for the love of god why!?

So I came back from a training session about 9 hours ago- where we tasted many espresso shots and talked about the good, the bad and the ugly. Not too bad, probably about 6-8 coffees and I'm still hyped but quite tired around the eyes.

Problem is- the coffee tasting session was at 7-8pm. It is now 4.55am!!

Rehab

A while ago, I fell into a small hole and rolled my left ankle in the process. Being the stubborn git that I am, I didn't give it enough time to heal and went to a few kung fu classes the day afterwards and massacred what was actually a very over-stressed ligament. Since mid-december I've been paying a heavy price for it, but finally in the past two weeks I have confidence in being able to run, skip, jump, punch, kick and roll again. So now I'm back to what I love doing, martial arts. I've been studying with Combat Centres for 12 months and it's great. I don't think that I have ever met a nicer group of people who have that unique combination of passion and knowledge. When you see a school with so many senior students kicking ass, it's fantastic. It seems that every second krotty or tkd school you walk into, nobody can fight and nobody has been around for more than 18months :/ That's very disheartening when you consider that you can only learn the basic techniques within that period of time. M.A shouldn't be some type of McDojo experience, you can't do shit if you get trained in a half-assed manner.

So do I bash people? Pretend I'm Bruce Lee? Live life in an RPG with +10 H2H combat skills and +7 nunchuck skills?! No no no. I benefit in a similar way to someone who does pilates, tai chi, and strangely enough- dancing. Mix in a lot of pad work, drills and sparring, and you have the macho element! It's almost a form of moving meditation, but not quite. I have gained so much confidence in my physical abilities in the past year. I've developed strength, flexibility, speed, agility, and more importantly, a level head when faced with 'fight or flight' situations. It's far better than when I was doing weights and trying to be a big man. That worked, but I felt like shit the whole time and what's worse, I felt uncoordinated, unbalanced and generally.. shit. I just don't have that happening when I do kung fu :)

So why do you do it?!

Last night I was sitting down to dinner with Adriaan, Bronwyn, Cam and Ingrid. We were served a lovely assortment of pork and chicken kebabs with gado gado which was very refreshing and tasty. So tasty that I had seconds, and then thirds, and was contemplating 4ths.. I was surprising even myself with the appetite that I had. It was a very pleasant evening and after many beers as well as a few glasses of wine, a topic came up-

Do you blog?

Followed by, what do you write, why do you do it? Out of the four people at that table, three of us were bloggers and Cam, the one left out didn't do it because he didn't know what to write about. It was one of those moments when you realise how dominant the internet has become. There are so many people who are connected these days, and so many people writing emails or blogging that the world has become a much smaller place. This is a very modern society these days, and it's great that we can share and be a part of a wider community so easily. To put all of our blogging answers together- we blog because

• It saves writing a massive email, repeatedly
  
• It acts as an online diary/journal that you can rant to when a friend isn't within phone/email/face distance
• It acts as a timecapsule for our thoughts

So that's it for now.. my brain has stopped and I need caffeine, and a little bit of fresh air.

I had an intruder!

Last night I woke up at about 2am in the morning and heard a pot dropping in the kitchen. I was a bit scared but thought I should go and check it out. I armed myself with a sharp pencil and crept up to the kitchen area but couldn't make out any shapes. My elite ninja skills kept me secreted away and I could definitely hear some movement in there. Whatever was in there did not sound very human, and when turned on the light I encountered one of the biggest possums I'd ever seen. Cheeky little bugger wasn't even scared of me- and just casually looked around for an opening to get out. I didn't particularly want possum patty for dinner the next night, so rather than killing it, I just herded the little intruder back to the door and out through the doggy door.

*phew*

note to self- funny faces and wild gesticulation do not work possums, but hissing like a cat and making claws out of my hands does.

*cough* Spanking the possum's bottom to help it through the doggy door was mildly amusing. *cough*

New Years Eve

Going back a bit now-

I had arranged to meet with some friends at the Sydney Street citycat terminal at 7ish. While I was waiting I had a nice surprise call from Petra who had just gone back to Austria and in the process of waiting she managed to catch her old old housemates Ingrid and Bronwyn. We headed over to a friend of a friend's place (Will who lives nearish to me, who works for Don who is an old college mate of mine) and drank, and danced, and played quite a lot of frisbee. It was a great night and I had so much to drink and mixed so many potent drinks together that I passed out at 3am. woops. I woke up and left at about 5am in the morning I think. The party got shut down at 6 in the morning by cops who responded to a complaint that my friends were "talking too loud". Needless to say, they weren't happy being there and it was quite a sight too. Will went to greet them outside, but stumbled upon someone passed out in the garden and almost did a faceplant. So much for a good impression. :)

Sadly, this party was so damned good that it started me drinking again. Usually I don't drink too much, because I had been training for martial arts fairly hard for the past 6 months and was entertaining the pipe-dream of entering an amateur MMA fight near the end of this year. I can't legally go around beating people up on the weekend, and the law tends to frown on m.artists who do this and cracks down hard on them so what else is left.. security (no thanks) and competition(yeah sweet!). Sadly, my school moved really far away from me, and I went from training 2-3 times a week to training once every 2-3 weeks. Then I rolled my left ankle fucking badly and destabilised the whole joint. FUCK.
So, back to the drawing board.. More body weight exercises at home until I have completely recovered I guess. Oh yeah, I should drink a lot less and skip a lot more. bah.

The mega catchup posts begin

It's been a while, and many things have happened. So where do I begin..

Around November-December period, I happened upon one of those very good friends that you hardly ever meet. The story starts from last year when my old housemate Chad hooked up with an Austrian cutie by the name of Edith. Edith in turn had a cute but fairly quiet Austrian housemate called Petra and while we all had a few conversations, nothing ever really scratched the surface. Anyway, fast forward to now- and Chad has chased Edith back to Europe and they are still together. Cool. Petra has come back to Australia to study for a while, and in doing her round of emails we ended up having a few good chats and then the next thing I know she's in Oz. After many an ice cream, coffees, a few drinks and a few d&m sessions we're good friends. I don't know how it happened, these types of friendships (the ones with the pretty girl that stay platonic) just always seem to happen to me and the next thing I know she's back to Austria and somehow I'm missing her. I don't know how it is that I can make friends so easily in some circumstances, but maybe it is due to my childhood. To escape my past, I've been seeking friendships with people that to me would approximate 'relative' status.

Mega Rewind- More about my family history. I have Hong Kong Chinese parents, who arrived in Australia in 1977. They knew hardly any English, and could barely do anything. All they knew was that hard work will net them money. Money = prosperity = respect of your peers. What do you do to get that when you have nothing more than street smarts and nothing more than a primary education? You grind it out, day in and day out. 16+hour days are pretty common, and my parents have graduated from sweatshops to busboys to f&b to managers to restaurant owners to being near bankrupt. All in the pursuit of happyness- all in pursuit of the mighty $$ because this ultimately provides happiness.. right?

So where do I fit into this? One of my earliest childhood memories goes back to when I was about 3 or 4, trying to strangle my nanny. Back then, it could be presumed that I didn't like being separated from my parents. But what could be done? That was the situation that we were in. From the ages of 5 through to 16, I was practically alone at home. I had the television, and books and that was it. What does this sort of solitude do to a kid? It totally fucks them up.. Sure, you hear shit like, oh Anthony's so well behaved at home and so quiet. He never makes any trouble etc etc. But what does this environment do to a kid who, apart from school is raised only on tv and books? A few quick and sometimes stern lectures here and there from a strained father and a caring but uncommunicative mum. A few times when I get the shit beaten out of me with a feather duster.. fantastic. great thanks. So that's my background. Socially mal-adjusted, bad at communication, bad with new people, new situations, very timid, hardly talks. Might as well be a ghost, might as well not be here. Pretty damned gloomy. That was back then. This is the here and now though. Over the course of the past three years, I have been struggling for mental independence and to break free from that past. From the former me. I can say very happily that I have been mostly successful. My former self is just a shadow, and while it follows me around, it can't do any harm..anymore.

I should also mention- today's melancholic post was brought to you by SIA- Colour the Small One. Quite a nice album, but haha, don't listen to this if you want to be in a quirky upbeat mood :P