Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Hopefully everyone can take advantage of the holidays and cherish the time spent with your friends and family.

*Insert touching and heartfelt blog here*

Happy Holidays to everyone, have fun and be safe.

Nothing to do with school or writing structure!

So in very important Chris-related news, I broke my cell phone. So I now have a brand spankin' new fancy camera phone like everyone else does! Yippee kai yay mother... eh you know the rest. I wonder what else I can break and get replaced...

Quick question to everyone, any song recommendations for the iPod...?

Moving onto other news, I went to the Arashido Capital Classic Championship tournament. It was pretty cool because in addition to the "sport Karate" events (point sparring, forms) they also had events such as gi and no gi grappling, kickboxing, and pankration (amateur level). Anyways, I took this time to take part in judging forms and point sparring for the sport karate events. At first it was a bit nerve wracking because they were only going with three judges, and I didn't want to be the person who was way off base in giving scores. But overall I felt I was pretty spot on with my judgement and with what I was looking for.

As for the other events, it was cool to see a bit of the grappling. I didn't watch much of the pankration (basically strikes + grappling, but no strikes to the face on the ground and other modifcations). However, the kickboxing setup they had was hard to watch. Of course it was fairly amateur level, but there was practically no defense to be shown. It seemed like a toughman-style competition of swing your hands and hope your punches land. Now, my feeling on this kinda sport is you should either go full out and get KO'ed, or it stays like point sparring. Having a sport thats in the middle where you get sustained damage isn't worth it at a casual level. I'd rather be KO'ed then take repeated potshots to the face and body. It was hard to watch a match where someone was repeatedly turning around and getting chased out by shots to the head. Maybe its just the softie in me though...

That reminds me, I gotta start getting some more exercise. But thats hard, so screw it. =D

Anyways, is anyone else slightly disturbed that it hasn't snowed here in Edmonton? Then again, I don't want it to because I'm so miserable when its cold out. Not to mention its tough to drive the Mazda in winter conditions. Still, I'd like to paste Keith with one snowball this year...

Another rapid change of thought, I watched the recently released movie The Chronicles of Narnia (someone should make a book outta this movie!) and I enjoyed it. I thought the sets and imagery were done very well and really helped me get into the mood of the movie. I haven't read the books, but I think I will try to over the winter break.

Since its the holidays, I thought I'd try to look back and think of a memory to conjure up feelings of sentiment, or something like that. I don't remember how old I was, but I was at a BCAA (Borneo Cultural Association of Alberta) Christmas party and I came upon this little boy who was crying. (Hopefully I'm not making this memory up) I must have spent a lot of the evening trying to calm him down. It turns out he is terribly sad because all of a sudden his dad just disappeared. So yes, we looked all over the restaurant at which the party was being held at. I think we did some really retarded searching though, like under tables and the like. Eventually, we stop looking because "Santa Claus" has come out bearing gifts! I'm like, frick kid, I want to get my present, lets go, and maybe Santa will cheer you up. The kid reluctantly follows me, and then all of a sudden his face lights up! Thats right, it turns out that the person playing Santa Claus for that party was his dad.

Also, one year, they gave me pogs with a Power Rangers slammer. =D