FEATURE: TEDx’s Jen Fontanilla

Posted on August 22, 2024 by High School Voices

By Sarena Yu

Jen Fontanilla is a certified money coach, TEDx speaker, and author who defies conventional knowledge. Proud of her Filipino heritage, she has carved out a unique space for herself as a mentor and guide. With a remarkable 25-year career in graphic design and nearly two decades in the financial industry, Fontanilla is on a mission to show creative professionals that they don’t have to choose between their passion and financial stability. 

Fontanilla’s story began with a traditional path. Originally pursing a medical degree, she believed that a stable, well-paying job was the only way to achieve financial stability. However, she wasn’t passionate for healthcare and harbored a deep desire for the arts. Yet, like many aspiring artists, she was concerned about the “starving artist” stereotype-a narrative that discourages creatives from pursuing their passions full-time. 

The turning point came when Fontanilla observed her friend engaged in stock trading. An astonishing revelation ignited her desire to understand personal finance. She realized that financial literacy could liberate her and others from the constraints of conventional career paths. Motivated by a new perspective, she embarked on her career as a financial advisor and became a Certified Money Coach.

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Feature: AWW Film’s David Aure

Posted on August 21, 2024 by High School Voices

 

By Julie Shen

David Aure is a Filipino American film producer and director from Anaheim, California. He runs his own company, AWW Films, where he primarily creates music videos for artists, social media ad campaigns, and captivating TV shows. Some of his notable clients include Erick Yung, Russ Cosón, and even Nomad, a five-member boy group from South Korea. In addition to working with artists, he has also directed “Golden Arch Cafe” Seasons 1 and 2 for Myx TV, sponsored by McDonald’s. While his current success is impressive, his journey has not always been easy. 

When his son Kai was born, Aure purchased a camera to document his son’s early years. At the same time, he was working with two close friends to start an event company. He had experience promoting local art shows and wanted to take it to the next level by hosting a free event to showcase his friend’s artwork. Unfortunately, the pandemic put a halt to his plans and he had to return the investment used to rent the art location. However, Aure made the best of the situation by booking a smaller studio to interview local artists and friends. This is where his love for filmmaking truly began and AWW Films was born. 

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AAPIs (and some Asian Canadians) in the 2024 Paris Olympics: A Retrospective

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Jeff

After watching the 2024 Paris Olympics which closed last week, I definitely felt that AAPI athletes had a high profile. That led me to decide to create this retrospective on AAPI (and some extent, the Asian Canadian) presence in the Olympics and its impact. There are stories about medaling, but also stories that didn’t involve medaling. I also thought about questions such what kind of impact would the presence of AAPI on Team USA make on the perpetual foreigner stereotype in the US and why AAPI Olympic athletes tend to be in certain sports and play certain positions.

From a medaling perspective, Sunisa Lee’s gold in Team Gymnastics, and bronze medals in the all-around and uneven bars were in my opinion the most visible. It is a remarkable achievement after her struggles with kidney disease.  Another prominent Asian American medal winner was Torri Huske in swimming, who pulled in an amazing three golds and two silver medals.

In fencing, Lee Kiefer won a gold in team foil and and the women’s individual foil.  She was joined by Maia Weintraub in team foil. More than 10 years ago, we noted that NCAA fencing had a high percentage of Asian Americans relative to their population.  The latest NCAA stats for 2022-2023 report that this percentage has increased to Asian Americans being 23% of the male fencers and 28% of female fencers.

The Team USA Women’s Volleyball team won silver, netting Justine Wong-Orantes a medal.  The Team USA Men’s Volleyball team took bronze. As a result,  AAPIs Eric Shoji, Micah Christenson, Micah Ma’a, and Garrett Muagututia got to take home medals.

Winning medals wasn’t the only way that AAPIs became noticed.

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Pinoy Rock: Slapshock

Posted on August 17, 2024 by tinabot

It was in the cool shade under the outdoor Legacy Gym roof on the tropical paradise island of Boracay, Philippines where one of the MMA trainers asked me and my friends what kind of music we’d like to train muay thai to. He looked at us Americans expectantly and had his smartphone in one palm, a finger ready to select whatever we requested. In my head, I ran through my usual preferred workout music and thought, I’m in the Philippines. Might as well ask for the good stuff.

“Slapshock?” I ventured.

Fighters tend to always stand at the ready with good posture, but he straightened up even more at the request and proceeded to tell me how he had to stand outside one of Slapshock’s concerts in Cebu because there was no room inside for any more fans, how they had a sold out concert in Los Angeles.

“I know,” I smiled, “I was there.”

If you identify as a metalhead, you would be derelict to not have enjoyed the full two decade discography of this giant of Pinoy rock.


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Oscar-nominated Buzkashi Boy’s Martin Desmond Roe

Posted on August 15, 2024 by High School Voices

By Jolene Liu

 

Martin Desmond Roe wrote the Oscar-nominated short, Buzkashi Boys, depicting the struggles of two boys, Ahmad and Rafi, as they try to find their way to their dreams in an extremely war-ravaged country. Ahmad and Rafi have very different backgrounds. Rafi comes from a family of blacksmiths, who expect him to follow in their footsteps, while Ahmad is a homeless orphan who roams the streets for money. Despite their differences, they became best friends and share the dream of becoming professional Buzkashi players. The film is set in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the spotlighted sport is Buzkashi, which is the country’s national sport. Buzkashi is a traditional game where players fight for possession of a goat carcass in an attempt to score in the opposing goal. This short illustrates Ahmad and Rafi’s hopes and dreams of living happier lives.

Roe is the founder and head of the Oscar, Emmy, and Cannes Gold Lion-winning production company, Dirty Robber. Roe has more than ten years of experience in development and production, focusing mainly on documentaries. Dirty Robber, founded in 2009 and located in Los Angeles, California, has directed projects on various platforms, such as Max (previously known as HBO Max), Netflix, Facebook, ESPN+, Showtime, and National Geographic. Roe executive produced the Emmy award-winning series Tom vs Time, showcasing how Tom Brady maintains and balances his professional and personal life. 

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Love in Taipei Coming to Nextflix on August 9th

Posted on August 12, 2024 by John

I’m  a little late to this posting, but the film Love in Taipei is now available on Netflix:

“On a summer trip to Taipei, a pre-med student must balance parental expectations, romance and a passion for dance. Based on a novel by Abigail Hing Wen.”

I had watched and reviewed the film at a special screening last August in San Francisco, and the film brings back fond memories of my time on the “Love Boat.”

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Traveling China: Zhangjiajie National Forest Park

Posted on August 11, 2024 by High School Voices

By Bing Fu Huang

 

My favorite place to enjoy and relax with my family is at Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China. This national park has three main places worth visiting: the big lake, the big forest, and the big mountain.

On a trip during the summer of 2023, our first stop was to the big lake in Zhangjiajie. We saw many different types of fish swimming freely in the lake. We brought some fish food there specifically to feed those fish. However, when I wanted to feed the fish, there was a bright light shining on my eyes. It attracted my attention, and I went to its source. I saw a notice board that said, “Dear Travelers, Please don’t feed any food to the fish in the lake!” It was then that I finally understood, I could not feed the fish. I was unhappy about this. However, my parents talked to me and suggested that we go to take a picture. After we finished taking the picture, we went to the next spot worth seeing in Zhangjiajie.

Photo: Bing Fu Huang

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US Table Tennis Gains visibility during the Paris Olympics

Posted on August 8, 2024 by Jeff

US Table Tennis, a sport in the US that has faces many struggles and in which the US has never medaled, has gotten a huge lift in visibility during the Paris Olympics.  This viral video from the day of the Olympics Opening Ceremony started this process, as this NPR article points out, The notoriety from NBA players definitely helped, but there are some other very notable achievements from this team composed completely of Asian Americans.

Table Tennis players in the US, as I mentioned, face a number of difficult challenges.  Until last year, there were no US professional Table Tennis leagues until the formation of Major League Table Tennis.  US players needed to go overseas to Asia or Europe to get experience against high level competition.  In the NPR article, the US’s best table tennis player Lily Zhang says that the lack of a professional table tennis culture makes people think that they, like Anthony Edwards, can complete with the her and her teammates:

You wouldn’t go up to Michael Phelps or Simone Biles and be like, ‘Hey, I could beat you in swimming or doing a flip.’ Because people don’t see professional table tennis, they don’t realize what goes into it.

You can see this lack of respect and surprise when they realize at what a high level when the team members Amy Wang and Rachel Sung were featured on Good Morning America and The Today Show.

Individual team members have had their own unique challenges.  Lily Zhang’s parents pressure her to get a more stable job. I can just hear that kind of discussion coming from Asian American parents! Kanak Jha lost a year of competition because of a failed drug test.  He wasn’t caught using drugs – he forgot to add a 1  (US country code) to his phone number on a form and missed the required test.

Some of the visibility I mentioned comes from the respect shown by more famous athletes. Anthony Edwards, to his credit, went to watch Lily Zhang’s match and was cheering enthusiastically.   Steph Curry also showed them much respect by having the Women’s Team sign a ping pong ball for him (see video below).

More importantly, Team USA Table Tennis made some progress.  While winning no medals, Lily Zhang managed to reach the round of 16.  Kanak Jha also reached the round of 16, making his Olympic run the best ever for a Team USA male Table Tennis player.

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ESPN’s 30 for 30: ‘American Son’ – Tennis Great Michael Chang – Premieres July 29 7 ET

Posted on July 29, 2024 by John

Before there was Jeremy Lin, there was Taiwanese American tennis great Michael Chang. Probably most 8Asians readers don’t remember or even know the name, but he is a tennis and Asian American legend as upcoming ESPN documentary notes:

““American Son” captures a pivotal moment in sports and history, as it chronicles the remarkable journey of Michael Chang, a young tennis prodigy whose ascent to fame coincided with an unfathomable and unforgettable upset of Ivan Lendl at the 1989 French Open. The documentary delves into Chang’s upbringing shaped by his family’s immigrant experience, his rapid rise in the tennis world, and the challenges he overcame to achieve success.”

This USA Today story further details Michael Chang:

“Though Chang was one of the great players of his generation, winning 34 ATP titles and reaching No. 2 in the world, he is in some ways the least-known member of the four American tennis icons who all came up together and largely dominated that era of the sport.

Pete Sampras won 14 Grand Slam titles and was widely considered the greatest player of all-time until Roger Federer came along. Andre Agassi was, and in some ways still is, a cultural icon. Jim Courier burned out after a short stretch of dominance but remains relevant as one of the sport’s preeminent commentators.

Kang, 44, wrote a lot about Lin during that era but remembered watching the 17-year-old Chang win the 1989 French Open. When Kang began to play tennis recreationally as an adult, the convergence of his interests and experience led him to the idea that Chang’s breakthrough and what it meant both for sports globally and Asian-American culture was worth re-examining.”

I remember watching live Michael Chang winning the French Open and listening to his victory speech since that happened the same weekend as the June 4th, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and Chang mentioned that in his speech.

I look forward to watching this documentary, which premieres on ESPN Monday, July 29 at 7PM Eastern Time!

 

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Sunny Choi and other AAPI to watch in the Paris Olympics

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Jeff

The Wife, Brother-in-law, and I watched the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony last night, and what struck me as cameras panned over the Team USA boat was that there were a fair number of Asian faces. We have talked about gymnasts Sunisa Lee, Asher Hong, and Leanne Wong as being part of the USA Olympic team, but there are other AAPI to watch like breaker Sunny Choi. Interestingly enough, there are other Asian Americans are not on the US team.

I enjoyed the above video, and I find Sunny Choi’s story fascinating. At 35, she is an older athlete who gave up what had to have been a lucrative career as Director of Global Creative Operations at Estee Lauder to pursue her breakdancing dreams. Another Asian American, Logan Edra,  joins Choi on the Team USA breaking team.

The Bay Area, with its large Asian American population, has a number of Asian Americans in Olympic sports that tend to be dominated by Asians.  Twins Annie and Kerry Xu from San Jose are joined by Vinson Chiu of Milpitas, Jennie Gai of Fremont, and Joshua Yuan of San Mateo on the badminton team. Along with Beiwen Zhang, they make the entire Team USA Badminton Team Asian American. Lily Zhang of Palo Alto and Rachel Sung of Mountain View are on the Table Tennis team and train at 888 Table Tennis in the Bay Area.  What an incredibly Asian American name for a training center!  Zhang and Sung are joined by Amy Wang and Kanak Jha, making Team USA Table Tennis also entirely Asian American.

There are other Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders that are in other sports.  Team USA Mens Volleyball has three athletes from Hawaii: Eric Shoji, Micah Christenson, and Micah Ma’a. Other volleyball athletes Garrett Muagututia and Justine Wong-Orantes are from California. Jack Yonezuka, from a long line of judoka, competes for the Team USA Judo.

As the Olympics already started when I posted this, there are already some Asian American athletes who have had their moment.  In particular, Torri Huske won the gold in the 100 meter butterfly a day after she won a silver in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. I have hope that this kind of AAPI representation and success for Team USA will help chip away at the perpetual foreigner stereotype. A distant hope admittedly, but a hope nonetheless.

I am sure that I missed many other Asian Americans in the Olympics. If you know of some other notable ones that I did not include, please let me know in the comments.

(photo credit:  Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license..)

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Plot Twists of Attack on Titan (Spoilers)

Posted on July 28, 2024 by High School Voices

By Wesley Wang

 

Plot twists are a big part of the success of anime. Some do it well, while others try too hard to create a shock factor, making the twist unreasonable and not plausible. Popular Japanese manga and anime series Attack on Titan (AOT) has some of the most brilliant plot twists out there, each one carefully planned out from the beginning. There are many components to a well executed plot twist. These include foreshadowing, character building, and execution. In AOT, there are three major plot twists that almost nobody saw coming. 

(spoilers follow)

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Asians are now the Largest Racial Group in the Bay Area

Posted on July 24, 2024 by Jeff

Asians are now the largest racial group in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to results from the 2020 census compiled by the San Jose Mercury News. The percentage of Asians in the six county area grew from 25.5% in 2010 to 33.1% in 2020, while the white population percentage shrank from 40.3% to 32.9% in the same time period.  Overall, the population increased 9% to almost 6.7 million people. What can we conclude from this data, which comes with a couple of caveats?

One thing we can conclude is that there has been some white flight in the Bay Area.  If you work back from the percentages, the white population in the area fell over the ten years between 2010 and 2020 while the Asian  population greatly increased. That makes the rise of Asian American themed malls in the area hardly surprising – more a reflection of the local demographics generated from white flight rather than some intentional self-segregation.

As I mentioned, there are some caveats to take into account.   The article considers the Bay Area to be the six counties of Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin.  Some analysis adds  the counties of Napa, Solano, and Sonoma to what is considered the Bay Area, which changes makes the percentages to 39.2% white and 27.9% Asian. This data doesn’t take into account the pandemic, which saw many people of all races leave the Bay Area (estimated to be 3% of the total population). It would also be interesting to see that data, but we will have to wait some time before that is available.

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