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.

Thursday, December 06, 2012

I Want to Unseal My Lips... Thursday, December 6

I have a secret -- I have a secret that’s both my pride and joy but also my anticipated heartbreak.

As many of you know, Snickers and I are planning to open up our own boxing club, sooner than later, but we haven’t yet approach Junior Mint about it.  It’s been hard to not talk to him about it; I talk to him about so much, perhaps too much.  He was the first person I told I was dating Snickers actually. 

Junior Mint clearly is more than just a coach to me and when I walked into the boxing club today, wearing the weight of this already hard to keep secret, it became all that heavier when he yelled out my name and greeted me with a huge hug.  He had a million and one questions about why I haven’t been at training and MIA on Kakao Talk (phone text messaging).  He had heard that I had been attending night school out in Seoul.

“What were you studying?” he asked.

And there it was, the unavoidable, expected question that my answer would clearly bring about a million and one additional questions, starting with “what business are you interested in starting?”.  I didn’t know what to say, so I blurted out “spontaneous human combustion”.  I figured throwing out some large English words would confuse him and deter him from asking more.  I had a little chuckle over it though.  “You may very well spontaneously combust when you find out”, I mumbled to myself. 

I so eagerly want to share my secret with him.  He’s always been my go-to-person for big news, much like how my dad and mom were when I lived in Canada.  This secret has been definitely hard to keep from him because I really want to tell him, he’s my go-to-person.   I want to share my good news with him but I know that my good news will be his bad news.  I'm not quite sure how he'll react to it but Snickers is eager to tell him.  I think perhaps Snickers feels guilty like me for holding onto such a secret.  I know he won't be happy but he'll understand that this isn't us trying to insult or turn against him because he knows that my boxing was what kept me in Korea so long.  Snickers' boxing is what had us contemplating moving to Canada and to the Philippines.  I almost moved to Japan because of it.  Junior Mint knows that we're very driven by our boxing and both passionate about it -- it's not what we do, it's what we're all about.  We both love boxing so it seems only fitting that we'd explore it in this fashion -- coaching and running a club.  I'm already running a fitness company, hosting 3-5 boxercise classes every weekend and doing personal training during the week so it was only about time I'd take it to the next level.  I simply can't do that at UP.  

The other month I cracked at training, I told my secret to Black Skinny.   I’ve known him since I started training at UP.  Panty Boy Jr., my former teammate and equally long friend, also knows my news and he’s already expressed his full support and desire to train at my club. 

I’m so overly excited about this great new adventure.  Ever since Snickers and I stumbled across the building, I’ve been visiting it every single day, even sometimes twice a day.  The other day I told Snickers I was heading out for a run but what I really did was I went there.  I know that place inside and out now and the more and more I visit it the more I feel in love with it, strange but true. 

This is going to be such a wicked venture, I just know it. 

Snickers asked me if us starting our own boxing club meant I didn’t want to move back to Canada but in all honestly I’ve been questioning that for a long time, for about a good year and half actually.  I don’t know what I’d do if I ever moved back to Canada but I know exactly what I want to do in Korea… and I’m doing it.

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