Tornado part 1

Leah C.

March 1, 2010 - 12:00 PM

A tornado starts out very small, gradually picking up speed and pulling everything towards it. I felt like I was spinning in a tornado since last Tuesday. Meetings after meetings after meetings. With Hong Kong Night looming in the distance, the pressure and stress started to sink in. I seriously had a panic attack when I was talking with Ashley, one of our vice presidents. There was just so much going on that week as well as some frustration with the exec members. I also skimped out on my training sessions for the entire week with the UO wushu team due to an slight knee injury. So last week was all about recuperation and HKSA.

Tuesday we held a meeting with the committee and began seriously planning for Hong Kong Night. General Meetings were to be postponed until next term and filled up instead with prop making days. This year we are planning to do a skit, so there's a lot of preparation before hand. We planned out dance schedules, photo shoots and filming days for our promotional video. We also scheduled a prop making session for Friday from 12pm-5pm. During the meeting we also discussed what we were going to do during our senate meeting. I asked those who were interested in going to the meeting to stay and help prepare a small presentation.

Alex, HKSA's flagship outreach was our key source of knowledge in preparing our request to the ASUO senate for extra funding for the night. He had previously stood before the senate to request money for a UO Chinese literary magazine and knew what questions would arise. The main goal is to create an argument, without raising any questions from the senate. The less questions raised, the more solid our reasoning will be. On Wednesday, Melissa the fundraising chairmen, as well as Alex presented our case. After watching the UO Forensic team request an larger sum then us, with failure to prove where each dollar would be spent, I felt confident in our case. We had given the senate our budget list for Hong Kong Night, with detailed quotes. We also calculated the amount we had to support the night and the amount needed. The ASUO senate accepted our request. HKSA now has a solid budget for the night and I'm so relieved we have that. This makes it a lot easier for us to provide enough food for the night as well as initiating some of our decoration ideas.

After the senate hearing on Wednesday, Thursday was the day for our HKSA photo shoot. Tanya, one of our new members this year helped us in photographing for our HKSA Night poster. There were 3 shoots we were planning to do. The first was in our character. The second was in our "agent" form, and the last was classy or formal. It was really fun to get together and to enjoy ourselves without stressing on planning. I still need to sort through all the photos and edit them. I will be replacing the background with a Hong Kong scene to create an illusion that we are really in Hong Kong!

On Friday, we started on making our props. From 12-5, volunteers stopped in to help make a double decker bus, red taxi, and a car, all out of cardboard, construction paper and paint. We are still not yet done, and will need more time to paint 2 large backdrops. We also started video recording some of our promo footage for the night. Soon to be released after spring break. I will end my blog here and continue with the weekend in the next submission.