Taekwondo Students Prepare for National Competition

I have been working on a press release for the martial arts school that my little brother Eric attends. They are trying to create a little bit of awareness about the program and get others interested in possibly sponsoring the school, or individual martial art students. Some of them, along with my brother, need to raise $2500 by the end of June to go to a national competition in California. Let's see who decides to run this press release I wrote

Local Taekwondo Students Compete In Preparation For National Competition

Lindon, Utah- April 25, 2011- Beyond Sports Taekwondo will be hosting a Wasatch Exhibition competition Saturday, April 30, 2011 at 9 a.m. to give forefront experience in tournament combating to students who will fight against top competitors from around the country at a national Taekwondo competition this June in San Jose, Calif.

Taekwondo is a martial arts self-defense sport fairly new to Utah, but has been steadily growing in the Utah County area. Not only do students learn self-defense, but also learn how to master forms that enable students to have controlled techniques that aid in the development of leaderships skills.

There are those Students who want to move on to nationals in hopes of attaining experience on a national level, but due to the high expense of traveling to nationals, only a fraction of students will be able to participate. Finding sponsorship has always been a challenge to obtain, yet is vital in order to help students advance in this rigorous sport.

Master Instructor Taralyn Sorenson at Beyond Sports Taekwondo said, “The main bulk of what I do is all about creating great kids out of leadership programs to give them self-control and discipline skills.”

Not only do students receive martial art instruction, but they also have the opportunity to become instructors and assist in teaching students in lower belt classes.

“I hope to one day qualify to compete in the U.S. Olympics. By helping to instruct lower belt students, I feel like it helps me to understand the techniques better to help me to reach that goal someday,” said 16-year-old Eric Nixon who holds a 2^nd degree Black Belt.

Taekwondo is the name of the martial art turned modern international sport which has been independently developed over about 20 centuries in Korea. The main feature of Taekwondo is that it is a free-fighting combat sport using bare hands and feet to repel an opponent. Taekwondo no more the sport of an eastern small country, Korea, has become one of the world's most prominent sports participated in by some 40 million people in more than 142 countries. The International Olympic Committee admitted the Taekwondo as an official event of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Australia. As a result, Taekwondo is poised to take another leap in its advance towards new dimensions. All events are open to the public.

For more information:

Beyond Sports Taekwondo: 801-796-0412, www.beyondsportsutah.com

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Recapturing Frank Abagnale's Speech Given to UVU

Frank Abagnale, a New Yorker made famous by Film Director/Producer Stephen Spielberg's movie "Catch Me If You Can," was a guest speaker at UVU today telling his version of his teenage adventures when he took advantage of the banking system and wrote fraudulent checks totaling 2.5 million dollars in 26 countries.

The story began at the age of 16 when he met his parents at the family courthouse. The judge told Frank that his parents were getting divorced. Being confused over the option of choosing a parent to live with, he left upset and wouldn't see his mom for another 7 years.

Unable to obtain a decent working wage at 16, he lied about his age telling people that he was 10 years older than he really was. At age 16 he was 6 ft. tall, and had partial gray hair. Even then he saw that he was unable to obtain good work with good wages.

After forging a few checks, he decided it was time to get out of New York, so he wouldn't get caught. He started his criminal career posing as a Pan-American Airways pilot where he posed as a pilot flying around the world riding in the jump-seat in the cockpit of other airlines so he wouldn't get caught. He was so brilliant that he came up with ways to get a uniform and an identification card for free. He did so by posing as someone he wasn't and giving clever lies to people in order to get what he wanted. Pan-Am estimates that from the age of 16 to 18 he boarded 256 airplanes and had flown a million miles to 26 different countries without stepping on-board of a single Pan-Am airplane; all that flying and hotel stay on the airline's budget.

Continuing to fraud checks along the way to gain money, the FBI eventually caught up to him. It was time to move on. He went to Georgia and posed as a doctor. He knew exactly what to do in order to aggravate the other doctors so they would avoid him. He was only asked to be on duty for 2 weeks during his time at the hospital.

He went on to be a lawyer. A law degree wasn't required to be a lawyer in Louisiana, so he spent 2 months studying and passed the bar. He eventually resigned.

He continued to fraud checks and even figured out how to magnetically encode deposit slips, so that people who used those slips would be depositing into his account.

Frank was only arrested once, in Southern France on a Sweedish warrant. He was convicted of forgery and sentenced to prison.

Spielberg recreated every little detail according to the prison log-book Spielberg also went to Sweden penetentary to learn about Frank's past.

A U.S. Federal judge sentenced him to 12 years in prison in Virginia, but he only served 4 years in prison. He was then offered the chance to work with the FBI to help the fraud dept. out. He accepted that job and continues working with the FBI 35 year later. He resides in Charleston SC.

He had little to do with the movie. He didn't participate in the making of the film. Spielberg did his own research. According to Spielberg, he chose to immortalize Abagnale on film, not for his past crimes, but for what he has done in the 30 some odd years since for his country.

Abagnale and his family were very pleased with the outcome of the film.

Frank says that if he were as brilliant as people say that he is, he wouldn't have found it necessary to break the law. Although people find it very fascinating what he did, he looks at what he did as immoral, unethical and a burden to him.

He ended his speech talking about his dad and the importance of fathers. All 16 year olds are just children, and like all children, they need their mother and their father. ALL children are entitled a mother and father.

He cried himself to sleep every night until he was 19 and missed out on the luxuries that ordinary teenagers enjoy.

Frank said, "I owe this country 800 times more than he could ever repay it, for giving me a second chance these past 36 years." He has turned down 3 pardons from 3 sitting President's of the United States, because he doesn't feel like that would pardon his actions.

In ending his speech, he mentioned that his wife changed his life. He gives all credit for everything he has, was or ever given to his wife.

He reminds men to remember what it means to "actually be a man." "Being a man has nothing to do with money, achievements, skills, accomplishments, possessions. A real man loves his wife, is faithful to his wife, who is a real man next to god and his country and places his wife first. "Nothing has brought me more joy than striving to be a good husband and father."

Zuckerberg Speaks at BYU

When I heard Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg was coming to town, I jumped all over the opportunity to go listen to what the youngest billionaire in the world had to say about success and technology.

Last week U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch invited Mark Z. to come to Provo and have an informal forum with him in front of a crowd of nearly 11,000. This was the first time Mark has ever visited a college campus to talk. Mark even mentioned how nervous he was to speak in front of so many people. He had never spoken to such a crowd. He quickly got over his shyness and did a good job talking about his company, and the major things he looks for in future employees and entrepreneurs. Senator Hatch is a form BYU alum, and did quite a candid job asking Mark some questions that had been submitted by BYU students.

Some things that stood out to me were a few simple things Mark said. He mentioned that the key to any company is the people who are employed. Make sure that everyone who you hire is great at what they do.

Mark took a psychology class while at Harvard and mentioned how it is the most important course along with sociology. It's important for

people to know what's going on with their friends and family. He just helped to provide the tools necessary to allow this.

My favorite part was the part where he mentioned what he looks for in hiring people. Passion. He said, “We look for people who are passionate about something. In a way, it almost doesn’t matter what you’re passionate about. What we really look for when we’re interviewing people is what they’ve shown an initiative to do on their own.”

What have you taken initiative to lead lately? He wants to hire people who think that his organization is broken and want to help make it better in other ways that they are currently not using.

After this technology forum I got the chance to talk to one of my best friends from Spain, Javier. He is doing an internship with a local Spanish tv station. He wanted to interview a couple people about what they had just heard, so he interviewed me in Spanish, along with a good friend of mine, Cristina. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I went.

The Return of OMD

Those who know me know that I am a big fan of music, especially 80s music. I have spent the last few years rediscovering songs from my childhood. I think I've done a pretty good job recovering songs that I can remember hearing when I was a kid. The best part is that all the songs I remember are still big hits. I think I have really good taste in music.

Some of the earliest songs I can remember hearing are songs from Tears for Fears, Animotion, and OMD. How cool is it to be able to attend one of these familiar groups in concert?

OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), A British pop group organized in 1978, came to Salt Lake City on March 23, 2011 for the first time in 23 years, and guess who was there? Me.

I had nearly forgotten how much I love synthesizer-pop music. It's great. I didn't really know what to expect from these guys, but I was very surprised with how hip they still are. The lead vocalist, Andy McClusky, is 51 and had the most fantastic almost spazzy type dance moves.

The concert held at the Depot was sold out. There was a good range of attendees, but I'd guess that the average age was upper 30s.

They put on a terrific show, and I would love to see them again in concert. My biggest disappointment was that they didn't play "Secrets". After returning to the stage to do an encore, my friends and I thought for sure they would be playing Secrets. Instead OMD played a song off their new album and Electricity, their first hit song they wrote at the age of 16.

The band apologized for taking so long to return to Salt Lake, and promised that they would return soon.

A Different Perspective

Recently BYU Forward, Brandon Davies, was suspended from the most successful basketball season to take place at BYU due to an honor code violation. As you can imagine what would happen to a player who plays for a team that is nationally ranked #3, he instantly not only became the talk of the town, but the talk of the country.

Davies' situation has become a number one topic all over ESPN and several news agencies and blogs. He has been one of the top Tweeted topics on Twitter over the past few days, consisting of over 185 million tweeters.

I respect the fact that BYU has a standard and sticks to it, but I would like to point out that Davies has gone through much, much more than what an average student would have had to go through if the exact same rule had been broken. Has his punishment been detrimental? I think so.

The church is centered around the fact that the natural man is evil and constantly committing imperfections that prevent man from returning to live with God someday. Because of this fact, a savior was needed and a gospel was created to give man the opportunity to be forgiven of his sins through repentance. It's a church of forgiveness.

I believe that some kind of restitution had to take place in order to teach a lesson, but was it necessary to take away hopes and dreams, destroy a chance of a lifetime and basically inadvertently defame that crap out of a student just because he had sex with his girlfriend? The school should have taken into consideration the effect this would have on Brandon Davies. Was public humiliation part of the god's forgiveness process? I don't know, God works in mysterious ways, but it's possible.

If you asked me what a proper shellacking would have been, I would have said a suspension from the regular season, and maybe take away the guy's scholarship for next year. This student has had it far worse than any normal student who would have committed the same violation. So if every honor code violation punishment is resolved on a case-to-case basis, why couldn't this case take a slightly different turn to avoid broadcasting a man's sins to the world? Something so personal that should only be known between you, your bishop and God; according to the LDS faith. I suppose Davies knew what he got himself into, so technically nobody should feel bad for him; however, I wonder how many other BYU athletes are sweating bullets right now?

Hanging Loose

I recently returned from an lds singles retreat to Maui, Hawaii. I had a such a good time meeting and making so many new friends. I got to do a lot of fun activities around the island.

One thing interesting that I learned was where the "Hang Loose" came from. I always knew Hawaii was famous for the hanging loose hand gesture, but didn't know what it meant until now. It is actually called the Shawka, because there was once a surfer who had a shark take a bite of his hand, leaving the thumb and pinky finger. Every time he waved to the local people, "hang loose" is all they saw. They called him the "Shawka" because a shark had got to him.

My favorite experience in Hawaii was watching all of the whale breaches. It is whale season and I have never seen so many whale jumping out of the water. One day I was out kayaking with my group, and paddled over to a couple of whales. We were hoping to get a picture of maybe the tail coming out of the water rather than just the blow hole. We were about out of time when all of a sudden the whale started jumping out of the water next to us. It was a momma whale showing its infant how to jump. It was so dang cool! Our tour guide told us that we were lucky. This kinda thing only happens to him once a season. If we were any closer, the whale would have landed on top of us. It was pretty much epic.

The snorkeling was fun to see the turtles and some colorful fish, but there weren't a lot of fish swimming around, so it was hard to spot them. The coral was sweet though.

We went up the Haleakala one morning to catch the sunrise at 10,000 ft. That was pretty cool to be up above all of the clouds.

The road to Hana was a little intense. It is so pretty, but holy cow was it a doozer. I read somewhere that it has over 600 curve turns. Be prepared to get a little car sick, but that part of the island is tropical, so it's worth it.

Having time to travel has been nice. I wish I was able to go with most of my friends who are all jealous, because they're working. But in return, I get jealous of them during the summer when I am super busy working and they all get to go on vacation. Lucky them!

Mini Fiddler

Last week Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband played another phenomenal concert at BYU. I was able to spend nearly an hour in the green room before the show, talking with Ryan and other members of the band. I am friends with most of the guys, so it's always a good time for me to catch up with them, since everyone is always busy with life.

I asked Ryan if he could play a song at my request. He said they didn't know the song. He continued to reject my next two song choices, because they hadn't practiced the songs together. He went on to try to teach me about the theory of concerts. He explained a concert performance like a roller coaster. It has to start high and fast and have low and slow moments, but ending on a high. I knew this, but just wanted them to play something new and different for a change. I went around asking the other band members if they knew the songs, and they all said they did, so I'm no sure why they couldn't squeeze an extra song in.

I saw Ryan's little kid, Trevor walk by with the littlest fiddle I have ever seen. I thought it was a toy, but everyone reassured me that it was real. Trevor is Ryan's Mini Me. He looks just like Ryan, and I'm told that he looks just like Ryan when he was a kid.

Trevor is the kind of kid who wants to be just like his dad. He watches his dad play and gets up and tries to be just like him. With what little vocabulary 2 year old Trevor has, he asked his dad if he could play with them in the concert. Sure enough they let him! Trevor came up during two different songs and played (unplugged) and would occasionally sing into his mini mic. It was so cute! I'm pretty sure Trevor will continue the traditions of his family name and be the 6th generation of fiddlers to be produced by the Shupe family.

I Found a Schmuck!

I was recently talking to a good friend, who I will keep anonymous, about school. He had graduated in December 2008; the same semester I graduated. Since then, he has been going about his business as a college graduate. I have never had a reason to doubt him, until now.

We got to talking about how hard it is to look at a piece of paper, framed on the wall, and make monthly student loan payments for it. I have my Bachelor degree in Communication framed and hung up in my bedroom.

My anonymous friend says, "Oh I never got my degree in the mail." I continued to question him as to why he never tried to figure out why he never got it. He responded, "I just thought it got lost in the mail or something. It doesn't really matter to me, cause I know I am graduated and that's good enough for me." Shocked in awe about how bizarre that response was, I proceeded to tell him about how proud I am of that framed piece of paper that has me $13 grand in debt.

I think that was when the wheels in his head started to turn. A couple days later he came to me saying something about talking to a counselor at UVU and found out that he never officially graduated, because he still has one more class to take. I asked him, how he did not know that? He gave some kind of response that he didn't know. He did say that he had some good news. Since he's an employee of UVU, he can take this class this semester for free! Haha!

Ok so here's my dilemma. How on earth does it take 2 full years to figure out you never graduated?

If you haven't seen the movie "Dinner For Schmucks," you need to watch it.

Does anyone want to invite me and my friend over for dinner?!