Pimping, and stuff
My offer on help_japan is still up -- bid, donate the winning amount to an organization contributing directly to the relief efforts in Japan, and I write fic for you. So if anyone's interested, please take a look. The auction ends on 31 Mar.
About silat...The ballot gave me a bypass into the quarter-final, which happened on Sunday. I survived the fight without passing out from the lack of stamina or re-injuring my knee, thankfully, surpassing my personal expectations...I also ended up winning, surpassing the expectations of possibly every one else. So I have to fight again next week. I'm still not sure whether that scares or thrills me.
But even with that win, Sunday still sucked, because of what some of my teammates had to go through. The refereeing and jury system has always been pretty screwy -- it's not just us being sore losers and accusing the referees of being out to get us. But against certain opponents... I'm sick of thinking about it, but roughly it has to do with, among many other factors, silat club politics, the fact that among the officials are people with ties to silat clubs, and how my team is made up mostly of people with no connection to silat clubs. And the small number of officials means that it's pretty difficult to ensure all the officials involved in a match sharee no club ties with the fighters (or the coaching staff of a school, in many other cases), and from what I've gathered they don't even bother trying. The jurying system in silat lacks transparency (which is why it's still not an Olympic sport) with the match result lying completely in the jurors' decision. And this year, they cut the number of jurors per match from five to three, making a biased result easier to achieve. My team's not the only one suffering as a result, but because of our situation we're probably getting the worst of it.
We've put up this shit for years -- we've been denied wins in close matches we thought were tipped our way, and swallowed it up when protesting didn't work. We've been reminded over and over that we needed to win so clearly no official would dare rule against us. That's usually worked out so far...But guess what? On Sunday, after choking back two close losses (which I don't think we deserved, really), we watched one of my teammates put up a very convincing performance in his match...and then saw him unanimously declared the loser.
Some of us just exploded -- I was one of them, I admit -- while the rest were just shocked into silence. We're used to this bullshit, but this was just too much. It wasn't just us -- some of the members and coaches of other teams couldn't believe it either. My coach was calm at that moment, but later we all got a glimpse of just how livid he was. He got our team manager to lodge a formal protest, roped in a particularly influential figure who strongly agreed with us to pile on the pressure when the organizers tried to brush it off, and finally got them to approve a rematch, provided the guy my teammate was fighting agreed to it to. Hah! That guy was barely standing after the fight, and he's in the semis now -- as if he'd agree to risk to put himself through another beating.
/outrage
We've still got the artistic events, and we didn't lose all our matches, so there's still something to fight for next week. But due to that crap, three of our best are out, and morale is pretty low, as you might expect. It's got to be especially troubling for the freshies -- at least the rest of us were somewhat prepared for it. There's talk of boycotting, but after all our training that's a pretty painful decision to make. I'm hoping this doesn't push anyone into quitting the team. No matter what my feelings for the sport and the local silat community are, I still value my team, and the time I've spent with it. And I'd hate to think some shit perpetuated by people who have little to do with us would ruin it.
About silat...The ballot gave me a bypass into the quarter-final, which happened on Sunday. I survived the fight without passing out from the lack of stamina or re-injuring my knee, thankfully, surpassing my personal expectations...I also ended up winning, surpassing the expectations of possibly every one else. So I have to fight again next week. I'm still not sure whether that scares or thrills me.
But even with that win, Sunday still sucked, because of what some of my teammates had to go through. The refereeing and jury system has always been pretty screwy -- it's not just us being sore losers and accusing the referees of being out to get us. But against certain opponents... I'm sick of thinking about it, but roughly it has to do with, among many other factors, silat club politics, the fact that among the officials are people with ties to silat clubs, and how my team is made up mostly of people with no connection to silat clubs. And the small number of officials means that it's pretty difficult to ensure all the officials involved in a match sharee no club ties with the fighters (or the coaching staff of a school, in many other cases), and from what I've gathered they don't even bother trying. The jurying system in silat lacks transparency (which is why it's still not an Olympic sport) with the match result lying completely in the jurors' decision. And this year, they cut the number of jurors per match from five to three, making a biased result easier to achieve. My team's not the only one suffering as a result, but because of our situation we're probably getting the worst of it.
We've put up this shit for years -- we've been denied wins in close matches we thought were tipped our way, and swallowed it up when protesting didn't work. We've been reminded over and over that we needed to win so clearly no official would dare rule against us. That's usually worked out so far...But guess what? On Sunday, after choking back two close losses (which I don't think we deserved, really), we watched one of my teammates put up a very convincing performance in his match...and then saw him unanimously declared the loser.
Some of us just exploded -- I was one of them, I admit -- while the rest were just shocked into silence. We're used to this bullshit, but this was just too much. It wasn't just us -- some of the members and coaches of other teams couldn't believe it either. My coach was calm at that moment, but later we all got a glimpse of just how livid he was. He got our team manager to lodge a formal protest, roped in a particularly influential figure who strongly agreed with us to pile on the pressure when the organizers tried to brush it off, and finally got them to approve a rematch, provided the guy my teammate was fighting agreed to it to. Hah! That guy was barely standing after the fight, and he's in the semis now -- as if he'd agree to risk to put himself through another beating.
/outrage
We've still got the artistic events, and we didn't lose all our matches, so there's still something to fight for next week. But due to that crap, three of our best are out, and morale is pretty low, as you might expect. It's got to be especially troubling for the freshies -- at least the rest of us were somewhat prepared for it. There's talk of boycotting, but after all our training that's a pretty painful decision to make. I'm hoping this doesn't push anyone into quitting the team. No matter what my feelings for the sport and the local silat community are, I still value my team, and the time I've spent with it. And I'd hate to think some shit perpetuated by people who have little to do with us would ruin it.