Epilogue: The Capital Banquet

The end draws near - Although we're given thanks* alongside a Capital Division Slideshow, we give thanks to Erin in the form of a thank you video and more.

Banquet Summary

Banquet starts with several introductory speeches, opening slideshows (which technically didn't work that day) as well as thank you gifts. We give our appreciation back to Erin. A pie-Erin done by Mo-Kang concludes the event.

Revised Erin Thanks

I wasn't able to get myself filmed for this surprise video (it was done around 30 minutes or so after I had to leave since I had to prepare for tomorrow's presentation, but the written transcript reads:

Erin, thank you for everything you've done this year - From the time I first knew about you last May during STC, you've been one of the most amazing and coolest LTG's I've met during my three years at Circle K. Good luck with the rest of the year!

Concluding Statements

The year finally comes to an end, and as Kevin says it, where an era ends, and a new one begins.

Sometimes, some of the best things comes to an end. For others... they are just beginning...

Sacramento Zoo Zoom: ZooRunner

Surprisingly enough, Taffe can run eight minute miles.*

Event for ZooZoom - a variety of different marathons for people with all ages, including a 5K and 10K marathon.

We're busy working with Key Clubbers from nearby high schoolers and holding up various motivational signs for people to keep them going, until both races are over.

Action Scene: One person collapsed to his knees near our position - and all of us rush over to the scene in no time.

Fun Fact: The first runner for the 5K came by at the 15 minute mark, but my stopwatch was off by a minute and a half so I said to nearby friends that the first person crossed the finished time in 15 minutes 2 seconds. (I later verified this)

Additional Feature: Volunteers and runners get into the Zoo for free after the race is over. (Us volunteers, however, do not get the privilege of free food.) At least we enjoyed the experience of flamingos and giraffes.

Blokus Mindgames

Feature in Alex Ung's house: Blokus. I've heard about the game before but never actually played it - until now.

General Directions: You need to place down more pieces on the board than anyone else. You can only place down pieces which are diagonally adjacent to your existing pieces, and they cannot be touching next to each other.

Strategy Used: I tend to focus on not what might be the next good move, but rather a few steps ahead to know what pieces I might be using up, figuring how (in one or two moves) to reach certain squares to expand my options, etc.

Additional Feature: Learned about Perler Beads, the source for both a fundraising initiative for Sac State CKI as well as a distinction for Sac State on their nametags during DCON. I will personally get a set of these beads and use them to build a few things later on in life...

Sac State EOTY Banquet: Pinning and Pieing

This is a one of at least a three part series of the final events this year at CKI. Sac State is the first one in the weekend long series of events (at least for UOP).

The Relay for Life events limited the audience to mostly Sac State and UOP people, as well as a handful of other students.

Sac State EOTY Banquet consists of the following subevents:

• New Member Installation Pinning Ceremony. It's apparent that one does not simply pin (a) Princess.

• Vinh's EOTYB Dare
• Old e-board members step down, new ones step up. The old board receives a pin to award them as a past E-Board officer.
• Words from the new President (Vinh Ke Ton)
• Officer pieing. as seen in this video:

Note: Bianca Posada (secretary) couldn't make it to the event due to family-related stuff, therefore she is immune to (possibly) being pied.

UOP CKI EOTY Banquet: Hagoo?

There were three icebreaker minigames during the end of year banquet at UOP - one being ipod wars, two being Hagoo, and the third being a drawing contest. (What is hagoo? Look it up on Google. Or on Urban dictionary...)

Minigame: Hagoo: Form two teams of people and get a person from each team. Walk over from one end to the other after saying 'Hagoo', staring at the person at the other end, and don't smile. Some people may find it easy, others, difficult.

I was surprised that Davis arrived due to a previous conversation from a friend there that there was an event over there the same day that would prevent Davis from attending, but still happy to see those that came.

Post-Event: Links released as part of images over to blog commentary prove rather ineffective. Also, it appears that it's better to focus posts that were intended for CKI members towards a more general audience, so I'll go ahead and make all the changes as mentioned in my closing statement.

Creative CKI Event Titles

On the other hand I tend to excel in a bit of creativity in the form of personal titles for CKI events that I've attended (or haven't). Many friends from Circle K might or might not know these alternative titles, so feel free to look. These are the titles that I would normally place on my blog when documenting events.

I like referencing stuff, but some people don't get it, so I've provided links as reference hints.

Note as years go by, titles start becoming less direct and more interesting.

Official Event Name	Alternative (blog) Name
Safe Trick or Treat 2009	More Volunteer Work
Laser Tag (Feb 2010)	Laser Taggeded
Pixie Woods	Pixie Platformer
Asparagus Festival	One Day at the Asparagus Festival
UOP EOY Banquet (April 2010)	From Just Khin to Kelly
STC 2010 (May 2010	STC and Davis
Sushi Buffet (May 2010)	Five Down
Fall 2010 CKI Tabling	Tabling IRL (preceded by a sketch)
UOP CKI First Meeting (Sept 2010)	CKI's Intro Meeting
Greek Festival (August 2010)	in the long run
KFH Bricklaying (Sept 2010)	Window Washer's Dream
Dixon Corn Maze (Oct 2010)	A Mazed
Ihop, Davis (Oct 2010)	Meanwhile in Davis
Mtg: Sac State / UOP (Oct 2010)	Charades, Anyone?
UOP CKI T-Shirts	UOP CKI T-Shirts (before t-shirts out)
L&L Fundraiser	Event Planning, Pt 3
UOP CKI Last Meeting (Dec 2010)	We Sing, We Dance, We Draw Cards
Campus Day of Service	Cleanup on the Bike Path
DLSSP 2011	Ascension
DCON 2011	DCON's Champions*
Sac State + Sushi Hook	Hooked on Sushi*
UOP EOY Banquet 2011	Improv in the Banquet
Oz Korean BBQ	At the Oz Korean BBQ Resturant
STC 2011	STC Revisited
Vic's Ice Cream	First Hangout of the Summer: Ice Cream Social
July DCM	One Day in Tahoe
August DCM (Emigrant Gap)	Jumping off of Cliff Edges*
Sac State Interclubbing	Service in the Soup Kitchen
Ice Cream Social	Ice Cream (Leatherby Style)
Garrett's House	I Can Has Camera?
Social at Sacramento	The American River Trail
DSSS 2011	On the Caravan
DSSS Day 2	The Great Mall Hunt
DSSS Day 3	Moar Cards N Stuff
DSSS Day 4	Service over the Years
DSSS Day 5	Welcome to Paradise Division
Greek Festival 2011	already here
UOP CKI First Meeting (Sept 2011)	Intercapital Interclubbing
California Coastal Cleanup	Bike Path, Second Playthrough
UOP Book Faire	Book Selling Floor
September DCM*	Capital's DCM
UC Davis First Meeting	Legend of Davis
Dixon Corn Maze 2011	Corn Fields and Zombies
UOP Meeting	Singin' the Poncho
Crazy Komp 2011	Kompetitive Games
UOP Family Competition	Black Curtain of Mystery
Fiona's Gee Dance	No Gavel Gee Dance
Habitat for Humanity (2011)	Tunneling Trenches
LHS Snackbar Volunteer	In The Snackbar Now
FTC 2011 Day 1	Winter Came Early
FTC 2011 Day 2	Penny Madness
Sierra Social (Nov 2011)	Sierra Roller Games
November DCM	Piper Opera
November DCM	Fire and Ice DCM (referencing both wildfires and snowstorms that day)
UOP New Member Banquet 2011	Cup Flippin Competitions
At Denny's	Denny's Storytime
Go West*	Kiwanis Float Engineering
Winter Rosebowl	Rosebowl Parade
January Intro*	Badass Triana
January DCM	24: The Interclub at Davis
Palak's Kiwanis Crab Feed	Crabfeed and Nom Noms
Key2College	Key2College Audience of One, DCM
Key2College	DCM, Looking Forward
Laser Tag	Davis Crew
St. Mary's Interfaith	Soup Servers
Car Smash	Pacific Car Smash
Campus Day of Service*	Bike Path 2.5
DLSSP 2012 (Leonne)	DLSSP In Stereo
MESA Work	Are You Smarter than a 6th Grader?
March DCM in Fresno	Capi-Coast Capture the Flag
DCON Teaser	N-Cubed
DCON: Service Legacy (2012)	DCON Evolved
Nam + Boris Workshop	Bro-nam-ced
Talent Show + Dance	End of Line, End of CKI
April UOP Meeting	CapitalFnMcrew
Davis Spring Mtg/Bowling Social (hidden event)	Striked First
Pixie Woods Cleanup*	Revisiting the Fairytale
UOP End of Year Banquet 2012	Hagoo?
Sac State End of Year Banquet 2012	Pinning and Pieing
Alex's House	Blokus Mindgames
ZooZoom	Zoorunner
Capital Banquet 2012	Epilogue: The Capital Banquet

CapitalFnMCrew

Capital Film and Media Crew: After hearing about the recent successes and productions from the UNLV Film and Media Crew (like an Asian Drama), a new team was assembled in order to compete with the Desert Oasis school. By request of the new LTG, Fiona Cheng, filming and production started as early as this.

If you want something good, it's best to start early. I should probably allocate more time to presentations... it's costing me quailty points on my grad work.

End of Line, End of CKI

Closing thoughts about being both a Historian at CKI and as an active member.

DCON - it was amazing entirely, but unfortunately the year's over, and it's time for me to retire my position as Historian as well as my an active role at Circle K within a month after this post (the last two events being the End of Year Banquets). Given the fact that I am currently a senior and planning a co-op this point forward, it's time to step down.

DCON 2012 Talent Show

These four videos contain the entire Talent show for DCON Service Legacy. (The bonus talent show addition by Danny Ha and Brett Butler is not included in this playlist - it can be found here.)

They are presented in this order

• University of Nevada - Runner Up (the first take had lights partially on)
• Orange Coast College
• UC Irvine (more specifically, Jessica D Nguyen)
• UCLA - Winner

DCON Evolved

This is the personal name for District Convention: Service Legacy.

Summary: This marks the end of the year for Circle K - where the old board retires and a new board for this upcoming year including* Fiona Cheng as Capital Division LTG and J-Cao Nguyen as District Governor.

---

It's been approximately one year since I last did the blogging of this event.

Unlike last year where we didn't have registration forms to attend the opening ceremony, instead it was the ride itself. Luckily this time around videos of this was posted online

Straight into the action we go. No intros, no electric lighted spirit battles and cheers, but there IS a combination of * Deadmau5 and Daft Punk DJing on the dance floor.

IMO I found the DCON to be the most impressive compared to last year, and some of the other events other than dancing were better and more varied. Also, the table props were very nice. As a senior, this is going to be my last district event.

Small Note: I was hoping to leave with at least a MRP award for my effort and service at Circle K (as a pin), but apparently I (and the rest of the UOP CKI) didn't receive them (I was unable to locate Jacklyn Rivera post-event), as well as my rank saying "Circle K Member", leaving others no indication that I served as a historian.

DCON Grid

DCON: Day 1. After six hours of driving, we finally made it to our destination, two hours after the official start of the event, missing out on a few intros. Luckily the opening-closing presentations were published online on Facebook.

On one of the cars in the parking lot: "Entering the Grid!"

Capi-Coast Capture the Flag

Come at me bro.

(Capture The Flag at C^3 (Central + Coast + Capital) - after the game reached a stalemate for over an hour. Later made into a cover photo.)

Objective: Interclub between Central Coast Division and Central Coast. Meet up at Letterman Park in Clovis. The only thing to do is to fix the park up (cover up gopher holes to avoid people tripping over them), painting over any graffiti in the bathrooms, raking leaves and other debris on the ground).

Summary: Capture the Flag game was held between four teams (one for each color), but unfortunately our team was unable to take the other team's flag before the time ran out (was also outnumbered). Dinner afterward at Popeyes. Note the picture between Capital and Central Coast for CTF is a bit misleading.

Meme related: Someone suggested 'Everyday I'm Shovelin' for the shoveling up the gopher holes portion. I however used that before last fall in the trench digging service project (image will appear at DCON). I looked through my pictures for the day, chose this one, and set the caption to my first thought about the image.

Also: This image also seem to go well with the song What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger) in the background (especially the chorus)

DLSSP In Stereo

We're busy working, those PTP dolls were both tough and time-consuming but in the end, we managed to pull it off. GJ Leonne.

Objective: District Large Scale Service Project. Meet up at the Arc in San Francisco. Make PTP (pediatric trauma prevention dolls), quilt and scarf making, outdoor work. A second team for the project was at SF State.

Summary: Event was successful - all people were dismissed at 4pm. Post event, visited Pier 39, a place I haven't been to in seven years (including going to the same restaurant), with portions of Davis, Reno, and UOP meeting up (though at different times)

Because I placed a lot of importance into knowing (and identifying) people, the number of people who I knew when I walked through the door substantially increased*.

Last Year: 15 identified (4 not friends on FB), met 13 new people.
This Event: 78 identified (31 not friends on FB), met 19 new people.

Fun Fact: This page will show up if you Google Image search for 'PTP dolls'. The panda is that of San Francisco State.

Idea: Davis Crew

I just had the strangest idea (or a rather creative one) - place the Davis E-Board as well as the A-Board (if possible) in the TF2 cast style. Maybe a sketch or something.

This image wasn't uploaded until April 2012 for the below reasons. It appeared at 4:44 in the DCON 2012 Opening Slideshow.

Full Circle VP

The last two weeks went by too fast. During that time I had my position set on VP Admin, several service events came by, nominated for President and VPA, and later elections. I only went going for VPA. Ultimately I didn't win that position. Neither did the person I voted for, since he had a very good speech and skills in leadership and there was no way I could fully serve given my pending co-op in fall, which I would most likely not be on campus during that time.

It all seems like things have gone full circle now. A year ago I was asking these questions (And yes, I did plan these questions well ahead of time.) and now I'm in that same position in CKI - running for VP (which was the other position I would run for other than secretary)

The only thing left now is accumulating enough hours to get that Bronze at DCON. Trying to figure out how to pass my current grad courses (four projects behind past due date at time of writing) with at least an A- or better is another story altogether.

Background Image - robot holding a flower. Date of this post shifted to Feb 14 - just thought it might relate. Happy Single Awareness Day (at least for me, but hopefully this will change by next year)

DCM, Looking Forward

[115] Reach 400 total friends on any site that counts friends. (Goal Completed)
[186] Successfully get a job. (Goal Completed)

The best thing to do now is to look up, and push forward. I now have my 400 friends which I thought was impossible or very difficult to do at the time I wrote that goal (which was 170). Now I can focus less on quantity and focus more on quality: In other words, improve as many friendships as possible in whatever time I have left. Additionally I will post on FB more often since I completed that goal.

Starting Point: At Zaps Zone - completely dominated the arena, but it's not as fun as compared to playing against a group of professionals.

Key2College Audience of One, DCM

"Probably one of the funniest, most educational DCM I’ve ever been to." -Nam Hoang*

In a week prior to the event, prepared a slideshow (the theme for this year was super mario), learned that my partner had many interest similarities with me, and did a lot of practicing in order to prepare speaking up to the high school audience on Sunday...

... which comprised of one person, Amy Chin, from MCHS.

At least we can say it's successful but there was 100% positive feedback about the workshops, if you factor her post on tumblr.

Fun Fact: Music playing at the title slide (before the presentation starts) - Avicii - Super Mario World Levels (SNES Version)

Crabfeed and Nom Noms

We're not the ones handling the crabs, we're the ones serving the guests. It's us four*... and 70 or so Key Clubbers. In an attempt to acquire the 50 hours or so for the MRP Bronze for DCON (it's the only thing left I could go for when being on E-board fails) I went through all four hours of this event.

I based the post name off of the next day's Facebook Event, Laser Tag Social and Nom Noms.

Pacific Circle K Car Smash

We're smashing cars and all of that for a good cause - as a fundraiser.

General Information: This is NOT smashing someone else's car (well it might've been, but this is a old car and the owner didn't want it anymore), but instead a car taken from Stockton Pick and Pull for a nominal fee.

24: The Interclub at Davis

This is the first major event that I've been to this Spring semester. 24 hours. Three events. One unforgettable experience.

I'm almost two weeks since the last post, so that means more pictures here. Please note that headers are picture titles as well.

This has been so far one of the largest picture posts I have made in the history of the blog.

On The Road

The following takes place between 5PM and 7PM.

The limited amount of rides = send drivers from Sac State and Davis down for all seven of us. I of course learned that limited rides were a global problem, and not just us. I knew that this was the largest group from UOP that we took to a interclub since DCON.

Over at Fentons

Vacaville, 18:52 PST.

Fenton's Ice Cream it is. Not just ice cream - burgers as well. (Any ice cream parlor would probably do this). Unfortunately there was ice skating afterward so I'll pass with the ice cream for another day.

Ice Skating

The following takes place between 7PM and 9PM.

Some were pros, others were beginners. One of our members happened to be one of them. Training during the two hours there = went from edge to center of the rink. In another scene, someone had to chase Vinh to make it interesting.

This Old Teahouse

The following takes place between 9PM and 11PM in the Davis Area.

Went over to This Old Teahouse, ordered a Pineapple Blizzard, and it changed my perception about these drinks. Thank Erin on this one - she suggested it.

It's also pretty cold outside and it's crowded inside. Where now? Back to Andrew's - apartment. With a brief intro. 6 beds and a large apartment - I've never seen anything this large in Stockton.

Settling in Catan / Apartments

The following takes place, Between 11PM and 2AM.

Settlers of Catan, anyone? Erin won this time around with me coming in third. Abba-Zaba, among other things.

Between 2AM and 5AM, discussions on CKI occurred on both floors. I start to figure out whether or not I plan to attend one more year - but that'll probably be a backup - I've got co-op to figure out.

Wake up, we've got stuff to do

The following takes place between 5AM and 9AM.

We're asleep, but some are wide awake. If you're in a different place, on the floor... yea. I've had those experiences where I got little sleep.

Rushed to Cuando

The following takes place between 9AM and 11AM.

We've been given a signal to head over to the dining hall in order to meet up with the rest of CKI there. Turns out we were the last ones there. Anyways, brunch.

January DCM

The following takes place between 11AM and 1PM.

DCM. The remainder of the events seems interesting enough. Icebreaker minigame, and the nearby apartment becomes the DCM.

If I had to say something about CKI, how I learned about it, and my experiences, I'd have to say that

• I heard about it through one of my friends at UOP, who founded the Key Club for my High School
• I went mainly to get community service, to explore new places, and to have fun, and...
• To make lots of new friends. (To date, the number of people I've met at Circle K exceeds the number whom I've personally met at UOP.)

Quiltmaking 102

The following takes place between 1PM and 3PM.

Meetings conclude and we continue on with arts and crafts. The only public bathroom in the building is sealed shut for the entire period of the event, causing a few... inconveniences.*

Unfortunately I didn't have much in the form of ideas, so I worked with another person to make a portion of a quilt.

Tied Up As CKI

The following takes place between 3PM and 4PM.

Our next stop was the nearby park to end the event. A jungle gym to be exact. It reminded me of that one in San Ramon, but this one's bigger.

But we had to leave...

The following takes place between 4PM and 5PM.

This was our message on their whiteboard before we said goodbye. It has been a good start towards the new year with these events. There was something that Andrew Tom said that would come later in the semester - I hope that happens.