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PS: The image above was taken from a clip of Community, a TV show on NBC I picked up right before finals. Super funny. Second only to 30 Rock in my books right now.

Great Night = The Great Arts Send-off

Did you know that before the first The Great Arts Send-Off (TGAS) in 2009, there was no graduation dinner for Arts graduates?

Well that all changed when four Arts clubs joined together and created TGAS, a dinner/dance celebrating the 4+ years an undergraduate has spent reading, writing, highlighting, procrastinating, sleeping, and/or partying since stepping into UBC. TGAS is to properly celebrate graduates’ success and let’s face it: the 3 minutes walking across the stage at convocation is not enough for the amount of hard partying and work done to get an Arts degree.

I joined  this year’s TGAS promotions committee because it is such an important event for Arts students. Last year’s event had over 300 people attending and this year it’s bigger, better, and greater.

TGAS 2010* is at the Renaissance Hotel in Downtown Vancouver on April 10th, 2010. Everyone is invited, because how can you celebrate graduates without their friends, family and professors that made it all happen? Even if you aren’t graduating or you’re not in the Faculty of Arts, you should definitely come, dress-up, and enjoy a great night.

For $50 each for the first 300 tickets ($75 for the ones following), you get: a fantastic 3-course meal (Bailey’s Irish Cream Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Bean Anglaise & Strawberry Compote for dessert…doesn’t that sound good?), dancing, music, the Dean of Arts Nancy Gallini and Dr. Eric Nellis as the guest speakers, and a night you will never forget.

Tickets are sold at the TGAS Ticket Booth at south-side of the SUB (doors facing the Aquatic Centre) from March 22-24, and at Buchanan D MASS between March 25 and 26. You can also get tickets at the Outpost at the SUB and online.

Visit the TGAS website, Facebook Group and Fan Page, and blog for more information. Check out the Facebook Event Page too for good measure.

*This event is endorsed by The Committee for Fun**

**The Committee for Fun’s consists of Eric Chow and everyone in the world who enjoys having a good time.

Beats and Tunes: AJ Rafael

Foreword:

When you have an assignment due, midterms to study for, pre-readings needed to be read, lecture notes to review, and any other work you should be doing, what do you do? You procrastinate.

Procrastination is always present when you have a busy schedule. And in university, that schedule is packed with school work, parties, spending time with the family and going out to relax. But in that block of time you put the label on as work, your mind wanders and you go on the Internet.

Procrastination has a sneaky and incredible way of creeping into work-time in the form of relaxing that you convince yourself. 5 minutes of break from work turns into 2 hours on the Internet.

I have done a lot of procrastinating and when I do procrastinate, I often find myself on YouTube where I find some extremely talented, but unsigned, singers. I will post such talented musicians/artists on my blog so when you are taking a break you can check my blog for something that might interest you. Let the Beats and Tunes reel begin!

AJ Rafael

The Talent

AJ Rafael is a 20-year-old Filipino-American artist in California. He plays the guitar, piano, ukulele and drums, does his own vocals and also writes his own songs. AJ was at the Berklee College of Music (incredible!) but left in 2009 to pursue his career in music. In the winter of 2008 he created a band (drums, bass, lead guitar, and him being the lead singer).  Check AJ out on his myspace and Youtube. He is now unsigned, but hopefully that situation will change very soon.

How I discovered him

Have you heard Miley Cyrus’ The Climb? Well, the song is actually very good (despite what you would expect from the original artist) and has been covered by many people. So I was searching for such covers when I discovered AJ. As with lots of YouTube artists, he started out by singing covers, all of them which were very good. Then I found his original songs which really showed his talent for singing and song writing. The lyrics are meaningful, not the mass-produced-trash-to-make-lots-of-money kind of music and shows he really put a lot of thought into his songs. The music industry needs talent, and AJ is the one of them.

Choice Song

Check out one of my favourite songs from him which is also on iTunes: I Just Want You.

A Seed of Empathy

Darren was the oldest child I ever saw in a Roots of Empathy class. He was in Grade 8 and had been held back twice. He was two years older than everyone else and already starting to grow a beard. I knew his story: his mother had been murdered in front of his eyes when he was four years old, and he had lived in a succession of foster homes ever since. Darren looked menacing because he wanted us to know he was tough: his head was shaved except for a ponytail at the top and he had a tattoo on the back of his head.

The instructor of the Roots of Empathy program was explaining to the class about differences in temperament that day. She invited the young mother who was visiting the class with Evan, her six-month-old baby, to share her thoughts about her baby’s temperament. Joining in the discussion, the mother told the class how Evan liked to face outwards when he was in the Snugly and didn’t want to cuddle into her and she wished she had a more cuddly baby. As the class ended, the mother asked if anyone wanted to try on the Snugly which was green and trimmed with pink brocade. To everyone’s surprise, Darren offered to try it, and as the other students scrambled to get ready for lunch, he strapped it on. Then he asked if he could put Evan in. The mother was a little apprehensive, but she handed him the baby, and he put Evan in, facing towards his chest. That wise little baby snuggled right in, and Darren took him into a quiet corner and rocked aback and forth with the baby in his arms for several minutes.

Finally, he came back to where the mother and the Roots of Empathy instructor were waiting and he asked: “If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you could still be a good father?”

I first heard this story from an associate professor at UBC at the Reading Week Project Orientation. She talked about how the Roots of Empathy project allows children to learn empathy from interacting with infants brought to their classrooms. Through interaction with the baby, the children learn how delicate a baby is, how innocent they are, and learn empathy.

This story was unlike any story I have heard before. A boy who has various unfortunate circumstances and seen by others as “bad,” a “nuisance” and a “problem” sees hope in the form of a baby. Love is a faint memory to him, perhaps not even existent. An abandoned child kicked around like a soccer ball from one home to the next. But from the few moments of contact with a baby, he sees humanity in himself. He sees himself as a father with love to give.

Like the mother of the baby in the story, I judged Darren from the first paragraph. But when you peel away his act of being tough, his tattoo, you find a child with an innocent heart, and has a caring soul. You feel guilty for judging Darren based on the only side you see of him, and fail to recognize that there may be something special in Darren.

I felt guilty for not even thinking that there could be something good in Darren. I misunderstood him. Like only seeing the corner of a picture and already making assumptions and critiques on what the entire picture should look like. But when the rest of the picture is revealed, you have that “Ah ha…” moment. You feel stupid. You feel ashamed of yourself.

“If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you could still be a good father?”

The take home message: don’t judge people by first impressions. I guess it’s a corny message, something that has been said by countless others. But that day I fully realized how important it is to know someone through interaction. During the first minutes you meet someone, you make assumptions beyond what that person tells you. For good or for bad, your assumptions may be wrong.

Remember Darren’s story when you meet someone and you might find yourself with a very interesting person, someone who wants to be a good father and give love to another human being.