sorry about the downtime. it's been a busy week, building usb drivers and teaching taekwondo and the such. that's life. at least, this weekend is 80 degrees (yet the water temp is still 57.)

i'm in between tournaments, so that means i'm enjoying plenty of food and drink. a part of me knows that i'm going to let go once i retire from competition, because even though i know there's like only 3 weeks until the next bantamweight weighins, there's basically 0 motivation for me to cut weight. that just means i have to train twice as hard, and that's why i'll be going to LA tonight to spar.

my goal has been to get my taekwondo legs back. as in, when i was in the INCTL for some reason my muscular development through taekwondo was different. maybe it was the constant biking? even on the flat roads of boston, the sheer mileage probably had an effect on my leg strength. anyway, now i think i've slowly started to lose leg muscle again, so my goal is to become like Dae Sung Moon.

sabumnim asked me for my INCTL record today, and in trying to remember what medals i've gotten over the last 5 years, i've come up with two things. one, my record is not that impressive. maybe by the sheer bulk of tournaments and competitions i've done, i've become something of a name at MIT, but looking over it, my resume is still littered with silvers, bronzes, and "competitor, 2005 Collegiate Nationals" rather than "Gold Medal, etc". of course, i like it that way. it's more colorful than someone who's pure "Gold", which really tells you nothing about their person. and maybe it's the thrill of winning and threat of defeat that makes it all that much more interesting - i would rather be remembered for heart more than achievement.

second, i've dug up my old collection of The Tech articles that have taekwondo results. I think i have an almost complete collection since 2002, when my ex-girlfriend gave me a scrap book with all of 2002-2003 collected. There's sort of a blank for 2003-2004, then I picked up collecting the articles again from 2004-2006. And looking back is like seeing history in your hands, but with your name in it as well. the papers are by now browned, wrinkled, starting to need some archiving and preservation like the declaration of independence. and even in the writing you can relive all the moments - from the time of my FIRST tournament at Yale 2003, which i remember almost better than my last tournament at Columbia 2006, to the moment our club was recognized, to winning collegiate nationals at Bridgeport. And excuse me for being purely selfish, but it's amazing to read about myself, and see from one article to the next, how i go from green belt to blue to red to blackbelt, winning and losing throughout the years. i think this would be true for anyone.

if i could i would share these articles. if i could only get old copies of the tech, i would send them out to the current MIT team and say to them, "See here! This is your legacy. These are your founders, your teachers, and your current peers. Don't let them down! Rise up and join them and become a part of the history and name of MIT Sport Taekwondo." And that's how nationalism developed and took over the world. All in the name of a few memorable years.