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Spent the weekend in Davis for their annual Picnic Day. Since I’m a Stanford alum, I was a wee bit confused about the “Picnic” part of the day, since there actually wasn’t a picnic. The equivalent event we have is a “Community Day,” which is a catch-all event without leaving people confused on where the picnic was. I suppose many years ago the event did have a picnic – that’s now replaced with food stands, student performances, lectures, and music. Which I’m definitely not complaining about. It was my first time visiting the campus and contrary to what I’ve heard, I did not see a single cow! I guess I did get a stilted view of Davis – I was taken to the main student union and the recreation center where I saw a demo of Wushu. So, I didn’t get to see the history department =( Maybe next time!

From UC Davis Picnic Day

From UC Davis Picnic Day

From UC Davis Picnic Day

Now to be honest, when I first found out that Kolina used to do Wushu, I was a bit skeptical. My first encounter with the martial art was during my Sophomore year of college, when my next door neighbor, who was on the Stanford Wushu team, would practice his moves in the hallway. Since the dorm hallway was fairly narrow and used for things like walking, it was pretty awkward to go around him while he was practicing, especially since he was always concentrating on his moves and seemed upset that I needed to get by him to use the restroom. Well, I guess if his training paid off into some pretty sweet moves (see pictures above), then I guess it’s worth the inconvenience. (It’s one of those things right – you’ll thank me later? I’ll just keep telling that to myself.) Compared to my years of doing Tae Kwon Do, there’s a heavier emphasis on artistic movement and jumping. Tae Kwon Do was a lot of kicking and punching. Plus, they played some sweet rap music while they performed. And some high schoolers behind me kept whispering “Wow that guy can jump hella high!” “Dang, that girl is showing off!” “Whoa, sweet sword!” etc.

After the Wushu demo, we walked around and finally ended up at the Battle of the Bands. This turned out to be a back and forth ‘battle’ between several university bands. And lo and behold, guess who was there?

From UC Davis Picnic Day

I didn’t get to hear them play “All Right Now“. So, if you haven’t heard the song, you must watch this YouTube video of the LSJUMB performing at the Chinese New Year parade:

I was impressed by the Davis band, which walked through the crowd to play:

From UC Davis Picnic Day

So all in all, a good time. More pics on Picasa. And for a more detailed account of Picnic Day, you can head over to Kolina’s blog for more details.

PS – I just found out that Stanford’s Community Day was canceled due to cost-cutting. Stanford 0, Davis 1