Fighting.
So, I had a fairly awesome weekend. Lots of stuff happened - I got to hang out with cool people, got to fight other cool people, and got to watch an asshat make a total fool of himself - overall, much fun.
The weekend started Friday at 3:45 when I picked up Albert to head over to Martian-Bob's house. We took Bongchul's and Marian-Bob's cars to Chicago. Not much interesting happened on the car ride over, but I did realize that Chicago is expensive to get to - over $5 in tolls to get out there! (Realize I've been living in Iowa for many years - we don't have tolls here) After we got to Chicago (Well, a suburb of), we met up with Master Jun, then headed out to a tasty Italian restaurant for supper. I had noodles with red sauce, and some other vegetable things mixed in. Was very tasty. We returned to the hotel, and everyone promptly fell asleep.
The next morning, everyone got up and promptly headed over to the gym in Niles, Il, where the tournament was being held. Jong-In did pretty well in his first fight, but he won by ring out. A few more fights went by, then it was my turn. My opponent looked like he had been in a tournament once or twice before. However hard he attacked me, however, I dodged, parried, blocked, and counter-attacked well enough that he didn't score a single point off of me. However, I accidentaly forfeited the match by stepping out of the ring one too many times. Martian-Bob told me after the fight that my form was really good for it being my first tournament, and we're going to work on my meeting charges, and my follow through - Having one or the other would probably have gotten me points in the fight before I stepped out. Oh well, it was my first tournament - and it was fun.
About the asshat... There was one dojo there that was headed by a gaijin (Non-Asian, in this instance), and the team was from the South. I felt really sorry for the kids - gaijin kept yelling at them, and not in the "You can do it! Come on!" way, but the "What are you thinking?!? Get back in the middle!" types of ways. So, anyway, gaijin came to Bongchul before they fought each other, and said that he was really looking forward to the match - he really liked nice, clean fights with no pushing, nothing dirty. Gaijin then offered Bongchul a Red Bull, and told him to go ahead and drink it before the fight, it'd help him out, then proceeded to chug his own. Bongchul looked at the can, and then just put it down next to his bag. They then proceeded to fight - with Bongchul winning quite handily. It wasn't much of a fight to see, unfortunately. I was hoping gaijin would put up more of a fight. On a side note, gaijin's team fought against a team of 4th dan blackbelts, and gaijin got 1/2 a point - by pushing one of the masters out of the ring. (I don't know if he actually got 1/2 a point - the ref shook his finger at him, but I couldn't hear what the ruling was)
On the team of masters, they had an interesting strategy worked out, so they could make it to the championship round - 1st master would win, 2nd would lose, 3rd would draw, then 4th and 5th would win. And they played nice with people who weren't asshats (see gaijin comments, above), in terms of going easier on them - instead of hitting 5 times in the blink of an eye, they'd only hit twice in the same timespan.
However, the ISU team beat the masters, and went on to win the tournament. With Bongchul's help.
After the tournament was over, we went out to an asian buffet restaurant (More Korean than anything else) and ate lots of food. After that, I got to drive home from Chicago. Overall, quite a fun weekend. There's another tournament in Philadelphia in May, hopefully I'll be able to afford to go, and will be in more than one match!
More stuff happened on Sunday, some of it good, some of it not so good, but is beyond what I want to talk about here.
The weekend started Friday at 3:45 when I picked up Albert to head over to Martian-Bob's house. We took Bongchul's and Marian-Bob's cars to Chicago. Not much interesting happened on the car ride over, but I did realize that Chicago is expensive to get to - over $5 in tolls to get out there! (Realize I've been living in Iowa for many years - we don't have tolls here) After we got to Chicago (Well, a suburb of), we met up with Master Jun, then headed out to a tasty Italian restaurant for supper. I had noodles with red sauce, and some other vegetable things mixed in. Was very tasty. We returned to the hotel, and everyone promptly fell asleep.
The next morning, everyone got up and promptly headed over to the gym in Niles, Il, where the tournament was being held. Jong-In did pretty well in his first fight, but he won by ring out. A few more fights went by, then it was my turn. My opponent looked like he had been in a tournament once or twice before. However hard he attacked me, however, I dodged, parried, blocked, and counter-attacked well enough that he didn't score a single point off of me. However, I accidentaly forfeited the match by stepping out of the ring one too many times. Martian-Bob told me after the fight that my form was really good for it being my first tournament, and we're going to work on my meeting charges, and my follow through - Having one or the other would probably have gotten me points in the fight before I stepped out. Oh well, it was my first tournament - and it was fun.
About the asshat... There was one dojo there that was headed by a gaijin (Non-Asian, in this instance), and the team was from the South. I felt really sorry for the kids - gaijin kept yelling at them, and not in the "You can do it! Come on!" way, but the "What are you thinking?!? Get back in the middle!" types of ways. So, anyway, gaijin came to Bongchul before they fought each other, and said that he was really looking forward to the match - he really liked nice, clean fights with no pushing, nothing dirty. Gaijin then offered Bongchul a Red Bull, and told him to go ahead and drink it before the fight, it'd help him out, then proceeded to chug his own. Bongchul looked at the can, and then just put it down next to his bag. They then proceeded to fight - with Bongchul winning quite handily. It wasn't much of a fight to see, unfortunately. I was hoping gaijin would put up more of a fight. On a side note, gaijin's team fought against a team of 4th dan blackbelts, and gaijin got 1/2 a point - by pushing one of the masters out of the ring. (I don't know if he actually got 1/2 a point - the ref shook his finger at him, but I couldn't hear what the ruling was)
On the team of masters, they had an interesting strategy worked out, so they could make it to the championship round - 1st master would win, 2nd would lose, 3rd would draw, then 4th and 5th would win. And they played nice with people who weren't asshats (see gaijin comments, above), in terms of going easier on them - instead of hitting 5 times in the blink of an eye, they'd only hit twice in the same timespan.
However, the ISU team beat the masters, and went on to win the tournament. With Bongchul's help.
After the tournament was over, we went out to an asian buffet restaurant (More Korean than anything else) and ate lots of food. After that, I got to drive home from Chicago. Overall, quite a fun weekend. There's another tournament in Philadelphia in May, hopefully I'll be able to afford to go, and will be in more than one match!
More stuff happened on Sunday, some of it good, some of it not so good, but is beyond what I want to talk about here.