Martial Arts
Outside of academia, I practice martial arts extensively, enjoy photography, and compose music. My primary art is Kajukenbo, which I practice at Seven Star Women's Kung Fu. I also train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Framework Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Capoeira Angola at the Union Cultural Center. Seattle is a great city for martial arts training. I find that I am at my happiest when I am moving, whether this is simply walking around campus, lifting weights, or wrestling my friends. Taking on the martial arts as a serious leisure activity has been essential for my wellbeing. The bonds I have formed through these experiences are among the most important in my life, and I look forward to continued training through the end of my degree and beyond.
Photography
I had always been a creative kid. I grew up drawing, creating fantasy worlds with LEGOs, and painted in high school. I got my first camera, a little Sony point and shoot, ahead of my Spanish exchange trip during my senior year in 2006. Here I recognized the power of being able to catalog the people and places that were important to me. During my junior year of undergrad, I worked at a KFC/Pizza Hut to save money and buy my first DSLR, a Nikon D40. I took it with me to Japan during my study abroad and again began capturing the world around me. My Japanese was quite functional, but things did sometimes get lonely when language barriers hindered deep conversations. When I was alone, I would wander the neighborhoods around Nagoya Gakuin University and watch as the spring buds became flowers, and finally yielded luscious, emerald leaves.
I used the camera for a few other occasions, but was largely inactive until driving from Pennsylvania to Washington state with my dad in the fall of 2014. In Seattle, I found a new source of inspiration: the martial arts. I now work as the photographer for my kwoon, capturing my peers as they make leaps in their training. I've also moved into sports and event photography for my department. Broadly I have been investing more time in understanding composition, photo editing, and a skosh of videography. All of the photography featured on this website is my own, unless otherwise noted.
Composition
From middle school through the end of high school I played the trombone. In that time, I dabbled with the trumpet, piano, marimbas, cello, violin, and guitar. I still have dreams of learning the tenor saxophone. Dreeeeeeaaaaaaam... One skill that I have retained is music composition. It is relaxing, but also highly detailed. The results of changing a single note and building an entire piece is satisfying in that tangible changes happen in real-time. It's a pleasing collision of objective goals and subjective satisfaction, and it challenges me to think flexibly and to remain open to the possibilities and power of change.