Li and Jack

To my excitement I landed my first non martial arts related audition recently. Well to be honest, I don’t think I’ve really gone out to many auditions that require acting. The project is a grad student short called “Green Tea”. I saw a breakdown for an Asian male to play a teenager and the audition was in Pasadena which is not too far from where I live so I submitted for it just to give it a shot.

The Audition
As usual parking is always a nightmare. I pull up to this faculty parking gate to ask someone where I could park and then the guy (I’m assuming he’s a teacher) asks me all these questions in an incriminating voice.. “who are you? why are you here?” I tell him I’m here to audition for some project. Then he continues to lecture me saying “so you thought you would creep in the faculty parking lot and park here??” It was pretty annoying; I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but I had no time for that. I had to park and get to the audition. Eventually I park in the student parking lot without a parking permit. Hey what can I say – gotta take risks in this game. haha

I get inside and lo and behold I see a ton of Asian males ranging from 15-30 all sitting with a script in hand. Not that I have anything against these guys or auditions, but I sorta hate the feeling of sitting in this ROW of chairs lined up with guys that all sorta look alike (especially when you glance at everyone to just check out whats going on). Anyways, there’s nowhere to sit except for this lone chair a couple doors down.. so I drag it over amongst the silence. I felt like Will Smith in Men in Black when he drags that squeaky table closer while taking that entrance exam. So then I get a script and meet the guys next to me. They seem pretty cool. One by one they file in.

So before I go on.. let me give you the background of this short film. Li is adopted from China by a Caucasian American named Jack. Jack was in the military and when he was fighting in Asia he knew Li’s father. I auditioned for 17 year old Li and then there is also a version of Li that is grown up who is around 40. In my scene I just came to America and am at a cafe with Jack. I ask for green tea, but the cafe only has coffee. Knowing that Li just came from China, I wanted to speak with a Chinese accent. Fortunately, I worked on another project that required an accent so I had some practice in that.

In order to stand out, I had to be different. I told myself.. Li is from China. I happen to have just come back from a trip to Asia so I just imagined I was still in Asia. I told myself to think in Chinese only. Auditioning can be a scary thing. Also speaking with an accent can be uncomfortable/ make you self-conscious.. so I let those feelings amplify because Li just came to America, he’s young, he has a poor grasp of the English language, and he is in an unfamiliar place. The director told me “Just read from the top” and then I nervously splurted out “ni shuo shen me?” He looked confused at first, but then realized what I had said and then told me to read from the top in Chinese.

All of that helped me get into the scene better and later that day I got a call back telling me I got the part of young Li!

Me and My Older Self

The Shoot
I got to work with some cool people including: Bo, the director, Hidekun, older Li, and Ed, who played Jack the war veteran that adopted me. In my opinion everyone there had a certain acting level where you could feel that it was like an instrument that they sharpened through practice. Although acting doesn’t require working out your muscles like in sports per se, it still is something that gets better with training and honing – you can find your feelings quicker, you can react to lines naturally, you can find a strong reason for your character, while letting yourself go creatively, and staying under certain requirements of the director. I had a good time at the shoot. My mind did start getting numb after 20 takes, but that was good practice too – always finding a reason to stay fresh and respond naturally. I will post the finished project when its available!

2010 Sport Accord Combat Games

Martial Arts / Wushu
I’ve been teaching 3 private lessons a week still. A lot of people are preparing for CMAT.. as am I. Did I announce that I’ll be going back to CHINA? Because if not.. just letting yall know, I’ll be going to China for the 2010 Sport Accord Combat Games in Aug/Sept. Honestly, I had planned to “retire” from competitive wushu and focus on stunts and action films, but apparently I qualified for this big tournament in Beijing. Only top 6 place at worlds qualify and only 1 male and 1 female from each country are invited. Flight and accommodations are covered for us so I couldn’t turn it down. I will be competing in Chang Quan aka Long Fist.

In other words I am getting back to training. I have been staying in shape, but the things I have been practicing were different. I was training more kickboxing and acrobatics, but now I’ll need to focus on wushu rules, nandu, speed, rhythm, cleanliness of movements, and etc. I feel like this tournament is fate talking to me because it gives me a hard date and specific reason to draw me back to Asia. I don’t know what else it can bring, but I am a strong believer in going with the flow and doing what feels right.

Business
Here I give myself a little pat on the back. Not a big pat on the back, but just a little one. Looking back at all the things I “planned” to get done after returning from Taiwan.. it seems I have done a large portion. I recently just finished the martialartscomplete.com website. I cleaned up the WushuKicks blog along with the main page (which by the way just got a pr4! yay!). I didn’t do the full redesign I had in mind, but I was able to adjust 75% of the things that were bothering me. I reached out to sponsor athletes that will endorse our products and got bank accounts and finances set up with partners.

My Goals before going to Asia are:
Fully have set up 3 more websites.
Clean up https on cart page.
Get product pictures and sponsor pictures uploaded.
Meet up with 3 distributors.

I got a lot to do before my trip and I really hope I get everything squared away before I go. Alrighty, back to work!

So I flew over Santa Monica yesterday in an SR20 plane. It was an awesome experience as I pulled the controls and pushed the throttle which lifted us off the ground to a gradual ascent. I climbed higher and higher white I released on the power. As we headed towards the ocean, I banked right and banked left guiding the plane as I trailed the coast of the beach. Then I flew to the right of the mountains to bring us into the path of the airport landing strip.

Checking the controls

control tower

night sky view from the plane

On Thursday I went to check out an SR20 and talk to some flight instructors regarding pilot lessons. It ended up being busy that day and pretty windy as well so I ended up coming back the following Monday (yesterday) to take my first flight lessons. It was pretty exciting learning the whole process of how easy it is to lift off the ground just by picking up a little speed and getting a little lift in the wings. I learned about taxi-ing, banking, the controls, and how to keep the plane level and all that.

In part I took flying lessons for my own education and also in part to get over my anxiety of turbulence. I fly all the time for various tournaments or events and understanding the plane helps me feel more comfortable with what’s going on behind the pilot seats.

Anyways, that was a highlight of my week.. but I’ve been doing other things as well.

I went to the griffith observatory and got to look at the moon close up with my own eyes (well with the help of a telescope). They also had a bunch of interesting space facts and exhibits inside. I love thinking about space and the universe because it makes us realize that there is more out there and that little insignificant annoyances shouldn’t matter when compared to how vast world/space/universe is. There’s all these interesting things out there that I won’t really go into.. but they touched on things like dark matter, the expansions of the universe, solar systems which make up galaxies and that we once thought our galaxy was immense until we discovered we were merely a galaxy among millions of other galaxies.

I also got more super powers from this meteor.

That was an actual meteor. It was pretty heavy for its size.

Here’s the view from the griffith observatory looking out at LA.

Back on land…. that same day I also test drove an Audi TT because I think they look cool.

and now… to business.

Workwise I spent the past week cleaning up and improving the ecommerce. I added extra layers of security such as SSL security, moved the site to a dedicated IP, added an authorize.net safety seal, cleaned up the logo, modified the CSS so that fonts were easier to read and the footer looked more professional.

I also went to visit my friend marc and richi’s office where they work on online business as well. They had this cool photo booth device that helped me take some awesome product pictures. Here is one of the many pictures I took with my SLR camera.

I also put together some more pictures that I’ve been meaning to get up. You might recognize this guy.. he’s a China National Wushu Champion and World Wushu Champion many times over.

If you know wushu you know who he is. If you don’t you really should. He is Zhao Qingjian – gold medalist in changquan, broadsword, and staff.

I will leave you with this ultimate ZQJ compilation video.

stapler gun

Hey guys, I’ve still been a little sick. Here is a quick update.

Martial Arts/Stunts
Haven’t been training much because I was sick the past week or so. I’m in a recovering mode and just got the sniffles. Hopefully it will be completely gone by the end of the week.

I helped coach at LA wushu today and I’ve still been staying active training my private lessons. Also got a new student starting next week so we will see how that goes. This sets me in line with my goal of having a max of 3-5 private lessons. I really enjoy teaching, but keeping it one on one – this way I really get to see someone’s skills develop and provide them direct attention and custom training. Meanwhile, it keeps me active without turning martial arts training into a full-time thing that prevents me from focusing on other areas of my life.

Sam called me the past week and mentioned helping her out on a crouching tiger hidden dragon fight set for 8711, but the scene required 2 girls instead of a guy so it fell through. However, I’m sure some other cool opportunities will arise. =)

Film
Finished shooting pick up scenes for Barry Baz (www.barrybaz.com). There’s nothing really on the site yet, so don’t get too excited. However, I am quite excited because it’s been about 6 months since I finished shooting the main stuff with them and they’ve been editing (with the editors from the same studio that edited the Bourne series) and cleaning it up so that it’s a masterpiece. It’s about an Australian that comes to America. He meets me and I am an award winning film maker of sorts.. but I can’t say much more… so let’s just say it’s a comedy and a whole lot more. Should be done within a month. I’ll post more details when it’s done.

Business
Tons going on over here. Continued working on wk mock ups. Created 2 versions that I like right now.. just trying to decide on a layout. Also got the martial arts complete site in progress. The layout is good just need to get the content up there and adjust the color scheme. I filed for the dba and am still waiting on the paper work.

Corporation’s taxes are due March 15, so I started cleaning up my finances. Feels good to really sit down and see everything from a numbers perspective and then watch how it’s grown over the years. I know this is something that I should actually be looking at quite often, but as a start up you worry about a million things and hardly want to deal with the number crunching. Anyways, it’s looking good for 09.. now just to stay on top of things for ’10.

Other
Major thing going on is that the front porch is finally getting remodeled and getting tile put in because the old material was starting to crack from the rain. Should be done by Sunday.

Also started doing a few fun raps/freestyles/covers if you hadn’t noticed on my previous posts.

Casual is Cool has our official youtube page which can be checked out at http://www.youtube.com/user/casualiscoolyo (SUBSCRIBE if you are cool)

I think the title of the post says it all.. but just to announce it, I got my FIRST DONATION today!

THANK YOU TIGER SHARK! YEAR OF THE TIGER! Woot!

first donation

When I first set up my blog, I found this donation tool and put it up, but then after a month or so I took it down because I thought, who really cares about donating to me and it’s probably a stupid idea… and in fact!.. just a few days ago I was upgrading some plug-ins on the blog (just to make sure its spam and virus FREE!) I saw this “donate tool” O_o…. so I thought, I’m pretty unemployed; it couldn’t hurt to put it back up.

…and u know what miracles do happen. A few short days after I put the donate tool up, I got my first donation.

I want to say THANK YOU again.

I think these contributions big or small are helpful to me because for one thing.. I am unemployed. haha. I am not saying that I will starve, but when you give up stability for an unstable but passion filled future the more financial support you have, the easier it is to keep your wits about you and help you stay focused on purely doing what you do and achieving those goals. It shows me that people who are following my journey support what I am doing. To me, it means that I have made a connection in some way whether it’s just an entertaining post, an inspirational beam of hope, or a reflection of someone else’s life and goals. It helps me continue on my path towards success in business, entertainment, and martial arts. It helps me continue writing this chapter of my life’s story.

I don’t think I have mentioned this phase in my life yet.. because I probably didn’t feel it was relevant until this post.. BUT.. what are my plans if and when I achieve these goals I set out to do ?

I would like to re-focus my energies on creating a charity or foundation to spread good. I have not thought that far ahead as to what specific aims this foundation would focus on because its too far forward right now and things always change… I feel that when that time is near I will be inspired by something in my life and know what the focus should be on. In a general picture I think I am always in support of medical research, children, and the environment.

I guess I am just talking out loud again, but yeah, in addition to helping me “make it” in these goals I have.. I see it that anything that helps me and my businesses succeed is something that also helps my foundation succeed. I know that it is pretty presumptuous to think that I will be so successful that I can actually create such a foundation or non profit organization, but these are just my plans and I am verbalizing them. I don’t know what the future will bring I can only gravitate towards my goals and make them known so that if there are like-minded people our efforts can be in unison.

Enough philanthropy talk. Time for me to go train. =)

Ni wen wo ai ni you duo shen

“Mooncake represents my heart!”

Wushu
NWTC, 99Wushu, White Lotus, UCLA Wushu / gym. This week I’ve been working more on short sections and speed over full forms. Only day I did full forms was at NWTC because they were the only place with enough space to do a full form. I’ve been training every day except one day for recovery.. shoulders have been feeling a little tight and same with my back. Overall I am probably in the top shape of my life though. I am going to bring home a medal from the 10th wushu world championships.

Film
Went out to an audition for Wizards of Waverly Place. It went alright. I said my lines confidently and naturally, but regardless when I came out of the audition it made me realize I want to take some more acting classes and practice more to refine my art. It’s always good to get more practice and I am a firm believer that everything takes practice. You can be talented, but to get to that next step, it still takes practice.. whether its acting, martial arts, giving speeches, etc.

Today I went to a meet and greet with a sports agent. They help book for fitness magazines, sports commercials, and anything athletic related. They liked the pictures I had and seemed satisfied with my athletic qualifications. I’ll be hearing back from them on Friday.

Tea
AngelsTea in Nucleus Art Gallery. (Read here: http://www.angelstea.com/angels-tea-in-nucleus-the-art-gallery-and-store/) Uploaded a few more pictures to the gallery and did some facebook updates. Add Angels Tea on facebook and twitter http://twitter.com/angelstea ! Valentines day should be a good time for people to consider Angels Tea as a sexy fun gift for their significant others.

Good news is that I’ve already had to make a re-order since my inventory was running low. My family has been supportive as well and family friends have helped spread the word in nor cal and I have made a few sales to get me off my feet with this. Thank you guys! Of course the true test is to continue pushing forward and get a large retail location to distribute my product, but sales are sales and the support behind me is a very positive thing.

WushuKicks
Set up a bunch of sites related to wushukicks. Hoping to cross promote and build up traffic through related markets. I began to evaluate other niches. It goes without saying.. wushu shoes occupies a small market compared to all of martial arts shoes or martial arts equipment. Also sketching in my idea book how to redesign wushukicks cleanly. Looking to get this done soon.

Filed for incorporation at the Secretary of State building. Next step will be to set up online merchant services. Also other To Do items include: Making new business cards, getting QuickBooks Pro, and making a wushukicks intro video.

Martial Arts Nutrition
Quite a bit of back and forth has occurred with the design. The lab has tested and labeled everything on their end. I believe we are at the point where we are going to get this product up and ready soon! Excitement is in the air.

General Business / General Thoughts
The bottom line is this – everything costs money! lol

Incorporating costs money. Merchant services costs money. Pay pal takes money. Shipping costs money. Joining the Realtors board costs money. Owning a realtor supra key to open lock boxes costs money. Maintaining your membership with your local board of realtors costs money. Product development costs money. Manufacturing a product costs money. Gas costs money. Business license costs money. Franchise tax board wants money. Sellers permit costs money.

Aiyah! Why didnt anyone tell me this BEFORE I got into starting up my own businesses. (I complain, but I love the entrepreneurial lifestyle.)

I got some great accounting advice from my uncle who is a CPA and also from my mom who was a controller for a tech firm. Now I am slowly getting all my bills, accounts, and expenses in order so that I can actually see my profits and losses.

My other uncle, a former CIO, encouraged me to read “never eat alone” – a book about building relationships and connecting people. I read it that day just because I figured if I didn’t read it right then, I would probably never get around to reading it. The book has a lot of common sense ideas, but 1) its good to re-enforce those ideas and 2) within its 250ish pages it obviously did have some new information and advice that I thought was clever or motivating.

We had an entr meeting with Dave, Misa, Jaemin, and Alison yesterday. Seems like everyone has encountered the freelance blues at some point.. which is working by yourself and having your own time, but feeling strangely unmotivated. We determined a good solution to that is to work WITH people wether mentors or partners. Even if you are successful its never fun sharing that by yourself.

Seems like Dave is FINALLY going to take some caffeine and maybe start working on getting our clothes design manufactured. I give him a hard time, but I know he has been swamped with Nom Nom (www.nomnomtruck.com) and I have been equally busy preparing for World Games.

Moon Festival
Despite all this business, I had a really relaxing day with my relatives on Chinese Moon Festival. First we visited grandma then we had some crepes for lunch, mooncakes of course, and a nice bbq at my uncles house. All us cousins went to the mall and played with every single contraption in the “As Seen on TV Store”. I had some good chats with my cousin Lydia and took note that its really key to maintain a balance between friends and focusing on success.

The next day we went to a Taiwanese dinner that my aunt invited me and Lydia to. I bumped into the random-est people there: Vivy, a college friend that I hadnt seen in a long time, a bunch of the Miss Taiwan Pageant girls which I saw at the Miss Taiwan Pageant only because my roommate Eliver knew people there (read post: http://www.casualiscool.com/pictures/miss-taiwan-approves-of-angels-tea/), and my aunts friend who happened to be on the US National Taekwondo forms team.

When I set out to write this entry, I was trying to make it as short and matter of fact as possible, but I am glad I wrote all this because sometimes I look back and I think “what have I done all week”, but as soon as I write it down it makes me feel like.. “okay, I have been remotely productive”.

Re-posted from: http://www.angelstea.com/angels-tea-in-nucleus-the-art-gallery-and-store/

Nucleus Gallery

Angels Tea Inside Nucleus

You can now find the deliciously sensual Angels Tea in stores at Nucleus!

Aside from sexy tea, Nucleus also sells some really cool shirts, drawings, and toys! Check them out!

Nucleus is located at:
210 East Main Street
Alhambra, CA 91801
http://www.gallerynucleus.com/

Nucleus is a great store known for their art gallery, unique products, and collection of artwork. Nucleus offers an extensive collection of original contemporary, illustrated, graphic, commercial, and narrative art. They have exhibited both local artists and artists from abroad, and catered to an international customer base. Here are 3 of our favorite pieces.

Titled: .02 Seconds

Titled: Off Duty Ninja

Titled: Cup of Teas

by Marguerite Sauvage

Cup of Teas piece is by Marguerite Sauvage. You can get this artwork at Nucleus.

If you are around the area remember to stop in and ask to smell the heavenly aroma of Angels Tea. =)

Eliver's Bday and I have food in my mouth

Friday was Elivers birthday! We cleaned up around the pad and eliver cooked up a storm. Had a good turnout. It was Sherry, Sammy, and XJ, Elivers sf4 crew, Kelly from the miss taiwan pageant and a few of my ucla friends dropped by. I like having house parties – fun and kick back at the same time. First time all of us roomies got together for drinks and cake in a long time.

Sat and Sunday I just did some cleaning and set up my printer. The cleaning is not to be overlooked. This was much needed. This was something I’ve been meaning to do for over 6 months so this was a big deal for me. I reorganized my garage, vacuumed, and filed a TON of papers and mail and all this into my filing cabinets. I wushu’d at the park and then got some generic tea and a snakebite at yardhouse.

Monday wrote up a traffic contestation, had 2 meetings and then wushu at SCWA. I did full forms followed by a business meeting after practice. Got some good web work done and set plans to move forward.

Tuesday continued managing a couple design projects and bought some more domains. Sent out teas to Sylvia’s Cafe in Oregon. She will start featuring my teas in her cafe in Oct/Nov. so we will see how that goes.

Wed. set up 2 websites, developed a brilliant idea on online promotion (probably not a new idea, but its just that a light bulb turned on), added more products to wushukicks, and flew up north to begin my nor cal wushu training. I am in San Jose now.

Sort of a boring updates in my opinion. Im just jotting down notes to hold myself accountable and make sure that I am progressing. Since I have no job and no steady income now, its crucial that I make steps to move forward in acting and business or else I would have quit for nothing. Now with about a month left before World Games, I need to switch gears and start getting hardcore with training.

Nom Nom Truck and I

Nom Nom Banh Mi - Photo Courtesy of NomNomTruck.com

The day started off not being a Nom Nom day. I was responding to emails, updating content, and making some tweaks to various sites. A little after noon I took a shower after teaching a wushu class. When I got out I saw a missed call from David. The day suddenly became Nom Nom. David is my partner on PokerBling.com and also one of the founders of nomnomtruck.com. He was going on a dinner run with the Nom Nom Truck for the first time at USC and wanted to see if I wanted to join. It would be fun and I had already done some light training for the day. I was there.

Co-founder Jen aka Maestro of Nom Nom

Here is us in the nom nom truck.

David and I had just brought a ton of baguettes to the truck and then we proceeded to slice, dice, and grill! Then when we finished. We headed out to the forbidden land – USC! (Kidding! – Joke cuz I went to UCLA)

Here is a clip of us driving to USC. This is why I titled the post A Nom Nom Angels Tea Kinda Day. There’s all kinds of things going on in the car. There is Tiger Beer, Sexy Tea, Monica in the backseat, a green nom nom truck. It was just too fun.

Monica seemed to really like the tea blend back there. =P Made me feel good too! =) Had to turn the camera off because I was doing a little thing called driving.

Finally we served the delicious banh mi, grilled pork tacos (a personal fave), lemongrass chicken tacos, and spring rolls. Bryant from wushu saw my twitter and came on out! Thanks for dropping by Sky and Bryant!

Bryant and Sky at Nom Nom Truck

Another satisfied customer!

Nom Nom Satisfied Customer

Afterward we wrapped up and headed back to the truck drop off point. It was a fun experience for me taking customer orders, packing food, making sandwiches, talking to customers about the nom nom truck.

Angels Tea in Stores Now

JUL head NOW OPEN

Our 4 delicious flavors of Angels Tea can now be find in retail locations! Our first shop JUL head located conveniently on Main Street in Alhambra just opened and was happy to have the beautifully designed Angels Tea tins featured on their counters as a stylish and healthy product to sell.

If you are around the area you can visit:
109 W. Main St.
Alhambra, Ca 91801

…and of course ask for Angels Tea. =)

Me and Miss Teen Taiwan

Here is a pic with the Miss Taiwan Teen winner. (Their event was before we got there so we got there in time to just snap a picture with the winner – Michelle) (Also, have a pic with Kelly who was Miss Taiwan USA reppin some Angels Tea)

Miss Taiwan Worlds 2009 Pageant
Saturday I went to a 2009 Miss Taiwan Pageant because my roommate had 2 tickets and 2 of his friends were in the pageant. It was close by in El Monte so I said hey I like places that are close by and Taiwanese models so why not. The pageant was cool and I’ve never been to one of these things so I got to see them go through different outfits, answer different world peace type questions, and then get crowned and such. It was a nice event except it was 3-4 hours long I think. I thought they just did one aisle strut each and then the judges voted, but it was a much longer process. In the middle there was a break sorta and Eliver and I went to get In n Out burgers FTW. I also liked hearing their speeches which were in half Chinese/Taiwanese and half English. Most of these girls were from UCs or other respectable colleges so it was good to see educated, talented, beautiful young ladies representing. Overall good event and congrats to all the winners!

Angles Tea
Made our first sale August 24th! Yay!! Thanks for the support everyone!

Then on Sunday.. I worked out and worked on the tea site all day and had another product photoshoot. I been workin harder now that I am jobless than when I had a full time job. haha, but I am LOVING my life more! I was up photoshopping until 5am.

Here is one of the pictures I shot/photoshopped. Notice the AngelsTea T-Shirt she is wearing. =)

Angels Tea Fitness Model