Legolin’s Weblog

The Tae Kwon-do Social Club website is finally up and running: www.tkdcentresocialclub.com
It’s nice to see it live.. and I’m particularly proud of it as it’s fully W3C validated and probably the most usable and accessible website I’ve built so far. What I am most proud of, though, is that I managed to set up the sign up form in php all by myself - well, ok, Google helped me a bit.. but still!! ; )

…couse WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!!! :-) Yeah everybody, the trip to Tramore for the I.N.T.A. National Championship turned out to be a trophies plunder!! There were 9 of us from the Taekwondo Centre and we came back with 10 trophies! It couldn’t go better than that: I had a very good time, I didn’t get injured (and that’s quite odd for me!) and… I WON!!! 1st place sparring!! :-) I know, it’s unbelievable!!! It was soo exciting… the nervousness, the concentration, the strain, the camaraderie… I really enjoyed every moment of the day. It was nice to have breakfast all together in the B&B in the morning and then go to the competition, I felt like we were a team, and that gave me courage. One of the thing I liked most is actually the way we naturally worked as a team, from the very warm-up until the last of us finished competing, supporting each other all the time. We did very good… Carole did great in patterns, as well as Pavel (2nd and 3rd place respectively), and then we ruled in the sparring (4 golds, 2 silvers and 1 bronze). Of course the low number of participants did have its weight (especially in my case, as I had to win just one round to get the 1st place!!), but this doesn’t mean we didn’t deserve it: “we trained hard, we were good enough, we were fast enough and we went out there to prove it” (i.e. Pat’s mantra). ;-)
It was also very good to stop in Carlow on the way back, to eat and celebrate together with Master O’Toole (whose smiling even if impartial presence was comforting during the competition) and Mr. Hannigan (whose help and support as coach was priceless - particularly for Rory, I guess, when he fell down after a kick in the groin!!! ;-P ).
Excitement, contentment and big laughs… it was a great weekend indeed! I will put together a page on my website with the pictures we took (as soon as we collect them from everybody), but for the moment check this out:

From the left:
Keith (1st in sparring, yellow belt & green tip -75kg), Peter (1st in sparring, yellow belt & green tip +75kg), myself (1st in sparring, yellow belt to green tip), Pat (coach and spiritual guide!), Master O’Toole (our 7th degree black belt Master), Kim (1st in sparring, blue belt to black tip), Pavel (2nd in sparring, yellow belt & green tip -75kg, and 3rd in patterns), Rory (2nd in sparring, green belt to blue belt), Jack (3rd in sparring, yellow belt & green tip +75kg), Mr. Hannigan (our 4th degree black belt coach) and, last but not least, Carole (2nd in sparring, yellow belt & green tip, and 2nd in patterns).

I know. You can’t even call it a gap, it is more like a lag, a temporal hole that swallows the past 3 months!! My last post was back in June and now it’s October… Summer (if it ever came!) is gone… it brought good fun, old and new friends, my first swim in the Irish Sea, a new belt (yellow!!), my first freelance website (www.miadeejay.it) and, for few days after my holiday in Italy, also a bit of tan! ;-) Now the tan is gone and days are getting shorter but I’m still busy and still having a good time.
In the past 2 weeks I’ve been working on redesigning my website, I was a bit bored by the one I currently have but most of all I felt it was just shameful for me (probably the heavier CSS supporter after Ben!!) to still have a website built in tables! I was hoping to get it live this week but unfortunately my free time seems to become less and less, so I guess it won’t be live before the next week or two. Who’ll live will see, as we say in Italy.
This week I will be super-busy again as my dad is here (that means looot of Guinness!!) and on Saturday I’ll be going to Tramore (down in Waterford) to take part to the National Taekwon-do Championship… that’s basically the reason why I finally decided to write a post on my blog… to leave my last will!! ;-P I’m quite excited about the competition, I’ve never done something like that before (swimming or running in your own lane is a bit different than actually facing your opponent in sparring!!!)… hope to have a good time and not to get injured (too much!). Today I finally got to wear my gum shield without choke…it’s already a good start!!! ;-)
More news will follow (hopefully!!!) - now it’s bed time!

And here we go… some months ago that of a taekwon-do social club was just a good idea in Pat’s crowded-of-good-ideas mind, and now we not only have an official logo (fruit of several sleepless nights and endless feedbacks from Pat!!) but also a great, first, official event. It was really cool to see all those people gathered in front of the do-jang on Sunday morning and to think that everybody was there thanks to the Social Club. And it was still better to see them knowing each other and having fun together along the day. Paintball, then, was just great fun.
On the way back from Enniskerry I was ord.. ehm.. asked to write down my impressions about the day, so here you go:

18th June 2007, the day after.
Your legs are sore. On your body the marks left by the bullets remind you the adrenaline; the silence of the forest broken by the shooting; the pain; the good fun. In your ears there is still the sound of the bullets hacking the air and smashing against the bark of a friendly tree, few inches from a short but acute pain. Of course if your name is Pat, Pavel, Rory or Lii you might hear just the bullets hacking the air and then smashing against your chest, your back, your legs and your bum, but that’s the story of the proudly-self-called “suicide squad”, and I am sure someone else will tell about that!
That of yesterday was really good fun… I think everybody enjoyed that and will keep a good memory of the day… I will definitely remember that I’ve almost shot Pavel point-blank, while I was indeed trying to cover him (a girl can make a mistake, can’t she?), or the way in the last game I took my after-first-death revenge over Tom (who probably won’t feel that comfortable being seated in the next few days!!). Someone in the Red Team will probably point out that we have been badly defeated, but I enjoyed being part of the never-give-up-we-can-make-it Yellow Team I have to say. We maybe lacked in strategy but surely did not miss perseverance, integrity and indomitable spirit!
What I did really like though, beside the game, are the good laughs, the nice and friendly atmosphere, the way playing together made us know each other better and feel to be part of a group… that was really nice. And that was also the aim of the TKD Social Club, which seems to have had the amazing power to turn classmates into friends.