Drawing Breath

Well, it’s been quite a while since my last post on this blog, or on my main portfolio site for that matter. A lot of things have changed, and it’s time to start writing about them again. I don’t expect that anyone reads what I post, or cares very much if they do. I have and will continue to use this site as a cathartic outlet; a chance to vent my spleen, or coalesce my thoughts. And no doubt it will continue to attract a ridiculous amount of comment spam that will, as usual, be flushed down the virtual toilet by the excellent Spam Karma.

I am already so fed up of seeing football everywhere; TV ads for everything from Argos to Pringles featuring footballers, managers or commentators; football related gewgaws and frippery given away with every soft drink or breakfast cereal; bloody cars with those bloody ridiculous bloody England flags flying from each bloody side of the bloody roof!

Bloody hell, the World Cup hasn’t even started yet. What a great summer it’s going to be for football tyros everywhere. I so glad I have a decent DVD collection.

On GMTV this morning, a big deal was made of a documentary to be aired tonight about a family of quadruped humans discovered in Turkey:

Researchers believe the five brothers and sisters, who can walk naturally only on all fours, may provide new information on how humans evolved from four-legged hominids to walk upright.

Two sisters and one son have only ever walked on two hands and two feet, while another daughter and son occasionally walk on two feet.

Much has been made of their discovery, and they are being described as a possible “missing link” between apes and humans. Am I missing something here? These poor people have a hip defect that makes it very hard for them to stand upright. Yet almost every ape or monkey I’ve ever seen on television is capable of standing upright. Most of them can even walk on their hind legs, albeit awkwardly.

This isn’t a discovery that could aid research into the evolution of humans. This is a freak show, pure and simple, with these poor sods paraded around on camera for our “entertainment”.

Well, I failed my brown belt grading yesterday in quite spectacular fashion. Frustratingly, it wasn’t my technique that let me down, it was my bloody ridiculous metabolism. It was a really long grading, and I had been sitting on the mat for almost 3 hours before my name was called. Unfortunately, this is just too long for me to go without food, and as soon as I stood up and felt the tremors in my thigh muscles, I knew it wasn’t going to go well.

I have always been borderline hypoglycaemic , and have to eat every 3 hours¹ or so to stop myself feeling sick and dizzy; by the time my grading started, I hadn’t eaten for nearly four and a half hours and my blood sugar level had tanked. As well as the physical effects, getting too hungry also makes me confused and irritable (just ask my wife), when I really needed to be alert and relaxed.

Consequently, I struggled mentally and physically, and when Sensei Moss called a halt to my grading with only half the required techniques completed, I knew I’d failed. No surprise, as I didn’t manage to complete a single kata without having to stop and regain my balance. Ironically, the part of the grading I was most worried about, the two man keiko, went really well; possibly this was because my head was so fuzzy by that stage that all I could do was move out of the way and use whatever technique dropped into place, rather than over thinking each move.

The most frustrating thing was that the panel assumed I simply wasn’t fit enough to manage the grading, which really isn’t the case; I just can’t go for that length of time without food. In retrospect, I should have prepared better, and asked Sensei for permission to leave the mat at some stage to “fuel up” before my own grading started, but I completely underestimated how long the other gradings would take. When I grade again in July, I shall take some carbohydrate laden food² with me, and have already discussed with Sensei the necessity of taking a break to eat.

My own failure aside, the other gradings were a mixed bag, with quite a few people failing, and a few doing really well (particularly those from the Milton Keynes and Stratord dojo’s, something that Sensei commented on too). Dennis, the only other person going for brown belt, did a spectacular job, and really deserved his pass, despite his having reservations about his level of preparation.

All in all, it was a disappointing experience for me, but I’m trying to be positive and treat it as a learning experience. I have to admit I wasn’t as prepared as I could have been, but after a 6 year gap I really needed to face the pressure of a grading again, and I’m fairly sure that if I had been okay physically I would have done enough to pass. Still, there is always next time, and the one positive thing I take from yesterday’s performance is that I don’t need to worry as much about the keiko, which is a big weight off my mind. I’ll be back on the mat tomorrow; I need to put the disappointment behind me, and get back to enjoying the training without the pressure of a grading for a few months.

1. Anyone who has spent enough time with me to see what happens when I go without food for too long will recognise at least two or three of the symptoms of hypoglycaemia listed below (I have experience almost all of them to a greater or lesser degree, but I’ve highlighted the ones that my wife will certainly recognise):

• Abnormal mentation, impaired judgement
• Nonspecific dysphoria, anxiety, moodiness, depression, crying, fear of dying
• Negativism, irritability, belligerence, combativeness, rage
• Personality change, emotional lability
• Fatigue, weakness, apathy, lethargy, daydreaming, sleep
• Confusion, amnesia, dizziness, delirium
• Staring, “glassy” look, blurred vision, double vision
• Automatic behavior, also known as automatism
• Difficulty speaking, slurred speech
• Ataxia, incoordination, sometimes mistaken for “drunkenness”
• Focal or general motor deficit, paralysis, hemiparesis
• Paresthesias, headache
• Stupor, coma, abnormal breathing
• Generalized or focal seizures

Although eating will reverse the symptoms very quickly (usually within minutes), I have found that eating high sugar snacks as a “quick fix” will almost certainly give me a severe headache, apparently as a result of the rapid swing in blood sugar levels; in the long run it’s always better for me to eat something high in carbohydrates (like pasta or wholemeal bread) than to reach for the chocolate bars or biscuits, even though it obviously takes longer to prepare a proper snack. ↩

2. At the moment, the plan is for honey and mashed banana on wholemeal bread, to give a good combination of quick and slow release sugars. If anyone has a better idea for a suitable snack (it has to be easy to carry and quick to eat), then please let me know. ↩

My favourite thing on TV at the moment is the “What Did You Want To Be?” advert for the new Ford Focus ST. It’s a hideous car, but I love the guy in the superhero costume. The way he takes to the air in response to a distressed scream is just superb. Watch it, then tell me it’s not the best superhero takeoff you’ve ever seen.

Update: The original site I linked to now requires paid membership to view the ad (yes, really), so watch it on YouTube instead. The quality isn’t as good, but it’s free.

Why is it that so many, like, people these days seem to need to, like, use the word “like” all the time when they, like, talk? It, like, drives me, like, nuts! And if I hear someone how overuses “like” (or “right”, or “y’know” or any other sentence padding flummery) and uses that damned rising inflection at the end of every sentence, then I want to stick knives in their neck.

Am I just getting old?

After my disastrous class at Aikido on Sunday, last night’s class was much better. I didn’t have to do a Keiko, but Sensei Brian called me up twice to perform techniques in front of the class. The first time was random techniques called out by Sensei and the other Dan grades. Luckily I remembered all but the last technique; I was already exhausted from the practice, and after about 10 techniques my oxygen starved brain just gave up and refuses to recall even the simplest techniques.

I don’t know why I was so tired last night. Brian’s class is always really physical, but I’ve been training 3 or 4 times a week for months now so I should be getting fitter. Last night though I was panting and sweating after about 20 minutes, and had to take frequent breaks at the side of the mat to get my breathing and heart rate under control.

I had a chat with Sensei Brian about my grading, and feel a little more relaxed about it now. I know it sounds a bit negative, but I am not really expecting to get my 1st kyu this time round; I am still not as fluid with some of the techniques from earlier gradings after my extended absence. What I do need to do though is put myself through the stress of a grading, just to try and shake out some of the nerves. My 2nd kyu grading was in 2000, so I really need to get up and have a go. If I pass, it will be a nice bonus; if not, the experience itself will be worth the (mainly self induced) stress.

Vicious cereal box eats cat:

That’s what’s happening, honest.

I’m feeling a bit depressed today after any embarrassingly bad performance in a two man Keiko at Aikido yesterday. My brown belt grading is less than two weeks away now, so I really need to pull my finger out if I’m not going to show myself up on the day.

In my defence, I’ve only done two two-man Keikos in 6 years, but that doesn’t excuse the fundamental mistakes I made yesterday. I have to really concentrate on keeping my guard up, make my Atemi count (or even remember to do them), and work on my awareness of the second attacker. Bugger.

So, a few French ducks have got the flu, and now frightened UK pet owners are dumping their parrots and budgerigars. The National Parrot Sanctuary in Lincolnshire has had to take in 23 abandoned birds in a week, more than they usually receive in a year.

These pet birds are caged, indoors. Do the owners think that their parrots are letting themselves out of their cages at night, unlocking the front door, popping to the local park and swapping used handkerchiefs with the local wild birds? Just how do they think their birds are going to acquire this disease? A disease that has yet to jump the species barrier and be demonstrated as harmful to humans? Idiots.

These poor abandoned birds (some of whom have had frostbite from being left outside the sanctuary in the middle of the night by their caring owners) must be really pissed off that they have been kept in a cage by people who are less intelligent than they are.