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| May 31st to June 1st |
| 06.01.04 (10:26 pm) [edit] |
Monday, May 31st. Terribly grey, overcast, and cold day. The worst weather experienced here yet. Felt like it was 10C.
Today, I commuted to Murdoch from Subi, did a monstrous amount of email and journal writing in the morning and then slipped away from the Uni in the early afternoon. I needed to get to the diving school so as to pick up my refund. Despite the dire warnings I had received from the slightly bitter course instructor, the refund was given without any problems.
From the academy, I walked through Claremont and into Subi, a fair walk with a lot of houses, parks, houses, small green spaces, houses, dogs, houses, parks... The rest of the day I spent in a great state of vegetation, contemplating the great mysteries of life, such as how long it would take my new bank to process the diving school check I had just deposited.
Tuesday, June 1st. A beautiful, sunny, sunny, day--a day that makes you smile when you're outside. 19C.
I countered yesterday's loss of ambition, movement, and potency by getting up at a fairly respectable hour--825am--calling long distance to Toronto on my second cuz's phone and then going for a great tramp around in King's Park. Now King's park is a pretty damn big swath of bush preserved right adjacent to Perth's city centre--and the western edge just happens to be a few blocks away from where I'm staying.
First, though, I needed some sustenance, so I went to Chez Claude, Patisseur, the swiss bakery down the street from the house, and got myself a croissant. Yeah! Now I was ready--off I went, tramp tramping along.
From first appearance, the western edge of the park looks like bushland--there's the four lanes of traffic, and damn, there's a wall of bushes, brush, and trees. You enter the park, and walk foot paths that diverge and criss cross over one another, not encountering a single person. This last fact may have to do with the majority of people being at work, it being mid-week and mid-day and all, but I think it also has to do with the sheer size of the park.
Occasionally, you exit the bush to find yourself in a planted clearing with an asphalt road crossing the middle--these are the roads that intersect the park. Along the sides of the road are planted eucalyptus that each bear a commemorative plaque at its base, marking in eulogy the name of australian combatants of various wars.
I eventually came out of the bush-paths to a substantial manicured and rolling green--the botanical gardens. These are situated right next to the escarpment that runs along the southern side of the park, overlooking the Swan river. Here, there is a view worth watching and there is a short tree-top walk that allows you to both appreciate the upper canopy of the forest in this area as well as the view of Perth.
So I tramped around, did my thing, and returned home--not before stopping, again, at the pattiserie for a freshly baked baguette. It turns out that they bake a whole bunch (really, a massive pile that stacks about five feet high) in the afternoon to sell to the working masses, returning from their day of labour. I pity the fools, because my baguette was still steaming inside--damn, it was some good baguette! Some water or orangina and I would have been in heaven; as it was, I made it home with most of the baguette intact, and made myself a massive green onion scrambled egg sandwich with tomato slices, some oh-so cheap plasticky cheddar, and a solid band of dijon.
I think that in my journey through the park, I only managed to see and cover a section of the western perimeter--which is pretty impressive, considering I didn't drag my feet. Roughly, I probably covered three or four km.
After recovering from lunch--during which I endured a long, tortuous, and disgusting radio broadcast of a house of commons debate in the Australian federal legislature--I went off to Swanbourne, suburb south west of Subiaco.
In Swanbourne was a tkd club that I was going to check out; however, from the train station where I got off, I managed to get completely lost and it took me over an hour to reach my final destination. ALong the way, I walked down residential streets, across parts of two seperate golf courses, hopped one eight foot fence, travelled alongside a highway, and finally managed to arrive at the train station that came immediately after the one I originally got off at.
Finally I arrived at the tkd club and watched the end of the kids' class and the whole of the adult class. The kids class was run by one black belt, who had four other adult black belts helping out, holding pads or teaching individual groups. A sixth black belt, a second dan, wandered the gym's perimeter, doing paperwork. This last one was the actual head teacher of the school, although by the end of the evening, he had done very little in the way of actual instruction, allowing his second-in-command to do the actual nitty gritty.
As it turns out, Rhee International Tae Kwon Do has a fairly bureaucratic structure--each student has a 'passport' that includes details like attendance and testing results. This bureaucracy probably stems from the fact that they are a massive nation wide school--Master Rhee comes to WA five times a year from his base in the Eastern States--and that the testing results are overseen by Master Rhee himself (so I was told), and thus the passports.
As for the adult class, it was well organized and efficiently run. Classes are an hour long, with two breaks at the twenty and fourty minute marks; there is a warmup (a light run back and forth across the gym, pushups, some punches in stance), a very quick stretch done in a circle, then a bunch of drills. The drills consist of punching targets with a partner, self-defense with a partner, then a great deal of non-contact sparring. The non-contact sparring was very brief--20 seconds--and worked its way up from punching only, to snap kicks only, to free sparring (all techniques). While some contact is made, through blocking and deflection, there really is no contact made, whatsoever. Class ended with some push ups and administrative business (passports returned).
The deal with Rhee International TKD is that it purports to be 'traditional tkd' and is not affiliated with either the WTF or ITF. This organization was only started in the seventies but carries itself as the only 'reputable' form of tkd in Australia and New Zealand; I can see why the organization has done well--the non-contact type of fighting is useful because no one is intimidated or discouraged by physical contact. The school practices heavily in patterns, self-defense, and one steps, so the training is complete in that sense. As for them being the school of Australia, it is something that leaves me unenthused.
However, as to the quality of their tkd, it was variable; the person who had introduced me to the club was probably the best student in the class. Her peers, five other black belts, were not nearly so good and their overall technique looked somewhat shoddy. The other issue was that the training was not very physically demanding--very little kicking training was done, the emphasis being more on hand techniques--and the students looked rarely, if at all, challenged by the exercise.
One thing that bothered me was the variable standard of kicks made in the club. Some kicked very well while others, black belts included, did not kick so well--and not because of flexibilty or fitness--as if their technique had never really been properly taught. The ones who kicked well looked like the naturals and the hard workers, those who in other words were capable of teaching themselves.
I think that the reason behind this is that they do not fight with contact, something that shows you as a student what you need to do to develop your kicks to a standard: a standard that necessitates speed, accuracy, and strength in a practical setting.
In any case, I returned to my enclave and called it a day...
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