OUSA Convention After Action Report

My old Fisherknight yahoo album, where I kept festival and convention photos, made a forced migration over to shutterfly. It took me a while to figure out how to make my photos publically available for viewing. Convention photos from last weekend's OUSA can now be found here. Please bookmark it, as I will get around to making all of the old photos from the Fisherknight account available here, along with others I have not gotten around to uploading, from before.

As is the case each year, I spent a bulk of my time in the goldmine, vending to help offset my travel expenses. Bless the buyers!

I achieved maximum sleep deprivation. Arriving home Monday morning at 9am, my intentions were to go in to work at 3:30pm; I decided to "rest my eyes" as soon as I got home, for 30 minutes. The next thing I knew, when I opened my eyes it was 11:30pm!!!

Who needs sleep and shower when there is a year's worth of folding to be crammed into 2 days?

The "Won" Dollar Bill

Most of my energies were focused upon the single-minded purpose of learning the $ koi fish, koined, "the Won Dollar Koi" (by no one else, but myself). To that end, I succeeded; and while Marcio Noguchi has koi directions at the top of his list of Won Park models to diagram, Won and I talked about possibly uploading a video of the folding process.

I pretty much filmed Won for an hour-and-a-half with my digital camera, folding the koi; but I don't think the quality is good enough for the average folder to learn by. Plus, it's a lot of video to scale down and edit. (Then there's also the incriminating, crude banter going on in the background audio of the video, by Joseph Wu, Jason Ku, and Rob Hudson...I'm sure you good folks in the origami community do not want to ease-drop upon that bit of conversation, do you?).

Perhaps a combination of step-folds and video-clipping of the fold process....? I'll have to make sure Won is still ok with it.

For those curious about how Won embarked upon the creation of his $ koi, it started with a WCOG member, Pam Miike (who lurks on the O-List- I see you Pam!), spending time in Hawaii, and consequently, spending time having Won fold her stuff while she just watches. Not that long ago, they went out for noodles; and in the noodle shop, Won saw a painting of a koi. That was the inspiration, right there, for the next dollar model.

On the flight from Hawaii to NY, Won started designing a seahorse, that already looked good, even though it was just an unfinished prototype.

I believe it was 2002 when I first met Won at OUSA. It was my 2nd Convention. Joel Bauer had met him in Hawaii, and told him about the Convention. Before that, Won was pretty much an isolated folder, whose work was largely unknown.

Back then, one of the last things Won tried to teach me, at 4 O'Clock in the morning, was this napkin rose:



I think Won's version is one of the best simple napkin roses out there, and I've been wanting to fold it for the past 5 years. Now that I've seen it again, I can't believe how simple it actually is and that it's not much different than what I've already seen; I guess it's just his artistry that made it stand out, as somehow different from the rest.

I carried a 4 GB memory card with me, but didn't go to OUSA this year with the mindset to make a video. In afterthought, I regret having missed some opportunities: Chris Palmer demonstrating his famous flower tower....my cicada glider boomeranging around the hospitality room; Shrikant's storigami; Kuniko Yamamoto's hospitality room entertainment; Jinni Xu's impromptu magic show (she's perhaps the only other person besides myself who came away from Convention, able to fold the $ koi on her own- she was more determined than me!)....nevertheless, here is the meager I did capture:



I am a creature of habit, who likes his daily routine. I cannot abide being away from my work for very long. I do not like to travel, nor do I like to take vacations. So my Convention travels, for the last few years, have been extremely short, with me leaving by Monday morning, even though there are great classes that go on during Mondays, as well as the Monday night banquet. I feel a twinge of guilt, that some of my Convention friends, I barely said hi to, if even that. I see these people once a year, and with the best of intentions, being busy at the moment, I figure I'll spend time saying hi and folding with them later. I forget that amidst the whirlwind and cramming of Convention folding, it is extremely easy to run out of time, and before you know it, you are packing it in, homeward bound. Final goodbyes and first hullos are sometimes left unstated. It's with this in mind, that I do apologize to anyone who I failed to spend longer hours with, or who I failed to spend even one minute with. Convention often leaves me breathless, with so many activities going on all at once and so many that gets left unaccomplished....

Also blogging:
Origami desde Lerma
Origami Tessellations

Other OUSA Photos:
Andrew Hans
Brian Chan
Brian K. Webb
Daniel Scher
Goran
Joseph Wu
Julie Savard
lilzabubba
Origamishiv
Phillip West
Rob Hudson
Sipho Mabona
vipnyc

Lantern Festival at Chinese-American Museum, Los Angeles

This was our 3rd year at this event. Filmed back on March 3, 2007.