Thursday, March 30, 2006

Cool videos

  • Just girls having fun... Love it love it LOVE IT! - HEY!
  • Black Eyed Peas - Pump It
  • Crazy ass spoof - Real Ninjas
  • Now THIS is Christmas lighting!
  • Wednesday, March 29, 2006

    Tournament and Teeth - A Follow-Up

    Firstly, to everyone who kindly pointed out that I need to work on my stamina... I KNOW! It's painfully obvious to me. On the bright side, my stamina has improved a lot since I started. On the down side, I've got a looooong way to go! :)

    Secondly, my leg and my finger hurts. It's been hurting for a while, but between TKD and going out, I haven't really given my leg a fair chance to heal. Fortunately, I'm going to be stuck at work for the next 2 weeks, so my leg will have plenty of chance to heal while it's not being used to kick random objects at TKD class.

    Lastly, my teeth... Looks like it's going to be 3 teeth down as original estimated. I'm talking to my dentist about options. I will probably go with a fixed bridge as opposed to dental implants. If that's the case, I'll start work on it once I get back from Singapore, and the entire process should take between 4-6 weeks.

    Monday, March 27, 2006

    Paid in Smiles

    Someone asked if we get paid as guest instructors. I told him that we get paid in smiles. I was only kidding at that time, but upon reflection, that's a lot more true than I thought.

    This weekend absolutely rocked. My students broke past a lot of their barriers. On Sat night, my student was walking around with a BIG SHIT EATING GRIN on his face. He realized that he could walk up to anyone and get them interested in talking to him. That was something he never dreamed he could do. And in the course of one weekend, his whole reality shifted for the better.

    Right now, I'm so damn tired, but feel so fulfilled. That was payment right there - seeing him walking around with that huge grin plastered on his face.

    Friday, March 24, 2006

    Mini tournament

    We had a mini tournament at TKD class yesterday.

    Rules were:
    1. Only solid hits count.
    2. One hit, and you're out.
    3. Winner stays in, loser cycles out, king of the hill style.
    4. 1 point for every win.

    The objective was to see who could get the most points.

    There were 4 of us. I started off very strongly by very quickly winning each of my matches against each person. I even won one round in about 1 second - instructor sayd "Begin!" and I immediately did a Bruce Lee style side kick that nailed the other guy and sent him almost out of the mats. Then I started getting tired from staying in the ring, and my performance started degrading.

    In the end, I had 14 points and Danny had 15. Dammit.

    Tuesday, March 14, 2006

    Minus three

    I called Grace last night. Apparently, my tooth isn't healing well from that previous episode, so I made an appointment for this morning to check up on the swelling in my gums. When I get there, Grace tells me that it looks bad, that I should see a specialist, and she gets an appointment for me immediately (she's awesome like that!) at a nearby dental surgery.

    To make a long story short, it seems that the kick to my face was just a coincidence. THREE of my front teeth have no bone structure supporting them, and the doc says that it is very unlikely they can be saved. Result? I'm going to have to extract the teeth and replace them with a fixed dental bridge. Losing teeth isn't so much a problem because fake teeth are almost every bit as good as the real thing anyway. The biggest negative side of this is that it's going to cost me $$$. But on the bright side, I'm going to get rid of that ugly front tooth I've always had that jutted out at a weird angle. :)

    The current problem I have is that I had 4 injections in my gums, had my gums peeled down to the jawbone, and now they are hurting like a bitch. I've dosed myself with Motrin and Vicodine, so I should be knocking out fairly soon...

    Only remaining question is... what do I bling up my false teeth with? Diamond? Platinum? Titanium?

    Monday, March 06, 2006

    Someone famous

    So I'm at Starbucks getting my daily dose of caffeine. There's this hottie sipping her drink. Long dark hair. Looks like a latino/asian mix of some sort. I can't really tell...

    I sit next to her and start a conversation. We're just start chatting and kidding around. She tells me she's married with kids and she's waiting for her husband. About 5 minutes into it, her husband shows up. Her husband turns out to be Cung Le, the undefeated San Shou champion! I'm something of a fan of his, so I spend the next couple of minutes just chatting with him, not about martial arts and stuff, but about his family, his sons etc. Turns out he's a really chill fellow, very softspoken and very alive. I ejected a few minutes later cos I had to get back to work. It was a good conversation.

    Toothy problem

    My string of quasi-bad luck continues...

    On Thursday, Danny nailed me in the face with a kick. I didn't think he hit me that hard because he pulled his kick, but apparently it was strong enough to knock one of my teeth lose.

    Dr Grace ChyuweiI went to Dr Grace this morning and had a splint applied to my teeth so that they would stabilize and repair themselves. She says that I'll probably need to have the splint for up to 6 months. Damn. On the plus side, it seems like nothing else was broken, so I have a good chance of recovery. And if not, we'll just have to pull out the tooth. Oh well. By the way, Dr Grace is such a cutie!

    I figure, I've been doing this for a while, and if this is going to be my only permanent injury, I'm doing fine. :)

    Friday, March 03, 2006

    Hailing in San Jose

    It hailed while Amy and I were grabbing coffee at Starbucks. One moment, the sky is looking a little cloudy but otherwise ok. A minute later, it's raining little iceballs from heaven. Crazy weather. Awesome experience!