Category: Features

By Harleen Kaur

VSA (Vietnamese Student Association) hosts their annual showcase in the L-Building on Feb. 7 at 7 p.m.

This year’s theme was Until the Last Petal Falls. The board usually decides the theme. When coming up with the rose theme for this year’s show, the VSA cabinet had intended to have the rose signify the fading culture. The petals would represent the memories and traditions of the culture as this generation holds on to each custom.

In the show, they performed a variety of traditional dances such as dances with umbrellas, fans and ribbons. They also featured an officer waltz at the end and a surprise prom-posal. The club hopes that they can showcase the importance of remembering their Vietnamese culture through the elegance of fluttering fans as well as ribbons. Usually, the Cultural Chairs choreograph the dances and the presidents choreograph the waltz, however, this year the members were able to choreograph umbrella, fan and hat couples dance.

“It feels amazing to be a member of VSA. I get the chance to dance with a bunch of talented girls and boys that share a common interest, supporting our culture,” says member Kristine Nguyen. “Being a choreographer takes a lot of dedication and time. It’s fun teaching a routine that we were able to come up with.”

VSA practices their choreography throughout the week. Each dance group, depending on the difficulty and need to clean, practices almost every day as well as weekends.

On the night of the show, the club sold snacks and club merchandise with the successful attendance of their supporting family and friends. They had a backdrop with lights and roses hanging from the bleachers for decoration.

Last year, due to scheduling complications, VSA was unable to host their showcase.

“We didn’t want to schedule the show during AP exam season and the L-Building was booked for the days we were considering, so we couldn’t have our showcase,” states VSA Treasurer Maggie Nguyen.

Overall, the show turned out to be an entertaining night for both the audience and performers.

“I’m so glad that the VSA show was a success. I was able to meet so many new people who were passionate about the same thing as I was,” says Cultural Chair Christine Do. “All the time put into the show paid off in the end when seeing the excitement and bond between the performers.”

 

By William Chen and Jennie Tran

The Advanced Drama class and Insane Ink collaborate together to warm up this month with the annual Holiday Showcase. This holiday-themed event was held on Dec. 6 in the L-Building, and was performed throughout the school day with an additional night show at 8 p.m., called Winterfest.

The showcase this year was “A Christmas Scarol” by Don Zolidis. The play was directed by seniors Amanda Gill, Karen He and Oziris Valverde. Tickets were sold for $5 at the G-Building the week during lunch leading up to the day of this event. They were limited to selling only 200 tickets.

“A Christmas Scarol” is about when a boy named Tim can’t think of a Christmas gift to give his high-maintenance girlfriend,” claims Oziris.

The show’s main protagonist, Tim, was then visited by four terrifying spirits (actually five—they’ve been hiring) who whisk him away on a harrowing and hilarious journey into the past, present, future and an alternate timeline. This wild and free-spirited adaptation of the holiday classic is a reminder of the true meaning of Christmas (which is getting awesome presents).

“The holiday showcase is one of my favorite shows to put on because it is student produced and we all worked hard to put on the show. The process was tough, but performing and spreading the Christmas spirit was the best part in the end,” says Advanced Drama student Alyssa Casimiro.

Not only did the Drama Dept. show their holiday spirit, but Winterfest overall was filled with many other fun activities.

“Expect to have nothing but fun and holiday cheer! Winterfest will feature games, face painting, a photo booth, free hot chocolate and an evening performance!” exclaims Karen.

The games, food and drinks are provided by Insane Ink, warming up the holiday season just right.

In addition, Winterfest had only started in 2017 and is now an annual tradition.

“The purpose of our annual Winterfest started for the parents. In previous years, we’ve only had the school-wide performances, which didn’t give our families a chance to see what their child was working on and the hard work they’ve dedicated in class,” adds Oziris.

During the process of the showcase, the students poured a lot of effort and work into the production to make the show a great success.

“Directing the show was a lot more stressful than I thought. I actually had a nightmare about forgetting light cues! Overall, I really enjoyed sharing my ideas with my co-directors, Karen and Amanda. We’re all super creative in different ways and it was interesting seeing all of our visions come together,” states Oziris. “We have the cast, booth team, props team, stage managers, costume crew and deck leaders. No part is a small part.”

By Victor Xie

Forget the flu! There’s another disease that’s taking the senior class by storm: senioritis.

If you don’t know if you have senioritis or not, here’s a list of expected symptoms you may experience:

• Doing homework the day it’s due
• Not doing homework at all
• Saying, “I can do it tomorrow”
• Saying, “I got this in the bag” without studying for the test
• Not realizing anything is due
• Feeling like nothing in school matters anymore

When I was a freshman and seniors told me, “I have massive senioritis,” I never understood why anyone could stop caring about school. More importantly, I never understood how anyone could stop working for something they’ve been working towards for almost four years.

Well, here I am, a senior, suffering from massive and crippling senioritis.

I never thought I would catch it. Looking back, I feel like freshman-me was much more driven and ambitious. I wanted to get straight A’s, get positions in clubs and do everything possible that would look good on college applications. Now as a senior, I think I’ve kind of accepted that it’s too late to chase those ambitions, and that’s probably what causes my senioritis.

I think what really bugs me is that people don’t really understand why some of us seniors catch senioritis in the first place. I just survived probably the worst year of my life: junior year. And now I’m being told to keep working, studying, writing and calculating with no assurance whatsoever that it will ever pay off. With college applications submitted, I’m simply waiting for judgement day. Senior year just seems like an excessive waiting line that determines my future.

If I could go back in time and tell my early senior-self not to catch senioritis, I don’t think I would. I think my senioritis is pretty justified; I’ve worked hard and now I’m burnt out.

I do homework in third period. I go home and take naps. I procrastinate on five-page research papers. These are bad habits I never did until senior year (surprisingly) and never thought I’d normalize. I guess my senioritis isn’t as bad as others that I’ve witnessed, but nonetheless I never thought I’d catch such a deadly disease.

Now, getting out of this pit hole of feeling endlessly unmotivated is going to be hard; probably impossible at this point. But I guess I’ll try. In second semester.

To the underclassmen: watch out. Senioritis gets the best of everyone.

By Jose Flores-Jimenez

Bells will be ringing for deals on Christmas presents, but the tariffs set by President Donald Trump on Chinese imports this season could make this Christmas a little frosty for consumers. The ongoing tariffs enacted by President Trump more than 16 months ago makes this the first time that major American companies are deeply affected by our Trade War with the Chinese economy during the Christmas Season.

Since July 2018, the US has been defending its position as the largest economy in the world by discouraging American consumers from buying Chinese imports with higher tariffs. The tariffs, implemented by President Trump, function as a tax that retail companies and small businesses have to pay in order to get their usual shipments of products from China.

China responded to the tariffs by enacting tariffs of their own on US imports in China, locking the two economic powers in a competition of who can set the higher tariff on who. So far, the biggest loser has been American companies, such as Ford, Stanley Black and Decker and Tyson Foods, that pay the tariffs. Now that the holidays are among us, more tariffs mean more cuts into company profits, which results in higher prices for the consumer.

“This (season) is probably where retailers expect a big part of their yearly profits to come,” says Economics teacher Alexander Sarria.“So they’re very sensitive to what’s been going on in trade.”

Last Friday, President Trump announced that an agreement between China and the United States had been reached, settling on an end to China’s tariffs on US imports, and a decrease in tariffs on Chinese imports.

While this continues to affect some clothing products, such as shoes and coats, which continues to have a seven and a half percent tax, the overall prices of consumer goods this season will not affect toys and tech products.

“The Trade War supports (Trump’s) base. He politically gained an advantage for doing these things. His supporters will support him for it,” says Mr. Sarria.

By Winnie Tran and John Nguyen

This year, Piedmont continues their four year winning streak, placing first for Olympia, which is a series of mini games similar to FANTASTICS. Piedmont Hills came in first, followed by Milpitas in second and Mt. Pleasant in third.

The VSA Mays (Mid-Autumn Youth Summit) festival occurred on Sat., Nov. 9 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Mount Pleasant High School. Entries were free and welcomed all parents and fellow students.

VSA Mays is coordinated by an organization called VietAYA (Vietnamese American Youth Association).

“Creating a dance is actually so much more stressful than it really seems but I’m really glad to have Christine Do as my partner. Honestly, everything we make comes through as pure creativity, there’s really nothing that inspires to incorporate a specific move,” states Cultural Chair Christina Wong.

The members have been working hard lately and have four routines planned: two fan dances, an umbrella dance and a ribbon dance. The festival is a competition style showcase where other VSA, VSU (Vietnamese Student Union) and CVC (Chinese Vietnamese Club) clubs from different schools perform to compete in many activities including singing, debates, skits, dances, games and speeches for first, second and third place.

“I think it’s important that if you are given the chance to represent who you are, you take pride in it. I decided to take part in MAYS because I can contribute to these amazing performances. I believe that we are all talented and MAYS gave us an opportunity to show it off,” says junior Kristine Nguyen.

The other schools that are competing with Piedmont are Silver Creek, Mount Pleasant, Milpitas, Andrew Hills, Santa Teresa, Overfelt, and Oak Grove. Last year, Santa Teresa High School, Silver Creek High School, and Milpitas High School scored the highest for dances. This year, Santa Teresa placed first for skit and second for dance and singing, and third in debate. Silver Creek placed first for debate, speeches, second for the scholarship award, and third for skit. Milpitas placed first for dance, second in Olympia, and third for the scholarship award and singing.

“It’s both bonding with your club and the anticipation of finding out the results after all the hard work you put in,” states Secretary Quynh Le.

During the event, Piedmont’s dance performance got moved from 4:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., giving them less time to prepare and practice, despite this setback, Piedmont Hills still placed third for dance group.