Todd Wong with Mike Webber – host for the SFU Recreation Department's Award Night – photo Deb Martin.

“I was just a student up here at SFU,
when I coined the phrase “Gung Haggis Fat Choy,” back in 1993 when I
first helped out with the Robbie Burns Day celebrations,” I told the
audience at the Simon Fraser University Recreation Awards Night Spring
Ceilidh.

“Terry Fox was just a student up
here when he was diagnosed with cancer, and when he decided to run
across Canada to raise funds for cancer research, ” I continued. 
Sometimes when we come up with ideas, we have no idea where they will
go.  Gung Haggis Fat Choy has grown from a small dinner to serving 600 people.  It has inspired the Gung Haggis Fat Choy BC television performance special.

“It’s about planting seeds. This is what we do as student leaders,” as
I encouraged the first graduates of the Recreation Department’s
Leadership Certificate program, after I had accepted my Recreation
Award for Outstanding Contribution by Alumni.

The SFU Recreation Department
held their 2nd Annual Awards Night and Spring Ceilidh (Celebration
Party).  The East Gymnasium was decorated, a covering protected
the Gym floor, and banquet tables were all laid out in front of a
gigantic 12 foot rear projection video screen.  Definitely an
important evening.

The evening started off with a reception at 6pm.  Appetizers,
juice, tea and coffee.  At 7pm, bagpipe music came over the sound
system and the evening’s host Mike Webber explained the purpose of this
new celebration, and the growing importance of the recreational
department.  He talked about the growing success of the SFU Terry Fox Day with Terry Fox Run, and the inaugural Gung Haggis Fat Choy Canadian Games.

Jerry Zaslove, Craig Asmundson, Todd
Wong and Deb Martin – all hold their awards and prizes from the SFU
Recreation Department's Award Night.

After the certificates for the Leadership Program were awarded.  A special award for retired professor Jerry Zaslove
was presented.  Jerry had chaired the English Department as well
as directing the Humanities Department.  Plus he is an incredible
basketball player – still going strong at age 70.  He was one of
the original SFU professors from 1965.

Craig Asmundson,
received a special award for his role in helping to revitalize SFU’s
Terry Fox Day and the SFU Terry Fox Run.  Craig is a senior
lecturer of Kinesiology, and he was my instructor when I took
Kinesilogy 100.  It was that year in 1995, that Craig shared with
his students he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.  Craig
then went on to be proactive in the Greater Vancouver Community, for
developing Men’s support groups for prostate cancer.  

The SFU Recreation department awarded me for my contributions in
helping to create the SFU Gung Haggis Fat Choy Canadian Games. For a few years the SFU Recreation department had wrestled with ways to
bring the university’s Scottish heritage into the forefront.  Then
one day, in 2002, they found a picture of me in the Vancouver Sun with
a story about a former SFU student who created the Gung Haggis Fat
Choy: Toddish McWong’s Robbie Burns Chinese New Year dinner.  In
the summer of 2003, Intramurals coordinator Geoff Vogt telephoned me,
and invited me to help create something unique for the Simon Fraser
University community – something that could draw on the University’s
borrowed Scottish heritage, and meld it with the growing Asian student
population.  Gung Haggis Fat Choy seemed like the perfect idea.

Over a few months, during which I had meetings with Geoff and
Recreation director Wilf Wedman, we came up with a number of
ideas.  The most exciting was the creation of “dragon cart” racing,
designed to simulate a Chinese dragon boat race on dryland.  About
16 teams participated in the inaugural Gung Haggis Fat Choy Canadian
Games on January 28, 2005.  I was asked to MC the event with Dr. Jan Walls
from the SFU Department of International Communications. 
Wonderful, as I had known Jan since 1989, and had invited him to be a
special performer at the January 30 Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner event.

After the evening was over, I shared with Geoff and the recreation
department staff, some great ideas I had for next year’s Gung Haggis
Fat Choy Canadian Games at SFU.  So stay tuned!

From my friendDon Montgomery, executive director of explorASIAN festival to celebrate Asian Heritage Month in Canada.

explorASIAN 2005 Heritage Gala – Tickets On Sale Now!

REVIEW:
North American Asians Write Poetry, or

Thank You, Canada, For Letting Us Land Our Planes”

featuring
KAZIM ALI, NICK CARBO, TINA CHANG, PAOLO JAVIER, TIMOTHY LIU, AIMEE
NEZHUKUMATATHIL, OSCAR PENARANDA, RAVI SHANKAR, PRAGEETA SHARMA, and
EILEEN TABIOS


Presented by Ricepaper Magazine, Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop, Filipino Canadian
Youth Alliance, and the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society.

WHEN: Friday, 7:00pm, April 1st 2005
WHERE: Our Town Café
96 Kingsway (Corner of Kingsway and Broadway) Vancouver

Vancouver was invaded last week by from all around the world, as they
attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual
conference.  The Vancouver Public Library's Central Branch hosted
two poetry events on April 1st.

Vancouver's own Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop played host to 10
poets, at Our Town Cafe, after first treating them all to a quick
Chinese dinner at Ho Tak Kee Won Ton house, across the street. 
The atmosphere was warm, friendly and inviting, as it was a great time
for introductions as many of the writers were meeting each other for
the first time.  Among them was my writer friend Xu Xi, who
divides her time between New York, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

ACWW executive director Jim Wong-Chu made initial announcements and
introduced the host for the evening, PAOLO
JAVIER is himself the author of two books of poetry, 'the time at the
end of
this writing' (Ahadada), and '60 Lv Bo(e)mbs' (O Books, fall
2005).   Paolo was friends with many of the writers and their
friendly banter and warm accolades for each other imbued the event with
love and grace.

Afterwards many people commented about the good quality of the writers
and what we had been presented with. While all he writers came from
diverse ancestries such as the Philippines, South Asia and Chinese,
their writing was similarly evocative of the shared issues of Canadian
Asian diaspora, such as identity and place.  Being Asian was a
shared being-ness, sometimes it was a central theme in the the writing,
and sometimes not. 

Many Vancouver Asian Canadian writers came out to attend the event
including Roy Miki, Rita Wong, Glen Deer, Sid Tan, and Rice Paper
editor Jessica Gin-Jade
Chen.  I had a lovely time meeting the writers and helping to host
them in my role as a vice-president for ACWW, chauffering in my car,
socializing over dinner, and bing our sound guy for the event. 
During dinner I sat next to Eileen Tabios who confessed a strong
admiration for the work of Evelyn Lau, and had hoped to meet her. 

It was great to learn that  OSCAR
PEÑARANDA from San Francisco area first grew up in Vancouver when his
parents emmigrated from the Phillipines. Oscar read from “Seasons By
The Bay, A Collection Of Interrelated Stories” which included stories
from both San Francisco Bay and Vancouver's own English Bay, as well as
from “Full Deck (Jokers
Playing)”.

TIMOTHY
LIU brought a wonderful sense of grace to his words while making jokes
about whether there were any strip joints in Vancouver.  He is the
author of five books of poems, including OF THEE I SING,
which was named a 2004 Book of the Year by PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. He is an
associate professor of English at William
Paterson University and a member of the core faculty at the Bennington
Writing Seminars, Liu lives in Hoboken, NJ.

EILEEN TABIOS, recipient of the
Philippines' National Book Award for Poetry, recently released a
multi-genre collection, I TAKE THEE, ENGLISH, FOR MY BELOVED,
encompassing poetry, experimental fiction, art monograph, play and
conceptual art.

RAVI SHANKAR (not the sitar player) is
young and hip and cool!  He is poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State University and the
founding editor of the online journal of the arts is currently editing an anthology
of South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern poetry. You can read an
interview with him at: www.jacketmagazine.com/16/dev-iv-shank.html.

KAZIM
ALI is the author of the novel “Quinn's Passage.” He is assistant
professor of Liberal Arts at The Culinary Institute of America and an
editor with Nightboat Books. His first book of poems “The Far Mosque”
will be published this October by Alice James.

NICK CARBO's latest book is Andalusian Dawn. He lives in Hollywood, FL and teaches in the MFA program at University of Miami.

TINA
CHANG, the author of Half-Lit Houses (Four Way Books, 2004),  She has received awards
from the Academy of American Poets, the New York Foundation for the
Arts, Poets & Writers, the Van Lier Foundation among many others.  She currently teaches at Hunter College.

AIMEE
NEZHUKUMATATHIL is the author of _Miracle Fruit_ (Tupelo 2003), winner
of the Tupelo Press Judge's Prize, ForeWord Magazine Poetry Book of the
Year, and the Global Literary Filipino Award, and was a finalist for
the Asian American Literary Award and the Glasgow Prize. She is
assistant professor of English at State University of New
York-Fredonia, right in the heart of Western NY's cherry and
berry country, where she lives with her dog, Villanelle.

PRAGEETA SHARMA is the author of
Bliss to Fill (Subpress Books) and The Opening Question (Fence Books).
She teaches in the graduate creative writing program at New School
University and in the low residency BA program at Goddard College. She
lives in Brooklyn, New York.

All the Asian American poets expressed a gratefullness and excitement
at ACWW's hosting and organizing of the evening's event, asking if we
did this on an annual basis.  They were very surprised to learn
that we organized events throughout the year, with a special emphasis
in May for Asian Heritage Month in partnership with ExplorASIAN
festival.

Hopefully there will be pictures coming, as well as an upcoming review article in Rice Paper Magazine, and some more reflections…

Gung Haggis Fat Choy practice is postponed until next

week april 10 2pm.


Practices will begin at Dragon Boat Association dock located at 260 West 1st Avenue (MATCON building)

Sorry but there are a number of considerations that  deternmined
this decision.  Bob Brinson (coach) is working hard on helping the
new dragon boat dock get set up.

More details later…

Come join me at

Our Town Cafe
96 Kingsway at Broadway
April 1st, 2005 – 7pm
Asian American Poets:
Thank You Canada for Letting Us Land Our Planes.
This event features 10 Asian American Poets and is sponsored by Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop and Rice Paper Magazine
for more details, please see www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com

also Kilt night at Doolin's Irish Pub
April 2, 7pm
I will not be able to attend, as I must be a special guest at the Simon
Fraser University Recreation department annual Spring Ceiledh 
(scottish for celebration party)

Cheers, Todd
604-987-7124