Alaska Part 2: My Souvenir

I wanna go back to my sugarbean... I really do...

This is lame I guess, but there are so many people you are stuck with on a cruise ship for 10 days that capturing their photo for the sake of my bad memory is all that I wanted. Most people you only meet once and then forget about cause nothing really stood out, but on occasion you will run into somebody more than once and those are the people that usually have something interesting to say... and so here is my small collection.

I asked if I could take this picture. This is Professor Yang, he is professor to a Martial Arts History class. He helps run a studio near Palo Alto that is the only martial arts studio certified by the Xiaolin Temple in China. I had dinner with him a few days later and found all this out. His favorite thing to talk about is how India tries to take credit for the birth of Asian martial arts.

I never actually talked to this man, but I saw him almost everyday at the same table, either smoking alone of with his wife. He looked so badass with his cigarettes and his rocky stature that I decided to snag a photo of him one day... and of course he wasn't hard to find.

Lunch: "So what school do you go to?" "San Jose State." "Oh, what are you studying." "Animation/Illustration." "Our daughter works at San Jose State, in the art department." "Oh really!? What's her name?" "Hmmmm, well tell us if you know this one... Her name is Elizabeth Briggs." "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!????"

I ran into this lady so much, that I just had to take a photo of her. When I asked, she started shying up, saying "Why do you want a picture of a weird person?" She is an advent trader of stuff and probably the most flashy character on board. That panda hat she traded for an elephant hat because she is a SF Giants fan and her favorite player is Sandoval, nickname: Kung-Fu Panda.

Check out the guy on the right

He hella looks like Nikita! Turns out he is from Russia and is sailing for 40 days with his girlfriend; they are both dancers for the ship.



Okay so this was the souvenir of my trip, an exchange between two people that will probably never meet again. This is about Stephanie, a little girl I met on the ship the first day. I was drawing in the lobby, looking for things to sketch, and her and her mother walked by and she waved at me . I waved back. Her mother and her came up to me to look at my drawings, to their dismay I had only one page of sketches.

I kept seeing them after that and she was so cute, and always waved at me. I tried to get a picture of her waving, but always came out blurry.

One night, I went to the lounge to watch a band perform and I saw little Stephanie dancing with this boy and everyone was laughing and pointing because it was super cute. I decided to draw them and before I left, I showed the drawing to her parents.
From that day on, every time I ran into them they would always say hi and talk to me about stuff. I even had lunch with the family but each time, I would never have the camera dammit!
It wasn't until the final day that her father nervously asked if he could buy my sketch. I was somewhat surprised, but I decided to just give it to them. I literally ripped it out of my sketchbook and wrote a little message on the back. Her father said he was going to laminate and frame it.

And then right before I left the ship, I got my souvenir! I guess it sounds creepy now that I think of it, but it really isn't. It's weird to think that sketch is with some people who I will never see again and I wonder what little Stephanie will think of it growing up. Who knows though, I ran into my teacher's parents, maybe our paths will cross again.

PS. I saw "Moon Chaser" and was very impressed! That's so awesome it's going to Ottawa! Everyone did so well!