Whenever I guest lecture about multimedia storytelling, I stress the importance of having a personal project. This is a story or an essay that you do for yourself, not for an editor or a professor or a publication. You do it because you’re passionate about the topic, the person, the issue, the situation, because not creating this story would leave you always wondering, “Why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t I make time for that?” A personal project allows you to be more creative, inventive and risky than you might be with an assignment. It can be a fun story or heavy story. Either way, you do a personal project because you must, because you love it. That’s all.

This has been my personal project for the last year-and-a-half: The Penny Project, the story of Leslie Stein, a woman who picks up all the change she finds on the street. In three years she’s collected hundreds of dollars and started a change-collecting movement among her friends and family. Last year she started donating the change to an organization striving to make positive changes in the lives of young women in DC.

I love this story. More to come.

(Mind you, this is just a first rough cut of the story introduction. I’m pretty set on opening with the sound of change, but beyond that I’m still thinking. Feel free to leave me thoughts and suggestions in the comments section.)

I threw my mom’s surprise birthday party at the beginning of May. Organizing this from afar was quite a task.

First, I had to lie to my Mom and tell her I couldn’t escape from DC for the weekend to celebrate a banner year birthday with her. In truth, I woke up early on a Saturday morning, drove down to Newport News and spent the morning of her party day picking up food from KFC, Domino’s and Mona Restaurant, a Korean restaurant that agreed to cater the bash even though they normally don’t serve such small parties. My sister and brother-in-law brought the cake and drinks.

Then, my Dad and I worked together to invite people to the party. Dad focused on church friends and I focused on Korean friends, many of whom don’t speak English. Ah, finally putting my hard-earned language skills to use for the first time in a while! I ended up leaving funny voicemails for almost everyone because no one picked up their phones. Luckily, enough people got the message and showed up.

Finally, I had to decide where to have the party. I haven’t lived in my hometown in a while and I’ve definitely never thrown a party there. I settled on the Virginia Living Museum, my niece’s favorite place to see her fishy friends Nemo and Dori (as well as furry and flying friend such as owls). Jennifer Turlington, the museum’s events coordinator, was wonderful in helping secure a party space and even coming up with the ruse for bringing my mom to the museum: why not have my Dad tell my Mom he was taking her to a flower show there? Not to knock my Dad too hard here, but I was suspicious my Mom would fall for this lie since flower shows aren’t exactly my Dad’s thing. Nevertheless, it worked. Jennifer posted a volunteer at the museum entrance. My Dad went up to the volunteer and said, “We’re here for the flower show,” which were the magic words for the volunteer to lead my parents through a side entrance, then down a path, then into a building, then down a hall into a classroom filled with all of us. Surprise!

The look on my Mom’s face was fantastic! She later said she wondered why she was being led to a “flower show” in a classroom in a building. She also said this was the best birthday she ever had.

August’s 8th birthday party in the beginning of June was a maelstrom of laughing, screaming, sugared-up kids exacerbated by a thunderstorm that led to much indoor horseplay and rowdiness. At the end, when everyone was gone and Eun and Marty were sweeping up and wiping down after their son’s celebration, they said, “See? No one ever tells you about THIS part of being a parent!” Haha! Those two crack me up.

Eun started out as my Asian American Journalists Association journalism mentor over 12 years ago. Over time we’ve become good friends to the point that I feel I’m a part of the Van Der Kim family: Eun, Marty, August and Reid (my godson). So I was thrilled to be at her 40th birthday party in mid July. The best part of the night? When Eun’s sisters-in-law appeared at the front door – they flew in from Arizona to surprise her!

What could be more fun than an all-afternoon trivia romp and scavenger hunt around DC’s famous and obscure sights? That’s exactly what I said to myself when I saw the ad for DC Challenge a couple months ago. So with help from friends and friends of friends, we cobbled a team together – Team Go, Go, Gadget! – and off we ran through downtown DC (with about 2,000 other trivia fiends) this past Saturday. The only rules were we had to use only our feet or public transportation and we had to take a photograph of the WHOLE team at each trivia location.

We searched for answers to clues such as: People say that the word “lobbying: comes from favor-seekers hanging out in this hotel’s lobby. It shares a name with a longtime NBC Today Show personality. Take a picture inside (if they don’t get sick of Challengers running through) or just outside.

Know the answer to that one? We didn’t. Tony and Ben researched the answer on their phones while the rest of us guessed aloud. The Couric Hotel? The Lauer Lounge? Ann Curry Motel? Thank god for iPhones and Blackberries, which gave us the answer: the Willard Hotel. And so we all ran over to the Willard Hotel, where a bemused employee to take a picture of us in the lobby. And you know what we found out? The scavenger hunt organizers didn’t tell the hotel – or anyone else/place on our clue list – that oh, 2,000 sweaty people might be dropping by on Saturday afternoon to snap a photograph.

Eleven clues, a few miles and almost three hours after we started, we crossed the finish line. It was a fantastic way to spend an afternoon!

Just over a week ago, Kelly and Mike pledged their love to each other during a gorgeous outdoor wedding at the Gramercy Mansion in Baltimore. They carried a little embroidered handkerchief during the ceremony – you know, just in case the tears flowed. While that didn’t happen, anyone can see how ridiculously happy these two are together. Congrats to Kelly and Mike!

Playing outside with my niece on a warm spring day – what could be more fun?

Last weekend my Mom came to visit and taught me how to cook 멸치 볶음 (myulchi bokkeum), which is anchovies lightly friend in sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar and a small bit of maple syrup. I’m getting more into cooking and hope my mom will teach me how to create more Korean dishes.