Amy Bere, Amy Bere, what do you see?
I see Brown Bear smiling at me.
... Or so I’m convinced he’s smiling at me, after all he does wag his tail when he sees me now.
Brown Bear, or Birrown Gom as he’s called by Koreans, is an oversized, overly-fluffy, under-loved four-legged old man who lives right near my boxing club. I spotted him the other week, correction, I heard him the other week. I was walking to boxing late at night when I heard this deep down, husky bark coming from across the street so I took a detour to seek out who was barking. Low and behold there before my eyes laid a sad looking dog.
He looks like he’s supposedly the guard dog of some kind of appliance fixer-upper shop but he’s too old to do so, so he just lays there watching people walk by.
Today my boxercise classes were cancelled on account of a rescheduling problem with the painters who, as I found out today, are working today at the boxing club. All my boxercise classes this weekend consequently have been canceled. Boo to that. When I arrived with one of my boxercise students we were greeted by painters so we had no choice but to turn around and go home. It was then that I introduced my student to Brown Bear. A lady walking by commented to us, telling us not to touch him because he’s an angry old dog but he’s definitely not. He’s much overdue for some love though.
It’s obvious I’m a huge fan of four-legged friends – I like my four-legged friends more than many people I know, it’s true – so seeing Brown Bear alone makes me sad. He could be someone’s Mi Nam but he’s not.
When I arrived home after seeing Brown Bear, I hugged my two four-legged friends extra long and then took them out for a walk. When the weather is a bit warmer and the sun is high, I take both Balboa and Pyen Chi out by the river together. Lately there’s been a crew of mini Koreans playing in the river, under the bridge by my apartment, and there’s one little girl that’s exceptionally affectionate to Pyen Chi. She comes up to my waist, is probably no older than five and she has absolutely no fear of Pyen Chi. Today she tried to sit on Pyen Chi like Pyen Chi was a horse… hahaha. She draped her arms around Pyen Chi’s body and then let her legs hang. I find this all too funny and Pyen Chi seems a bit confused by her excessive hugging.
Pyen Chi usually gets a lot of comments by other people out by the river but she also gets screamed at and I’ve seen full-grown men run like little girls at the sight of her. For every 10 people that pass her, I’d say a good 7 of them become uncomfortable and go out of their way to walk far around her. And out of those remaining 3, 2 will simply ignore her while only 1 will try to pet her. Only one out of ten, it’s true. So when Pyen Chi is out by the river and this particular little girl comes flying down the path, running with arms wide open and yelling Pyen Chi’s name, well you can imagine it’s definitely not what Pyen Chi is used to. This pretty little mini Korean seriously gets Pyen Chi so worked up that Pyen Chi ends up having to pee right after this mini Korean bombards her with hugs.
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.
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