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. 
March 14th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Markus, du bist a wahnsinn!!
(markus, you are some craciness;-)