For the Biggest S.F. Giants Fan I Know…

Baseball is one of America’s greatest pastimes. With its rich history and the relative ease of understanding how the game is played, many different generations and cultures outside of the U.S. have grown to enjoy the sport. The sport has become so popular that there are even televised games for the Little League World Series, where little leaguers from all over the world compete against each other, and that even on the professional level there is the World Baseball Classic. But just like celebrities, the sport is popular because of loyalty from the fans.

Jasmine Pacis is a 26-year-old graduate of San Francisco State University who is without a doubt the biggest San Francisco Giants fan I know. Ever since I’ve known her she has always been a Giants fan. She makes it to as many home games as she can every season, owns tons of Giants clothing and merchandise, and most importantly (not only for her, but all true Giants fans) she HATES the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Jasmine does the YMCA with pictures of Giants team members – photo credit : Jasmine Pacis

Being from L.A., I grew up watching the Dodgers, but I never bothered to understand the history of the Dodgers and everything that involves them. The most I would do is go to a few games, enjoy a Dodger-dog, and cheer for them whenever they played. It wasn’t until after I moved to San Francisco and met Jasmine that I bothered understanding more of the team that I supported.

Most people from L.A. don’t really look at you funny or act really distant from you just because you support a rival sports team. But once I started to live in San Francisco and sported my L.A. caps or told natives where I was from, I noticed something different about how they began responding to me. It was almost as if I said or did something wrong and they didn’t want to tell me why. However, I soon began to realize why this was, and the few friends I made who are native to the Bay Area confirmed my suspicions. If you follow baseball and are a S.F. Giants fan, you must despise anything “L.A.” Ever since baseball became a professional sport and dating back to when the Dodgers and Giants first started in New York, there was an intense inter-state rivalry that ensued. That rivalry still lives today, as L.A. and S.F. are considered rival cities in everything in terms of sports, culture, and even popularity. But in sports, it’s really intense when it comes to baseball.

As I got to know Jasmine and we became better friends, we would always tease each other about where we were from. While our friendship developed, I began to notice that if baseball was mentioned and I was around, she would always want to say something bad about the Dodgers. Like most people from my area of Southern California, I try to be as easy going as possible, even if a rival sports team supporter tried hassling me. But this strong distaste that Jasmine would display for the Dodgers just boggled my mind. I didn’t really know why it was such a big deal to her. Her undying loyalty and love for all things “Giants” made me question whether or not I was even a real fan of the team I supported. So with that in mind, I decided to ask her a few questions about herself and her love for the baseball team she avidly supports.

Before the interview actually took place, I asked to take pictures of any Giants paraphernalia she had. To my surprise, she just kept coming in and out of her room and all over the house with items that had “S.F. Giants” written on them or were in the team’s colors. Once she grabbed everything, I set it up and laughed to myself and wondered how could anyone really want so many things that all support the same team? To my amazement, she had several cups, t-shirts, jackets, sweatshirts, pins, books, magazines, posters, and even a Pez dispenser with Giants on it. I pale in comparison to her as a fan of a team that I “support.”

Thirsty much?

After taking the pictures and sitting down for the interview, I began to examine and observe her attitude and behavior about each Giants-related question I asked her. When I asked her about her favorite moment regarding the Giants, her eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas as she began telling me the story of how she first met the back-to-back Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum. Her smile while telling the story was so genuine that there was no question about it – she really does LOVE her team.

As each question was asked and answered, I began to realize that maybe I’m not as big of a fan of the Dodgers I’d like to think. I don’t own a Dodgers jacket or jersey. I don’t have several cups or mugs with the Dodgers logo or magazines featuring the team and its players. I actually don’t have much of anything that says I support the Dodgers other than my New Era caps with the L.A. logo on it. And that’s when it struck me. Even though I may not buy or own several items with the Dodgers’ logo on it, my heart is enough to still be loyal to my team.

Jasmine on the field at AT&T park - photo credit : Jasmine Pacis

However, if actions speak louder than words, then shouldn’t I be buying Dodgers items consistently? That’s when the light bulb went on in my head and I had to admit it – Jasmine is quite honestly not just the biggest Giants fan I know, but she’s probably also the biggest sports fan I know. I didn’t like the thought of someone possibly being a better fan of a team compared to me, but truth be told, I guess if I was a real fan of a team I’d buy items that supported them. That’s exactly what Jasmine does. She goes to several games a season, she owns a ridiculous amount of Giants merchandise, and like it was mentioned earlier, she still hates the Dodgers. Because of her, I began to take more interest and note of how to be a better fan of the teams I support, and now I can say that I’m a better fan than I was before. Despite the fact that she and I still have a sports rivalry with each other, I appreciate the fact that we can put aside our sports differences and still be friends. Even though she may still be the biggest fan and overall a better fan than I am, I can still take pride in the fact that at least the team that I support and love is better than hers. C’est la vie! =)

Final Project Blog…

Dec. 7, 2009 – For my story idea, I have a couple of things in mind.  For a business story, I was thinking of possibly going with a poker story.  I’m pretty interested in poker and have been playing for a few years now – mainly hold’em, but a few mixed games like razz or stud are also intriguing enough for me to play.  In the last few year, the poker world has been radically changed by the huge popularity of the World Series of Poker held in Las Vegas every year.  It’s the world’s largest and widely recognized series of poker tournaments and a great way to gain recognition as an elite poker player.  Also aiding in the poker boom is the advent of several software programs that allowed users to play poker online.  Sites such as Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker sponsors professionals and have their own teams of pro players, and the increase of users who play for real money online has bred a whole new species of poker players.

However, since this is a business themed story, I was thinking of focusing on the monetary aspect of poker and how people make a living off of it.  Since the online poker boom, several people including those who are legally underage to be gambling, have been turning a profit online by playing poker.  There is a specific “guide” called bankroll management, which refers to players following a set of principles and rules on how to properly manage their poker money for the best possible results in trying to make a living off of poker.  This is the information I also plan on using in a graph by gathering data from hopefully some professional online poker friends I have.  I would interview them through Skype or the phone and record the conversation for audio, and use pictures of them playing poker, as well as pictures of what the online platform for several poker programs look like so that viewers can get a good visual on what online poker is about and “how to” make a living on poker with proper bankroll management.

Dec. 14, 2009 – The reporting process thus far has been fairly smooth.  I’ve had all of my interviews lined up and just need to knock them out but it’s been difficult getting a good time to get together.  One of my subjects lives in New York with a three hour time difference, and the other just recently moved to Thailand, so communication hasn’t exactly been the easiest.  For research, I’ve been looking up charts and graphs that looks similar to what I was going for in terms of proper bankroll management or showing the plus-minus swings of playing poker, thereby showing the importance of proper bankroll management in order to make a living off of poker.

Capturing photos hasn’t been difficult at all because with my friends’ permission they allowed me to just use their pictures that they have uploaded on Facebook of them playing poker.  One of the photos shows my friend Steven playing online with about 16 different poker tables running at once, essentially meaning he’s playing 16 different games of poker all at the same time.  The proper term for that is multi-tabling.  Steven multi-tables so often that he needs to hook up 2 more computer monitors to one computer in order to play all at the same time.  It might seem pretty intense to someone who hasn’t been around poker before, especially online.

If I could give one piece of advice for future students who are going through with this project, it would just have to be to plan wisely.  Without proper planning, things can get confusing and a bit hectic.  Make sure that you and all of your sources can each agree upon different times of meeting in order to capture the interview, and don’t wait until the last minute to start getting your work done.  Even though as journalists some of us may work better under pressure, truth be told it’s a lot less stressful and more rewarding if you can plan thoroughly before tackling this final assignment.

Dec. 18, 2009 – So I don’t have much to say for this production process because my poker business story has fallen through.  =( The experts I’ve been looking forward to interviewing haven’t been able to follow through with the interview, so I’ve been scrambling to find a new story to write.  As a result, I decided to go with a profile of my friend Jasmine Pacis.  She is originally from the Bay Area, and she is absolutely the biggest San Francisco Giants fan I know.  Her love for them nearly borders on obsession to me, and I tease her about it all the time.  Regardless, she has an undying loyalty to her team and I respect her for that.  She collects several memorabilia about the Giants, and she goes to several of their home games at AT&T park.  Being from Los Angeles, where the Dodgers are the Giants’ long-standing rivals, I thought it’d be intriguing to just capture Jasmine’s love for her team and everything that she devotes to expressing that love.

UPDATE – So this production process has been time consuming to say the least.  I’ve been working on editing the sound clips on Audacity, and busy editing the photos and putting them together to make a decent slideshow.  I’d say the most challenging thing during this process is just making sure the edits in the sound bites don’t sound choppy and out of sync with the timing of the photos.  Some of the sound bites don’t sound very clean during the editing, but I’m hoping that with more practice I will eventually become a lot more better at it than I am now.  I’m nearly done and hoping that it doesn’t take more than an hour to completely upload onto Youtube or the class blog because it’s almost time to be turned in. EEEK!!!

Dec. 21, 2009 –  GAAWWD!!! It feels SO good to be done!!!  As you know, I’ve had a bit of a stressful time trying to make sure that I turned the project in on time and that it was completed without looking absolutely terrible. LOL  Since my original idea fell through, my last second adjustment to working on the profile story worked out ok because luckily my friend didn’t have any plans at the time I called her for the interview.  It’s been tough for me in class this entire semester.  I swear I feel like God just decided to step on me at random times just so he could watch me suffer and stumble through the class.  From losing my completed assignments to having my camera broken to having my final freaking project idea not pan out, I’m surprised that I didn’t just give up.

However, despite the fact that I’ve been stressed out from this class this semester, I’m glad I took it because I was able to learn somewhat on how to use applications like Audacity and Soundslides.  I’ve been writing for a while now, so that process in this class wasn’t anything really new aside from the fact that it was a blog, but in terms of gaining more familiarity with online and media tools in order to package and get good journalistic multimedia stories, this class has been invaluable in showing me how awesome one can truly make a story with the right pieces and elements in place.

If I was to do anything different for a next time, I’d just make sure to be more on top of my interviews and stuff.  I admit that I could’ve been more personally adamant to my friends about keeping their word for the interview about the poker story, but at the same time there were also other elements outside of my control (i.e. time zones, finals, work, etc..) that kept us from connecting.  I would just say that next time I would make sure that I’d have the proper time to get the interviews knocked out of the way first, because I thought that since I had all my interviews lined up already that things were going to go according to plan.  I didn’t really have a backup plan for the business story in case it fell through, but thankfully I had another idea for my profile story that came to save the day.  Hopefully the work I submitted is good enough to give me a decent grade for the class.  =) Once again, thanks Staci for the experience and the memories this semester.  I’ll be sure to bring my puppy by your class in case you ever want to see him again…but I can’t let you keep him…I love my little pup too much. hahaha….

Final Project

Staci,

I’m posting this so that you can know that I have everything completed but I’m having trouble uploading the file online. I’ve been dealing with this for the last hour and it’s not working. Please e-mail and let me know if you see this. This is SOOOO stressing me out!!

UFL and Garlic Fries!

When it comes to making plans for the weekend, I can err on the side of indecisiveness.  Luckily for me, this past weekend didn’t require much decision making on my part.  A friend of mine working at AT&T park gave me free tickets to watch a new football league that started in the U.S. – the United Football League (UFL).  Being a fan of both football and the garlic fries that are sold at AT&T park, I found it hard to resist going to the game while eating those unhealthy fried potatoes with garlic smothered in ketchup, while washing it down with a good beer and watching some football action.

Out of the four-team league, the local team here is the California Redwoods.  The other teams are the Las Vegas Locomotives, Florida Tuskers, and the opponents of the day, the New York Sentinels.  Even though some of these players didn’t have NFL talent, it was still entertaining to watch these players go at it.  The Redwoods even had a decent fan base show up to the game sporting white, lime green and turquoise combinations.  Happily for the fans, they weren’t disappointed as the Redwoods went on to, well…just check out the slideshow and you can see for yourself.

Photo Slide Show >

Eating cupcakes will make me a DoughBoy…

The other day my roommate asked me if I wanted some cake.  Seeing as how I’m a foodie and really love sweets, how could I resist.  As I followed her to the kitchen expecting to show me a slice of delicious cake for my consumption, I could only imagine the disappointment that probably showed in my face when I saw her pull out a box of Pillsbury cake mix.

After all of these years, the Pillsbury dough boy is good mascot.

While I was a little disappointed that we had to bake this cake, it made me realize something I hadn’t realized before – I never baked a cake before.  Ever.  In my life.

With this new realization, I figured it made a good opportunity for me to capture my first cupcake and cake-baking experience for a blog post.  And out of all the cakes there are to make out there, I must say that my favorites are in fact the one that we baked on this day, as well as some others I have no clue how to make, such as my friend Stefanie’s red velvet cheesecake featured in Cheesecake factories across the country, and Sweet Inspiration’s Rachel’s Cake .  If you haven’t tried either of these delectable sweets, I suggest you stop reading this blog and start heading out the door to consume either one (or both if you’re a foodie like me) of these superb desserts.

Mix, mix, mixing it up!

So after mixing in the cake mix with the eggs and milk, and waiting impatiently for what seemed like an eternity for our cupcakes to finish, I was pleased to take a look in the oven and see the cake rise to it’s cloud-like fluffyness.  After pulling out the cake and letting it cool off for a bit, we then proceeded to put the frosting and sprinkles on the cakes (of which I probably ate more frosting than I put on) and voila! Here it is!

These cupcakes were SO good!!

The San Francisco Treat and Carne Asada

Being from Southern California, I was spoiled with Mexican food. Not just any Mexican food, but authentic, home-made style Mexican food with flavors so tantalizing it could be appreciated by just about anybody. After moving to San Francisco, I knew that one of the things I’d miss about home (LA) is the abundance of Mexican eateries no matter where I was at. Tacos, burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, a most importantly, carne asada fries!

These carne asada fries are a little piece of heaven!!! (photo credit unavailable, but found on Imageshack site)

Although San Francisco does have more than its fair share of delicious places to eat, I have come to be disappointed in the fact that San Francisco lacks the “delicious” factor when it comes to Mexican food. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t good Mexican places to eat at all.  Pancho Villa and Taqueria Guadalajara do their part when it comes to serving decent Mexican food. But in terms of richness in flavor for the price that you pay, nothing beats the places I dine at in LA.

So, instead of spending $10 for each burrito or carne asada plate I order at these Mexican food joints in “the city,” I decided it would be a lot better if I just tried cooking a Mexican meal on my own. On deciding what to make (which took quite a while because I love just about every Mexican dish) I narrowed it down to grilled carne asada with Mexican rice and a side of mixed veggies. Of course, it just so happened that I felt too lazy to go to the grocery store to buy all the right ingredients to make authentic Mexican rice, but on a previous grocery trip I did pick up a box of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat (I know you can totally hear the jingle in your head too!). How appropriate since I’m in San Francisco too, right? Well, here are a couple of pictures taken from that night, and needless to say, my roommates thoroughly enjoyed their dinner, even if the San Francisco treat had a bit more sodium than desired. :]

I know I'm not the only one who plays the jingle in my head when I see Rice-a-Roni!

The smell while cooking this was delicious!

The completed dish!

“]

Can't you tell my roommates thoroughly enjoyed this? :

Pizza and TMNT!

When I was a child, I did as most children did and watched cartoons.  One of my favorite cartoons to watch as a child was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Anyone who has seen an episode of TMNT knows that there was one food that all the characters had a weakness for – pizza.  Because I wanted to be so much like a ninja turtle (Michelangelo was my favorite), my desire for pizza became similar to theirs.  Upon my discovery of pizza, with its melted cheese and delicious slices of pepperoni, it soon became my favorite meal to eat.  Whether it was freshly delivered or cold and eaten right out of the box, my insatiable hunger for this Italian dish was quenched at every opportunity I had.  Now that I’m older, I still have this craving for pizza, but it has been tempered by the nutritional facts and value that began regulating my eating habits.  I only have pizza once a week, if that, and I still enjoy every last slice.  With all of the delicious pizza eateries there are in the city of San Francisco, I must say that one of my favorite places is still Pizza Hut pizza.  Hand tossed, pan style, deep dish, thin crust – all of them provide different nutritional values, and despite this graph and what my regulations are on “eating healthy,” I can’t deny that pizza is still my favorite meal to eat!  So when I’m feeling down because I can’t eat pizza, I could just refer to this chart to keep me going strong because after all, I don’t want to be another statistic for an overweight American!

Pizza Hut pizza calories chart

We All Love Orange Chicken!!

Panda Express has it. P.F. Chang’s China Bistro has it. And just about any Chinese restaurant serves it as well. It’s orange chicken. Chinese cooking enthusiast Larry Lee briefly talks about the popular Chinese dish as he cooks up some of his own batch at home.

Once upon a Starry Knight…

Freedom of speech is a valuable right.  In the United States, many people tend to take this right for granted or abuse it, but as journalists know all too well, it is essential to our freedom as citizens of this country.  In many countries outside of the U.S., the freedom of speech and the press is one that is limited, where governments regulate and circumscribe the free flow of ideas in the marketplace by incarcerating or persecuting journalists who speak out against them.  Still, there are those who are brave enough to stand up for what they believe is right, even if it means becoming a victim of such persecution.  Abebe Gellaw is one such journalist, whose experiences in life lend him a provocative view on what it really means to have this underappreciated right.

Abebe Gellaw with former Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang - photo courtesy of Flickr.com and Yodel Anecdotal

Originally from Ethiopia, a country where many of the media organizations are government owned and operated, Gellaw is a graduate of Addis Ababa University and reports on issues regarding human rights and politics.  After having experienced first-hand the atrocities that can occur within a country lacking complete freedom of speech and the press, Gellaw has since been exiled from Ethiopia and come to the U.S. as a Stanford University Knight Fellow, sponsored by Yahoo!.  Despite being an advocate for human rights, Gellaw, who has written for several cyber media outlets, including Ethiomedia.com, strives to remain true to journalistic standards, saying that while he’s an activist, at the same time he’s objective.  Before he gave his presentation to the class, he started off with Napolean Bonaparte’s quote, “The future destiny of a child is always the work of the mother.”  Although he admitted that his mother was reluctant toward his desire to become a journalist because of the hazards he could have and eventually did face in Ethiopia, he continued to pursue his passion and it has paid off.  With several honors and awards to his name, Gellaw gave credit to his mother for the journalist he is today, and it seems that Bonaparte’s quote rings true for this Knight Fellow.

2009 Annual Armenian Food Festival

The other day I was driving nearby campus when I saw a banner for a Armenian food festival.  If I ever see anything with FOOD and FESTIVAL in the title, then you can bet your firstborn that I’ll do what I can to be there!  When it comes to food and cooking, my philosophy is that one must learn to appreciate food from cultures outside of their own.  So to stick to my philosophy, I figured that this was a good opportunity for me to try some new foods and get a blog post for it!  Unfortunately, I got off of work later than expected and was only able to catch the tail end of the festival, but I still accomplished my goal of getting some good food and taking some pictures of what I ate.

Since I have never tried Armenian food before, I didn’t really know what quite to expect.  Walking around the festival, I saw that there was a lot of pastries, fruits, and dairy products that were used in the cuisine.  I had so many choices to choose from, but of course I could only eat so much!  Now, I love desserts.  Even as a child, I would often get in trouble because I’d somewhat spoil my appetite by eating sweets or dessert before my actual meal, and this day happened to not be any different except for the fact that I didn’t have my parents to scold me. :]  So the first thing I tried was their sweet pastries.  Both of the pastries I tried were almost like an apple danish and canoli.  They had real apples inside with a sweet caramelized flavor, and the bread itself was delicious with the powdered sugar on top.  I should have gotten more than one piece of each, but I had to save room for the other food I was going to eat too!

i love pastries with apples!!

any pastry with powdered sugar on top can't go wrong!

first course

So after my first course, I decide to look around and see what else there was for me to devour.  With my sweet tooth satisfied, I needed to get some kind of veggies and protein to balance my meal this day (follow the food pyramid people!).  Alas, I came across a falafel booth, where to my pleasure I had a chicken falafel filled with chicken (really?), tomatoes, red onions, random greens, some spicy sauce and another sauce that I don’t even know how to pronounce properly, all wrapped in a pita-type bread.  This falafel came out looking like it was the size of a super burrito from the Mission, but bigger.  I ate as much as I could (which means all of it, including the foil it was wrapped in), and the chicken was actually one of the tastiest I’ve had.  I don’t know what they marinaded it in or how they prepared it (although I’m sure it was grilled), but it was great to eat!

This chicken falafel was tasty!

Onto my third course (and yes, I know I can eat a lot, and I swear I’m a fat man stuck in this body), I saw a lot of people waiting in line for something that looked like pizza.  As it turns out, it was in fact an Armenian style pizza.  The lady who helped me told me that there were seven different spices or seasonings that topped the pizza, with some olive oil, and what people liked to do was get cheese and melt it on top of the bread.  While I didn’t have any of the cheeses at the time, this by itself was delightful to consume.  It might not look like it’s too appetizing, but I wasn’t disappointed, and I’m sure if I topped it with cheese then it would’ve covered the tumorous looking bubbles that were in the bread! :]

This Armenian pizza sans cheese and tomato sauce tastes better than it looks

With all of this food consumption, I was definitely started to feel my waistline expand a little.  But while I ate all of this food, I needed to also have something to drink.  I saw a stand serving some wines and alcohol, and had it been a Friday night I might have indulged in some inebriation, but of course I needed to try a drink that was really Armenian.  I saw some people walking around with these bottles with either a red or green cap, and once I located where they were being sold at, I decided to approach the booth and ask what it was.  To my surprise, it was like a hybrid between milk and yogurt.  I didn’t know how to feel about this, but “when in Rome” right?  The original flavor had a red cap, and the mint flavored ones were green, so I decided to get the minty one.  It was actually quite a thicker liquid to consume, and thankfully I’m not lactose intolerant, otherwise I’m positive I would’ve had some serious issues in the bathroom later on.  While this wasn’t my favorite drink to consume, it was passable.  I’m a huge texture person, so I think that’s what kind of threw me off with this “drink.”

I'm so glad I'm not lactose intolerant!

There were several other things I could have tried as well, but I wasn’t trying to gain 10 pounds in a couple hours of food consumption.  So after this drink I was full and content to watch some Armenian ladies dance and perform to some Armenian music playing over the speakers.  While I wish I had someone to join me on this adventure, it was still fun to experience since I didn’t have to share any of my delicious pastries with anyone. =D