Positively Against Negative Vibes... Wednesday, June 12

It was just one of those proceed-with-caution days with me and it was kicked off by the arrival of Mama Kim.  She came barring a dish drying rack and I instantly knew at first glance that this wasn’t just a dish drying rack, oh no, and I was right.  It was one of those moments when I hate that I’m right. 

Around the juice bar counter her little feet pitter-pattered, with the dish drying rack in hand and a mission in her eyes.  I’m convinced she’s constantly on a mission to pick at and point out all that’s wrong with our club and with me.  Snickers can do no wrong in her eyes but me, oh, I’m the tattooed neck girl who is “too lazy” to cook for my husband, "barbaric" with the sport she plays and who "eats like a man”, I can do no right. 

So the mission with the dish drying rack… out plopped all the dishes I had just washed into the sink because she labeled them as dirty.  Instantly I looked like a punk too, standing there with her slaving away over the dishes and me scratching my head.  “Leave the scene” I told myself and that’s what I did.  I picked up one of the mirror cleaner sponges and went to clean mirrors.  I was quick to be told this spot and that spot that I supposedly missed.  In my head, I took the mirror cleaner sponge and wiped her out.  Unfortunately though, this was only in my head and when I opened my eyes she was still standing there, calling my name and sliding her hands over the mirror I had just cleaned, or “not cleaned”.

I am sure she means well but I’ve yet to hear her say anything good about our club and the only nice thing she seems to say to me is that I’m pretty.  I am so over people calling me pretty.  First of all, I don’t kill myself at training and haven’t educated myself only so that I can be thrown an adjective that’s so easily handed out here in Korea.  She called my sister-in-law's baby boy pretty -- the kid has NO hair and drools on itself!!!  Call me strong thank you; call me stubborn, thank you too, but call me pretty?!  Really, that’s all you see in me???  Wait until I chop off my hair… hahaha.  She’ll have to come up with a new adjective.

No sooner did she leave but I threw that dish drying rack into the back room.  

I’m most happy at the boxing club so I take great offense when people try to come here and stress me out.  I may have created a little bubble world here but I love it.  It’s safe, positive-packed and it’s filled with a crew of people all enjoying some great passions of mine – boxing, health and fitness. 

There are definitely some key members at our club that I think are just flat out awesome but I think the dynamics of our member population is rather amusing.  Most of our members are between the ages of 20-32 with about 70% being 28-30, so it’s quite the meat-market of fierce females and hot, inked hMuunks!  The youthfulness of our members means there’s always a lot of fun energy and it’s quite contagious.  A couple of my favourite members include a local gang that trains out of Hulk’s – my “G-Boys”.  There are about nine of them and they’re by far super fun to train.  Whether it’s pushing them with weight training, yelling at them when they slip out to smoke or shadow boxing together, it’d be impossible for me to believe their gang affiliations if I met them just as another member of our club.  Perhaps it’s their affiliations that makes them try extra hard to be respectful and very sweet, I don’t know, but they’re such a great group of guys and I look forward to our daily time together.  One of them favors me.  It’s obvious by the fact that he goes out of his way to say hi and bye to me – he once waited outside of the bathroom to say goodnight.  The other day he made the connection that I was married to Snickers and became super apologetic.  I thought it was hilarious.  Tonight he tried to impress me by showing me his English playlist on his phone.  Upon seeing Sade on his list, I blurted out “You know Sade?!”  “Yes”, he responded, “Me a smooth operator”… nice, hahaha. 

I definitely rely on certain members to come training – they’re my “feeders”.  Whether it’s the cute little couple that comes with their friend, my Poster Child Girl, my G-Boys, or my boxercise babes, there are various members that definitely pick up my spirit, rejuvenate me and give me a much-needed second, third or fourth wind.  It’s hard to continually juggle training various people but it surely makes a difference when they all bring such positive energy and want to train hard.  It dramatically makes a massive difference when those I’m training give it their all and want to change.  There’s only a couple members that I feel I can’t help and it’s not because of any kind of language barrier but because they just want to go through the motions of training.  Even when members come and train alone, without our assistance, we’re always sure to help them out by spotting for them, showing them a new exercise or giving them a bit of a push with their training.  A select couple just want to be left alone and they rather stand out among our members because they come in and do the same exercises every time and they always say why they can’t do something when we try to get them to switch things up.

“Success trains while failure complains”, a saying that I’ve finally learned what it means.  It goes right hand-in-hand with “insanity is doing the same thing over and over yet expecting a different result”.  My club is full of such “success” with only a pinch of “failure” but it’s great that such success is strong and loud.  I’m very proud of my members for training hard and as we approach the one month mark soon for many of their memberships, I’m very curious to see how much of a success they have been with their hard efforts.