Friday, June 29, 2007

Long, hot days

Training is ticking along nicely - I'm learning so much, particularly in the clinch, and my kicking technique has improved a shitload, it's fab. I didn't make it along to training this morning because I was feeling pretty rubbish with a sore throat and a sore stomache, so I'm hoping the throat will clear up quickly and not develop into anything too sinister. I actually managed to sleep all night, too, which was both big *and* clever, as usually I wake up every hour or two to switch the air conditioning on, then off, then on, then off....

At about 7am what sounds like a convoy of articulated lorries appears to roar through my bedroom, but it's just the Thais starting to head off to work outside on their phalanx of mopeds and trucks and cars, but it's pretty bloody loud, so that acts as an effective wake-up call. Today, however, I slept (with difficulty, but someone's gotta do it) until about 10.30, then took a wander up the road to find tesco, buy some fruit and rent a DVD to watch in the afternoon. I lay around drinking OJ, eating Chinese pears and watching an o.k. sort of Robin Williams movie (The Good Guy - doesn't warrant a review), ate lunch, collected laundry and went to training. So it's not terribly exciting alot of the time, and this is why I don't have many pictures. So far, I've taken 3 pictures of geckos, and 5 pictures of what my room looks like......sad.

Anyway, I'm going to try and force innocent bystanders to come and do touristy things with me, like ride an elephant or something, so I've got some good pictures - I'm very selfless like that.... or incredibly selfish, not sure which...

In other news, I went to watch some fights last night - Pedro from the gym was having his first fight and we all went along to support. It's alot different from fights at home: weight disparity doesn't seem to be much of an issue, and neither is experience by the looks of things, since Pedro, for his first fight, after training for only 3 months, fought a Thai with over 60 fights, and there were several wildly mismatched fights throughout the night. Makes a good show for the spectators, but it's not much fun for the fighters...

Also, they don't seem to care nearly as much about who actually wins - the ref seems to decide, just holds the winner's hand up and that's that - no big fuss like at home, with build ups, and 3 judges, and trophies for the loser, or even the winner. Mind you, they do all get paid. About 30 quid.

But it was a good atmosphere, and interesting, and when Dave fights on Monday I'll take my camera along and get some good pictures for the sharing thereof, have no fear.

Now it's the late hour of 8pm, and time to go home, eat a pear and read my book until I fall asleep, ready for training in 12 hours time.

Take it easy, speak to you soon

Aarayan x

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Sawatdee Ka!

Hey guys,

just a quick update to let you know that I've arrived safe and sound in the land of smiles, I'm set up with a place to stay, and I've started training at the gym. I've not got time just now to upload any photos, and to be fair I don't have many yet - I've mostly been sleeping and training today and yesterday, so I've only got pictures of my room.

The journey here was pretty epic, and I'm glad I'm only going to have to do that once more - it took a full 27 hours from waking up on Monday to arriving in Chiang Mai, and I didn't sleep for any of it. On the plus side, Qatar airline who I flew with from Gatwick to Doha and Doha to Bangkok do a decent range of fims and you can pick what you want to watch. I just hope they've changed them by the time I head back since I watched just about all of them.

So I arrived in Chiang Mai and got a taxi to the gym where I was met by Noom, who showed me a guest house just opposite, I got unpacked, had a shower and had a wee nap for an hour before heading out to training for the evening.

It's completely different from the way we do things at home, obviously- you start out with a run which is supposed to be about 5k, but I only did 1 lap yesterday, so about 1.5k, since I was knackered. Then you go with one of the trainers in the ring for a few rounds of doublepads, which is thoroughly knackered but really improves your technique no end. Mind you I'll have to stop doing half of it when I get home since some of it's wildly different from the way we do things, but anyway. Then either shadowboxing or bagwork, and back in the ring for grappling and technique work. Technique is bloody hard, becuase they're asking you to body kick their hands without pads, so you can't go hard, but they want me to relax - I find it very hard to relax when I'm kicking a Thai stranger and trying to be gentle about it.... Then it's situps in the ring and you're all done. If you're me, at some point someone will also weigh you and then laugh/look disturbed/tell you you have to weigh 55kilos (What?! Lose 10k in 3 weeks?!) - we'll just have to see about that, I'm only human.
So, All that takes about 2.5 or 3 hours and then you go an eat something from one of the many little outdoor restaurants. There's one near where I'm staying and I just go there because the food is amazing, and the nice man understands I don't speak Thai and just cooks me something different every day.

Today's training was mental - it was really quiet so one of the trainers just took my in the ring for literally about 2 hours - one on one training: exhausting but fantastic.

This evening Dave of Hammerhead Gym very kindly came and picked me up on his moped and took me for a ride into town to have a look around the night market and change my traveller's cheques. The Thai's are insane when it comes to driving - think "traffic lights are guides, not rules", marry this with a lack of speed limits and you've got some fun conditions. I'm definitely going to have to bring home some nice gifts from the market (once I learn how to barter - Paul knows how badly I suck at this), lots of pretty, touristy tat :)

Anyway, it's been a very long day, and it's time to go to sleep, so I'll bid you adieu and I'll get some photos uploaded when I have some to show.

Fann dee

Aarayan x

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Here we go...

Hullo to those of you who I've just informed about my blog so you can see what I'm up to in Thailand! I'm very embarrassed to have written most of the crap I've written, so please don't mock me too mercilessly, or at least wait until I'm out of earshot.

And Mum? I'm sorry, but I do swear- a fair bit. Please forgive me.

So, it's now officially the day after tomorrow that I head off, and I'm well on my way towards being prepared - I have piles and piles of clothes on my study floor which I'm going to pack tomorrow, and carefully tick off the list I made earlier in the week so I don't forget anything vital. I've got my tickets, I've got my money and travellers cheques, I've got a whole bunch of stuff I'll never need but seems important now, I've got travel insurance, at a whopping £62 for 3 weeks cover. I rang up the company and said:

Me: I need comprehensive insurance. I'm going to Thailand to do Thai Kickboxing

Her: That's fine, you're covered for that with this package.

Right, but just so you know, I'm going to be training full time. I intend to be getting into a ring on a daily basis and potentially volunteering to get punched in the head. Am I still covered?


Yup, you're covered.

So you're saying that if I deliberately get smacked in the face, doing a martial art, and need hospital treatment you'll pay? And further more, if I accidentally mortally wound someone else, and *they* require hospital treatment, you'll cover their treatment *and* my legal costs, even though I was doing a martial art, on purpose, for fun?

Yup, pretty much, and if you die we pay out £5,000,000


....and you'll require *proof* of death, I suppose.....?


So, if I don't make it back from Thailand in one piece, don't mourn too much- I'll probably be "dead" on a beach somewhere on a tropical island. Either that or Paul will have bumped me off, he'll be on the beach, and I'll expect you to avenge me.

I'll update the blog and get pictures up for you regularly, here, so you can all reflect regularly on how much you hate me, and how you wish you were in Thailand instead, whilst looking at handy visual aids to really make the jealousy burn ;)

On second thoughts, I'm starting to think I shouldn't have told you about the insurance pay out.... not before I mocked you, anyway. Bugger.


Keep in touch, leave me comments, and I'll see you in three weeks!

Love,

Aarayan

Friday, June 22, 2007

Many Happy Returns

Tomorrow it is my birthday. I've forgotten quite a few times already over the past few days and gone "...huh?" when Paul mentions the party on Saturday. However, I'm not as dense as Paul who has accidentally convinced himself that it is he who is going on holiday on Monday, and is in for a very disappointing morning, silly billy.

I've never been a huge fan of birthdays, to be honest. Other people's are usually great fun: everybody gets a bit pissed, has a good time, the birthday boy or girl has a fab night and doesn't feel awkward or embarrassed at having gathered all their friends together for such a patently self-centred reason, because it's absolutely fair enough, and nobody considers it to be egotistical or presumptious - including me.

When it comes to my own birthdays, however, I've never quite got the hang of this, and always feel.....apologetic at having thrown myself a birthday party. Kind of like I've forced people to reveal their hand and throw their friendship cards down on the table. For this reason, I haven't actually had a birthday party since I was about 7.

This is very silly. I know this, and tomorrow evening I am going to not be such a paranoid idiot, and do the birthday thing, and a lovely time will be had by all. I will eat Jamaican food and not, even once, complain that I am fat. I will meet friends at the pub and not, even for a nano-second, look at their shoes instead of their faces to avoid seeing an imagined look of "When can I go home?".

Most importantly, I will get quite pissed, have a laugh, say some ridiculous things and will not, under any circumstances torture myself for weeks afterwards by constantly thinking "Oh, God! Why did I say [insert drunken comment here] - what a twat!".

This is my pledge as I enter my 25th year. It's a dramatic pledge, I know, and very out of character - check out the reaction of this chipmunk who I told earlier on today:





It's about bloody time I grew up.


At least a little bit. Happy birthday, me :)

Monday, June 18, 2007

The end of an era...

Thank Fuck.

Ding Dong, Moray House is dead! I've finally finished the course after a mind-bogglingly awful 9 months, and I am most, most pleased. (I passed, by the way)

My final placement went very well, thank you, the school was lovely, the kids were lovely, the teacher was.....very helpful... and the management were friendly, competent and approachable- what more can you ask? Obviously, what with the fight training and the ridiculous work-load for uni, and teaching full time as well I was mostly made out of stress, and it's nothing short of a miracle that I still have a husband in tow (bless his little, antibacterial cotton socks which my Gran gave him for Christmas. Two years in a row. Insulting, much?).

I developed a habit of crying at entirely random moments in the evening, throwing childish tantrums about ridiculous things, like having to go to the shop to buy dinner because Paul had forgotten ("It's just not bloody fair - why is life so shite?!"), and becoming hysterical at movies which should technically be, if not funny, not actually psychologically scarring...

We watched "Click", that Adam Sandler movie about a guy that gets a Universal Remote and, guess what, it remote controls....THE UNIVERSE! Surely a recipe for comedy japes and misunderstandings, but in a calm, controlled, non-perilous way. And it was, unless you're quite nicely teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, in which case the whole moral of the story about a guy who wishes his life away a died, alone, unfulfilled and regretful (and fat) in the rain is just a bit....too close to the bone. So I had a proper, wailing, uncontrolled crying fit for about half an hour, emitting strange snorts, squeaks and mangles "I don't want to die!"s so that in the end I was laughing as much as crying and laughing at the crying and crying at the laughing in a horrible, snotty cycle of stupidness. Paul, however, thought it was hilarious, which is pretty handy.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that the placement went as well as could be expected, my final presentation went quite a bit less well than could be expected, (doing me out of an Distinction which I wasn't really bothered about but felt like I ought to try for) and the fight didn't happen at all.

Which I was naturally not too pleased about, in light of the whole working-myself-into-the-ground thing I mentioned above, but sadly that's just the way it goes sometimes. Remember I said there were many reasons not to get overexcited about a fight, because at any moment it just might not happen... well the most common reason happened, and she pulled out at the last minute. But, thankfully, she pulled out for a reason which at least makes people go ".....huh?!" when I tell them. She became "unfocussed" (just all of a sudden, apparently...) and decided to elope to the States with her girlfriend. Plausible *and* fun! I acted like a mardy cow for the day, had a shitty time and, showing my stylish nature, encouraged everyone to join me in my lovely pit of self-pity - nice.

However, there will (presumably) be other fights, and I will certainly get pulled out on again many more times, and I'll just have to get better at dealing with it, because that's the way it works sometimes. With a bit of luck I might get my first fight in Thailand, which will certainly be an experience (don't, for God's sake, tell my travel insurance people...)

So that's the next big thing - one week from today I will be merrily winging my way to Thailand, and by "merrily winging my way" I do of course mean that I will be terrified, self-doubting, and constantly checking that I have my passport, I'm on the right flight, and I am actually who I think I am - I usually am, but it's prudent to check from time to time.

One week and counting guys - yipes!