trash talk

We had an MMA class last week. This is especially exciting because it hasn’t happened since August. The stars haven’t really been aligning in terms of my school schedule and Dan’s work schedule/life. :[ But as always, it was super fun!

We made a lot of jokes and stuff because let’s face it, BJJ can look pretty darn wrong at times.

F: You might wanna put your hands on my lower ribs or something because I have boobs in the way. I’d hate to have to report you.
S: Okay, good idea.
F: Cool.
S: How’s that?
F: I think you have to have my arm here or else you won’t really choke me.
S: How about that?
F: Yep! Now scoot the rest of yourself that way.
S: You’re probably the most compliant victim in the world.
F: Yeah. I’m sure you’ll come across this in real life. “You’re doin’ it wrong. Here, let me show you how to choke me to death.”

F: Score!
S: Alright, you got me. But wait for it, I have the ultimate attack. (tickles me)
F: AHHHHH!!
D: That really is the ultimate attack.
F: Dan, I need a defense against that!!!
D: I’m sorry; there really isn’t one.

We had a couple live rounds at the end. I got to rematch Mike, and although I know he barely tries when he’s going against me because he’s worried he’s going to accidentally kill me, it makes me slightly happy to know that he has to inject at least a slight bit of effort into countering whatever I do (I’m pretty good about hanging on in a lock like a barnacle). When Sean and I were practicing punches, he suggested that Sean not use his actual fists because there were a couple instances where it looked like he was actually going to clock me in the face. Thanks for lookin’ out for me, good sir!

It’s been a longstanding goal for me to be able to choke him out. So far, I’ve still been failing, but I did manage to get him into a really uncomfortable [to breathe] position, just short of actually choking him?

M: It’s not gonna happen, Farrah!
F: Screw you and your sternocleidomastoids! You’re goin’ down!
D: That’s the best trash talk I’ve ever heard.

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sleepover at school

It’s my spring break right now, but I’ve been driving to school every day to practice piano. My break has been pretty wildly unproductive aside from the med student conference I went to in Charleston on Friday/Saturday (I re-learned once again how to intubate baby mannequins, and also learned how to do to sutures, put in a central line, and do a lumbar puncture. Twas pretty awesome.) On Saturday, I went with a couple friends to a stranger’s house to watch MMA fights. When I mentioned that I was going to hang out with said friend, here’s the basic gist of the conversation that followed:

: Cool! What are you guys doing? ;)
F: We’re gonna watch MMA fights and be all manly and stuff.
: …

Ever since then, I’ve been doing one of the following:
1) practicing piano
2) volunteering (either at the dog shelter or playing piano at the nursing home)
3) watching a whole lot of Netflix (Breaking Bad, Walking Dead–I finished both seasons of WD on Netflix and I started on Sunday; yes I’m a little ashamed)

Yesterday evening, I convinced my friend to come out with me to my BJJ class. (By convinced, I really mean that he asked me to tell him when he went, since he was interested in coming.) I’ve basically been getting private lessons from Dan for the past couple months (with giant gaps in between since he has work and I have school), so yesterday evening consisted of a bunch of live 5-minute rounds. It was a really, really good workout, and I’m not as terrible as I thought! My friend was a collegiate wrestler and I almost managed to choke him out with a rear naked. (He had to work a good minute or so to get out of it. I should’ve gone for the actual choke part instantly instead of hanging out and waiting around.) I also got Dan in a full mount and an arm bar, and also managed to tackle him to the floor using a move my friend had just taught me. Granted, they weren’t going all-out but they each have 55 pounds on me and several years of experience over me (which isn’t hard, since I have uh, none), so I’m pretty happy. :D My friend said he was really impressed and that I’m really strong. :D

F: I got an arm bar and a full mount on him!
T: Yeaaaaaaaa you did! ;D
F: Oh. Those two were only on Dan. But I did almost succeed in a rear naked choke on him.
T: ……No words.
F: Don’t you love the name?
T: Just none.
F: Took me a month to learn to not laugh when I heard it.
T: Do I even want to know?

Here’s how the rest of yesterday went:

(I slept on one of these, but in a windowless room, so no one would see and judge me. :O )

christmas adventures

I’ve been all excited about coming back home because, aside from being able to see my family/friends again (and Asian food!), I can practice wrestling/rolling with my brother!

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but way back in the day, we used to fight all the time and I got really good at escaping whenever he tried to pin me. We made a pact to stop fighting when I was around 11-12 though, and not a moment too soon, because soon afterward, he took up wrestling (and also gained a crap ton of muscle because hello testosterone/puberty).

Anyway, we decided to wrestle/roll this morning (what better day than Christmas morning, right?) and thoroughly alarmed my mom (who thought Sam would kill me)/disgusted my dad (who already think I’m kinda mannish).

S: Is this around the same level of intensity compared to when you wrestle with your teacher?
F: Yeah, basically, except I didn’t ever try to bite Dan.
S: You tried to bite me?!
F: No, but I thought about it.

I also successfully escaped a full mount and I almost managed to take his back, much to my brother’s shock/dismay. (He was operating at 2/3 his max because if he was going all out, I would very likely hurt something. >_>) He was pretty impressed though! Despite this, I somehow managed to almost get choked out by a loving hug from a 75-ish year old grandma.

Also, might I add that the only time you’ll ever see durian as a present = at an Asian white elephant gift exchange. The recipient cut it up to share with everyone and all the naysayers immediately lit candles. I haven’t had durian since before 2007, because everyone in my family hates it (other than my grandma, but she’s no longer around :[ ).

Merry Christmas/Happy holidays, everyone! :]

an elbow to the face

Jason had a test on Tuesday morning, so he wasn’t in on Monday. (I usually roll with him because he’s closer to my size than Dan, and then Dan can throw me all kinds of pointers while we’re rolling.) But! It’s good to practice with different people anyway, and Dan’s an awesome instructor. He says I’m picking up things really quickly. (I managed to break out of back control during both our drills.) :D! He’s also started to actually throw me [lightly] so I can get used to it/practice my breakfalls. As the title suggests, he accidentally elbowed me in the face while we were practicing something (it’ll be a good while before I actually remember the names of everything I’m learning). Since it was an accident, it was a lot more painful than it normally would’ve been, since they’re very good about checking their blows when they’re actually trying to hit me, but I am a-okay. Learning to be more durable. And accumulating a hell of a lot of bruises. My face is fine, so meeting with my standardized patient went well. (No “what the hell happened to you? I’m not sure I want you as my physician” comments. In fact, he said I was very personable, thorough, did a really great job and was the first one to actually extract a pretty vital piece of information from him. Score!)

I like what Dan said: “It takes a special kind of crazy to actually like coming in 3 times a week to be thrown around and beaten up.”

At least if people see my bruises now (it’s basically all over my left leg; I don’t know how my right leg escaped everything, but there’s always next time), I can say BJJ even if, in the future, it’s from pole, since it’s a conservative community and all that goodness. Speaking of poling, I still need to obtain one. :[ There’s one in our one and only club (it’s also a restaurant), but apparently people aren’t allowed to dance on it, so I’m not sure why it’s there. :/

What better way is there to get to know people than when you’re straddling them and pretending to punch them out? (Or choking them out.)

Truth be told, there are many other ways. (For instance, stripping every week in OPP lab and having people palpate you to find somatic dysfunctions.) We’re basically going to know our class a little too well by the end of this [and next] year.

BJJ

So I decided to join the BJJ club because having an outlet is pretty much necessary when you spend most of your time cooped up in a library or classroom studying/in lecture. I get fed all kinds of awesome food (chicken, bread, cream cheese pound cake, ginger snaps, chocolate, fresh berries/pineapples, energy bars, cream puffs…) in the library by Jerry (sweetest woman ever) and there are almost always fresh home-grown veggies/herbs up for grabs in the classroom, but still. We’re attempting to stuff mountains of knowledge into our brains and we actually need to retain it. An outlet is healthy. The gym is cool, but I’ve pretty much been a solitary gym-goer since…almost right after I realized I’d be a disgrace to my major if I didn’t do much of anything (I had Tahitian and hula, but still–ward off that osteoporosis and sarcopenia! Everything starts going downhill after 25, so in my opinion, the more of a base you build, the better >_>). Human interaction is pretty nice to have.

Said outlet involves rolling around on a mat with dudes, since I could not, for the life of me, convince a single one of my female friends to join with me. (To be fair, I didn’t try very hard to recruit them to BJJ. I figured it wouldn’t happen, given my observations of the reservations they had about the idea of sports bras and palpating both genders’ backs.) It also looks all kinds of wrong in some cases, and I have to admit, I could not keep a straight face when he said, “We’re going to do the rear naked choke now.” But anyway, I’ve wanted to learn some form of a martial art for quite some time now, partially because I think it’d be awesome (what with brag rights and all–I picked someone up when he put me in a guillotine at my second class and threw him on the ground; how cool does that sound? :D? Even the guy I threw was pretty impressed. :D!), and partially because I still have a hell of a lot of latent anger directed towards the creeper we never caught. If there’s ever another one and my taser does not get to him first, I’d like to at least be able to throw him on the ground and pummel him. In other news, self-defense would be pretty cool to learn too.

The guys at the gym are super nice. I’ve only been to three classes so far and had absolutely no prior experience, but they’re really good about breaking down each move, demo-ing it, and then walking me through it. I joined in on the “sparring” in my second class (I put it in quotations because although they said they were just going to attack me, it was more like “attacking” me and giving me hints if I forgot what to do/giving me suggestions on how to make it better) and that definitely helped me to cement what I’d learned more so than while I was just learning them. They’re still going easy on me and not actually sending me flying onto the mat for the time being, which I appreciate, because I’m still pretty weaksauce and/or not 100% confident on how to break my falls yet. It’s going to take a long, long while until this becomes second nature (will it ever? ;_; I wish I had someone to practice it on.)

Mondays and Wednesdays are BJJ/Judo, and Saturday is kinda a mix–mostly muay thai with some other things thrown in. Dan likes teaching us self-defense, which I believe is partially for my benefit because I look somewhat dinky and unthreatening. They say this makes it all the better because people won’t expect me to attack if they try to come at me (I keep wanting to say, “Come at me, bro!” in class :X ), so I can use that to my full advantage and just lay it on them. So yesterday, I started learning some striking so that I wouldn’t only know how to do take-downs. I rolled with one of em’ (I am pretty ashamed to admit that I can’t remember his name. ._. I feel kinda stupid asking now because I’ve had so many conversations with him and we’ve been throwing each other around for the past two weeks ._.) once and also joined in on one of the stand-up’s. Jason said there’s definitely a hell of a lot of anger in my eyes when I’m punching. har har. :X I got punched in the face twice, but I am improving, so that’s a definite plus. I also rolled with Dan and almost managed to choke him out. Granted, he is definitely going all kinds of easy on me, but the fact that I almost got it on almost-pure instinct was kinda nice. I think all the fights with my brother when we were little and didn’t get along really helped. :D He was always super frustrated because he could never pin me. >_>

I think it’s sad how every time I’m living in a town where people say there’s “never anything to do,” I always find all sorts of things I want to do and never have time to do it all. Back when I was in Davis, I did indeed try to do it all. It technically wasn’t the best of ideas, but I managed to cram a whole crap ton of things into my four years there. Here, it’s definitely not advisable if I want to actually make it out of medical school alive and well. Sacrifices must be made. I need to choose wisely. ;_;