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.

Wednesday, March 02, 2016

A Solid 2 Scary Hours... Wednesday, March 2

Had a most rare "what-the-hell-am-I-doing?!" moment when I woke up from my midday nap and couldn't see.  Instantly  wondered if it was from my boxing.  Everything was so blurry.  I looked into the mirror at myself and couldn't even so much as make out my own eyelashes.  I had training to get to though and had to pick up stuff downtown at GNC so I got ready for that as if nothing was wrong.  But something was so very wrong; I had no idea why I had gone to bed with perfect vision and had woken up in a blurry haze.  I had texted about it on my Facebook status update but that took way to long to type because I just couldn't squint enough. 

On the subway I listened for the stops being announced but coming back from the mall I had to ask someone which subway was going north and then which one was going west.  When the first person I asked pointed at the sign, I told them I couldn't read English.

My eyes were all glossed over with on-the-verge tears.  I was freaking out; I was freaked out.

Arrived at System for training and was greeted by one of my boxing buddies who instantly, upon seeing my strange demeanour, approached me and asked if I was OK.  "I can't see", I told him, "Everything is so blurry!"  He too is a boxer so he is quite familiar with the strange and deranged variety of injuries us boxers get.  He took me aside, put his hands on my face and asked me to look up, look down, and look side to side.  Then he asked me the details of what exactly had happened today.  I told him I had sparring this morning and that what was supposed to be a light 8 rounds of controlled sparring turned into 10 rounds of intense hits split between two opponents who had come from Cabbagetown to spar with me.  


In the first half of today's sparring session, I had been hit really hard but not with a punch; I took a shoulder right to my left eye.  It made a strange sound, I stepped back and put my arm out to stop the sparring temporarily because it hurt so much.  My eye got super glossy and I was sure there would be a bruised forming there.  It was a hard hit.  I took some mean cross jabs too but in the 9th round I took punch right to my opened eye and it swelled up with tears because the glove had hit my naked eyeball and it felt as if it had scratched it; I hadn't blinked.  Two distinct situations where my eyes had been taken mean blows but one was to the left and the other to the right, but my blurry vision was equally bad in both eyes.  It only added to my uneasiness regarding my situation.

Thankfully my eye sight returned back to normal but it had been a solid 2 hours, borderline 3, since I first woke up and noticed the problem.  My buddy at System kept on checking up on me and just like that I instantly could see so much better.  It was a relief but not really because I don't know how it even came about in the first place.

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