I've done a few.. but will take a while before I upload them.

Vancouver Pt.2 - MMA

I went to the gym. I gotta admit it closely resembled the MMA(Mixed Martial Arts) gym I attend back at home - There were no fancy pictures or weapons hanging on the wall. The place was spotless, as clean as a whistle but you could still smell the sweat and blood that had spilled in this place over the years. It was a hard-core training facility.

Interestingly enough, the coach wasn;t offering self defence classes or boost self-esteem - he was seriously in the business of turning out fighters. He was a fighter in the National MMA scene. So I approached him and introduced myself, explaining my Martial arts background that I'm visiting from Australia. Honestly, with my accent, he looked lost in the conversation when the word "Australia" came out.

With a nod of his head, this meathead assumed his fighting stance in the cage. The moment we got the go-ahead I threw a jab-cross combination and shot in on this legs, took him to the ground and caught him in a knee-crush. It forced him to tap.

"What was that?" he asked, truly perplexed.

"Knee crush."

"Well, I wasn't ready. I've been doing High-school wrestling, no one has shot in on me like you did."

Highschools in Australia don't have wrestling, and the closest thing remotely related to manhandling was Aussie Rules Football or Rugby. Hearing him say this made me think this boy had a silver spoon up his ass! When I started wrestling and BJJ, leg-locks were the craftiest submissions out there, that's why I made it a mission to become a leg-lock tactician. When you got caught in one, you had two options - tap out, or have your leg broken. Seriously, over time we were sparring I could have given this enthusiastic young lad more hits than Google.com! So throughout my time over there, between resting periods, I coached him along with a few younger boys in submission wrestling.

I couldn't be happier. I would stay in the gym and put myself through drills all day, everyday. I became a human sponge, absorbing all I can learn from everyone. Over 3 weeks, I feel like I've gotten 3 years older with the experience I got here. I had a good system going on - I'd wake up from my hotel, walked 10 minutes to the trainstation, played PSP for 40 minutes while on the train and go to the gym and just lose myself training. I'd come back to the hotel, rest, and get to creative work.

A week later in the gym, when I wasn't kickboxing or grappling, my coach introduced me into this crazy program he'd like to call "Dinosaur Training". He had me lifting sandbags and kegs of beer, building the kind of strength you can't get from lifting balanced weights in the gym. It paid off. From the time I started, to the time I was about to head off back to Perth, I felt the difference - I can rip my opponents head off at will!

After I'd go out and have dinner with the guys, or people I met through random occurances. My level of hunger on a scale from one to ten, I was at "shove a homeless guy out of line at the mission" level. I charged the streets of Granville St determined to fill my stomach with something palatable and not coated in saturated fat and high-fructose corn syrup. At one stage I almost sprinted out of view of my female companion, Julie, who was also hungry, but apparently lacks my animal-like instinct to kill and eat anything in my path.

More Later! (Yes, a very abrupt ending, Sue me!)

Vancouver Pt.1 - The Beginning

later!

People whom I know in real life:


(I'm going to be in the process of updating this!)

Online Friends: