half an hour per lap. ray, of areodragons, signed up for 8 of the 12 hours. 8 of the 12 hours!!! but ultimately he "only" ended up paddling for 6 of the 12 because he was too tired. he's amazing. seriously incredible. wow!

anyway, i gotta say tho, of my sponsors, i'm surprised at who donated and who didn't. i won't go into names here, but only one of my best friends donated. and besides rip and my parents, it was a kind of random mix of people i'm friends with. special mention goes to b, who pledged $20 a lap tho i only asked for $5 a lap. what an amazing guy! i'm lucky to have such generous friends. :)

time lapse video of our paddle. i show up steering just after the 2:15 mark. if you can't be bothered to watch the whole thing (honestly, i haven't either) after 3:30 you can see them paddling while it gets dark. towards the end someone has a glow bracelet on :)

lb 2013

long beach this year was really good. last year i didn't have such a good time because i was working too much and because of some drama with rip. but this year it was totally different. i barely volunteered at all since we already had so many marshaling volunteers. and even better, since they had mostly paddled before, they were all great! in addition to not working, i only paddled with socow and called a couple races for boston sci, so i had a lot more free time this race. i even managed to take a nap on saturday!

of course, i didn't hang out at the tent all weekend. in addition to the usual stuff, gary let me start a race! i was pretty nervous, of course, since i'd read a lot of bad reviews of our starter from baby LB. but it was an elementary school race so it was only 4 boats, i knew all the steers, and it was a 250m without the start blocks. so i got all the boats lined up pretty quickly, and i did the thing: "paddlers are you ready, attention please, go!" and no one moved. no one. not even a little bit. lol. gary and i looked at each other. "i don't think they heard you." hahaha, then he did it himself and it went fine. :) i later talked to a steer from the race and he said they did hear me but since they were elementary school kids they just weren't ready to go yet. lol. maybe i should've called the all women's cancer survivor's race.

boston sci did terribly. of course. i think we place last in all our races? maybe 2nd to last in one or two, lol., oh well. socow did not do well in our first race, but it was seeding to div III and IV so we were up against some very legit year-round teams (including lard red!). in our 2nd race our steer miscounted lanes and we ended up colliding with electric dragons before she called a check. we placed last. didn't even beat the pinks. sheesh. in our finals race, since the team was pretty upset with her (she'd actually messed up in our first race too, tho nothing that cost us time), i switched steers and went with herrick, a festival team steer. but i've always liked him and thought he did a good job at testing a couple weeks ago. he did excellently. everyone really liked him. and, more importantly, we placed 2nd! 2nd in the lowest division, mix IV C, but it meant that we won medals. haha!

i had to stay for the award ceremony since i was presenting the icdbf trophies and since socow won our first medals in like give years some of the team also decided to stay behind since it was was supposed to be no more than a two hour wait. supposed to be. ...and so of course it ended up taking something like four fucking hours or something like that. they ended up rerunning a race, which took forever. and for some crazy reason they stopped using both sets of boats so things ended up taking even longer. i got on the chase boats taping the start blocks (even got on the catamaran this time!), and nosed around starting too. probably should've went to marshaling to try to hustle things along or at least find out what the delay was about (starting and chase boats had no idea what was happening. our walkies were either not working, or were not being responded to).

awards were... not so bad. haha, i breezed thru mine, which was easy since i only handed out six. but we stayed nearly thru the end because mary announced the regular awards in "reverse" order so div 4c was announced last! gah!!

that night we went to korean bbq, of course. (at some point over the weekend our team chant became "bar be que! bar be que! bar be que!") where we were presented our medals. after we had boba. it was pretty great since everyone went to both!

anyway, so yeah. this year was great! it was like before i got too involved with the other stuff and stopped having fun. i know mike wants me to be a race official (which i think i'm going to do for the la race again), but i really like not running around so much. i got to hang with the team, which was really great. the only thing that would've made this year better is if rip was around, but he was in the carribean for a tourney. as i told him before, i'm sad i didn't go with him, but since i would've regretted something either way, i picked the one i knew i could live with. there were of course a few hiccups but i think the overall feeling from everyone is that this was our best tourney yet.

dunzo pt4

more than anything, the thing that most bothers me about captain R is that he doesn't take responsibility for things. he hands off the blame to others when he's the one who should know better. not only is he captain, he's the only space captain that goes to the captains' meetings. so that right there means you're in charge and therefore responsible for getting things done properly and on time.

lately i've gotten a couple emails from him either blaming me for not giving enough advance notice, or blaming certifier A for not covering his responsibilities. i had fucking had it. i'd talked about this stuff at every captains meeting, i'd emailed schedules and updated and detailed spreadsheets, tweeted, fb'ed... below is a clip of the email i sent:

"I will accept emailed paperwork until midnight tonight but I will not accept this type of irresponsible behavior again. The tournament is a few days away and I do not have time for this, which is exactly why I set the deadline for completion of requirements (sans CPR) for year-round steering certification nearly two months ago. You have missed multiple deadlines with nary a sorry. Instead from your emails it seems that perhaps your leadership should review what their own responsibilities are."

i got that apology. and i also finally got that fucking paperwork. it's so crazy to think that all it took was an angry email for them to finally get their shit in line. i don't know what certifier A is going to do next year. she had talked about quitting. a lot of the vets have either already done it, or are seriously considering quitting. it makes me sad, honestly, it really does. i do really like the team, and nearly everyone on it. i just can't stand the way it's being run. i know that no matter what team i join there will be drama. but hopefully it'll be the dumb crap of who's sleeping with whom. none of this blaming innocents when you fail to do your job.

the only questions now are 1. do i keep my jersey? and 2. do i go to year-end banquet to say goodbye.

china 2 - tourney

competition was much like any other competition. lots of confusion not much organization. oh well, we're used to it by now. this year's teams included us, harvard, toronto, kenya, "congo," russia, "europe," "korea," new zealand, china, singapore, and probably a few other asian teams. teams in quote marks are teams that are actually exchange students studying in china.

there was also TONS of cameras this year. cctv had like 18 cameras or some nonsense like that. and there was the other media on top of that. the girl we had chosen to be "media" person was suddenly camera shy so i ended up doing most of the interviews. bah. but at least we had a couple non-chinese kids who didn't mind being on tv so i'd always try to drag someone out with me. one of these kids, who is 1/8th chinese and doesn't look it at all, speaks some chinese so that was super great. (let's face it, chinese looking person speaking chinese poorly does not make for good tv [talking about me, btw])

the tourney venue was beautiful. the fen river and the surrounding area was very pretty. one of the nicest venues i've raced at. the weather also cooperated fully and it was sunny (hot and humid goes without saying) all tournament. fun fact: tournament was on 6/12-13. 6/12 was actually duanwujie. i made sure to have a zhongzi that morning!)

racing itself went pretty smoothly. there was a foul up regarding our first 200m race, which i ended up missing because i was at the opening ceremony (as a flag bearer, not just cause i wasn't paying attention). but the rest of our 200m and 500m went well (two races each). we did not get to race genders this year, which sucked, but at least it meant our kids weren't super tired. thursday was 2000m day. one race and done! it's a pursuit race, but fastest boats are released first and in 30 second intervals so there's pretty much no passing. also, we were released first. hahah. but our kids did pretty well (4th of 8).

 

after races were done was the craziness of team photos. something weird this year, i'm apparently considered quite pretty in this province. i got A LOT of personal attention this year. some guy even ran up to me and rambled off his name and phone number asking me to call him. i said no, in english, no less. but there were lots of personal pictures, which is a very weird thing for me. china has become a bit of an ego boost for me, looks department wise, haha.

that afternoon the tournament people organized a trip to jinci temple for the racers. that was really great of them to do so! i probably wouldn't have gone myself since it was a bit far outside of the city and i think a lot of the foreign teams didn't get much sightseeing time so this was really thoughtful of them. but there was another foul up there with one of harvard's paddlers missing our 5pm leaving time so most of the north american teams went to the banquet / awards ceremony dirty and unshowered (we were on the same bus). (btw, our hotel sucked. we were pretty much without water for two days. one of our kids [bless his heart!] wrangled a couple rooms in the other hotel tower for us to shower in)

banquet this year was much like last year's with the craziness of teams wanting to swap jerseys and take pictures... not much drunken debauchery this year, however, thank goodness. though of course there was too much food. they also hired a few performers, all singers i think. or lip syncers at least. at least one of them must be semi-famous because some of the chinese girls went crazy over him.

afterwards we went back to the hotel. some people went out to buy drinks (of course) and i think nearly everyone did a shot or two. most of cali stayed in to play cards so i joined them, while some of the rest of cali (along with harvard and toronto) went out to karaoke and drink some more. eventually a few of us ended up at kfc where were couldn't order a bucket of chicken. it was kind of funny cause the manager told us that "no one does that." our guy ordering for us, who was probably a bit drunk still, told him that "i'm from america and we do have chicken in buckets!"

coach scott with our 3rd place trophies & medals (500m mixed)

i was kind of sad i wasn't leaving with everyone the next morning (north america was once again traveling together and they were all talking about what they were going to do in beijing). but they were to be in the lobby by 5:30am and this was finally my chance to sleep in so i wasn't too upset to be alone.

china 1 - journey

china trip this year. it was a headache from the start. we switched from may to june to a date that was inconvenient for everyone. then the cali team we chose thought they more than deserved to be chosen though they never once practiced together and had not even individually trained for the 2000m. people from the team kept asking me what i thought of them. they were better than last year, right? um... no. and even if you were, who cares? you're competing now, not traveling backwards in time to compete with the 2012 team.

there was more than the usual amount of confused emails, drama, and complaining going on when it was finally time to leave. most of socal was meeting most of norcal in vancouver before heading to beijing together. our flight was then delayed. first time was for a couple hours. that's fine. then it was delayed to the next morning. NOT FINE because that meant we were going to miss our high speed train from beijing to taiyuan. these tickets were booked weeks in advance (as was our hotel) and they were all sold out. i was in a mad panic get one of my supervisors (all already in china) to contact me back.

 

after hassles with luggage, vouchers, taxis, and overbooking, three hotels later we each got about 30 minutes of sleep before heading back to the airport. at least this time we took off on time. my supervisors in china knew about the situation and told me that the new plan was that after arriving in PEK, we'd wait a few hours for the rest of the toronto team to show up before taking a chartered bus to taiyuan. the bus takes 7 hours. that train we missed? 3 hours. oh well.

get to PEK. wait for 6 hours for tornonto. get onto bus. driver tells one of us it'll be a 5 hour trip. woohoo! tho i have no idea how this is possible. about "halfway" in driver tells me we have another 5 hours to go. ...i knew it was too good to be true! a few more hours in of horrible traffic we get to a toll booth. the operator tells us that they don't allow passenger buses on this road between 10pm - 6am. ...he refuses to even let us pull forward and off to the side of the road. after calling the cops, we get escorted off the highway to a city. our drivers are now lost. they get rather confusing directions and refuse to follow the gps that the toronto captain has provided.

most everyone keeps going back to sleep. i don't / can't. i'm in charge, i'm worried, and dr chen and i call each other every hour with non-updates. i slept for maybe an hour. after not sleeping much on the plane, after 30 minutes of sleep the night before (the human body is amazing!). it ends up taking us 12 hours to get from beijing to taiyuan. remember that it only took us 11 hours and 20 minutes to get from vancouver to beijing. this after hours and hours of airport waiting. PROPS to the "kids" for being cool about everything. everyone was tired and frustrated but no one acted out. everyone was very orderly and made the best of the situation.

we each then get about 10 minutes of sleep (if you bothered. [i did! but i woke up sooo confused. in addition to not knowing where i was, i didn't know who i was]) before eating breakfast at the hotel and checking out the neighborhood. that afternoon we went to practice and the weather was NUTS. torrential wind and rain and it was scary. hahah. because of a few scheduling issues i ended up steering harvard's boat rather than going out with my own team. i am not a good steer. i was worried. but it all ended up fine.

next post will talk about competition.

dunzo pt3

these instances just show me that the main leadership of this do not care about the team. people have long since said that sd is very cliquey which i've agreed with, but i've always said that it's impossible not to be with a team this large. it's natural that everyone has their favorites, esp when it seems like a good portion of the leadership only hangs out with other leadership, but i thought they knew well enough to put the team before their personal feelings.

looking back on other stuff now i can see how these four instances are just the "highlights" indicative of their actual priorities. i've consistently disagreed with how they trained their staff, ran their board, disseminated information, and more. but i mostly kept my mouth shut because i'm not on their leadership and i know there's a lot i don't know about.

but of course it makes me so sad to be leaving this team. i've had uncountable good memories and i'll always wish them the best. i just wish things had turned out differently. if anyone asks me why i left sd i'll only say that "it was time to move on." those i know well will probably know more of the details, but certainly it being time is no lie.

dunzo pt2

(3) i started coming out to practice again because i love wednesday practices, which had recently started up again. the team had been preparing hard for baby LB, which i wasn't paddling, so i decided to come out and steer for them. this way their usual steers could get more paddling time in. on sat morning i showed up with  DB, having carpooled, waved at the captains and went to the beach monitor's table to do some stuff. when captain R came by a bit later i told him that i wasn't planning to paddle, just steer. he said that they might not have room for me since they already had 45 and i was 46. (doing the math later i realized that two boats only accommodates 44, so they would've needed a third boat anyway) i was annoyed because i had actually signed up on the poll (only 27 of us did) and had come out for the sole purpose of steering for them. i guess he didn't see me wave at him earlier, tho. i was incredibly annoyed but also willing to forgive the situation.

they head out to the water and after a bit R comes running back up and past me with another guy who was obviously late for practice. they do some stuff and run past me again back to the water. i see their boats going out a few minutes later. they have three boats and multiple open benches. i see A steering. he's been out of country the last three months and has only been to two practices before today (for this season). today being the day before competition. i'm pissed. i hear from D later that A actually asked, while steering, if anyone would be taking over for him so he could get some paddling time in.

at the end of their practice (just after 11am), which i sat around for since  i had driven D to the beach, i approach R to let him know that i heard the marine stadium only opens at 7:30am, tho their call time is at 7am. he acknowledges that he hears me (does not apologize for earlier, btw). that night at around 10:50pm a notice goes up on facebook and an email goes out saying that call time has changed since marine stadium only opens at 7:30am. ...it's 11 at night. for a tournament the next morning. some people live way out in torrance or jtown. that means they have to leave their place around 6am to get here by 7. so they have to wake up around 5:30am and you're sending out an email less than 7 hours in advance when i fucking told you 12 hours ago?! why wouldn't you confirm with any of the scdbc leads at the beach when i told you? i was just talking to G, A, and M all of whom would know! (4) it just kills me that R didn't bother to verify the opening time hours earlier. i don't know how many teammates showed up a half hour early, but i do know that my K, D, and their kid were there at 7am to be met with locked gates.

dunzo pt1

i've complained about my year-round db team a few times on this blog. but after what happened this past weekend, i've decided to leave them. i'm staying to the end of the season and will paddle for kg next year. honestly, i was pissed enough to just quit and join kg immediately, but i generally do not act rashly and prefer not to burn bridges. i also do the team twitter and help run the blog so i'll fulfill that commitment to the end of the year.

i've been unhappy with sd for some time, mostly because a couple years ago when long beach sent a team of kids to world's, there was a pool to help pay for some of the expenses and when D asked our coach E she declined on behalf of the team. firstly, i don't think E is even in the position to say no on behalf of the team as she's just our head coach, and not a captain or treasurer. also, how can you say no to kids? they're in hs and college and don't have much money. we didn't have to use team funds, but we could've asked people to donate what they could. what's worse is that our team sent more kids than any other team, and yet every other team contributed to the fund and we didn't. it's disgraceful. (1)

(2) a few months ago scdbc had a cpr class. everyone was supposed to pay $35  in advance. with an exception of sd, all the teams that registered for their steers did pay well in advance. sd told their steers they would pay for them so i was expecting a group check. which i received less than a week before class. while that's annoying, it's not a big deal. what is a big deal is that i found out later that i had misread the paid sheet and M from sd has attended the class without paying. so i emailed sd captains asking who was going to pay, them or M. i didn't hear back for a couple days and i got another email from DrC about it. so i fwded the email again adding "RESPOND ASAP" to the subject. captain RR fwded my email to C (i was cc'ed). no response. after half a week i emailed again saying that we submitted a final name list and did not include C and to email me if that was not okay (i cc'ed C). (btw, i had received an email from the treasurer after my first email regarding something else so in my response i told her what was happening and said that i'd like to get this resolved soon. she said she'd not heard about it but would talk to RR) after another half week i received word from DrC that C's certification was actually already paid for. grr... so this time i emailed the captains, C, the team certifiers, head coach, and treasurer telling them of the situation and asking for the check. and saying that "If we do not receive payment, none of the Space Dragons' steers who attended the class on 2/23 will receive their CPR certification cards." within hours C wrote back saying that he would send out the check the next day.

it's annoying that C would not get back to any of the emails i sent. but what i find kind of nuts is that sd captains didn't just foot the bill. C has been on the team longer than i've been (so over 5 years). and while i may only have his email, i'm sure they have his phone number. furthermore, i only heard back from anyone, really, after i threatened to withhold all their certifications. but did it really have to come down to that?

i can't believe that they would have so little loyalty to a team member. i always knew that they didn't care much about their reputation with the scdbc (they don't go to the only scdbc fun event we have: an annual bowling thing.) yet i thought they would at least care for one of their own. ...tho not particularly. K told me a while ago that she felt betrayed by the team when after she had kept getting the flu over and over and was unable to come out to practice, no one (the ones who knew she was sick and were her "friends") bothered to check in with her. i checked in with her cause she went bowling with me once when i felt that sd needed a representative team for the bowling event and realized that i hadn't seen her in a while . i ran into KM at another event earlier this year and he told me pretty much the same thing. except that he had hung out with coach D every single week before they stopped asking him out. :(

dragons

so this is the dragon that i was talking about in a previous post. so as i said, aj had been pestering me to come up with something for the auction. but we were both drawing blanks. so i went to joann, the craft store, and walked around waiting for inspiration to strike. i ended up in the felt aisle and decided to pick up needle felting again. i'd tried it years ago and had only made a couple things: a black and white sheep, a couple dinosaurs and a more intricate crocodile. i figured i had about a month to make something good. and if it wasn't good, i just wouldn't tell anyone about it!

it took about four days to make my first dragon. and holy shit i couldn't believe it when i was done! this literally came from one 8x11" sheet of blue felt, some left over red felt, thread, two seed beads for nostrils, and two "pearls" for eyeballs. i gotta say, i felt pretty fucking bad ass.

i emailed a photo to denise and said my dad thought he could mount it onto a wooden placard so it would be more trophy-like. she said that while it was very cool, they were all set for trophies for this year. maybe offer it up along with a trophy? i said no. haha. he's so special to me that i want him to be a highlight!! i didn't say that to her but i surely was thinking it :) so i said that i'd hold onto him for next year and make a red dragon, so we could have two, since a few of our prizes are paired.

four days later, i had made a red one. i also made the blue one more "chinese." i added eyeballs, horns, and the pearl in his mouth. i tried to make the red one's head more chinese too, but pretty much failed. blue's dad is a chinese lion; red's dad is an alligator. oh well. they do actually look very very different from each other, which is a shame, but each one has its qualities.

i didn't make the green one, obviously.

after making these tho i realized that hey, i finally have a great gift for dr. chen, mike, and mary! for sooo many years i've been wanting to get them something special as a thank you, but could never think of anything. i don't actually know them personally, and they all have money, so... but hand-made dragons would be great! they're from the heart and one of a kind. i'll photograph them when they're done sometime next year. :)

holiday cards

i really wanted to do something for the space banquet this year. not sure why, but probably because aj had been bothering me about us offering something up for the action (but we couldn't think of anything), but also because i've been crafting a lot lately.

i had originally needle felted a dragon to offer up as a trophy (i'll post pictures of that later), but denise said they were all set for trophies. oh well. then about a week and a half before banquet, i was at michael's with g and saw that colored paper was on sale; 6 sheets for $1. so i decided i'd give paper cutting a try.

and those are the results. pretty good if i do say so myself!! the last colored sheet we bought was a light grey, so the white design did not look good on it, so instead of making 12, i made only 11, then discarded the one i felt was "worst." i figure a set of 10 cards makes more sense than 11. i also purchased plain white envelopes to go with the cards. (tho i totally didn't think to do so at the time!)

making these were easier and harder than i thought, haha. i had went to target a couple times to get desgin ideas for the cards so that part wasn't too bad. turns out that the hardest thing is drawing! even if you do have an  idea, the pencil marks have to be light enough so that they'll erase cleanly. the design also has to be drawn on backwards since i cut from the back. once i realized i would never be able to finish without some help i asked ting to draw a few for me. she "free handed" the snowman and the stockings, and also drew the wreath and "be merry" from a few pictures i had taken at target. she really adapted them to make sense with the paper cutting though and i definitely think the ones she drew turned out to be some of the best of the set. (btw, i did draw the deer and the holly ones. but before you give me too much credit, i copied those designs, haha. [i tell you this because rip didn't believe that i did the deer one myself. which i kind of didn't!]).

btw, the guy who ended up winning these cards, i don't think was too excited about them. it was a mass raffle pot instead of people putting in tickets for specific items they actually wanted. oh well. either way, i gave something to the team, tried out a new craft, and made something pretty nice too.

sf

backdrop to the races. pretty nice, no?

went to sf a few weeks ago with the team. then stayed a few days afterwards to hang out with chang. a few highlights of the trip:

gangnam style costumes

twas pretty cold there!

1. i actually cried after a race, which i've never done. i was stroking white boat, which was full of newbies. newbies tend to get excited during races and lose control, which is exactly what happened in our first three races. after the start we'd be in the top three and over the next 400m we'd drop to like last place (out of six). it was heartbreaking because it was no one's fault but our own! it was incredibly frustrating to me because even the other stroke was rushing me during each piece (i was lead stroke). for our finals race, most of us switched sides, so the other stroke was then on her "on" side and was lead since i was now on my off-side. and guess what? the whole boat kept it together and we finished in 3rd! :) i was just SO happy that we finally got it together for our finals race that i cried after. hahah. pretty crazy.

at black sands

i couldn't roll up my skinny jeans, so i just took them off!

2. annie and i went to many new places: black sand beach, chapel of the chimes (which was designed by Julia Morgan [she did hearst castle too]), mountain view cemetery, and point bonita. i love that every time i go to sf i see new things. eventually i'll do golden gate park. 

at the chapel. those "books" are actually urns!

not the only pyramid. and certainly not the fanciest mausoleum.

a few other fun things worth mentioning, but not worth going into detail about: space taking the tourney (finishing an amazing season where we took every tourney we were in [minus portland, which doesn't count cause that was a roving tourney]), gangnam style flash mob, drinking (not drunking!) 7 days in row which beats my old record by ~4 days, eating lots of good food (charcuterie, fried crawfish, also sea urchin for the first time...), discovering the panoramic function on my cell camera, scaring off the gay couple having sex at black sands (which is a nudist beach, btw. but anyway, underwear is like bikini bottoms, there was no one there, and my jacket pretty much covered everything).

otw back from point bonita lighthouse (which was closed)

will food for paddle

so annoyed. earlier this year the scdbc put on our inaugural la dragon boat race. most of the teams competing were random community teams. however, there was also a "Best Twelve" category, which was reserved for year-round teams like space dragons, guppies, etc. all the big teams (except space) in lb sent a boat or two. (lard sent three). why? cause there was a cash prize! 1st - $800, 2nd - $500, 3rd - $300. registration was $300. since space is having an amazing season, and the races were only one day, and not far, we were guaranteed to win money. we might not have won first (la races were on 10man boats) but, and i'm not at all being conceited here, space would've at the very least earned our registration money back (if we sent only one boat).

we didn't go because there was "not enough interest." ...tho i'm sure had the captains emphasized that we were pretty much guaranteed to win a cash prize, we would've gone. why? because we paddle anyway. why not paddle for money?

i get the the weekly space newsletter today and now they are asking for people to randomly donate money to the team because we're now a 501(c)(3). they've also announced yet another fundraising event: working the concession stand at the rose bowl. we've always done a garage sale, and in more recent years we've added a bake sale. this year we've also done a restaurant thing, and now this random selling food shit. ...wtf?

this is a dragon boat team. we paddle. that's the whole point. but when we're invited to paddle for get "free" money, we say no. instead we decide to sell food. i get that everyone eats but... this team's staff is so fucking ridiculous sometimes. i've had a lot of fun this year, at tournies, practices, getting to know people, blahblahblah. but some of the admin's decisions are just... they make no fucking sense. it's enough to make you want to quit the team! oh, right, that is the reason i want to quit. (btw, there's MUCH more than just the la race thing but i'm so tired of thinking about this team's fucking staff...)

long beach '12

this past weekend was our annual long beach dragon boat tournament. and while normally it's a lot of hard work, it's still a ton of fun. this year, tho... i'm undecided. we're always short volunteers, and since we had an excess of paddlers for socow i decided to marshal saturday rather than paddle. i'd already brought socow co-captain song in with me to handle our corporate team boston sci so i was expecting to mostly marshal and maybe call the occasional race. turns out ripple effect (space dragons' sister team) needed me to paddle their women's boat, so i did get a 500m in with them.

friday set up

sunday i also arrived super early (mostly to give kim a ride), and found out that alex (who does a ton at marshaling) had really bad food poisoning the night before and was not going to come that day. !!! so i decided to give up my morning 500m socow race and help marshal until the uci volunteers showed up (they were supposed to come at noon). 

marshaling. ;)

things were supposed to be fine. but my co-captain was running late so i had to get boston sci together myself for heat 60. which would've been easy enough, except that i was also supposed to paddle heat 57. ...i asked rip to help me and there was some drama there and just... the situation managed to work itself out, as things usually do. but rip ended up talking to me for the rest of the day (actually, it's thursday night now and he's still not talking to me. anyway...).

lucy took photos of me!

later the uci volunteers were a bit late, but eventually i did manage to make it back to the socow tent and have a late lunch and paddle our 200m with them too. for the whole weekend, i probably spent a total of 1.5 hours with the team.

boston sci with song on the bow

at sunday's banquet i felt like i was trying to play catch-up, but still unable to keep up. now everyone's pictures are up on fb and i'm in hardly any at all. i dunno, i just feel really sad. i got into paddling because of the social aspect of it. which i'm now totally missing out on. i don't regret volunteering because lord knows we need as much help as we can get. and i in particular am useful because i paddle so i catch things non-paddlers have a harder time with. i also know nearly all the steerspeople so i can find you a steer last minute and i can also get steers' attention faster cause i know most of their names. and i can drum. but still...

socow 2012

sunday night after banquet i (and two socow'ers) went to club ripples to meet up with space and ripplefx. we got there pretty late tho, and after like 30minutes both teams went home. i did go out with the two socow'ers to another bar tho, and we had fun getting to know each other better.

korean bbq for dinner. rudy (far right) is a vegetarian, lol.

i think it's all harder because of the fight with rip. this is the 2nd time this month he's gotten mad at me to the point of not talking. we normally fight this "badly" only once or twice a year, and for 2012 this is our 3rd time, and it's only july!

anyway, i'm unsure of what's going to happen with rip, or with lb next year. i think i'm going to try to stick with the same plan: volunteer saturday, paddle sunday. i think it would've been better (for me anyway) if i had managed to stick to that but things come up... i know i personally have mixed feelings about lb this year, but honestly, it was a great tourney. we were only a few minutes behind (until that one boat huli'ed and didn't come back to the shore for nearly an hour), didn't have too many serious accidents, alex ended up coming, we got more volunteers sunday afternoon, and all the teams i'm involved with had fun. some even came away with medals (5 of the 6 space teams placed into div 1a, and space red was first in the 500m and 200m.). i just need to focus more and pay attention to those closest to me, rather than get distracted with the association stuff. it's hard tho, cause i feel very responsible about certain things, and generally when i know i can help, i do. anyway, here's to 2012, and here's hoping that it's even better next year.