1. With it raining in the morning, walking Mi Nam turned into quite the slip n’ slide and quite the messy situation when he decided to run and well, my legs weren’t quite ready to run… hehehe. The end result, a shower for two and one sore bum.
2. Junior Mint had told me to come to the club around 2pm to watch some fights on TV with him, some female fights that is, but what I saw wasn’t a fight. Instead, what I saw was discrimination at it’s peak.
3. Call it pride, call it home advantage,.. call it whatever you want, but no matter how you want to flower the word up or circle around the term, when it comes down to it, it is still discrimination so why don’t people just call it that.
4. I use to think that there was no right and no wrong way to look at things but now I’m seriously reconsidering that thought. There is a wrong and there is a right way to things, maybe not to all things but definitely to many things. Today, this was one of those things!!!
5. The first “fight”, as they called it, was between a female Chinese boxer and a female Korean boxer. The Korean girl was clearly NO match for the Chinese girl but after six rounds of her barely keeping herself on her feet and practically not able to even open her eyes, the Korean girl won. I was shocked… Junior Mint was shocked… the Korean girl who won even seemed somewhat shocked.
6. I didn’t stick around to watch the title match which was another Korean girl against another Chinese boxer. I already knew who was going to win and you know what, this wasn’t the first time this particular “champion female” has defended her title match by fighting a foreigner which really makes me wonder, did she really win those matches?!!!
7. I was so ticked, so ticked that I barely got through my heavy bag exercises. I pounded away at the sand bag, hoping that what was so clearly discrimination was only just a coincidence. I knew it wasn’t though and I know of 23 other fights that prove my point.
8. Q met up with me later on but I still hadn’t relaxed and so I sat at dinner with a long face on and said not a word… then it all came out. I spilled my beans to him. Q’s awesomeness clearly doesn’t stop at his amazing level of patience and dedication to me, it goes beyond that. Although he may not see eye-to-eye with me about the baby issue he does however see me as a person and not a foreigner which says a lot about him… a LOT! He agreed, discrimination was definitely at play today. He tried to cheer me up by telling me that I am different. I'm not some visiting boxer here for a match; I live here, train here, box here, have a team here... but does that really matter, I ask. I mean, in addition to having to step in the ring and fight my opponent, I also have to fight discrimination among the judges. Q and I both think that the way to get over this discrimination is to get the crowd on my side and win over their popularity. That's where my appearance on KBS and Airrang, my newspaper interviews, my homepage, and my attendance at every and any boxing related event whether that be a dinner party or actual match is important. I have to make my face and name more know. I have to make them see that I am not just another foreigner boxer; I am one of THEIR boxers.
9. Running into my friend, the Hongik Oppa, definitely helped to turn today’s frown upside down. I haven’t seen him since I changed fitness gyms and so he gave me a shake of the head for that. Turns out he’s taken over Hongik and is no longer just the main squash coach, now he’s also the manager and owner of Hongik. I told him I like my new gym, La Sya, but him offering me a 50% discount on a Hongik membership, hmmm… I think I can like Hongik again… hehehe.
10. Dinner turned into a dinner and a movie and dinner and a movie turned into me re-enacting movie scenes in the parking lot. I thought it’d be funny to pretend I was Jolie in “Wanted”, this is until I think I pulled a muscle… hehehe.
QUESTION OF THE DAY...
If people think they're not doing anything wrong, they why do they try so hard to cover up things?
QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
-- Leo Tolstoy
As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).
After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.
Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.
1 comment:
Korea is an interesting place at times. People and things tend to fuck people's shit up, but the main thing is, knowing to walk away, or fucking their shit up. Sometimes, there is no choice but to keep calm, and walk away. Sometimes, you just know that it's the right time to let them have it, prove them wrong, and fuck their shit up so much that they don't make the same mistake again.
Yesterday, I had one of those moments. Do I fuck this person's shit up, or do I walk away. It was best to walk away.
But, as I've heard before. Revenge is a dish best served cold (and also, when the fuckers least expect it) *^^*
In the words of Taylor Mali: I have a policy about honest and ass-kicking, which is "If you ask for it, then I have to let you have it."
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