Watching the television last night on one of those channels that have the news over and over, probably ABC or SBS there was some report about some nations joining forces or something, big stuff, but not big enough for me to remember the details BUT the one detail I remembered was seeing a person in the bottom corner doing sign language.
Which got my mind thinking, if two deaf people from two different countries (preferably with different languages) met each other, would they be able to communicate through sign language alone?
Someone find out for me, then we can both learn something interesting!
Sign language is something I wouldn't mind trying to learn, I already use my hands for many things, I might as well add another talent to my hands. And it'd be the one time I can talk with my mouth full without seeming rude or disgusting, unless I'm talking with food in my hands...
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
My Injuries (So Far)
Over the last nine months now that I've been doing my Hybrid Martial Arts I've had my fair share of bumps and bruises as one would. And this blog is a list of the injuries I've had so far, with many more to come I would assume.
I remember after my first few weeks of training I discovered bruises on my arms while taking a shower, this would then become the start of a long string of injuries to all different parts of my body. Bruises soon disappear and no one ever sees my arms anyway, so I wasn't too worried about my bruises.
I've had cuts on my feet, and the ways I got them were quite weird, though I only remember one, which was from someone else while wrestling with them. Apparently, they somehow, using their toenail, assumingly on their big toe, dug it into my foot and cut it. Which I didn't feel at the time, until I looked at my foot and saw blood. But cuts heal pretty fast and didn't require major medical attention. I've also had a cut on my hand, which I've now forgotten how I got, except that I know it was from training.
My other toe injury was similar to my toe tombstone blog back in March, where my toenail bent backwards, except this time it was only the top part, so I was easily pushed back down and is currently healing itself. Must remember to keep my toenails cut short.
Other cuts included my elbows, the first time due to elbow training where we practiced elbow shots on a pad, to the point where it started to bleed, showing both my seriousness in training, and silliness at not knowing when to slow down. Those healed up eventually, but soon enough, getting thrown onto the ground during training, landing on my elbows and scraping them lead to scraped elbows, eventually leading to scabbed elbows. Those heal okay over time too.
Then there are cuts that matter, because they're seeable and generally don't look very pleasing. The only seeable cuts I've received were to my face, the lips to be exact. The first time it was cut was when I was wrestling a rather aggressive person, who I've continued to wrestle, despite my not wanting to wrestle him at times. At some point I was on my back, and he was on top, he came down with an elbow to do a move and must've mistimed or something and instead came down with the elbow to my face, specifically my mouth. He looked up and said "You're bleeding!!", I touched my lips and saw a lot of blood, and got up to clean it out with water. Its quite amazing how much blood can be in your lip, my instructor took a look at it and said "It was alright", but then he would've seen much worse himself, I hadn't. But basically I had a piece of my lip skin hanging out, which stung when water was applied. That took a while to heal up.
Other occasions with a busted lip were of less drama, either me bumping into someone with my face, or them bumping into my face causing the lip to bleed. I've since started wearing a mouth guard to give my mouth a bit more protection and to protect my lips a lot more. Don't want to hurt my lips!
The other type of injury I've had are ones that no one can see, and only I can feel, those being that of pain. I've had both my arms stretched out a lot due to arm bars, possibly leaving my elbows to deteriorate slowly but surely, but most people are good with arm bars and won't crank my arm to the point of breakage. Though one time at training someone had their arm broken, resulting in a visit to the hospital.
I was once thrown onto my head, which hurt, a lot, and probably rattled my brain. So I try to be very cautious with takedowns and the like now. I've also hurt my pinky toe, due to a takedown where the guy was trying to take me down and I tried to stop it and post with my left foot, but it kinda got stuck and my pinky toe got stretched backwards, which hurt, a lot.
One submission we do a lot in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are chokes, usually finding someway to constrict a person's breathing and causing them to submit. These are probably my favourite kind of submissions, but not favourite to receive and often after training, I would wake up the next morning with a sore neck due to the chokes I've received.
Last, but not the least is my most recent injury. One that I wanted to avoid since getting into this martial art, and that is cauliflower ear, which if you get a lot of, results in a pretty ugly looking ear, all puffed up and whatnot. The way you get this is if you suffer blows to your ears, or pressure put upon them, which can happen a lot during wrestling. I had always been careful, or at least tried to be careful and protect my ears as best as possible but at somepoint I developed a little 'lump' in my left ear, but it was very small and I thought it was nothing of concern, except that when I put pressure onto it, it would hurt. So sleeping on my left side was often difficult because of the lump. However, this got worse last night, after training, while I was at bible study I reached up to feel my left ear and felt what was a pretty substantial lump, at some point during wrestling I must've put a lot of pressure on my ear and the lump grew big. This lump, is basically a blood clot, so it was filled with blood, I didn't want it to hang around anymore or else it would've settled and I would've had a slightly fatter ear than my right ear, something I didn't want.
Today I went to see the doctor to get the blood drained out, which the doctor did, but only found there to be a little bit of blood inside, according to the doctor it'll take 10 days to heal, so I'll try to limit my physical activity over the next 10 or so days. Which is quite difficult, with a (un)friendly bout with Andrew Ha tomorrow and my third stripe grading on Monday for BJJ, followed by Thai Kickboxing grading on the Tuesday, and a BJJ competition that I want to enter at the end of the month, I'm going to have to protect my ears very well. I'm not a vain person, but I'd like to keep my facial area generally intact, not for my sake, but for yours, since you guys have to look at me from time to time.
I remember after my first few weeks of training I discovered bruises on my arms while taking a shower, this would then become the start of a long string of injuries to all different parts of my body. Bruises soon disappear and no one ever sees my arms anyway, so I wasn't too worried about my bruises.
I've had cuts on my feet, and the ways I got them were quite weird, though I only remember one, which was from someone else while wrestling with them. Apparently, they somehow, using their toenail, assumingly on their big toe, dug it into my foot and cut it. Which I didn't feel at the time, until I looked at my foot and saw blood. But cuts heal pretty fast and didn't require major medical attention. I've also had a cut on my hand, which I've now forgotten how I got, except that I know it was from training.
My other toe injury was similar to my toe tombstone blog back in March, where my toenail bent backwards, except this time it was only the top part, so I was easily pushed back down and is currently healing itself. Must remember to keep my toenails cut short.
Other cuts included my elbows, the first time due to elbow training where we practiced elbow shots on a pad, to the point where it started to bleed, showing both my seriousness in training, and silliness at not knowing when to slow down. Those healed up eventually, but soon enough, getting thrown onto the ground during training, landing on my elbows and scraping them lead to scraped elbows, eventually leading to scabbed elbows. Those heal okay over time too.
Then there are cuts that matter, because they're seeable and generally don't look very pleasing. The only seeable cuts I've received were to my face, the lips to be exact. The first time it was cut was when I was wrestling a rather aggressive person, who I've continued to wrestle, despite my not wanting to wrestle him at times. At some point I was on my back, and he was on top, he came down with an elbow to do a move and must've mistimed or something and instead came down with the elbow to my face, specifically my mouth. He looked up and said "You're bleeding!!", I touched my lips and saw a lot of blood, and got up to clean it out with water. Its quite amazing how much blood can be in your lip, my instructor took a look at it and said "It was alright", but then he would've seen much worse himself, I hadn't. But basically I had a piece of my lip skin hanging out, which stung when water was applied. That took a while to heal up.
Other occasions with a busted lip were of less drama, either me bumping into someone with my face, or them bumping into my face causing the lip to bleed. I've since started wearing a mouth guard to give my mouth a bit more protection and to protect my lips a lot more. Don't want to hurt my lips!
The other type of injury I've had are ones that no one can see, and only I can feel, those being that of pain. I've had both my arms stretched out a lot due to arm bars, possibly leaving my elbows to deteriorate slowly but surely, but most people are good with arm bars and won't crank my arm to the point of breakage. Though one time at training someone had their arm broken, resulting in a visit to the hospital.
I was once thrown onto my head, which hurt, a lot, and probably rattled my brain. So I try to be very cautious with takedowns and the like now. I've also hurt my pinky toe, due to a takedown where the guy was trying to take me down and I tried to stop it and post with my left foot, but it kinda got stuck and my pinky toe got stretched backwards, which hurt, a lot.
One submission we do a lot in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are chokes, usually finding someway to constrict a person's breathing and causing them to submit. These are probably my favourite kind of submissions, but not favourite to receive and often after training, I would wake up the next morning with a sore neck due to the chokes I've received.
Last, but not the least is my most recent injury. One that I wanted to avoid since getting into this martial art, and that is cauliflower ear, which if you get a lot of, results in a pretty ugly looking ear, all puffed up and whatnot. The way you get this is if you suffer blows to your ears, or pressure put upon them, which can happen a lot during wrestling. I had always been careful, or at least tried to be careful and protect my ears as best as possible but at somepoint I developed a little 'lump' in my left ear, but it was very small and I thought it was nothing of concern, except that when I put pressure onto it, it would hurt. So sleeping on my left side was often difficult because of the lump. However, this got worse last night, after training, while I was at bible study I reached up to feel my left ear and felt what was a pretty substantial lump, at some point during wrestling I must've put a lot of pressure on my ear and the lump grew big. This lump, is basically a blood clot, so it was filled with blood, I didn't want it to hang around anymore or else it would've settled and I would've had a slightly fatter ear than my right ear, something I didn't want.
Today I went to see the doctor to get the blood drained out, which the doctor did, but only found there to be a little bit of blood inside, according to the doctor it'll take 10 days to heal, so I'll try to limit my physical activity over the next 10 or so days. Which is quite difficult, with a (un)friendly bout with Andrew Ha tomorrow and my third stripe grading on Monday for BJJ, followed by Thai Kickboxing grading on the Tuesday, and a BJJ competition that I want to enter at the end of the month, I'm going to have to protect my ears very well. I'm not a vain person, but I'd like to keep my facial area generally intact, not for my sake, but for yours, since you guys have to look at me from time to time.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
My Fight With Dewey Griffin
My goodness it's been a while, a long while! There's so much to blog about and I've got so much time to do it, but too lazy to do so. But here we go, hopefully I'll be able to throw up everything my mind can remember from the last month or so. Lets roll out to get the lol out!
August 14th, Simon Ha's funeral service, which I shan't dwell on for too long, except that it was sad, but I'm very glad he accepted Christ as his Lord and Saviour in the end. After the funeral we went back to the Ha's house for what I like to call the after-funeral party, just because it was so laid back, with food and drink and socialising it just felt like a mini party. Anyway, in the previous few weeks there were talks of me fighting Dewey Griffin, who has been wanting to fight me for a while and what better time to fight than after a funeral. I accepted his challenge and we both took our shoes and socks off, got our fancy shirts off so they wouldn't get dirtied (I had a singlet type thing on underneath), got my gloves on and got ready. With a crowd of well dressed people I didn't want to look bad, but didn't know how things were going to work. I knew Dewey had flexibility of gymnastic proportions and could kick faster than I could punch, but I just didn't know how hard we were going to go...until he kicked me in the leg.
From then on it was basically me trying to punch him, but not in the head because of the no head shot rule, which I found hard because I was taller than him, and needed to reach lower to punch him, leaving me open to get kicked, which I got a lot of. Also, having not sparred in over a month I wasn't doing very good in the standup exchange, so if anything Dewey looked a lot better fighting me when we were trading kicks and punches.
After he axe-kicked me in the chest, which didn't hurt, but provided a nice thud to make the crowd go "oooh", I decided to try take the fight to where I would dominate, that is, the ground. So we took each other down, and ever so slippery like a snake Dewey managed to get on top, and mounted me and began raining down punches on my head, though lightly, the referee Adam stopped the fight as there were to be no headshots. I remembered at this time how tired I was, and how much I wanted to rest, the adrenaline must've got to me, but there was no rest to be had. With the intent to keep the fight on the ground I took off my gloves, no longer needing them, and so did Dewey, despite my telling him he didn't need to, but he didn't hear me. We locked up again and I found myself on my back, but this time I had Dewey in my guard, and in my legs were wrapped around him, protecting me from his attacks, this was where I worked best and due to his inexperience with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) I locked a Triangle hold on him, which was basically my legs wrapped around his head and one of his arms, choking him slowly, however it didn't seem to be on tight enough so I tried to go for an arm bar instead, but soon found that wasn't working (I haven't yet gotten an arm bar on anyone in training), I then attempted to transition to an Omoplata, which is a shoulder lock but having never really pulled the move off before Dewey squirmed out and we started again. Eventually we locked up and I caught Dewey in a Guillotine, which sounds like what it does, my arm was wrapped around Dewey's head with my forearm in his neck, my legs were wrapped around him and then I slowly began to tighten and pull, cutting off his head so to say, forcing the submission, and rendering us both extremely tired. I got up and found a cut on my arm, most likely from rolling onto the concrete, which was nothing really. My other elbow suffered a grazing, which was a bit more painful, especially when you apply water to it, you know the feeling.
So I won in the end, in what was a fun fight. And now I face my next challenge, that being Andrew Ha, where I feel I have a losing chance, if only because he has the strength advantage. It's such a shame I never got to wrestle with Simon Ha though, because that was something I really wanted to do at some point, but I guess that'll have to wait until we get to heaven. In the mean time, his brothers will do.
August 14th, Simon Ha's funeral service, which I shan't dwell on for too long, except that it was sad, but I'm very glad he accepted Christ as his Lord and Saviour in the end. After the funeral we went back to the Ha's house for what I like to call the after-funeral party, just because it was so laid back, with food and drink and socialising it just felt like a mini party. Anyway, in the previous few weeks there were talks of me fighting Dewey Griffin, who has been wanting to fight me for a while and what better time to fight than after a funeral. I accepted his challenge and we both took our shoes and socks off, got our fancy shirts off so they wouldn't get dirtied (I had a singlet type thing on underneath), got my gloves on and got ready. With a crowd of well dressed people I didn't want to look bad, but didn't know how things were going to work. I knew Dewey had flexibility of gymnastic proportions and could kick faster than I could punch, but I just didn't know how hard we were going to go...until he kicked me in the leg.
From then on it was basically me trying to punch him, but not in the head because of the no head shot rule, which I found hard because I was taller than him, and needed to reach lower to punch him, leaving me open to get kicked, which I got a lot of. Also, having not sparred in over a month I wasn't doing very good in the standup exchange, so if anything Dewey looked a lot better fighting me when we were trading kicks and punches.
After he axe-kicked me in the chest, which didn't hurt, but provided a nice thud to make the crowd go "oooh", I decided to try take the fight to where I would dominate, that is, the ground. So we took each other down, and ever so slippery like a snake Dewey managed to get on top, and mounted me and began raining down punches on my head, though lightly, the referee Adam stopped the fight as there were to be no headshots. I remembered at this time how tired I was, and how much I wanted to rest, the adrenaline must've got to me, but there was no rest to be had. With the intent to keep the fight on the ground I took off my gloves, no longer needing them, and so did Dewey, despite my telling him he didn't need to, but he didn't hear me. We locked up again and I found myself on my back, but this time I had Dewey in my guard, and in my legs were wrapped around him, protecting me from his attacks, this was where I worked best and due to his inexperience with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) I locked a Triangle hold on him, which was basically my legs wrapped around his head and one of his arms, choking him slowly, however it didn't seem to be on tight enough so I tried to go for an arm bar instead, but soon found that wasn't working (I haven't yet gotten an arm bar on anyone in training), I then attempted to transition to an Omoplata, which is a shoulder lock but having never really pulled the move off before Dewey squirmed out and we started again. Eventually we locked up and I caught Dewey in a Guillotine, which sounds like what it does, my arm was wrapped around Dewey's head with my forearm in his neck, my legs were wrapped around him and then I slowly began to tighten and pull, cutting off his head so to say, forcing the submission, and rendering us both extremely tired. I got up and found a cut on my arm, most likely from rolling onto the concrete, which was nothing really. My other elbow suffered a grazing, which was a bit more painful, especially when you apply water to it, you know the feeling.
So I won in the end, in what was a fun fight. And now I face my next challenge, that being Andrew Ha, where I feel I have a losing chance, if only because he has the strength advantage. It's such a shame I never got to wrestle with Simon Ha though, because that was something I really wanted to do at some point, but I guess that'll have to wait until we get to heaven. In the mean time, his brothers will do.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
My SonRise Olympics
Last Sunday, the 10th of August, the children's ministry at our church, SonRise held our latest Evangelistic Event, meaning an event for the kids aiming to tell them about Jesus.
The event itself started with a cold morning, at the school across the road from our church so we were all shivering while setting up each game, which were bean bag throwing (skill), running (speed), quiz (mind), balancing challenges (balance) and lastly cup-stacking (team).
At 9am we started, and kids started trickling in, we broke them up into groups, so we had a blue group, red group and yellow group.
One thing we found is that holding events early means that kids take a while to arrive, but once they arrived it was all good. Prior to this event we did a lot of advertising, and it paid off with a few new kids coming which was awesome indeed, and they looked like they had fun too, which was even better.
We had planned for running each game for 10 minutes but some games ended up running a bit longer, and because of our time flexibility we just allowed them to stay on each game a little bit longer, and scrapped our cup-stacking game, saving it for another time.
But of the games we did have, I think bean-bag throwing was the most popular, if only to watch the kids try and aim beanbags into a hoola hoop. Relay was good to get the older kids tired, but kids these days recover pretty quickly so they weren't tired for too long.
Following our Olympic games we headed into the school hall for the talk, done by yours truly, and a puppet originally name Donny, by my sister, and then renamed Sonny, pronounced Sunny, by Lisa S, because it fits the SonRise thing.
I decided to try and do the whole ventriloquism thing, which I think worked pretty well, originally Sonny's voice was going to be more squarky like a parrot but 20 minutes of practicing the voice destroyed my throat, the voice I ended up on kind of came out of nowhere when I was practicing so I don't know how to describe it, other than 'easy on the throat'.
The talk itself I think went alright, trying to stay inline with the Olympic theme I talked about a race, and how in the Bible if we run the race and win, we get a crown, that gives eternal life. The passage below was where most of my talk influence came from.
25Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
So how do we get this crown that gives eternal life, lasting forever? Well, we have to trust in someone, and who that person is, is Jesus. We told this to the kids through a skit, which, due to my poor planning had me running up to people and enlisting their help, explaining their role to them in the morning. So big thanks to Julz, Wendy, Sylvia, Billy and Mr Patterson, who is always willing to help. The skit turned out well, involving the main character wanting to play Trust with people, Trust being the game where you fall back and someone catches you. Julz was the main character, and I was the narrator. With no rehearsals beforehand things were interesting, and it ended up being a combination of the characters working off my cues, and me working off their acting. After the skit I concluded my talk, getting the kids to acknowledge that we should trust Jesus, because he will catch us, more so, he will look after us, and give us salvation forevermore!
My attempt at ventriloquism
After the talk we handed out ribbons to the winners, which took a loooong time, then ended with food, a lot of food, so much that I wish I was a kid and could stay around eating and eating, so I settled with 3 cups of jelly, which I ate during morning service at 11am.
Overall, the event was good, and is only just the beginning of the direction we want SonRise to head, with post-evangelism events the following two weeks, to ease the new kids into the way we normally do things. So big thanks to those that helped out and pray that the new kids that came will continue to come and find a new friend in Jesus, as he could possibly be the best friend you could ever want to have, water into wine, mass bread and fish, one-way ticket to Heaven? I'll follow that, and so should you!
The event itself started with a cold morning, at the school across the road from our church so we were all shivering while setting up each game, which were bean bag throwing (skill), running (speed), quiz (mind), balancing challenges (balance) and lastly cup-stacking (team).
At 9am we started, and kids started trickling in, we broke them up into groups, so we had a blue group, red group and yellow group.
One thing we found is that holding events early means that kids take a while to arrive, but once they arrived it was all good. Prior to this event we did a lot of advertising, and it paid off with a few new kids coming which was awesome indeed, and they looked like they had fun too, which was even better.
We had planned for running each game for 10 minutes but some games ended up running a bit longer, and because of our time flexibility we just allowed them to stay on each game a little bit longer, and scrapped our cup-stacking game, saving it for another time.
But of the games we did have, I think bean-bag throwing was the most popular, if only to watch the kids try and aim beanbags into a hoola hoop. Relay was good to get the older kids tired, but kids these days recover pretty quickly so they weren't tired for too long.
Following our Olympic games we headed into the school hall for the talk, done by yours truly, and a puppet originally name Donny, by my sister, and then renamed Sonny, pronounced Sunny, by Lisa S, because it fits the SonRise thing.
I decided to try and do the whole ventriloquism thing, which I think worked pretty well, originally Sonny's voice was going to be more squarky like a parrot but 20 minutes of practicing the voice destroyed my throat, the voice I ended up on kind of came out of nowhere when I was practicing so I don't know how to describe it, other than 'easy on the throat'.
The talk itself I think went alright, trying to stay inline with the Olympic theme I talked about a race, and how in the Bible if we run the race and win, we get a crown, that gives eternal life. The passage below was where most of my talk influence came from.
1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (New International Version)
24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.25Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
So how do we get this crown that gives eternal life, lasting forever? Well, we have to trust in someone, and who that person is, is Jesus. We told this to the kids through a skit, which, due to my poor planning had me running up to people and enlisting their help, explaining their role to them in the morning. So big thanks to Julz, Wendy, Sylvia, Billy and Mr Patterson, who is always willing to help. The skit turned out well, involving the main character wanting to play Trust with people, Trust being the game where you fall back and someone catches you. Julz was the main character, and I was the narrator. With no rehearsals beforehand things were interesting, and it ended up being a combination of the characters working off my cues, and me working off their acting. After the skit I concluded my talk, getting the kids to acknowledge that we should trust Jesus, because he will catch us, more so, he will look after us, and give us salvation forevermore!
My attempt at ventriloquism
After the talk we handed out ribbons to the winners, which took a loooong time, then ended with food, a lot of food, so much that I wish I was a kid and could stay around eating and eating, so I settled with 3 cups of jelly, which I ate during morning service at 11am.
Overall, the event was good, and is only just the beginning of the direction we want SonRise to head, with post-evangelism events the following two weeks, to ease the new kids into the way we normally do things. So big thanks to those that helped out and pray that the new kids that came will continue to come and find a new friend in Jesus, as he could possibly be the best friend you could ever want to have, water into wine, mass bread and fish, one-way ticket to Heaven? I'll follow that, and so should you!
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
My Licence To Drive
Finally, after two years and a little bit of green P plates I've upgraded to the status of Full Licence, earning a nice yellow streak on my licence, and even better, a slightly decent looking photo of myself, more so than my other licences.
No more plates, its all good. I'm now an adult! Check me out!
No more plates, its all good. I'm now an adult! Check me out!
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