1. Monday morning mumbles from my first period class… they’re slowly killing me. It must be cause it’s the first class of the day, first class of the week.
2. No sign of the director wanting to talk to me… interesting. I was sure she’d want to talk to me about my strong letter but I guess not. Sometimes not saying something says a lot… hmm, definitely gave me something to think about then.
3. Tomorrow’s the big voting day here at Dankook University. They’ll be picking a new student president. “Pick number two!” I say… he’s the cutest and his manners are as finely toned as his stylish clothes he wears and his smile… hehehe.
4. Got word that my friend Myoung Jun’s grandmother died last week, and so did Milk Dud’s grandmother… again. Yes, again. She was reported dead but word has it that while she laid in the funeral hospital, she came back. Despite her passing away, yet again, I think she’s pretty blessed to have had the second chance to see friends and family, even if it was only for a week. That’s a full week she wasn’t really suppose to have, but she did.
5. All day I anticipated sparring with Gangster Oppa. He had called me yesterday and in our conversation he asked if we could spar. I always get the jitters and butterflies before sparring. I know it’s only an exercise, an exercise I’m familiar with, but I always take sparring practice so seriously and it’s not because I could get injured, which I could and do, but because my boxing is very important to me. It’s always anyone’s match and so it’s always interesting to see each other go from training buddies to punching the heck out of each other in the ring. I always like to use a bit of intimidation to spook my opponent and so I usually get my sparring partners telling me after that my “death stare”, as they call it, really felt uncomfortable… that’s the whole point.
6. Had quite the eventful sparring session with Gangster Oppa today. Not only did I totally kill the heck out of my new Adidas gloves and leave them totally useless now, but I almost ended up showing everyone what I had for lunch after one too many body shots.
7. Gangster Oppa somehow became both the villain and hero in my sparring story today after he forced me to spar five rounds with him, even after he showed up 40 minutes late and I had already been training for an hour. I had warned him to stay clear of my nose, that he did, but he was quite generous with the body shots. By the end of the fifth round, I could feel my sweet potato and eggs making their way back up to my mouth. No sooner had the last round concluded but I was jumping out of the ring and pulling off my equipment as I raced up to the bathroom. Out came the sweet potato, well, only half of it.
8. It’s fair to say that my friendship with Gangster Oppa definitely reached a different level today and so I am happy. I was beginning to feel like his charity case with him text messaging me and volunteering to spar with me. I think he was impressed with me keeping up with him and accepting his sparring challenge of five rounds and so when I exited the bathroom (after spitting up the potatoe) he was waiting for me with a huge grin. He gave me one of those side hugs that is more or less like half a hug, escorted me back into the club, and asked me a million times if I was ok. I was ok but I played it off for a minute or two that I was ticked… hehehe.
9. The beauty with being able to spar with someone again is that it gives you time to work on counteracting their moves. Gangster Oppa and I are both very much in-fighters and so it was pretty interesting to spar with someone who likes getting all up in someone’s face in the ring like I do. My signature move has always been my right hook. I go in, slip to the left, give a good left body shot and then come up with a mean right hook. As for Gangter Oppa though, he’s all about leaning into me with his head and shoulders, and then going full-force with the body shots. I’m good to go for the body shots cause I train abs everyday but yikes, today my abs were working on overtime!!! Junior Mint and those watching got a good laugh in the fourth round when Gangster Oppa cornered me in the ring and then went to town on me with body shots. I couldn’t really move, I was cornered, and so, instead, I decided to fight dirty. I wrapped my left arm around his neck, much like a headlock, and then went crazy with dishing out a lot of right uppercuts. In a real match, my move would have definitely been called but today it was just laughed about as they watched me exhausting myself on him and he yelling at me to stop. My headlock was more or less like a choke-hold and so he was struggling to breath.
10. Despite the sore neck and bruises on my side that I’m sure I’ll be waking up with, I have no real injuries. My knuckles are a bit cut up from the old gloves I used and my forehead is a bit blotchy looking with some blood cells that got popped but didn’t break through the skin.
QUESTION OF THE DAY...
What lingers in your mind?
QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first.
--Frederick B. Wilcox
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment