teenage mutant ninja turtles casting

Film
Saturday I went to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles audition! No, it was not for the role of Michelangelo or Raphael. It was to cast for the foot clan soldiers. I hear that the movie has no official funding yet and that the casting was more of a publicity stunt (It was held open in public in the middle of Hollywood and Highlands). Nonetheless, it was good times because I got to see a bunch of martial arts / wushu people all in one place. I ran into Phil Dang, He Jing De, DY, Phil Sahagun, Yan Wei, the rest of EMC, Xin, Roy, Andrew, Jacob R., Aoni, Matt, and the list goes on and on. I performed longfist, dropped off my headshots and demo reel and then headed out for my other shoot.

I am shooting a web series / pilot where I play an asian camera-man / film editor. It is in Bruno/Borat style where I am documenting the adventures of a crazy Australian. This is less of an “action” role and more of an opportunity for me to try different things (I have an accent!) and play someone other than a “hardcore badass”.

Due to my various online promotion pushing to play the Kato role, 2 editors contacted me wanting to interview me to discuss my quest for the role of Kato in the Green Hornet.

Wushu
Fri I went to Wushu practice. Sat the TMNT casting was the extent of my wushu. Sun I just dropped by to say hi to Tamiko and Ming. Ming is awesome. She is such a good instructor and person. I didnt train because I slept 20 minutes too long, but went to say hi nonetheless. I did some light jogging then went to eat at Tea Station.

Met a friend of a friend who is sponsored by TapOut. I am going to talk to him and see if we can get the team jackets sponsored by TapOut. I need to compile a video of US wushu and sanshou. I am excited to see how this turns out. It would be awesome to be sponsored by TapOut.

Business
PokerBling – Emailed and faxed out and followed up with all the contacts that I have for now and will wait a week or so to see where this goes.
WushuKicks – Want to plan a restructuring and reorganization / clean up site / add more unique products / renegotiate with suppliers.
Clothing – Got an email back from pattern maker. Some aspects of production are still on hold.
Tea- Promotional shirts are done!

Misc
Went out to Hollywood on Fri. and hung out with Matt B by Venice Beach on Saturday. Sunday was an errands kinda day. Spent most of the day tearing my harddrive out of its external case. =P

Magnolia LA Downtown - A Meeting of Minds

 

Wushu
Been feelin eh~ Sorta slacked this week. I’ve gone to practice about every other day.. which is not good. I should be going everyday and the days that I do go.. I sorta just jog and then stretch. haha. I’ll have to really step it up in the upcoming months anyways, so I figure I don’t need to burn myself out right now. Still, I don’t like this lethargic feeling. Maybe it’s because I am having a lot on my plate.

Clothing
Ever since our pattern maker got sorta upset about some hiccups in stitch/screenprint work we havent really hard back. We will wait and see on this until next week as everyone has various things going on so a few days to see. I am still optimistic that our project will be moving forward. Expected completion date is still targeted for August.

Also, promotional shirts I’ve been trying to get printed finally have all the correct graphics submitted to the screen printer. I should get these shirts by next week.

Tea
Got my labels in the mail finally. The shipped it to a different address so it’s just been sitting there. Need to make some SMALL modifications, but overall it looks good! I think I have some additional embellishments in mind, but down the line anything can change so I can make modifications based off of feedback. Chocolates are go! They are getting hand made as we speak! lol, well maybe not this minute, but they should be done in 2 weeks.

PokerBling
Got some contact information and emailed information over to Bellagio, The Wynn, and Commerce Casino regarding our products. It’s fun to think our products will be all these casinos. Our product makes sense though so its just more about making them aware than “selling” them on it. We are also almost ready to come out with our new poker design. Way to go Dave!

Film
Sunday had a BBQ at DBrocca’s place and discussed his new short. I might have to do an asian accent in it, which I was hesistant about as far as how it would come across to the asian community etc etc, but its supposed to be a comedy and a satire plus I want a challenge. Also, I thought who am I to turn down any opportunities to work? So I’ll be shooting on Saturday near Santa Monica. I think it could also be good practice for the Kato role.

Misc
Went to Tim’s bday at Blue Dahlia on Tues. – It was pretty fun and found out his brother who has the same birthday as me happens to work in the twin building right across from my office.

Yesterday Misa set up a lunch for young entrepreneurs. We have about 6-8 people in the group. It was a good lunch in downtown at Magnolia. Magnolia had good ambiance and a nice bar. We didn’t drink at lunch, but could imagine it being a relaxing place to hang out at in the evening. I got to brainstorm and discuss all the projects I was working on and since everyone is pretty business-minded I think I got a lot out of the suggestions/comments.

Tea
Sent out revision 7. Got the okay on it, but still need to make minor text changes.

Clothing
Sent out 3 different designs for basic shirts to be made
Sent out text and logo files to pattern maker

PokerBling
Collected payment on sales
Learned about increasing conversions and helping retailers from a wholesaler perspective
Dropped off new inventory for Bicycle Casino

Real Estate
Turned in realtor ethics test completion certificate

This Sat. and Sun update.

Errands/General

Gave myself a haircut, went to best buy to find out about fixing a busted external harddrive, changed casualiscool.com’s theme, showed a room to a potential roommate, lunch with a friend, and went to a job interview at a japanese restaurant.

Last week randomly I decided to apply for a job at a yogurt shop. All the other applicants were just out of high school.. and I just got off of work from my banking/finance job. The interview with the yogurt job was cool b/c the owner interviewed me and he happened to be the owner for ONO Hawaiian BBQ and also another chain of restaurants. He also just finished getting the legal paper work done for franchising his successful restaurants. Anyways, after a day of interviews with high school kids, he was shocked and confused to be interviewing me – an actor, entrepreneur, compliance associate, and realtor. He skipped talking about serving yogurt and eventually asked me if I’d be interested in opening his first franchise store. Anyways, very cool guy and he said he would contact me after my competition next week if he had anything suitable for me.

Meanwhile, as I was waiting for my interview I chatted it up with the japanese restaurant next door. I got an interview (which I went to today) as a host. Parking was terrible to find today, aside from that I think it went well. I should be hearing back by thursday.

So what am I trying to do? Why go from banking to yogurt? I just like interacting with people and having something fun and supplemental on non 9-5 hours. I am only looking for 2 days a week and I would probably go 1 night and 1 weekend or something… I cant work on business on my computer or train wushu ALL the time. =P Its funny how a spontaneous trip to the mall led to a yogurt shop interview and then a japanese restaurant interview.

Wushu

Sat. Cleaned up straight sword 4th section, did a ton of 540 outside kicks, 2 full forms, wore new shoes.

Sun. Finalized tai chi nandus, 1 full form, light conditioning, finalized registration and forms for team trials.

US Wushu Team Trials is next Saturday June 20th. I am 100% ready. I am going to train a little lighter to start recovering. For the past 3 months I have trained on average 6 days a week. Now I just need to let my body recover and max out. I am flying up north on Thursday to get ready for the tournament which is going to be held in my hometown of Cupertino. Wo yi ding hui ying.

Real Estate

Mandatory Realtor class, got lock box electronic key set up, checked out a property. I met a guy when I was checking out the property and he has just bought the unit next door. He was a CPA and owned about 12 or more properties.. and this was part time to his finance job. He seemed like a very smart and experienced guy when it comes to investment properties. He told me to keep in touch, so I just emailed him a few hours ago. We will see if anything develops.

PokerBling + Clothing

Had a meeting with David to discuss getting more poker bracelets into other casinos in LA and Vegas. We are also preparing for an upcoming WSOP (world series of poker) event in vegas.. so we will partner up with another company that has a booth there. David also brought over couple boxes of bracelets that just arrived. I’ll have to drop those off at Hollywood Park Casino sometime next week if I can squeeze that in between my training schedule.

I have been designing some fashion articles lately and we revamped our design and made some improvements and adjustments which I will take to my pattern maker tomorrow or tuesday (depending on his availability.) It should be cool. Hoping to get this back by Friday.

Tea

Sat and Sun. I have been going back and forth with my tea source. I sent him a couple different versions of my label design. It’s finished, but it wasnt the right size as his template and he emailed me back today as if it was really complicated to make it fit. I was a little frustrated, but I resized it myself and just re-sent it back… so hopefully this will work. Honestly, I have everything else ready to go except for the sizing of label.. it shouldnt be this complicated. Hopefully this will be ready also by Friday or sometime next next week. Also designed some promotional shirts for a few of my businesses and need to send out the designs to my shirt maker.

Beverage

I’ve been working on a beverage. I got this idea when I started up on my tea project and realized that not only loose leaf teas were popular and tasty, but beverages would also be a quick alternative. I spent fri, sat, and sun designing a mock up of what I’d like the label to look like. From here I’ll send it to a pro to clean up / revise. At least I have a clear idea of what I want and it’s easier to show someone than to vaguely describe it. I’ll be sending this to some buddies who have experience in the field to take a look at.. we’ll have to revise it no doubt.. and then hopefully within a month we will have these labeled and bottled with a custom blend. Even though I am really excited about my other 2 projects.. from a long term perspective I am REALLY excited about this one. Still, this is the newest project and most up in the air at the moment.

TO DO

Contact and draft up new agreement for web developer to join on pixnation

Finish Real Estate ethics course

Look into transparent labels

Work on WushuKicks site upgrade (long term project)