Asian Night 2009

About a week ago, a steady stream of annual Asian subgroup events came along. Thus, it's only fitting that the umbrella group, the Asian Student Union (ASU) gets its fair share of the spotlight.

Featuring all seven subgroups in Binghamton University -- Asian Outlook (AO), Binghamton University Japanese Association (BUJA), Chinese American Student Union (CASU), Korean American Student Association (KASA), Phillipine-American League (PAL), Taiwanese American Student Coalition (TASC), and Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) -- Asian Night is the annual conglomeration that celebrated Asian culture on Binghamton's campus. It's a plethora of food and performances, all handled by students.

Since each group was responsible for contributing varieties of dishes and performers, I made the effort to take care of the performance aspect for TASC. What can I possibly do?

If you know me, I'd say I'm most confident about my piano-playing abilities.

Unfortunately, performances were limited to approximately 10 minutes at a time. As seen above, the video is 15 minutes long. Knowing we were short on time, I had to rush through the majority of pieces. In actuality, I cut off great portions of the songs. The latter three songs (excluding Heart and Soul), i.e. first movement of the Pathetique sonata by Beethoven, Fantaisie-Impromptu by Chopin, and the third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, average between 5 to 10 minutes in duration per piece. Yep, the only way to solve that is to condense the songs into wads of noise played at hyperspeed.

Here's the list, alternating between Kevin Su (KS) and me (JH):

JH: Super Mario Bros. Theme
KS: Family Guy Opening Theme
JH: Pokemon Gameboy Theme
KS: River Flows in You (Yiruma)
JH: Final Fantasy VII: Tifa's Theme (Uematsu)
KS: Final Fantasy VII: Tatakau Mono Tachi (Uematsu)
JH: Pathetique: first movement - Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13 (Beethoven)
KS: Secret Theme (Jay Chou)
JH: Fantaisie-Impromptu (Chopin)
KS: Adapted Waltzes, Op. 64 from Secret (Chopin / Jay Chou)
JH: Moonlight: third movement - Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27 (Beethoven)
KS/JH: Heart and Soul (Carmichael)

...After being worn out from the piano, I decided to chase a bus following Asian Night's after party. I was justly rewarded with a sprained ankle. Yay! Nights of experience. Gotta love it.