I’ll Trade Ya!
The other day I got this in the mail.
Hilton Trading Cards!
When I was younger, I was always envious of the kids that got their trading cards made when they played little league. This is kinda light it right? Thanks to Hilton and Team Hilton HHonors for making me into a trading card!
Good ‘Ol Day at the Ballpark
For those of you that don’t already know, I’m a huge baseball fan. That said, I’m so glad I finally got an off day to just relax and have fun at the ball park! It was a good way to clear my mind. I think the awesome weather helped!
The match up was Giants vs the A’s. I’m a bay area native and although you’re not officially supposed to like both teams, I do, so it was basically a win-win situation for me. One of the teams is gonna end up winning right?
In the end the A’s won, which was actually nice to see since they had a pretty long losing streak going on at AT&T park. Good times and to make things even more awesome is I got a Brian Wilson lawn gnome. Check out pics below 
Such a nice day and awesome view of the Bay Bridge. Had to get a shot since I was there for the Bay Bridge Series of course.
I guess it was 12:05 when I took the picture :)
Nosebleed seats but super nice view of the park and the bay.
The ridiculously long line to get the lawn gnome. I heard that some people were there for over 4 hours!
Got one! You don't Gno-Me!
Go Get ‘Em!
While all this time I’ve been busy training and chasing my dream, someone very close to me has also been doing the same thing. That person happens to be my sister. Although we usually don’t say a ton of good things about each other, or to each other for that matter,(we are very close in age and both of us are super competitive), I wanted to take this opportunity to say that I’ve always admired her determination and her fighting spirit. She’s been competitive in Kendo since she was very young. And this week she’s in Italy to fight it out at the biggest stage – the World Championships. Although this would be a huge accomplishment even for a regular athlete, I see this as a bigger deal for her since she was born with a disability. She’s been deaf since birth, and because of that, she’s had to deal with a ton of adversity and work extra hard to make up for something that we take for granted everyday. Even more impressive is that after college, she started working full-time for the US Government but continued to keep up her Kendo training. She’s come a long way and I feel that I speak for everyone when I say that I couldn’t be more proud of all that she has accomplished already. Wishing her and the rest of the US Kendo team best of luck as they fight it out on the world’s biggest stage!
My sister all set to go to Worlds
Keeping Things in Perspective
I can’t believe I haven’t written here in over 2 weeks! Please forgive me though as the last couple of weeks have been a bit crazy.
A few things to update here. Training has been coming along pretty well. In fact, I just finished my last hard week of training before USA Championships. Yup, USAs…it’s just a couple of weeks away. From here on out, I will be doing less reps but raising the quality of each turn. Lower numbers means I get to let my body recover so that I could be in peak condition when USAs roll around! My hard week of training was rather brutal but I’m totally glad to be done with it. This will be the first qualification for the Olympic Team!
Some people say I’m interesting because when things get more intense in the gym, I try and do more stuff outside of the gym. One of the reasons I do this is because I feel that it keeps me grounded, and helps me release the stress that comes along with training. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been busy doing more work (the Google stuff), studying for the GMAT (thinking about eventually applying to B-School), and doing some volunteer work.
I haven't opened up a book and studied in years. My head spins when I think too hard but I'm easing back into it!
Of all these things, the volunteer work has been especially great. I’ve been helping with the set up for the prom that’s going to be held in a couple of weeks at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. Although we call it the “prom,” the event is more like an end of the year party since all of the kids that attend the hospital school are invited. It’s really inspiring and puts my life in perspective when I see these kids fight for their lives with all they’ve got. Some of them are really young, but super brave. It makes me not want to complain about the small things anymore. Anyway, this is my third year volunteering for the prom and this year’s theme is an “Under the Sea” theme. Dreamworks (the production company famous for movies like Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar) has been gracious enough to let us borrow their facility. We’ve been working on making signs, props related to the ocean such as paper mache coral reefs, and games booths that we’ll be using during the event. Things are moving along and hopefully I can share some photos with you guys as we go along!
Volunteering at Dreamworks!
Training Update!
We’ve entered May and I’ve been pushing my training along to get prepared for the big qualification meets for the Olympics! Weather in California has been a bit up and down, which hasn’t been good to my body. Your body usually doesn’t like it when it gets super hot one day and then gets really cool. Shouldn’t be complaining though.
I’ve attached some training vids to update you on my progress. They are not perfect by any means but it’s getting there. I’ll be pushing myself through a couple more cycles so that I could peak at the right time! Let’s git ‘er done!
