I.K.K.A. 2011 Spain

Traditionally I am about to write a blog about my attended Kenpo Karate tournaments, and this time the event was situated in Madrid, Spain.

Let's get right down to business. Starting at friday, Flok attended all 6 hours available seminars for the intermediates. First up was Bob White, which I remembered from Las Vegas, where he gave all of the attendees a nice warming up of freestyle techniques. Several of them were stretching movements that woke up some of my deeper muscles that have yet to be trained professionally.

The second black belt was José Enrique Hernández, who gave a seminar of counterstrikes which was pretty much all about adapting towards the situation. This would be the first of several seminars where I had to train with Spanish people, which created some interesting moments of communication.

The third of them was Vasilis Vezyrgiannis from Greece, who showed towards us rearrangements on standard Kenpo techniques, and ultimately to combine them towards different results. Other members in our group agreed on the same opinion that the topic of this seminar was intriguing, but the execution was rather lackluster, for the man only talked about 2 techniques for 1 hour, and most of the time we were pretty much waiting for the next part of the seminar to happen, as we constantly had to train this on ourselves.

After a siesta, the seminar day continued with Doreen M. Dirienzo, who teached us to look and feel, everything that Kenpo Karate stands for. That includes stances, freestyling, techniques, forms, in particular the stances were addressed here, something that normally only our own dojo addresses towards the members. Dorien went pretty deep with the topic of looking and feeling here, making it one of the better seminars.

The next one up was another nice seminar, where José Maria Gutiérrez spoke about anticipating moves and the timing needed to counter them. Gutiérrez is actually a funny guy towards the English speaking people because of his English accent. Two examples given: "My English is generally bad" and "Thank you for here.". We were free to develop our own random attacks while our opponents would had to anticipate, time and counter them, resulting in some very interesting situations.

Finally for today was Zach Whitson, who gave a seminar that reminded me of the second seminar, but the execution was different, as the movements that were being used were constantly moving. Basically once one guy would block an attack, the other guy would had to block another attack, and it went on forever. Learning and seeing these counterpoints reminded me of those crazy old Kung Fu flicks, and I'm sure that you know what I talk about then.

On saturday, the tournament was held, and as always this day was the busiest day of the event. I attended three divisions this year, and one of them happened to be a surprising consequence by another person in our group. We managed to grab PLENTY of medaillons once again, which is very good.

I did Short Form 3 at the Forms division, resulting in a score of 7.2 on an average scale by three judges, which is pretty good considering the judges would only give out 6's, 7's or 8's as scores. Seeing as it was different in Ireland last year(7's, 8's and 9's), this was an improvement for me.

And then I finally started freestyling at the competition level, which resulted in some much needed experience. I lost both matches in it, but I am glad to have experienced it, as it has motivated me to train and to get better at this.

The first match was against a veteran Irish green belt that eventually would become the champion of the Freestyling +75 KG division that day, so it is actually cool that I lost to the champion. The end score was 3-1, that single point was because he hit me straight to the face, which is prohibited.

About an hour later, I had to replace a member of my dojo at the team sparring division because he was exhausted by the freestyling division I mentioned before(Ending up at the second place!) and had an injury on his feet. Basically it means that a group of three people would had to face another group and the end scores would determine who would had won.

I faced another veteran Irish, but this time a brown belt. I tried my best, but was completely dazzled by the fact that he won with 7-0. It's crazy, once you are in that spot, it is way different than walking around it and looking at the competitors. I was told later on that my guard was always low, resulting in him getting easy initiations to score points. Around the fifth point, as the referee said "FIGHT" for the umpteenth time, the Irish man gave me a spinning backkick that was so unexpected that he hit me with full contact on the abdomen. I collapsed on the ground, as I could not breath anymore. The medic people were already alarmed, but fortunately I was able to recover and finish the fight. This was a moment never to forget.

On sunday, there were two more seminars planned. First up was a seminar by Alexandre "Pequeno" Nogueira, the 6x times World Champion in Mixed Martial Arts. His hour was all about wrestling and ground moves, which was pretty intense at times. I can't say that I am a huge fan of ground moves, but I enjoyed this lesson nonetheless.

The final seminar was by Norman Sandler, a small but wise man that gave us extensions on normal Kenpo techniques, such as Glancing Salute and Snapping Twig. Another pretty deep seminar, I can't say that I remember much from this one, perhaps I was too tired at the moment. Still, I am glad to had attended all available seminars. The brotherhood dinner followed later that evening, and was entertaining as always.

Adaptation was a very important ideology and many times indirectly mentioned this year for sure. Thinking about it now, it has always been very important, haha! The next tournament in 2012 will be in Utrecht, The Netherlands. You can count that almost everyone in our dojo will be attending then!

The Ending Era is Near

It won't be long anymore before E3 2011 has arrived in June. It looks like it will be a hardware presentation primarily, as Sony's Next Generation Portable and Nintendo's Project Cafe will be presented to us. We can always expect the latest hype kicking games to be announced at the show. And next to that, there are huge games in development as we already know, including Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioShock Infinite, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and The Last Guardian.

Has the seventh generation been great with Nintendo's Wii in particular? As a lifetime fan of the old company, I must say that these Wii years haven't been great that much, as far as qualified games go. And while the Wii Remote brought exciting new control and the "rise" of more casual games dominated the console and gave it huge boosts, I have yet to see the full potential of the Wii Remote, and there are just too few exceptional games for the Wii available.

There is Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Ōkami, MadWorld, Super Paper Mario, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Sin & Punishment 2: Successor of the Skies, GoldenEye 007 and the two Super Mario Galaxies, but other than that, as far as I know, nothing else is exciting to play.

As for other games usually depicted as the best, Monster Hunter Tri is above average and pretty deep, but not exactly cherished by many and I had some issues with it, Metroid: Other M was the most dissapointing Metroid title for me, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom's character cast is rather dull and the No More Heroes games's best quality was their quirkyness.

Anything else? New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Mario Kart Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns are all good, but not outstanding. I could also mention all of the on-rail games I own for the Wii, but I know that the fanbase towards them isn't that hot, so I will spare you my comments on them.

If I would have to compare the Wii's best games to say, the Nintendo Gamecube, then I would definitely have to prefer the purple console's best games. And that is mainly because of the third party titles being available for that.

Looking at the upcoming Wii games, there is only Skyward Sword to tease us in the West, but as I look at the East, Pandora's Tower, Xenoblade and The Last Story all look interesting to say the least. But will they be able to arrive in time, before Nintendo's next console or even just the Nintendo 3DS will have pushed the once so called Revolution away?

Will Nintendo announce a last wave of Wii games at E3 2011 to excite us, or has the era been fulfilled after the release of Skyward Sword as far as the West goes? I am eager to know if Nintendo's Wii will go out with a bang or silence.

Perhaps the inclusion of the Virtual Console, the WiiWare service, automatic updates and all of those channels affected our lesser interest in Wii's own library. Perhaps the quality of third party games was either poor, embarassing or ripped off. Or perhaps Nintendo will blow us all away at E3 2011 and make us be content with the Wii anyway, while we go crazy over it's successor. I'm sure that good things are on the way, very good things, in one way or another.

I Love/Hate Anonymity

What the title said.

I love anonymity and it's associate the internet for letting us talk together about difficult subjects, such as suicide, sex, addiction, torture, corruption and such, well basically ANYTHING can be discussed on the net, which makes up for some of if not, the best debates to go through. Hearing about certain debates can be so fascinating, it develops the mind.

I despise and utterly dislike anonymity at certain gaming communities where teamwork is crucial and where it is so easy to flame or whine while being anonymous. I've experienced countless examples of this at the DotA and HoN communities, and I wish that it could be different, but they have such low standards of entertainment, that it is all about blaming others and playing to win, communicative speaking. Playing to win is good, but not in fanatical and insulting ways.

I really like anonymity for giving us a safe position, for any situation. You've got a serious problem at home? No problem, just consult somewhere online your issue and help is surely on the way. Don't want to be identified? No deal, think of any ridiculous nickname and people won't recognize you.

I hate anonymity when it is abused, when frauds and imposters attempt to suck and drain your time, money and good intentions away. And I speak of knowledge as well as experience then, and I am sure that you would know of the best examples as well.

And I could give a thousand more reasons about why anonymous is awesome or horrendous. Well, one thing for sure is that it is here to stay, in this current decade, in this current age. It has it's ups and downs.