bon odori & grading

saturday: bon odori

not relly interesting, n blew 20 bucks there

picked up caryn n june at around 7, then drove over to the esplanade...it wasnt so jammed but the parking spaces nearby were all full (except for one in a secluded alley which a stupid indian fella was trying to con us to going in to, n i had better sense than dat...poor safety + having to pay for his 'service'? no way!) so in the end we parked somewhere near the bank street...10 minutes' walk away from the festival venue...

after reaching there we met up wif ej n went to look at the japanese dance which was going on. it wasnt relly dat good...the dancers dun seem very familiar wif their moves n werent synchronised. hehe u wud think dat they wud hv worked harder to put up a good show for their last year. but anyway there was a lot of ppl gathered around the circular stage where the dancing was taking place.

following that, we went looking around the stalls for some chow. the stalls were organised into rows like chinese, malay n japanese food. everything was paid for by coupons, n one set of coupons is 20 bucks! but the jap food was so expensive we finished our coupons without relly filling up oso.

there was this one jap bbq something stall that ej queued up for while i went to get the noodles. 5 mins later, i went back to find ej n he hasnt moved an inch in the queue. i went to look for my prefect juniors (got motive lah ;P) n when i came back 15 mins later, ej has made 2 steps' progress. then the fireworks started n went on for about 5 or 10 minutes. after which, we still had to wait another 10 minutes b4 ej finally emerged truimphantly from the queue. then i asked him: "where's mine?" n he sed "i tot u sed u dun wan!" -_-'

anyway, we originally wanted 2 eat at the seaside, but it turned out the whole stretch of the curb there was fully seated. so we scouted around n finally came upon an unoccupied table n settled our food, which did not come close to filling us up. (well, us 2 guys anyway) then we walked around a bit more n it was time to go home.


sunday: grading

man was it a disaster!

as was the norm for tkd events, we waited for a long long time there. i managed to learn all 7 one-step sparring sequences n 10 self defense sequences in that time (having been absent for class last sunday n yesterday morning) so it was lucky we had so much free time after all. but it din help me much, cuz i relly messed up the basics. i already knew it was bad news when i 1st saw the grading syllabus. we had to do the blasted jumping kicks (front, side, turning) AGAIN...i mean, we did that for the green belt grading last year! apparently they shifted it up to blue tip so rugilah kita who already did it last year (dats me, justin n samantha).

in case dan's wondering y i'm making such a fuss about jumping kicks, its becuz in tkd 'jumping kick' means u hv 2 jump n HOLD the kick when u land. holding normal kicks is hard enuf for me n jumping is all but impossible. n it kinda makes no sense to put ur leg out like that but lets not go into that for now.

anyway, when our turn came along i messed nearly everything up. 1stly was patterns, i 'gave it 101%' n messed up my side kicks which i was never good at (the tkd side kick still feels a bit weird after all this time). then when it came to basics, my jumping kicks were like waist high, which defeats the purpose of jumping in the first place. then came one step n self defence which wasnt so bad, then sparring. man, justin's an absolute horror as a sparring partner. he kept kicking below the belt! so i din dare to kick to high cuz we werent wearing groin guards n i dun wan 2 resort to cloning to reproduce in the future. the only thing i cud do was get in close n jam his kicks then try to do a chopping kick. but when dat happens he turns his back to me n squats down n covers his head! so i din get a clear hit on him at all. ok, enuf of technical stuff :P

so in short i can kiss that double promotion bye bye d. i think i'll skip next week's class cuz it'll b real siahsui when samantha n mira get their double n i dun.