必勝

Originally I wanted to have something like

" 1 day to AUG --- Shinai Weigh In"

but I decided not to. Why?
Because we need something more inspiring. And... we didnt quite weigh our shinais today.

But first let me talk about the whole inspire , aspire ( btw Im using an Acer Aspire 9420, thats how I thought about the aspire thing) topic. So yes, throughout our squad trainings, Andrew has repeatedly reminded us when we did our cuts

"Imagine you're in the team events. Team final. The score is draw and its gone into encho ( extra time), you've been called to represent the team. Its going to be a match which will decide who's the victor, all in 1 single point."

To give you a better idea of the situation, encho in finals do not have a time limit. As far as it goes, the match will continue until someone scores a point, even if it has to run for an hour. Which means during that whole period, you're going to have to keep your concentration on, and at the same time try to score that one point. Its a pretty big task if you ask me.

Another event that comes to mind, that is somewhat similiar to this would be during the Olympics. Water polo, womens event, playing for Bronze. Australia plays against Hungary in a match that went into extra time when Australia equalizes the score with 8 seconds to go before the round ends. Extra time saw both sides fighting over, only to have Hungary score an equalizer 17 seconds before the match ends. Obviously by now both sides are tired out, and the game proceeds into a penalty shootout. At this point, the Australian coach goes down to the poolside and talks to the girls, with the TV camera clearly zooming onto his fist which had " We cant loose" written on it. I found that pretty cool. Australia finally beats Hungary by 1 point to win bronze.

So yea, this years AUG isnt going to be easy, for once we've got the biggest number of competitors then previous years, supposedly 70ish contestants. It might not sound like a big number, but remember that this is kendo, not basketball or football; we're a pretty small group. This years UNSW and USYD (as I've said before) are pretty strong, and we've got lots of other smaller groups competing. So yes... things are bound to be pretty interesting.

Its at times like these when I kick myself for not having a video camera, or a normal camera to take down the awesomeness.



I shall leave all the speculation for tomorrow. The next time I blog, it'll be all over and I'll know how much that 10 months of training had paid off (frankly Im pretty satisfied on how much I've progressed though).


Anyway so yea, Im going to sleep early tonight and make sure I eat right. And just let my shinai guide me....



** On the side note, today's shinai weigh in was pretty eventful. We had Tom and Avi being in charge of checking the state of everyones shinais. I can easily say that around 75% were rejected for various reasons. I had one of my shinais rejected, but after some touch ups, it was deemed useable. On the side notes, there were people who had everything rejected so you could see people doing last minute repairs and retying.

Since they didnt have a weighing scale at the location, we will have to weigh our shinais tomorrow before the events begin. Meaning I'd have to wake up earlier to get to the site earlier so I can get my weapons weighed.
( ps, I think one of my shinais is underweight)