Marty Myers will be boarding a plane from Honolulu this morning to bring her skills as Kennedy Theatre manager to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The 20-year veteran of UH Mānoa’s on-campus theater will be one of two ticket managers at the ski jump, biathlon and cross-country skiing venue in the brand-new Whistler Olympic Park. It is located eleven miles southwest of the village of Whistler, in an area called the Callaghan Valley. This is significant because it’s the first time all four Nordic skiing disciplines—cross-country skiing, biathlon, ski jumping and Nordic—will be held at the same Olympic venue.
Myers is looking forward to her first Olympics, and is confident that her customer service skills, ticket office know-how and house management experience will be valuable in her temporary role. She’s also excited about meeting people from around the world and networking with colleagues.
When she arrives in Vancouver, Myers will go through two days of training before heading to her home for the next three weeks—a condo that she will share with the Boise State athletics ticket manager and a woman from Italy.
From February 12-27, she will toil as ticket manager at the venue, where at least one event will be held each day. Marty will have be in the office at least three hours prior to the start of the event, and shudders at the thought that, on some days, it will mean a 4 a.m. arrival at work, where weather.com predicts an un-Honolulu-like high of 40 degrees.
For about a year, Myers had toyed with the idea of taking some time off from her university job to work at the Olympics. At ticket conferences, many of her colleagues had recounted their enjoyable experiences, and she was intrigued by what she could gain by being a part of such a historical event. After initial phone calls to friends of friends, then more follow-up calls, she had almost given up when she received the exciting news of her hire.
So how are Marty's husband and son going to fare while she’s gone for almost a month? “They’re going to have a lot of male bonding,” she said, laughing.
Mānoa Arts & Minds, a four-strong entity partnership—involving the UH Mānoa Department of Art & Art History, Department of Music, Department of Theatre & Dance, and Outreach College—continues to dazzle and amaze performance-goers with a wide variety of music, dance, theater and art events on the UH Mānoa campus.
February is no exception. A long-anticipated highlight is tonight’s premiere of The White Snake (Bai She Zhuan) on Kennedy Theatre’s main stage from 8:00-10:30 p.m.
This well-known Jingju (Beijing opera) in its English-language world premiere relates the famous legend of a snake spirit who descends to earth as a beautiful woman. She marries a handsome young man, and then must fight to restore his life and save their marriage in the face of supernatural attacks from a powerful monk who believes that she is an evil demon.
With the script written by China’s National Actors of the First Rank Mr. Lu Genzhang and Ms. Zhang Ling, and score by National Musician of the Second Rank Mr. Zhang Xigui, this dynamic production features exciting acting and combat. Thrilling music includes flute-accompanied song directly derived from the classical Kunqu, proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2001.
Besides heavy influence from China, UH Mānoa faculty has a huge presence both in front of and behind the curtain. Produced and directed by theater professor Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak (who also provided the translation along with Hui-mei Chang), musical direction is by ethnomusicology professor Frederick Lau, and Center for Chinese Studies coordinator Daniel Tschudi conducts the orchestra.
What’s even more special is that guest artists from China, under the supervision of China’s National Actor of the First Rank Madam Shen Xiaomei, have been in residence since August 2009 training UH Mānoa student performers.
The show runs February 5, 6, 10, 11, 12 and13 at 8 p.m., and February 7 and 14 at 2 p.m.
Tickets are available from the Kennedy Theatre Box Office. Prices are $22 regular admission; $20 seniors, military, UH faculty/staff; $15 students; and $5 UH Mānoa students with ID (all service fees are included).
Don’t miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity share in the wonder of The White Snake.
Some UH Mānoa oceanographers are currently on an Antarctic cruise studying the consequences of the abrupt collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in the fall of 2002. They’ve set up a cruise blog, and are one month in on a two-month long cruise.
They have been posting some absolutely incredible photos, and it’s a great overview about what life is like for researchers who go to sea. To follow them on this adventure, visit the cruise blog at http://uhmanoa-antarctic-research-larissa.blogspot.com/.
I asked one of our UH Mānoa participants and a Principal Investigator, Craig Smith, about what has happened so far, and the coming month. He reports:
“We are now entering the second month of the LARISSA cruise, after spending a month on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula because of heavy sea ice on the eastern side in the Weddell Sea. We have completed much of the terrestrial ice coring and glaciology on the Peninsula, supported by Twin Otter airplanes and helicopters. We also completed a study of the physics and biology of climate sensitive fjord ecosystems on the west Antarctic Peninsula, which have been very poorly study and appear to contain remarkable levels of biomass and biodiversity.
“We are now breaking our way through the ice back into the Weddell Sea where we hope to undertake the oceanography components of the project, studying seafloor and water-column communities and processes in areas liberated from the ice shelf at different times, ranging from 1-16 years ago. This will allow us to see how normal Antarctic marine food webs form following release from the very food-poor conditions beneath ice shelves.
“Our work will be very interdisciplinary, involving physical oceanographic moorings to study current regimes and particle flux over the next two years, studies of phytoplankton standing stock and productivity, and sampling of seafloor communities in all size classes to assess patterns of biodiversity and food web structure. We will also utilize an ROV to search for and sample the first cold seep reported from the Southern Ocean, which occurs in our study area.”
Follow the blog written by Craig and others, and post some comments/questions. Then stay tuned to UH Mānoa Campus Talk for an update of their findings, when they return to warm, sunny Hawai‘i in March!
Conducting a plankton tow from a zodiac inflatable boat with a Flanders Bay glacier and mountains as backdrop. Photo credit: UH Manoa Oceanography
UH Mānoa Oceanographer Craig Smith uses a Kovacs Ice Corer to take an ocean water sample. The party in the background is collecting additional ice cores and measuring the sea-ice temperature. Photo credit: UH Mānoa Oceanography
Tara Hicks Johnson (M.S. 2002, Geology and Geophysics) is the Outreach Specialist for the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (www.soest.hawaii.edu) on the UH Mānoa campus. See http://manoa.hawaii.edu/.
In these tight economic times, people are looking for ways to earn an extra buck. So, if you have a job that depends on tips to pad that paycheck, there’s a way to earn about 10 percent more.
UH Mānoa Associate Speech Professor Amy Ebesu Hubbard and her students—A. Allen Tsuji, Virgilio Seatriz Jr. and Christine Williams—conducted research on what it takes to get more in tips. They collected data from 400 patrons by four servers in two different restaurants.
“It originated as a class project in my nonverbal communication course (Speech 470), and then the students were motivated and wanted to follow up on the project they started,” said Hubbard. “I saw a lot of potential in their work, and so we continued with the study that was ultimately published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.”
The students enlisted the help of friends who were waiters and waitresses at one semi-formal and one bar-café setting in Waikīkī. Their directive was to briefly touch (for two to four seconds) the shoulder of a patron when returning the change from a bill. Half of the patrons were touched, half weren’t.
On average, customers tipped about 13 percent. But those who were touched tipped their server more than 22 percent. The results showed that it didn't matter if the touch occurred between a male server and a female patron, a female server and a male patron, a male server and a male patron, or a female server and a female patron.
Now isn’t that more than a touch interesting? For more information on Professor Hubbard’s Speech Department at UH Manoa, see http://www.hawaii.edu/speech.
Dr. Amy Ebesu Hubbard
Tracy Orillo-Donovan, B.A. 1985 and MEd 1996, is broadcast manager for UH Manoa. See http://manoa.hawaii.edu/.
At the Campus Center Ballroom on Wednesday evening, the UH Mānoa Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship & E-Business (PACE) 20th Kipapa i ke Ala lecture, sponsored by the Emmett R. Quady Foundation and Kamakura Corp., was given by one of the most successful businesspeople in Hawai‘i—Pierre Omidyar. He is a software engineer by trade, but is widely known as the founder of the world’s largest online marketplace, eBay.
Omidyar took a risk when the Internet was unfamiliar territory, and people had a difficult time trusting people online, let alone doing business with them. Nonetheless, over Labor Day weekend in 1995, eBay was born. Founded on the premise that people are basically good, eBay brings people together in one place and provides them with equal access to information, and the opportunity and resources to pursue what they want.
This was a rare opportunity to hear Omidyar in person, and to chat with him during the question-and-answer session. Small-business owner Brigid Barcarse was among the 700 people at the Campus Center event, because she wanted to see what she could learn from Omidyar’s phenomenal business success story. Plus, she said, his local ties made his story more intriguing.
Some of Omidyar’s quotes and quips:
On starting a business: Focus is essential in a start-up. There is a certain fear of failure that entrepreneurs have to deal with. When asked how you get past it, Omidyar responded that it’s not failure if you learn something from it. “You can have a great idea, bad timing and financing, or you can have great timing, a bad idea and no financing. But if you’ve learned from it, it’s not failure.”
On his newest venture, Peer News, an online news service: Omidyar’s goal is to create a new civic square, provide a forum for the public to learn about community issues, and enable them to debate with each other and discover solutions. He plans to employ a combination of professional journalists and members of the online community. He is passionate about helping people have intellectual conversations and civil dialogue.
On his and wife Pam’s $50 million pledge to the Hawai‘i Community Foundation: Omidyar, who attended Punahou School in his eighth and ninth grade years, and wife Pam, who grew up in Hawai‘i Kai and attended ‘Iolani School, are dedicated to helping the Aloha State. When eBay became successful financially, Omidyar felt a certain sense of responsibility to make sure the money was put to good use, and that it had impact. The desire to bring a business perspective to the philanthropic world comes to life through the Omidyar Network. Created in 2004, it invests in nonprofit and for-profit efforts that enable people around the world to better their lives and make powerful contributions to their communities.
On his long-term personal goals: What gets Omidyar going everyday is the inspiring stories of people everywhere, and his goal is to increase the capacity of communities around the world to make it a better place.
On social media: Omidyar is excited about modern-day technology and how Twitter and other forms of social media bring people together more effectively. Some audience members were on their Twitter accounts during the lecture, tweeting his advice.
On his values and beliefs: “When you give people the tools they need, they will be successful. When you put people in the right kind of environment, they will thrive.” Omidyar went on to say that if your company has universal values, you should not have to compromise your own beliefs and values.
On the ultimate ebay bid: UH Mānoa Shidler College of Business Entrepreneur Club President Joey Aquino ended the Q&A portion of the evening by asking Omidyar if he ever lost a bid on eBay. Omidyar chuckled and shared that he almost lost a bid on a wedding present—a very expensive and popular bride-and-groom Pez candy dispenser—for Pam. Needless to say, he won the final bid and has been happily married ever since.
