Summer 2005

Hola!

I have taken up someone’s brilliant suggestion of letting someone else manage my updates and signed up for this blog. Now, you can access this bedtime story anytime you want, anywhere in the world. Don’t nod off now…

Ten shades darker and at least five pounds heavier I come to you, thanks to a rather intense summer. I’m in the process of uploading seven months’ worth of pictures so if my writing seems a bit off, it may be due to a case of karpal tunnel caused by constant hand-on-mouse motions.

Since finishing the spring semester in late May, I’ve traversed the length of the United States. Besides Iowa and Illinois, which I count as one, I’ve seen: Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. Those of you who really care about me, uh, I mean, those with good memories, will remember me mentioning that I’d be in Florida for six weeks. Well, we took good ol’ George, our 16-year-old Toyota Corolla, all 1,500 miles to Florida from Iowa and 1,500 miles back again. While in Florida, I put another 1,000 miles on the old geezer. Boy, do we need a new car.

That paragraph was for those who’re geographically and car-ically inclined. Now, we can get to the update proper.

So, some of you thought I may have dropped off the face of the planet. Yes, this planet. The fact is I was at the Poynter Institute for six weeks (I did try to sneak off to the dorm for some “sleep” at nights). [In some ways, it felt like I was on another planet.] Now that I’ve been through Poynter, I know that this was exactly what I needed, as a journalist. It was a good place to learn about newspaper writing, since my experience is in magazine writing, and I networked with some of the top names in the industry. Unfortunately, I still have this master’s degree to complete.

I met 27 other budding journalists—both reporters/writers and visual journos—and a wide range of faculty from all over the country. Baby Js was what Jacqui, our Pulitzer-prize winning editor called us. And at the end of the program, we had a recruiting day and met recruiters from many papers—some from far-flung corners of the country but most were from Florida. Two of my friends have been hired after the program, one because of an interview at the recruiting day. Now, if only I can wangle something like that when and if I graduate in December.

If you’d like to read more about my adventures at Poynter, go to the side bar below. Just a few highlights—it involves hookers, hurricanes and nude dancers (Boy, am I selling this side bar!)

Besides Poynter, Seng Keat and I also made our way to Vancouver, Canada, for Seng Jin’s, SK’s brother’s, wedding. There, we met all the relatives we’d been avoiding for three years. The last time we’d seen any of them was at our wedding. Jin’s wedding proved more raucous than ours. Uncle Thomas tried repeating the “miracle” that happened during our wedding—and tried jiving to the music--but unfortunately after two knee replacements, his joints wouldn’t cooperate. But the rest of us pretty much rocked the party! We even made the band play “Funky Town,” a song it vowed never to play.

We ate a lot in Vancouver—practically closed every restaurant we went to dinner. When we weren’t eating, we put our tourist dollars to good use. We visited Butchart Gardens, on Victoria Island. It was one long ferry ride to and fro, plus the 45-minute drive to the ferry terminal and back.

Besides the flora, we also enjoyed Vancouver’s fauna, in the form of Orcas or killer whales. Three orca pods live off the coast of Vancouver and Washington State. We saw a three-week old baby and a 90+-year-old matriarch. They were resting when we saw them. If I were them I’d rest by bedding down in a hammock by the beach but these whales continue to swim while resting. Half their brain sleeps while the other half tells them to avoid boats and other such floating things.

SK had signed up to do two days of RAGBRAI (the bike ride across Iowa) this year but we decided against going. Otherwise, I’d still be packing out of one suitcase into another, after doing that the weekend before.

We’ve just managed to find our apartment floor again, in time for my family’s weeklong visit beginning Aug. 14. My mom, sister and oldest nephew will be setting foot on American soil for the first time. I’m going to take them to see the cow made of butter at the Iowa State Fair and other such interesting Iowan artifacts. But, that’s a story for another time.

Til then…hope to hear from you. Write me or post a comment on the blog.
☺

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You whose eyes have made it this far will be rewarded. This is the juiciest bit of reporting I’ve never done. Our instructors said we should write and publish this but we’d paid our dues and had finished our last article by then.

So, the last weekend in Florida, we were evacuated out of Nu Residence in Eckerd College, where we’d been living for the past five weeks. The College was taking precautionary measures because there was a slight chance that Hurricane Dennis may come our way.

Our self-appointed Jewish mom, Jeanne, got a travel agent to set us up in a hotel. Little did the 27 of us (most fresh grads in their early or mid 20s) know what we were in for. Our hotel is on 34th St. in St. Petersburg, Florida, which apparently, is kind of a dodgy neighborhood. We found out just how dodgy it was.

We found out when my 22-year-old friends, Anna and Shauna, tried checking into their hotel room but found their key cards didn’t work. While Anna went to the front desk to find out what’s going on, Shauna waited by the room. And while waiting, she saw a dingy guy with three duffel bags come out of the room. Later, they found out from the hotel manager the room they were supposed to stay in had been broken into three times in the last week.

The room faces the back of the hotel and Kelly, who leads the Poynter Reporting and Writing program, suspects a member of the hotel staff had been sneaking out the master key so rooms could be used for prostitution. When questioned by the Poynter people though, the manager was evasive, even though only a master key could override a room key, which is why my friends couldn’t get into their room. When they checked into their new room, they found a Band-Aid stuck over the room’s peephole and stains of unknown origins on the walls.

The sheriff deputy who came to take my friends’ statements was shocked to find that there were about 30 of us young ‘uns here. He said we shouldn’t be there and that if we need him, he’d be on duty until midnight that day.

We moved into another hotel the next day.

That’s the hooker story.

Now, for the strip club owner.

During our second week at Poynter, we were given an exercise: drive up to Tampa, which is about half an hour away, use the public records and find out as much about a mystery person as you can. They told us only the name of the person and even then, they only did that at 8 a.m. the morning of the exercise. We were supposed to prepare a presentation on the person, based on what we found, on a specific aspect of his life, whether personal, legal, financial, etc. But we weren’t told the category until 3 p.m. that afternoon. Our presentation had to be ready by 5 p.m.

We were given the name Joe Redner.

From searching through public records, we found out this guy is famous for owning a series of adult entertainment outlets, the most famous of which is Mons Venus, which is patronized by famous people and which is featured in a rap song. Redner has also run for mayor and has sued the FBI and the President of the United States because he felt his freedom of expression was inhibited—he tried to protest at a rally where George W. Bush was present and was told to leave. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

We also found out he has several wives, some legal, some not, though not all at the same time. He has been arrested many times, including once for cocaine possession. He has a net worth of about US$2 million. He owns several successful businesses.

There was a lot we could say about this guy and we were ready to do so at 5 p.m. When the first group went up to the stage to present though, they, and the rest of us, found out we had a mystery guest. It was Joe Redner. Several people turned pale.

Redner took notes and we had a Q&A session with him after dinner. He was pretty nice about the whole affair and didn’t care that we were raking up all this stuff about him. His main objection was that someone said he was somewhat “scandalous” (I can’t remember the exact term) and he said that’s a value judgment. And he protested at someone calling his establishment a strip club. He said since the dancers were nude to begin with, that that wasn’t accurate. He didn’t mind Mons Venus being called a nude bar.

The lesson we learned that day was that we should take responsibility for everything we write. And that we should be able to look whoever we write about in the face.

Now, aren’t you glad you read this side bar?

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