High School Musical

Gave a talk at my high school, Head-Royce, last week. My old English and Japanese lit teacher Barry Barankin somehow found me through the SF Asian American Film Festival people and invited to me to talk about how I got where I am today. It was cool seeing all my teachers from way back when( I graduated class of '92) and to see they were still inspiring students and still looked pretty much the same. The talk was fun and the students had a lot of great questions. There were a lot more Asian kids than when I was there and some of the students even did wushu. When I was in high school, I was the only one who did any martial arts!
From left: Jeff Key my art teacher, Johnny Wang my classmate and buddy, My Mom, Me and Barry Barakin. Jeff and Barry took me and several students to Japan for a summer class trip back in 1990. It was my first time to Japan and I loved it, which is probably why I went back to study in college and have been back dozens of times since, When I was working on Shinjuku Incident, I couldn't help but think of the great times we had 18 years ago! Teachers are important people in this world and these guys definitely influenced me heavily.