Friday, but no pictures today
Sorry, I have no pictures available right now. So my Hong Kong trip review will wait until the weekend, most likely. But that doesn't mean I can't blog!

This week has been interesting. Work's pretty standard, getting a few things done, which is good. The notable thing was the concert I went to with my sister yesterday. We went to see Cake! They're actually really fun in concert. They played on campus at TU, along with two other opening bands, one of which I don't remember the name of, the other of which was called Gomez. I'd never heard of them before, and apparently they're British, but they turned out to be quite good. It was a pretty good example of different qualities of bands. The first one was all right, but it was sort of an, "Eh, when are they going to finish?" feeling in the background. The second band was more of a, "Hey, they're pretty cool. But they're playing for a while. How long are we going to be here?" And then Cake came on, and it was just a, "Hey, this is fun, I'm not even thinking about the time anymore!" They did a good job with the crowd, teaching a few song bits for everyone to sing along, then bringing the instruments back in full force. And splitting the crowd up for singing parts, which creates competition (in the lead singer's eyes), which makes it better. One time it was guys and girls, and another it was halves of the room. It was in the Reynolds Center, and the tickets were for specific seats. We had okay seats, like halfway back, on the left side, in the middle. But since we both had TU IDs (well, I had mine, and my sister knew someone there), we got special wristbands and got to go on the floor right away. We waited until after the first band was mostly done, then decided to go ahead and hit the floor once they let everyone on in. We managed to get right up next to the stage against the front barrier, on the left side, very good location. Sucky thing was that we were in front of the bass amp, so I almost felt my hair being blown back every time the bass drum was hit. It wasn't loud, though, just strong, so it wasn't too bad. It was a fun night, though.

And the rest of the week has been mainly kung fu. I took Monday off instead of Wednesday, because Wednesdays are now reserved for full contact training. And we had our first one this Wednesday. Sifu broke us in. Key word there being "broke". It makes the standard classes relaxing in comparison. I loved it. We start with some stretching of the leg joints, with leg lifts, which is basically like kicking your leg in front of you high up, without bending your knee at all. And then it was into stances. Oh yeah. A minute of each. Which makes ten minutes of sitting in our stances, all very low. And yes, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth. And people collapsing. We finished that, and that was our warmup. After that, training through various techniques, conditioning exercises, usually for a minute of each, doing them hard and fast. No real breaks, just the occasional minute to get some more water in our system. Imagine that for about an hour. I'm still feeling it a bit in my legs. And I have some nice bruises from it. One of the exercises was kicking the bag. There were four people there - two of the guys got the soft bag, which has water-filled base as an anchor. Sihing and I got the heavy bag, full of sand, much of which has settled into a rather solid state of being near the bottom. I think we successfully broke most of that up into a softer place with our shins. It was all that, and we had a nice warm-down by doing a hundred crunches. Which actually was relieving, compared to the rest of it. We'll be doing this type of training regularly to get in shape for full contact sparring, although I personally won't be competing in tournaments. I think it's just a great way to get in shape. That, and I think it might partially be because I'm masochistic.

In the fun stuff, I've decided God of War is excellent. I haven't had many things that could drop my jaw so repeatedly. I'm simply impressed with everything. The graphics, the sound (the soundtrack would easily fit into LOTR - orchestra, choir, the whole nine yards), the FUN of it. It's definitely not for kids, though. Plenty of everything in there. But that's part of what makes the main character so vivid. You don't question whether or not he'll do something. If it needs to be done, no matter what it takes, he'll do it.

And that's my Friday blog. Now for random linking! I was looking at the main character of God of War, Kratos. Made me think of what guys think of when they think of REAL men. Well, the model, the testosterone-filled epitome of what most guys consider a REAL man... I would say is filled by this guy.
- posted by Pootenheimer @ 12:22 PM | 0 comments