ohhhh markus ….

my parents, one of my brothers, and my uncle are visiting me until apr  8th and have landed safely yesterday at JFK. Unfortunately it took them 2.5hours to get thorugh customs, since there was a reeeeally long queue. since I was waiting outside I used the oppurtunity to walk around a little bit and discovered the hillarious magazine “YOUR PROM”, something probably many girls at the age around 18 would kill for, incredibly thick and consisting mainly of pictures of dresses and makeups for the prom. from a male point of view it was just hillarious

anyhow, finally they got out of customs and we went to my new home by train.

unfortunately my roommates all got seriously sick, taking antibiotics. and I am on the edge of getting sick, already having a very sour throat. well, lets see how this works out.

Today we all went to central park and (finally) made a boat tour around manhattan, where I took some AWESOME pictures (feel free to leave me a comment ;)).

I am just back from my first long nightwalk (endurable temperatures at last!) and during walking it finally hit me. I am here in NY. big city. many clubs. lots of cabs. lots of food and 24h deli. different culture. me, little markus in NY far away from home. no feelings of homesickness, just being surprised.

funny that it took so long.

so I won a trophy last weekend. what I didn’t mention was that I got kicked with full strength to my chest, still hurting a lot six days after (nothing broken, but maybe a bruise). Since the pain was getting endurable I decided to visit sparring on Friday again.

big mistake.

VERY big mistake.

my opponent/partner was super aggressive, hitting me with a series of super fast fist strokes exactly on this spot and due to the massive pain I wasn’t able to block fully. as our trainer noticed I could barely move, my face a landscape of pain, I got extra protection gear for my chest but it was too late. I was moving like a robot, each move extremely painful, my sight almost gone because a lot of sweat was running in my eyes and I was unable to lift my arms to clean them. at the end of the training I couldn’t take it anymore, just standing at the side, trying not to puke of pain. After the training it took me ages to change and to get home during bad weather. REALLY bad weather. heavy ice rain and temperatures around the freezing point (and on the day before was sunshine and 16 degrees Celsius PLUS. crazy crazy weather. the picture has been taken before around 18:00).

when I finally arrived home I seriously questioned if its really worth all this effort, if I shouldn’t just quit since it took me two hours of just laying on the bed before I could finally breath again without pain.

conclusion: don’t go to sparring when you are not really fit. seriously.

got a nice email today from alex, recommending a very special band, performing on march 22nd in NY. as I checked out the LINK in the email, I had to start dancing immediatly in my (office)chair.

this is the right stuff. pure. rough. let us dance and scream out loud! rock the house, partypeople!

can’t wait for their performance, see you there!

03/22/2007 08:00 PM  -  lit lounge
93 Second Ave NY NY 10003

Two times a year there is an internal tournament between our three Taekwondo schools. Since I trained a lot and was very curious how this is handled I decided to participate.

as my roommate heard in advance about it, they decided to go with me, to give some cheers and support which made me very happy. well, on the day before we went to the birthday party of a friend of Attie, with karaoke afterwards. which is only real fun if you are completely drunk (as all others). needless to say that I didn’t drink that much because of the tournament and went home rather early (around 3am), in heavy rain, without even the chance of getting a cab, arriving soaking wet and rather pissed but looking forward to the next day.

the tournament was around 3pm so I decided to try to wake my roommates around 1pm. well, I tried. Attie was sincerely miserable and Stephane responded very quietly, obviously drunk, that he will join later, I should leave him the address. So I shrugged and left the flat, getting a sms from Stephane while changing for the tournament, that he, Attie and ben are coming and will hopefully arriving soon. which made me very happy.

unfortunately they took a wrong bus, which took them an additional 30 minutes, missing my form and my fight. which is on the one hand good and bad on the other one.

First I had to do my form (a predefined, complex sequence of moves). After your name is called, you go into the middle of the Dojang, bow, shout your name and the name of the form (in my case sir kang il hyung), ask for permission to start and the room falls totally silent, everyone starring at you. I concentrated, started and made a mistake after the second move.

and just froze.

turning my brain into white noise. after the first shock I continued, but I had completely lost my focus, turning numb and uncontrolled, everything around me just faded out and after making three additional mistakes (pausing after each one), I only wanted to drop dead right at the moment. but at least I kept my dignity completing the form, bowing, and returning to my place. feeling totally terrible because I trained it a lot and would have never expected that I could get so nervous to such stupid mistakes.

anyhow, after everyone had completed their form and the award ceremony was over there was the second part. sparring.

quite interesting, you are in an square of about 4 by 4 meter, a judge standing on each corner, holding a two colored stick (one end of it being red, the other one white). the two opponents (one having a white stripe in his belt, the other being automatically red) get into the fight area, and when someone of them seemed to make a point, the fight is paused, and each of the four judge holds up the end of the stick, whose color scored. if the majority is one color, the color scores. if there are not enough votes there is no point gained (e.g. if the judge covers his eyes instead of holding up the stick it means he didn’t see it and there is no vote by him). after the decision the fight continues. this system is incredibly fast, reducing the time for a vote by all four judges to less than 5 seconds.

before my turn there were four fights, one of them by a real kick ass professional (he won the tournament in the end), being on step away from the black belt (=high red), almost double my weight, beating his opponent like hell while being incredibly fast (his first opponent didn’t score even once although being a high blue belt). I really pittied his next opponent. and now guess whose name was called to be my opponent.

I was standing there, turning pale white, tempted to just run away, thinking, oh my god, this must be some kind of joke, this guy will beat the crap out of me (I was by far the lowest belt at this tournament).

So the fight started and I tried to remember everything I have learned in the last weeks during sparring, keeping my cover, moving quick like crazy and I SCORED against him! he won at the end, of course (3:1), making his last point in the last 5 seconds by hitting me so hard on the chest that I was kicked back almost half the court, but I managed to make one point and keeping the overall score very low, because I could almost dodge most of his moves, earning the 4th rank of the tournament in the end (the other fight was against a high belt, too, ending 1:0). After the fight one of the instructors approached me and told me, that my performance was very impressive, being that good at that low level and that I have a lot of potential. leaving me with a big grin on my face ;). On the picture of the award ceremony you can see the guy I fought (he is the one on the left), being almost double my width.

I was happy beyond words when I was called up, being the 4th rank. This is the first (sports) trophy of my whole life, making this very special to me.

about 20 minutes after my fight Stephane, Attie and Ben arrived, and we watched together the fights of the black belts and had nice sushi afterwards (which is incredibly cheap compared to insane prices in Manhattan). Brooklyn is really really different to Manhattan, very suburban, you can get an impression by the pictures below. Felt almost like a vacation going there.

today something rather unusual happened on my way to the office. shortly after the subway closed the door and started to accelerate a (pretty) girl fainted about 10 feet away from me. dropping straight to the floor, catched by passenger next to her. and the whole cabin just froze. including myself, I have to admit. luckily an elderly man next to me told the guy next to the emergency brake, “pull the emergency brake” in a very calm and casual way like saying “nice weather today, isn’t it?”, which really impressed me. the guy next to the brake was frozen, too, but after the elderly man repeated the command, again very calmly, he pulled the brake, forcing the train to brake immediately after just moving a couple of inches. so the train was still in the station at its full length.

and now it gets really interesting.

a very handsome guy helped the girl up, smiled to her, talked to her and made some conversation. in the meantime, the doors kept shut, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the train, and no one was coming for at least 5 minutes. everyone tried to keep a low profile, especially not starring at the women and after the waiting started to get uncomfortable, the guy who pulled the brake left the cabin headed to the next cabin in search for an MTA employee. which he found and brought back after another 5 minutes.

the MTA guy talked a little bit to the girl who had quickly fully recovered (although being extremely pale) and the handsome guy and left after resetting the brake. another 3 minutes later the train started to accelerate again and arrived shortly after at 34th.

now if this would be a Hollywood movie, the handsome guy and the woman would have a coffee, and getting a couple in the end (after some struggles of course). well, this is NY. the guy just left and the woman went another way, so no romance to expect there.

the whole thing (fainting, brake, resetting brake, moving again) took about 20 minutes, leaving me with a couple of conclusions:

1. if the emergency brake is pulled, the doors remain shut.
   which is super stupid, imagine you are having a heart attack where every minute counts and the people next to you are prevented to get you outside.
2. the MTA personal is super unprofessional by needing that amount of time to get evidence what happened.
3. although there were several policemen standing outside they didn’t investigate either, which I also consider unprofessional
4. IF there is an emergency situation, I am the same frozen bunny as the rest of the people (no illusions there anymore)
5. the by far most effective way to handle a situation like this is to sound as casual as possible
6. NY (and maybe the rest of the world) is not a Hollywood movie when it comes to romance
7. there are people who can get even paler than me

So although the woman was helped, I am not really feeling supersafe anymore having something really severe happening to me a in the subway due to the lack of fast situation handling. MTA is training their people for situations like this, aren’t they?

Friday night aaaand Stephane and I decide to go out, have some fun. and there was to beautiful woman in the queue. next step, we are in the queue, too, with a total length of 4 people. of course the queue was there, because there HAS to be queue (the club was empty). god, how I hate that, anyhow, chance to talk to the couple while waiting. funny thing was, he is a DJ, playing regularly in Beijing, too, which was perfect base for some chitchat for Stephane. afterwards Stephane “discovered” my new haircut and we found out that we both go to the same hair studio and have even the same stylist (9th avenue, Hoshi Coupe, HIGHLY recommended). how awkward is that?! like there are not a gazillion studios out there but just one

anyhow, later on we moved over to a real Chinese karaoke bar, where Miss E, Ivor, Attie and a bunch of other guys already have been for a couple of time in a private karaoke booth (and quite drunk). had a jolly good time by singing English songs and listening to a lot of Chinese ones. oh, and Miss E hit a wall with her head, but that’s another story.

Saturday I was sent out to do some shopping for dinner (pasta) and managed somehow to get lost, circling the blocks in search of the supermarket. but I discovered a lot of other nice ones, which I had to inspect thoroughly of course.

And when I came back home, I presented proudly one package of freeze-dried astronaut ice cream and the maybe most ridiculous and fat bunny (but supercute) bunny ever made.

most funny thing: the fat bunny

edit: although I have no problem with sexual equality, I really enjoy to pay less as a man when going to a hairdresser. but manhattan is different (as usual). for dying your hair there is no price difference between genders (which came as a surprise, because I consider $110 for just a little bit dying rather expensive, but, oh well, don’t we want all to look a little bit pretty from time to time ).

so guess what, Stephane and his girlfriend got engaged today. and we all had a very very nice dinner tonight with - surprise surprise - frog legs as side dish. tasted a little bit like fishy chicken. but I still think its a little bit gross

oh, and one thing came to my mind today, I am not quite sure if I am thinking in English or German when I am just bored, like on the train in the morning. which brings me to the question how can you check in which language you are thinking without thinking about it? because the moment you are thinking about the language you are influencing the way you are thinking and therefore maybe the language itself ….