Collin "smiling", poor kid...

Normally, I take BART to Berkeley with an event like this. This year I decided to drive, for a few reasons:

• Taking BART turns a 35 minute drive to a 80-95 minute commute (I normally miss the first train during the transfer)
• BART doesn’t operate all night, and the last few years I’ve had to rush out of CMAT to catch one of the last trains
• BART is still expensive to me

So I ended up parking on Hearst, right next to Wushu West, and walked a good 30 minutes to Cal. I enjoyed it, it was a very peaceful walk, and I enjoyed the mild exercise. The extra bonus is I didn’t have to pay for parking.

I walked in just in time to talk with Connor and his parents (it was about 3:40pm, and he was done for the day) and I unfortunately already missed the Nandu (“difficulty”, all the flashy stuff) division. Chase got a Bronze though, good job. For the first few hours, things were pretty uneventful and it wasn’t until 8pm or so when the advanced divisions went on when things started to pick up again. It was sort of odd not to have Collin and Shahaub compete this year, and it seemed that the entire overall quality of competitors was lower than previous years. Also, there were not as many people from China, you know, the ringers, to completely destroy everyone else. Still, there were some good people, and Anton was very good (he is also new to wushu, which makes it even crazier).

Lynda, Patti and Mark. Mark is covering up his mysterious hair cut

The entire competition lasted till around 11pm. There was a young girl who must have competed in almost 6 or 7 divisions. She was the last female competitor and she did a very good job:

crazy girl in mid aerial

After it was over, I contemplated going over to Marks to watch videos and hang out with everyone, but man it was late, and I had to walk back to my truck. I was also getting a little worried that I may have been towed I’ve been towed away in the neighborhood before, and even though I asked the person who lived there if it was okay I still felt very uneasy. With that, I made it back to my truck, munching on a free veggie sandwich (it was from the judges lunchroom, they had a bunch left over). The evening was very nice, it was cool and quiet. I made it home at exactly 12am.

Collin judging, why so judge-y Collin?

Stephanie Lim and Anton Alexsiev(sp?)

Wong Wei and Shahaub judging two separate events

Now they are waving at us (Mark and I moved to the other side of the staduim)

Those are all the photos (that are worth showing, most of them didn’t come out). I’ll probably upload some of the footage I took to the Wushu West You Tube account later. Or I’ll give it to Mark and let him decide what he wants up there or not.

Ip Man

It’s long overdue, but Mark, Shahaub and I finally got together for a movie. All three of us are movie geeks. Mark was part of the industry with Jet Li and Rotten Tomatoes, Shahaub is in film school right now (and posted a few demo reels, like this one, on vimeo.com), and I like to watch them and then write about what I watch. Our conversations immediately started off with George Lucas movies,  Arrested Development, and then oddly to my fear of Bees and Black Widows. How did we get there?

I figured since they were coming out (of the closet) from Berkeley, I’d prepare lunch for them. We had DELICIOUS cheese steak sandwiches, baked chicken (which Mark provided), and a big salad with Avocado. One thing with those two, is I don’t have to worry about pickyness or food allergies. They will eat anything, and everything on the table

The movie itself was pretty awesome, there are a lot of great fight scenes, and they all prompted Shahaub to imitate the Wing Chun style:

Despide his fierceness, Mark said it felt like a massage.

as well as trying to stand up from a kneeling position, using the strength of his feet (as in the movie):

ready?

and UP...

and back down, nice try Shabi

The movie is based on Grandmaster Ip Man (or Yip Man), who was most notable for teaching Bruce Lee Wing Chun. I’m sure there are some artistic liberties taken to make a more entertaining movie, the back story was still very interesting. After the movie, we went though a bunch of wushu clips that I had, then some on youtube, and then squeezed an episode of Arrested Development in (The “Nelly” episode, oh it feels so good to talk like this!). When Michele, Caralyne and Owen came back home, Caralyne had a lot of fun shooting all three of us. his fueled the inner child in Shahaub, and made him question why he doesn’t own Nerf weaponry. We know why, its because no one would be safe, and every crotch in a half mile radius would require medical attention. After a few rounds of destroying each other, Mark and Shahaub left to meet Chase and his family for dinner.

Shahuab cannot take a normal picture

nothing else besides that, so check here for more: http://www.m87-blackhole.org/photos/China+Trip+06/page/3/