The Victor

I joke with my friends all the time about how each year seems to be better than before. It’s not clear to any of us how we come to that conclusion, or how we measure it, but it’s more or less a feeling of how happy we feel by the end of December. Right now, the feeling is great, and it’s very profound. For many of us, the year began with an outlook of making something happen, doing something big, or what we like to say, makin’ moves. Throw in a hella, and you got yourself some serious progress.

2010 started off with a very important mission started by one of my closest friends and room mate, Billy Shih. Haiti was struck by a terrible earth quake leaving many familes in ruin. Billy arranged a way for everyone from friends, family and strangers to come together and raise over $17,000 from over 100 individual contributors! He demonstrated that we are all capable of tremendous philanthropic change. We all began to feel a sense of empowerment. The events that followed led to successful engagements with friends and family with my photography business. I was given the opportunity to photograph many families and couples as a way to drive fundraising. The result was a complete win – win situation for all of us. Fast forward to today, Billy, and several others including myself, are now starting a philanthropy to achieve the same effect. These two events act as book ends with many stories of heart ache, camaraderie, triumph and inspiration in between. Luckily, it has been a strong start and a strong finish to an outstanding year. Many lessons were learned and many more about to be created.

Below I have listed some of those events and the people who have been a significant part of the ups and downs. Some events are small, some are groups of events, some are just concepts. Nonetheless, they have been very meaningful to me and my life. My ideal situation would mean it would be the year 9999, which would allow me to list 99 events and 99 people to include more of each. Alas, it’s only 2010 and I was forced to highlight only a few.

Before you read the list, I would like to say, thank you to all my friends and family. Thank you for being patient and understanding. Thank you for being supportive of my ideas and tolerant of my methods. You being a part of my life has made it better and the events below could not have happened without you there. All of you.

20 events

• Visiting 7 different cities because of the “Year of Travel” goal
• Supporting Billy’s Birthday mission
• Moving to Artefact’s new office
• Retrieving Austin’s phone in SF from sketchy kids who wanted a slurpee in return
• Playing Catan and stealing everyone’s ore, twice
• Supporting the talented Deborah Yen with a fashion photo shoot
• Hosting a unique Flavor party
• Revisiting my ambitions and outlook after turning 25
• Celebrating the 2nd Annual March Madness Las Vegas trip
• Supporting the Ping video and photo shoot
• Finding romance
• Surviving the 3rd Annual fast food pot luck
• Photographing Liz Truong trash her dress in NYC and Seattle
• Photographing 8 weddings this season
• Going 500% during the September Las Vegas trip
• Reliving the amazing production quality provided by USC events for Halloween
• Learning about game mechanics and making that a focus in my career
• Joining MDA’s Young Professionals Committee
• Co-founding a philanthropy

10 people

• Lucy Cho
• Billy Shih
• John Taing
• Michelle Moy
• Yaddi Ty
• Varisa Verasiri
• Christopher Konrad
• Liz Truong
• Connie Wong
• Jesse Graupmann

Bonus extra person for the new 2011 year: My second nephew who will be joining us this Spring! Thank you Sharon (and PJ) for having such a beautiful family.

Happy new years everyone!

[Photos were taken when I was visiting Portland, Oregon at the Jupiter Hotel]

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