A Final Bow

A Final Bow
  

Sometime in May 2012, Bamboo Martial Arts (BMA), the Taekwondo club I ran, stopped holding formal classes. Since then, I’ve continued to do my own workouts, officiated tests at my original master’s school, attended seminars, and helped promote the New Jersey Taekwondo Association(NJ-USAT). I also ran a short-lived after school Taekwondo program at the middle school where I am a Health and Physical Education teacher. BMA has, however, maintained an online presence with a Twitter account, Facebook page and its own website, offering private and semi-private Taekwondo lessons. It’s also registered as an active club with USA Taekwondo (USAT), the governing body of Taekwondo in the United States, in the hope that it would grow into something bigger. Alas, it has not.

In its second incarnation - its first go around was in 1993 as The Bamboo Institute of Martial Arts (BIOMA) - BMA failed to generate enough interest and student enrollment to sustain itself and to promote Taekwondo fully. To my masters and the larger Taekwondo community, for that I apologise. Without its own location and with limited resources, resulting in nominal promotion, minimal class times, and inadequate facilities, BMA was never going to be able to surpass being a very small club. 

The first Bamboo logo/patch, ca 1993.

The largest regret I have, equal to that of failing the art of Taekwondo, is not being able to directly pass Taekwondo on to my son as his teacher and fulfill my hope and dream of producing a kind of Bas family Taekwondo dynasty. I can, and do, as his father, still demonstrate the tenets of Taekwondo for him in my daily life. I just don’t do it as his sabumnim. My father-son Taekwondo dream is over. My son, however, is taking Taekwondo lessons but at Apex Martial Arts, a nearby character-based and champion-producing school. It’s an exceptional program and he’s loving it and I’m glad he’s there but, speaking as a father and merely as a human being, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a small dagger in my heart every time we go there. I’d be more than dishonest, too, if I said I didn’t wish he was training under me at our own school. I’d hoped that we would follow in the footsteps of Al and Mark Dacascos, Ernie Reyes, Sr and Jr., Master Tiger Kim and his twin sons, who are masters now themselves, and Masters Simon and Phillip Rhee and their father. Taekwondo isn’t just something I do and have done for almost thirty years. It’s not just something I want my son to do. It’s what I am and what I hope he becomes. As parents, we always hope our children do more and better than what we did. I may not be his teacher but I did introduce Taekwondo to him, exposing him to New Jersey State Championships, taking him to 2011 US Team Trials and the 2011 National Championships. I even gave him his first two uniformed lessons. Perhaps, when he’s a dad, though, he’ll get to succeed where I failed and realise the father-son Bas Taekwondo dynasty.

As for me, I’ll continue to train. I might even join the same dojang my son is attending but I won’t be there as a teacher. It’s been a long time since I walked onto a dojang floor completely as a student. That could be a challenge but also something to cherish. I might go back to one of my masters’ dojangs. I might continue to compete but I haven’t yet decided. I will, though, continue to promote Taekwondo and other martial arts through my writing endeavours and other means I am able to utilise.

I am grateful for all the masters I’ve studied under, regardless of what style it was in, who have taken their time to nurture my potential. I’m grateful, too, for all the students I’ve had. I thank them for allowing me to share my vision of the martial arts with them. I also acknowledge everyone who supported BMA as a school and as a concept; martial arts interpreted through the symbolism of a bamboo stalk, hard and flexible on the outside and hollow on the inside. In my martial arts career there are an abundance of people, for different reasons, who will always hold a special place in my mind and heart. There’s Grandmaster Lee, Ron, Steve, Rachel, Mike, Grandmaster Kim, Master Levy Diogene, Vinny and Vinnie, Ani, Wayne, Steve Saunders, Tony Palmieri, Leon, Master Herb Perez, to name a few. Naturally, there are my wife and my son. To all of them, I offer my heartfelt gratitude and, in many ways - as a friend, like a brother, like a son - I can truly say I love you.

I’m not done with Taekwondo or the martial arts. I don’t believe they’re done with me. I’ve been doing Taekwondo too long to even consider giving it up but as with other things in life, whether willingly or not, my ongoing love affair with Taekwondo is taking another turn. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes and what directions we take. I still want to visit The Kukkiwon and train there for a time. Who knows? Maybe I'll get there one day.

In the meantime, however, like its physical existence, BMA’s online life will be coming to a close. At the end of July 2013, BMA will shut down its Twitter, Facebook and website accounts. When it’s membership expires, BMA will also cease to be a registered Taekwondo club with USAT.

For now, as I make my final public bow - my last kungyet - let me simply say thank you. Or, more appropriately, kamsamnida.

A Year in the Life, part II

Hi, here's the second half of my 2011 recap. Enjoy.

July:                  

Nationals. This trip would be our big family vacation. We’d stay at our friend’s place in Marina, just outside of Monterey, and the tournament was in San Jose. So, right now, I can say “yes” to Dionne Warwick. I do know the same to San Jose. I loved it there. Even the drive was nice. Everything was great - fantastic scenery, great farmers’ markets, cool and no humidity weather. We stayed with my wife’s friend Marsh, also a martial artist and a Monterey firefighter. Jude was so comfortable with Marsh. Guada, Marsh and Marsh’s girlfriend got to show Jude the Monterey Aquarium, where she works, and Jude got to feed the seals. I wasn’t able to go because I shot into San Jose to train and watch a friend compete in her division - a new friend, mind you, I’d made through the seminar and test in June – but just knowing my son was able to experience something as cool as feeding the seals made me happy.

Nationals itself was nice. I attended a small but meaningful opening ceremony. Each state walked in with signs, just like the countries do in the Olympics, and we heard opening speeches, pledged an oath to compete fairly and we watched some Taekwondo demonstrations. Was I excited after that? Heck, yeah! I couldn’t wait for the tournament to begin.

My actual competition was on the Saturday before July 4. There were 11 competitors in my division and I went right to the staging area. There, I warmed up, practiced my forms, relaxed. Then I’d repeat. While doing so, there were others doing the same thing. There were also lots of US team members, some I’d seen and competed against in Team Trials. What made Nationals and the year’s return to Taekwondo so rewarding was this: not only did I get to introduce my son to the thing I love, but, at Nationals, some US team members came up to me and greeted me by name. They’d remembered me from Trials and said they’d wished they could’ve helped me at Trials because they knew I was doing the forms the old way. I had pictures taken with some of them and made Facebook connections, too. We’re not all ‘buddy buddy’ and I’m nowhere close to becoming an elite athlete but I feel like I’ve become a part of the larger Taekwondo community. It’s easy to be the master of my school and keep it local and simple. To be a part of the entire community, however,  – making connections with US team members (one, incidentally, Facebooked me a birthday greeting today), making connections with the state association masters (the president served as my coach when I competed at Nationals), making friends in and through Taekwondo around the country – is what doing anything is about. Even as a writer. To make connections through the WDC and with other writers via Twitter, puts everything into perspective: that there’s a whole world out there that I am but a small part of and, yet, I can help it grow; that I do have a part to play.

I came tenth at Nationals. I thought I’d done well enough to place higher but I can accept my position. This was my first time doing this and, really, I pursued so intently for Jude. Sure, I did have notions and hopes – however, very thin ones – that I might medal but it’s okay that I didn’t. I committed, competed and have no doubts or regrets. If I do it again this year, I’ll be better prepared.

August:

Things settled down and got back to normal. I still trained but didn’t have a tournament to compete in. I also saw myself in the mirror and noticed that I’d dropped a good 15 pounds and several inches around my waistline. There’s still a long way to go but I’m heading in the right direction.

My wife’s parents celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary. Due to scheduling and budgeting, we couldn’t all go to Manila and celebrate with them so my wife went and I stayed in New Jersey with our son and dog. It was an interesting and fun father-son bonding time but it was also a little scary. I didn’t know if Jude was going to meltdown every day without his mother but he did fine. We enjoyed going to the pool, playing soccer in the park and watching movies. I wouldn’t want to play ‘single parent’ all the time but it was a nice, like I said, father-son bonding time.

This month also saw me take over, again, as head volleyball coach at my district’s high school. My second time around in this position, I knew better what I was doing and what I wanted to achieve and how to go about doing it. We had some success and some failures – and most of the credit goes to the players – but we did get to do things our volleyball team hasn’t done it a long time. We beat some of the ‘bigger’ title contending teams. We advanced to the second round of our county tournament. Some of our players were voted onto the all-conference team.

Also in this month, I made the decision to indie-publish my novel. I’d gotten lots of praise for it but no one wanted to pick it up and I found that not finding a place for it was stifling my other writing pursuits. So, I decided to self-publish and so began my foray into being a publisher, of sorts. Sure, I wish I could’ve gotten a nice fat advance and all that but, especially for a first book, I’m okay with self-publishing. There are lots of reasons why agents didn’t pick up my work. It doesn’t have to mean my novel is junk. There are simple taste reasons, economy reasons, including shifts in the publishing business with e-books, who knows? Maybe I was just targeting the wrong agents.

September/October/November:

It’s funny but these months really didn’t have much going on. Yes, the volleyball season ended in November with the team having done better than it has in recent years. Yes, there was Halloween and the strange snowfall before it. And, of course, there’s Thanksgiving but, really, nothing much happened to write about.

We did take Jude to see The Radio City Christmas Spectacular for the first time and its magic and the glamour of the Hall got to him, even as a three year old, instantly. “This is amazing,” is what he said. He actually said those words. I love the show. It’s a fun and meaningful program and I was ecstatic that he loved it, too. I hope he continues to enjoy it as he gets older and, hopefully, after I’m long gone, he can take his children and they’ll enjoy it too.

Oh, and about that freak snow storm, it really put me in a foul mood for weeks. I was in Brooklyn, with my wife, a mile or so away from Dumbo and The Powerhouse Arena, when the snow really started to come down. We were on our way to the Page Turner Festival, the annual literary festival and awards event hosted by The Asian American Writers’ Workshop. I’ve always wanted to attend but something always got in the way. This year, having committed to publishing my book, I bought tickets and we were set. As much as wanting to attend the event and hear speakers talk about their work, I also wanted to make some connections as an Asian-American writer, to get my book out and all that.  Well, so near yet so far. The snow forced us to go home. It’s a good thing we did because we would’ve gotten trapped in Brooklyn otherwise. As it was, we got stranded in Newark when the train wouldn’t go and our friend had to get us in his 4x4.

December:

Christmas this year was very special. With Jude more aware of things, the idea of Santa became very real to him. So, Guada and I played it up. As a result, Christmas was brilliant. Jude loved it; getting into the songs, lights, decorations, the gifts, the food, everything. For me, his excitement brought back a renewed joy for the season. I love Christmas but there always seems to be a touch of melancholy around the holidays. Through Jude, I got to feel his innocence and unblemished enjoyment of all things Christmas.

So, that’s what I have to look back on in 2011. As I venture in my 44^th year of life, let’s see what comes with it. My novel will be out in February. Maybe it’ll lead to some things big and exciting. The marketing people at the publisher think it’ll make for a good movie. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get on that US Poomsae team; with dual citizenship, if not the US one, how about Team Philippines?

I hope you enjoyed my trip down memory lane. If you didn’t know me, now you do. I’d like to get to know my readers, too. What stands out for you in 2011? What do you have planned for 2012?

A Year in the Life, part I

Today’s my birthday and I’ve turned forty-three. I first wrote my age as a number but that seemed a little depressing, emphasizing my age somehow. I’m still pretty young, I guess, and in generally good health but I think it’s normal for someone my age to start assessing his life and taking stock of where he is, what he’s done and where he’s going.  I’m in the fifth decade of my life. Some of you reading are way beyond this. Some of you are at about the same stage and others are very far away from turning thirty, never mind forty. Perhaps some of you are even yet to hit twenty.

Last year, at around the twentieth anniversary of the completion of my undergraduate studies, I did a look back to see what I’d done since then. It was a timeline of some of the major events of my twenties and thirties. Today, I’m going to present what I’ve done and accomplished and failed in over the last twelve months. Hopefully it will be an interesting read and, perhaps, educate some and entertain others. Maybe, too, it will provide one or two of you some ideas and motivation for what you want to achieve for yourself.

It’s a bit long so I’ll post it in two parts.

January:

The year started out great with a nice New Year’s celebration. We were in Manila, though, and coming home was a disaster. It’s a really long story but, in a nutshell, out flight was cancelled. People were getting booked on flights two and three weeks later. We couldn’t afford that. I’d connected somehow with another Fil-Am, who works as a travel agent in New York, and following his lead I pressed the airline to get us booked. I’m usually very shy when it comes to speaking Tagalog but this was not a time for those kinds of insecurities. I spoke Tagalog, as bad as I do, and made some progress. Granted, everyone there at the airport spoke English, but, if you’ve ever been to The Philippines and you’re Filipino, it’s never just English. It’s Taglish, which I found out is an official language, so I had to use whatever Tagalog I knew. After about 12 or so hours, we were bound for Tokyo and, from there, on to Newark. While Guada and I were about to lose it, Jude was brilliant. At one point, we had to re-inspect our bags. I’d been carrying Jude and after our bags came out of the x-ray machine, I was setting up to shoulder one, roll another and grab him. He said, “No, Daddy. Don’t carry. It’s too much.” As I write this, I actually want to lose it. At such a young age, he recognized that we’d been through a hellish ordeal (we got to the airport at about 5pm and didn’t leave for Tokyo until about 9am). He slept through a lot of it but, when he was awake, he was happy and smiling. I looked to him whenever I wanted to break down and whenever I was ready to lose my cool at the airport and airline people. He kept me from doing either. Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes and hopeless cases. I became attached to the name years ago when I was going through a bad patch and came across a prayer card to Saint Jude. That’s how I became determined to name my son Jude and, yet again, Saint Jude came to my rescue.

I also returned to Taekwondo this month. Well, I never left it but the realities of everyday life had taken their toll and I hadn’t been training regularly, if at all. At the studio where my wife teaches Pilates, Niyolates and Gyrotonic, and where she and another instructor run their own business providing various dance and fitness classes, I started teaching Taekwondo. I do it through their business, Step2Gether, and I use the name of the Taekwondo school I operated in the early 1990s. I knew I missed training in and teaching Taekwondo, and perhaps it’s because of my age, but I didn’t know I missed it as much as I did. I’m really glad I’m back.

I attended the Writer’s Digest Conference (WDC) in New York City and pitched my novel, Back Kicks And Broken Promises, to agents at the Pitch Slam. They were all kind and said nice things. Three of them requested the complete manuscript and two of them compared it, based on my pitch, to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It’s my opinion that writers need validation; that what we’re writing matters to someone other than us. Whether my novel is actually on par or similar, in some way, to Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize winner, I don’t know. That’ll be up to its readers to decide. Just hearing these agents say that, though, gave me a sense of hope and reward that what I’ve written could be something meaningful to someone other than me.

February:

Not much happened in February, except for finding out when the NJ State Taekwondo Championships were being held. I’d only started teaching Taekwondo again when I had to get some supplies at a martial arts supply store in Bergenfield, NJ. On the door was a poster advertising the tournament. Funnily, it was held on the same day as the New York City Half Marathon, a race I’d applied to but didn’t get accepted. If I had, I wouldn’t have competed at States and won my division and the rest of the year wouldn’t have happened as it did.

March:

The biggest thing to happen to me in March 2011 was the NJ State Taekwondo Championships. I hadn’t competed in, maybe, 15 years. Granted, I was only entering the forms division, so there wasn’t going to be contact happening but I was a little nervous about getting on the floor and performing. As it turned out, I was the only one who’d entered my division. I still performed but I was going to auto-gold anyway. If there had been others, who knows how I would have done but I was there, ready and willing to put it out on the floor. What was really interesting, and encouraging in a sense, was the fact that once I’d changed into my uniform and sat on the floor waiting for my time and stretching, a confident sense of déjà vu came over me. It was as if I’d never left the tournament circuit and, while the place and faces had changed, the calm I’d gained from experience, despite my absence, hadn’t.  I was relaxed and even confident and I didn’t have any of the nervousness that some of the other competitors looked like they had.

April:

I’d finished the final draft of my novel the previous December and had it in submission with agents so I allowed myself a break from writing to focus on my training. I was still following up with agents I’d queried and working on my works-in-progress but the main activity I was doing was training; getting back into shape and getting ready for the next tournament. You see, a little while after winning States, I’d received an email from USA Taekwondo (USAT), the governing body of Taekwondo in the United States, that I’d qualified for the US Poomsae (Forms) Team Trials and the US National Championships. I’d tried out for a US team before – in 1996, in Atlanta, for a spot on the US Olympic Men’s Handball Team for 2000. I didn’t make it but I was one of about 300-plus who was invited to try out. Unfortunately, for the team, but in a way it eased my disappointment, the US didn’t qualify for the 2000 Olympics.

After reading the emails and talking with my wife, we decided that 2011 would be ‘my’ year; the year in which our focus were these pursuits that were, ultimately, mine and mine alone. We decided that I would train for team trials and nationals for the experience, for our son to be a part of, for writing research and, maybe, to qualify for a national team.

I also began training with the NJ Taekwondo Team. This was fantastic. I got to meet masters who are in the know of how things are currently done and I got to improve on my forms and my fitness. What I’d missed from playing basketball on my high school team in Hong Kong and from our Taekwondo tournament entries with my friends and students from the 1990s was being rekindled here with the New Jersey Team.

I also received a third email informing me that there was going to be a special poomsae seminar and test in June. The test was being given by the Martial Arts Commission of USAT (USAT-MAC) and the seminar was being taught by a senior master from the Kukkiwon Academy in Korea.

May:

May is my anniversary month so, naturally, this has to be mentioned. In 2011, my wife and I celebrated seven years of marriage. This isn’t a lot, in terms of numbers, but when you hear statistics that 50% of American marriages end in divorce and that many marriages (I forget the stats) don’t get beyond 3-5 years, seven is not too shabby.

This was also when the US Poomsae Team Trials were. I’ll admit I had dreams of success. They turned into delusions of grandeur pretty quickly. In preparation for this event, I had to teach myself three advanced poomsae. I didn’t have a lot of time so I spent most of it learning those forms. Of the ones I already knew, I just practiced them as is. Later, after a humiliating last place finish at team trials, I discovered that the forms had changed. They’d become more streamline and uniform; easier to judge fairly in competition. It was still a great experience and a mini-vacation but I did have to put on a brave face. Inside, to be honest, I felt embarrassed and contemplated not even going to nationals.

After my humiliation, my wife and I talked and we decided that I should take the seminar. So, I enrolled in it and applied for the test. I hadn’t tested since 2001 and, since I had enough time in, I could test from 4^th dan to 6^th dan. So, turning to my masters and other masters involved with the state organization, I trained, relearnt everything, trained and trained some more.

June:

It was another mini-vacation, thanks, to Taekwondo that was the main event for me in June - the all-day forms seminar and test. It was a fantastic event and I felt very much at home with the grandmaster from Korea. As soon as he’d arrived with the masters from the USAT-MAC, I bowed to him and I think this gave us some kind of connection. Throughout the course, which started at 9am and ended at 5pm, he would come to each us and correct us as we did the forms the new way; new to me but not the others. It was a packed room that was, perhaps the size of a two squash courts, and it held what must’ve been 90-100 of us. Jude and Guada were great. I wasn’t sure how Jude would be but he stayed happy and watched and played in the play room with other kids. Guada watched, learnt stuff herself and filmed the instructor’s demonstrations on her iPhone. I really absorbed what he taught us and I took it back with me, trying to do the forms the way he did. Strangely, and I don’t speak Korean other than a few Taekwondo-based commands, but I felt like I could understand the instructor.

After an hour break, the test was conducted. There were about nine of us who tested. Another master and I were testing for our 6^th dan and it was a fantastic experience. Those testing were of varying ages so the style of Taekwondo that was on display could have been filmed into a documentary and titled “Taekwondo Through The Ages.” I did everything well, I think, but my breaking routine needed some work. I tried a three-board jump spinning back kick – MY kick – but no go. I hadn’t practiced enough and I was under-rotating. At least my large frame was still able to get up there, though. After three attempts, I switched to a flying sidekick and went right through the wood. Jude, as kids will do, wanted my broken boards.

The following day, I went to my New Jersey Team practice and got my official uniform. That was, simply, cool. I hadn’t been on a team in a long time and to have this uniform, with the New Jersey Taekwondo logo on it, made me feel, again, part of something exciting.

USA Poomsae Team Trials, part I

The team trials for the USA Poomsaea (forms) team is this coming weekend and I'm competing in my division - 1st Male Masters, for black belts aged 41-50. A little unnervingly, I've been feeling very relaxed about the whole thing the last few weeks. Maybe it's because it's, basically, here. Who knows? I might be a mess the day of the event and not get any sleep the night before. To make things more interesting, I haven't trained as much the last two weeks either. First, there was my hamstring pull when I last trained with Master Levy. Then, time and other things (work, my wife's work, not being to to get or afford to get a babysitter at particular time) got in the way.

I don't know. Maybe I've really manage to harness a "who care, whatever happens happens" mentality that's going to serve me well. Or, I reallly feel like I don't have a shot of winning and making the US team that I've just decided to say "Oh well" and throw my hands up in the there. I'll admit that some of that has come to the fore. Training's been difficult. Discounting my hamstring pull, I've been learning and practising the forms I might have to do one way with Master Levy, another way with some of the masters at New Jersey-USA Taekwondo and, yet again with slight differencs, from the textbook and DVD that's come ouf of the World Taekwondo Federation and Kukkiwon. Add to all of this - and maybe it's a case of paralysis by analysis - my sidekick has gone the way of Elvis and left the building. I've never had a good forms sidekick but, now, it's seemed tohave vanished altogether. Plus, I've been thinking a lot more about my novel and the agents who have it, or parts of it, and haven't gotten back to me yet. Through all of this, however, I've managed to compartmentalise everything and maintaina very relaxed demeanour about the team trials.

That is, until last Tuesday at around 4pm. I'd come out of a doctor's appointment when I the alert that an email had come in on my iPhone. I checked the email and it was from USA Taekwondo. It was about team trials and had attachments and information about getting my credentials, the schedule of the events and it provided a list of the forms we are going to be asked to do on Sunday. If I get all the way to the final, I'm going to have to do Keumkang in the preliminary round, Pyong Won in the semifinal and Shipjin and Chonkwon in the final. I love Chonkwon and, having had to learn it (and Shipjin and Jitae) from scratch over the last couple of months I think I do it pretty well. Pyong Won, though, has a bunch of sidekicks and Shipjin has that difficult slow part where the block opens and is followed by a spearhand attack.Keumkang is the only one of those four I feel confident in. So, my calm demeanour has gone out the window along with my sidekick.

Well, on the flip side, having received the email and all of its attachments with all of their info has revved me up and made this entire thing - this Taekwondo resurgence I'm having - feel very real. If this stars are aligned properly, who knows? I could end up in Russia at the World Championships at the end of July.

I'll keep you all posted.