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Tonight I went with Belinda and a pair of the Korean teachers to see a kung fu dojo. It was called Spirit Hands Taichi or something equally silly, but the master of the place was purportedly a Korean legend - his gym has trained a few Olympic medalists and he himself was a judge at the most recent Games. I wondered if there was a correlation there... somewhere... 10.0 from the Korean judge!

The dojo itself looked disappointingly like an office building, except that instead of desks and cubicals it had a honkin' big mat on the floor. We went into the master's office, where he sat in a comfy chair and showed us videos of martial arts exhibitions on his flat screen Samsung display. He kept trying to convince Belinda (the only one of us actually there to sign up for his ninjastics) to take up tai chi, which is basically not fighting at all but swaying around like a spiritually enlightened drunkard - albeit a very controlled and precise drunkard. Belinda looked at me and we were like "no, fuck this," and through a series of gestures and our Korean teacher interpetation service, we told him she wanted something with more bashing.

So then the master opened up Photoshop accidentally and had trouble maximizing his Media Player, but finally we were watching a video in which swordfighters flipped and twirled viciously through the air. This was more like it, and I hooted appreciatively. Mad props for weaponry. There are two styles of kung fu, the master told us: Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. He quite clearly thought we were retarded but tolerated us nobly, even when Belinda asked if she could learn the kung fu which would best compliment her Chinese acupuncture skills.

On our way out we watched two shy teenagers high-kicking across the mat, almost booting themselves in the face with each impossibly vertical step. A contemplative instructor sat watching them and I wondered whether she would suddenly fly into a rage and chase them around the dojo with one of the many swords in the rack behind her. I don't really know why I was expecting this but a sword battle would've been a nice end to the visit, you have to admit.

Posted by Chris at 08:51 AM >> Commentations (6)