Great places for parties! The Vancouver Museum and the Vancouver Aquarium as BC Arts Council and CBC's Think Vancouver both took place on Monday, February 28th, 2005.

We started at the Museum where BC Premier Gordon Campbell made a big
announcement that will see millions of extra dollars spent on the BC
Arts organizations.  $25 million will help start up the BC Arts
Renaissance Fund to be supervised by the Vancouver Foundation. The fund
will leverage private sector support to build endowments for
arts and culture organizations and support strategic investments that
will assist organizations to develop innovative initiatives that
improve self sufficiency.

I attended with the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra, managed by Deb
Martin – my girlfriend. She introduced me to many of the players in the
Vancouver Arts scene. We saw  Don Shumka – BCAC Chair, George
Laverock of Festival Vancouver, Violet Goosen of the Vancouver Chamber Choir, David Y.H. Louie, Robert Kerr of Coastal Jazz and Blues Society. As well, we saw many friends such as Fred Wah representing Kootenay School of Writing, Donna Spencer and Jessica Scheider from Firehall Arts Centre; Adrienne Wong was there with Camyar Chai of  New World Theatre; Lindy Sissons who showed me her new brochure for the 2005 Vancouver International Children's Festival; Heather O'Hagan now with Craft Association of BC  who had attended Gung Haggis Fat Choy when it was still only 60 or 100 people.

Fred Wah
was our featured poet for Gung Haggis Fat Choy 2005. He told me that
when he was attending the Chinatown Chinese New Year Parade the week
afterwards, Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell came up to him and said he
really liked his performance at GHFC. Wonderful!

Fred also noted how few writers and Asian Canadian Arts
organizations were in attendance at the BC Arts Council reception.
Gordon Campbell, in his speech to all the arts organizations, stated
that Vancouver won the 2010 Olympic bid because of its dymnamic arts
component that featured multicultural artists. Fred shared with me that
since the BC Government is highlighting Vancouver's Asian community and
multicultural arts groups, more Asian Canadian arts groups such as Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop, Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society,
and Gung Haggis Fat Choy should all be represented.  Perhaps we
will have to be more proactive in working with the BC Arts Council to
help promote the Asian Canadian arts organizations.

It must have been one of the most multicultural Academy awards yet,
hosted by African-American comedian Chris Rock, and Oscars going to
best actor Jamie Foxx and best supporting actor Morgan Freeman – on the
2nd to last day of Black History Month. The Oscar for best song went to
a foreign language film, and the composer sang some of the lines in
Spanish – beautiful!

Presenters included Mexican and Spanish actors, Salma Hayek and
Penelope Cruz, Chinese actor Ziyi Zhang. Sandra Oh looked fabulous in
her red gown, when her husband won the Oscar for Best Adapted
Screenplay for “Sideways.” Sandra is Korean Canadian and now living in
California and also had a supporting role in “Sideways.”

I watched the Awards show at the Caprice Nightclub, attending the
“Starry Night Gala” beefint for The Vancouver Friends for Life Society.
the Caprice is a former movie house, wonderfully turned into an
intimate upscale night club – the perfect setting for an Oscar party,
hosted by Terry David Mulligan. A large screen was perfect for viewing
from anywhere in the club and seats were set up on the dance floor in
row like a movie house. The best seats were the booths on the floor,
where I later met brand new friends Tim and Barbara, whom I discovered
with we had mutual friends Barb Lee at the Vancouver Asian Film
Festival – Barbara's business card was titled “Eager Student” and is
currently taking the Entertainment managment certifcate course at UBC –
hm…. maybe I should try that too.

My buddy Craig Brown met me inside the Caprice, and we also made
some new friends – Leslee and Cheryl – who just might join the Gung
Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team!