I am Jack's swollen sense of worth

Gosh, what a week. Ok, recap. Easy hitchhiking to Victoria for a 3 day stay at Lindsay's. Awesome weather, hada great visit. Checked out 2 karate classes, both were pretty decent. Easy hitchhiking on the way back. Stayed at home Thursday, work 4hrs friday, then ferried to Van. The next morning, I rode transit to Coquitlam for the CSKA Shotokan Challenge, or in Laymen's terms, a karate competition. I'd say it was roughly as many people as the JKA BC Provincials last year. So I get there and very quickly realise that the sparring event I've signed up for is actually free-sparring. The major difference between JKA and CSKA karate is that JKA doesn't even introduce free-sparring until brown belts and only black belts free-spar in competition and belt tests. CSKA, on the other hand, introduces free-sparring at the beginner level. So even though I'm a green belt, the only free-sparring experience I've had is from the 3 CSKA dojos I've visited, including the two in Victoria this week. I almost withdrew from that event, because I didn't have gloves, a mouthpiece, or a cup. But I decided I might as well try to round stuff up. So I bought an unfitted mouthguard, pretending to be wearing a cup, and after asking around for hours, finally found a pair of gloves to use. My other event was kata (form, sequence, pattern, etc). There were 4 or 5 guys in my category, which was white belt through purple belts (purple is right before brown). I thoguht I performed my kata very well. Of course, it'll always be a little better in practice, cuz your heart isn't pounding, but I was certainly happy with my effort. The guy after me, who was also a green belt, did the same kata as me, but in my humble opinion, I performed it better in basically every single way. Not that he didn't do it well, just that if you rbeak it down into the components (speed, timing, coordination, technical accuracy, etc) I think I did better on all counts. Regardless, he beat me by a tenth of a point, so I got silver. I was kinda choked, but whatever, I put out 100%, so that's the important thing. Next was the sparring. I basically had the attitude of 'nothing to lose', since I could hardly have any expectations. This was to be my first free-sparring match, the first time I'd worn gloves, and the first time in my life that I'd punched someone in the face. So my first match was against the green belt that had beaten me in kata. It's mostly a blur, and I don't understand japanese enough to know who got what points when, but I won. I was hitting him too hard, which your actually not supposed to do. It's not boxing, the idea is to show you can land the best techniques. It was tiring though, but I think we put on a good show. I got a bloody nose from it, a damn sore jaw, and a nice little bruise over my eye. So onto the finals it was for me, since there was about 5 of us. For some reason, there was a brown belt in our division, and I ended up going against him. It was his 3rd math, and only my 2nd, so he was more tired, but to be fair, he's got like 10 times the experience of me, especially when it comes to sparring. Anyways, it was a good tough match, but ended in a draw, so it went into a final minute of sudden death, in which I scored a point to take the gold medal. I was absolutely stunned. I couldn't believe it. Like seriosuly, what the fuck happened. I still can't get over it, but god damn it feels good. It's kidna funny, cuz I just started reading FIght Club yesterday and yesterday was the only thing in my life to resemble a fight. So after the competition, me, Ashley, Lindsay, and Steve went to an all-night party in a small warehouse. All female drum n bass/breaks DJs. Good beats for sure. As tiring of a week and day (pounding headache) that I had, I managed to dance for basically 5 straight hours. Oh, and I got drunk. That's probabl why I had so much fun. Only got about 4 hours sleep, and I worked 4 horus today. Anyways, it was a pretty wicked week, and I'm more than ever looking forward to the Albertan JKA Provincials, which should be bigger and better than this competition. Onwards.....