Times a Changin

So much has happend in the last couple of weeks that its hard to provide an update that makes any sense if any...so I'm just gonna take the easy way out and stick to basics.

The last couple of weeks of this Month has been some real high's and low's for my exile from NZ to Kyoto. One low point was getting rather sick (viral or bacterial infection on my lymph nodes) which meant 5 days with no training, expensive medicine... unfortunately it got worse; I had to have a blood test.

Now what most people don't know is that I'm freaked out by needles, not knitting needles but injection needles - Syringe is the medical jargon I believe (I'm no doctor) while this was a very unpleasant activity for me, my good friend & landlord Aoki San found it quite amusing - especially when the Nurse got the wrong vein and had to go again. Poor little Obasan (Baba for short (old lady)) nurse could see and hear that I was not enjoying this one bit and got nervous and missed. This had the effect of causing further stress on myself, my vision is swimming, im hyper ventalating... why is my blood coming out black? is this bad? why is everybody laughing (including the old men in the waiting room)these things and more were running through my head.

Finally it was over and the big brave boy got a sticky plaster (no lollypops in the land of Samurai!)

I have to say I'm very gratefull to Aoki San for taking time from his busy schedule as Boss of Total Home Architecture Corp to take me to the Doc a couple of times - its not easy to get medical care if your a gaijin alien and harder still if you dont speak Japanese.

So I'm on this great cocktail of drugs that would make any pensioner proud, taking 12 pills a day at different times plus 3 Doctor prescribed vitamin drinks.. so I'm getting better but have been told to avoid Newaza for a week as it could cause my Neck Lymph Nodes too much stress... will have to try and keep my Shiaii this Sunday to standing fighting then, I'll do what I can.


Well as I before mentioned.. the price of Doctor Visits and Medicine was no small blow to my limited wallet; Budget Cuts that would make the Government cringe had to be made. First off, whats all this Lunch business about then - well whatever all that fuss is about it has to stop. Secondly how much are you spending on breakfast? "300 Yen" 'WHAT! make that 100 Yen! 2 slices of toast quick smart Mr Reynolds.' So by following this formulae of budget cutting popularised by TV's 'Money Man' I cut corners or more correctly whole blocks out of my budget. Things have picked up again and resolved themselves back to a nice balance, but I did have a lean week or two. Currently eating nice, large nutritous breakfast's again but I did learn a couple of good tricks that I'm going to keep in effect.

Good things going on this Month would include the 3 Competition's I have happening starting from this Sunday and going through next week including my Shodan Shiaii which is really exiting for me right now. Trainings going completely Ace aswell right now - foccussing on Kumi Kata (tactical grips) to dominate and controll my fights and keeping preasure on my opponents at all time. basicaly keeping them on the back foot physically and mentally from the get go.

I have a very strong lead for a part-time job in a English Teaching company, the pay is great to say the least so this could be the timely miracle I have been hanging out for...fingers and toes crossed. I'v been seeing my (fighting, not fashion)style turn a few corner's recently so I'm hoping to see where that end's up.

Got an unexpected phone call from Bill Vincent from New Zealand a couple of days ago who was hanging out with my old man Greg suprisingly, got to say hi to both of them and got told to take a few days off to recover (which Mum also ordered) was nice to get a call so that was cool.
While I'm at it I should nominate my Aunty Trish for a nobel prize for being such a big help during last months turmoil - without her help I would definatly be back in New Zealand right now not training here at this level.

Also we have Ivica Pavlinic staying here with us now for a bit, which is great; he's enjoying the training and is a real help to have here. It's really good to have new faces here and more people to train, talk and hangout with; which reminds me we have the New Zealand Master's team (which is going to be the strongest yet) coming to stay for a week late this Month. Hopefully they enjoy out Fightclub style accomodation that we have to offer. This building definatly resembles the fight club manpad in more ways than one.

I should have alot of actually interesting news to post next time as opposed to this rather lame rant, so hang in there.

Jords