Bad day at the office

Well Friday’s morning training was quite good. Pai Mei ordered us to do sanbon shobu and make them feel like shiai, and try to fight as many different people as you can. I really felt like I was in the right spirit. I had a really good fight with Andy. Tried to be constantly attacking, even when he missed hit me and stopped to apologise, I’d just do a strong kiai and continue without stopping. I also fought Pai Mei, but he beat me quite easily. Also fought KevH and lost. Hmm, I really should post things earlier dammit, cos I can’t remember much of what happened. Only my fight with Andy comes to mind. I also fought Pei at the end. Yeah, that was fun… Also fought Lin Mo (sp.?). I had a short chat to him afterwards and asked him his name again, I actually thought it was Rin Po! Hmm, didn’t really hear him properly the first time cos I was wearing my men. Anyway, I really felt good after the training and felt like I was ready to do shiai. I was told that the pools for the VKC were just chosen at random, so I could possibly get 2 ikkyu’s in my pool. So yeah, I did have a goal of getting out of the pools, which I later changed to just winning one of my matches but by that time I had downgraded that to just score a point, which I then changed to just doing my best. Positve, yes I know. But hey, I’m trying to be realistic.

Night before the VKC. Went to service my shinais only to find the doubari shinai I’d been using the past couple of weeks had a big crack in one of the slats!!! Doh! I was really starting to like the feel of it. Its virtually impossible to replace the slat now, because it’s an oval handle shinai. Hmm, might try though, because the shinai is still very new and it seems like such a waste! I have only used one side too! So the backside looks pristine! It wasn’t boding well for my chances at VKC.

VKC. Very disappointing. My two pool matches went by so fast. Lost my first match to MD and my second to MM. I should have listened to Pai Mei’s advice from Friday when he said ‘Make sure you get a good warmup and break a bit of a sweat!’. My pool was 4th, so I though I’d have time to do a good warmup, but by the time I finished my stretches and suburi, I was being called to get ready! WTF! It seemed that the group A matches were really fast (the speed was further quickened by my performance). But yeah, during my fights, I felt like I did at the Otsuka tournament, just really underdone. Oh well, I’ll just take it as experience.

The rest of the UMKC team did quite well, with UMKC winning kata pairs and kyu teams and coming runners up in kyu individual (Kev Wu) and open teams. I felt really proud during the team events. I had to keep score so I didn’t get to watch some of the matches because they were on the other court, and when they were on the court that I was scoring, it would have been rather inappropriate for me to cheer… though I couldn’t help it and cheered for the team every now and then. I was able to watch the open teams final between UMKC and Fudoshin from the stands though. I was really proud how the team played, especially since we were playing against a team that had 4 members on the national squad! A really funny moment came when KevC decided to kiai ‘Say! Say! Say!’ hehe.

Another thing that stuck in my mind was Kate Sylvesters fight against Orihashi. It was just very inspiring when watching her and I wish I can fight like that. Not in the physical sense (ie. technique wise) but her spirit. She was outsized by a much stronger opponent, but she never gave up and kept going. I guess that’s why she’s on the national team.