Shoryuhai report
Apr. 25th, 2005 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirLowell House, on the Feast of St. Mark
Currently, the Notepad to-do list open on my computer says:
"1. Clean up room
2. Kendo
a. Reischauer
b. budget balancing
c. website
3. Korean - hanja and L18
4. Charlemagne - paper"
But because I am lazy, and my room, which is still serving as the second kendo closet, is a huge impossible mess, I thought I might as well blab away about the Shoryuhai for now. Ah, the joys of procrastination. I think I'm going to balance the budget next because I anticipate being made very happy by all the money we made. In particular, we earned a total of $72 on blank zekken alone (the name tags that you slip on the center flap of the tare) yesterday. I forget which team bought ten zekken, but I remember their check with fondness nonetheless.
(Er, I start sounding horribly materialistic when it comes to the kendo club account, but please believe me when I say that I'm not actually a miser. I just enjoy being a control freak.)
So, the Shoryuhai...where to begin? Team registration went so smoothly that I'm still flabbergasted. The increased organization really made a difference. Individuals registration still ended up being more chaotic than I would have wished, but I have nearly a year to think up ways to improve that. ^_^ I spent most of the tournament helping out as courtside staff and recording points on the scoreboards. Unfortunately, that meant that I couldn't cheer for the Harvard teams, but I do have to say that I probably learned a lot from watching all those shiai. (Well, at least the parts I watched in between posting up the next matches, erasing the points from the previous matches and dealing with collapsing easels. I got very good at erasing and watching simultaneously. Also, often I would hobble over to record a point, hobble back to my chair only to have to get up again immediately to record a second point scored in the interim. Some of the competitors were fast.)
The Harvard A team didn't make it out of the round-robin preliminaries, but that was not entirely unexpected. The level of competition keeps drastically increasing every year, and we have many teams that are simply far more experienced than ours. But I was surprised and pleased to find that our freshmen were holding their own. They don't look like first-years at all, and even in the course of the tournament alone, they improved drastically. Christina, who was sempo on the D team, suddenly grew ferociously aggressive after the break and started pushing around her opponent, who frankly looked terrified. She won the match because she managed to push him back until he stepped out-of-bounds twice and scored a men on him as well. ^_^ Bea, who's only been in bogu for a few weeks, also scored men twice. Isn't that amazing? (I myself didn't score a single point during the entire tournament last year.) Joe scored a hiki-do, which is one of the most difficult points to score on. The other teams also did well, especially the B team, although I didn't get to watch their matches because they were on different courts. Also, in the individuals tournament, Brian won three matches! The freshmen are all quite amazing, and Daera and I get ecstatic when we think about future Shoryuhai. ^_^ We've decided that since the freshmen are all Izzy's children, we can be their "doting/scolding aunts" depending on our mood.
UCSD won the tournament against Salem State, as Daera and I predicted, although the Salem State taisho took first place in individuals. Eugenia took third place in individuals, after playing three matches in a row (she lost the third to the UCLA taisho), and wow, she was amazing. Watching Eugenia is always cool because she has such beautiful form. Many of the top players on the other teams are strong and aggressive, but they don't always have that sort of clean kendo that's really impressive. Eugenia though always makes kendo look graceful, which is why we were so pleased when she won. The UCSD and UCLA girls are also quite amazing--they've all practiced kendo since elementary school--and I learned a lot from watching them. ^_^ Oh, wretched ankle. Hopefully it will get better soon, although all the walking I did over the past week hasn't been too kind to my healing ligaments. >_<
Last night, we were invited to a celebratory dinner with the UCLA and UCSD teams, and Brian, Daera and I sat with two of the UCLA team members and chatted about kendo and college life. It was quite pleasant, which was unusual since I don't normally do so well with strangers. The service was unusually bad, and the food we ordered didn't turn out to be enough, which embarrassed me since we were at Koreana and I'd taken charge of the ordering. ::sighs:: But it was a nice way to end the tournament weekend.
I thought that this year, since Daera was no longer managing the tournament (well, not officially, anyway) that we wouldn't be the last ones to leave like we were last year, but once again, we stayed back to clean up after everyone. Well, some of the freshmen had to stay late too, so I guess it's still better than last year. We ended up cleaning out the closet because I put my foot down and refused to store the scoreboards in my room. (Instead, the trophy's staying here instead.) Ah well, I suppose I should just resign myself to being one of the cleanup crew until I graduate. >_>
I've been skimming pretty rapidly through the friends list, so apologies for the lack of comments on fics. I'm also outlining the drabble requests, but I probably won't finish them until next week, due to the Looming Term Paper of Doom (TM). Well, unless I give into temptation and write fic instead of doing work, which is quite possible because the drabble requests are really interesting, particularly![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sub_divided's Death Note request. I also wanted to write something for May 5th (informally known as Hikago Day), but at the rate things are going, it's unlikely.
Yours &c.
Currently, the Notepad to-do list open on my computer says:
"1. Clean up room
2. Kendo
a. Reischauer
b. budget balancing
c. website
3. Korean - hanja and L18
4. Charlemagne - paper"
But because I am lazy, and my room, which is still serving as the second kendo closet, is a huge impossible mess, I thought I might as well blab away about the Shoryuhai for now. Ah, the joys of procrastination. I think I'm going to balance the budget next because I anticipate being made very happy by all the money we made. In particular, we earned a total of $72 on blank zekken alone (the name tags that you slip on the center flap of the tare) yesterday. I forget which team bought ten zekken, but I remember their check with fondness nonetheless.
(Er, I start sounding horribly materialistic when it comes to the kendo club account, but please believe me when I say that I'm not actually a miser. I just enjoy being a control freak.)
So, the Shoryuhai...where to begin? Team registration went so smoothly that I'm still flabbergasted. The increased organization really made a difference. Individuals registration still ended up being more chaotic than I would have wished, but I have nearly a year to think up ways to improve that. ^_^ I spent most of the tournament helping out as courtside staff and recording points on the scoreboards. Unfortunately, that meant that I couldn't cheer for the Harvard teams, but I do have to say that I probably learned a lot from watching all those shiai. (Well, at least the parts I watched in between posting up the next matches, erasing the points from the previous matches and dealing with collapsing easels. I got very good at erasing and watching simultaneously. Also, often I would hobble over to record a point, hobble back to my chair only to have to get up again immediately to record a second point scored in the interim. Some of the competitors were fast.)
The Harvard A team didn't make it out of the round-robin preliminaries, but that was not entirely unexpected. The level of competition keeps drastically increasing every year, and we have many teams that are simply far more experienced than ours. But I was surprised and pleased to find that our freshmen were holding their own. They don't look like first-years at all, and even in the course of the tournament alone, they improved drastically. Christina, who was sempo on the D team, suddenly grew ferociously aggressive after the break and started pushing around her opponent, who frankly looked terrified. She won the match because she managed to push him back until he stepped out-of-bounds twice and scored a men on him as well. ^_^ Bea, who's only been in bogu for a few weeks, also scored men twice. Isn't that amazing? (I myself didn't score a single point during the entire tournament last year.) Joe scored a hiki-do, which is one of the most difficult points to score on. The other teams also did well, especially the B team, although I didn't get to watch their matches because they were on different courts. Also, in the individuals tournament, Brian won three matches! The freshmen are all quite amazing, and Daera and I get ecstatic when we think about future Shoryuhai. ^_^ We've decided that since the freshmen are all Izzy's children, we can be their "doting/scolding aunts" depending on our mood.
UCSD won the tournament against Salem State, as Daera and I predicted, although the Salem State taisho took first place in individuals. Eugenia took third place in individuals, after playing three matches in a row (she lost the third to the UCLA taisho), and wow, she was amazing. Watching Eugenia is always cool because she has such beautiful form. Many of the top players on the other teams are strong and aggressive, but they don't always have that sort of clean kendo that's really impressive. Eugenia though always makes kendo look graceful, which is why we were so pleased when she won. The UCSD and UCLA girls are also quite amazing--they've all practiced kendo since elementary school--and I learned a lot from watching them. ^_^ Oh, wretched ankle. Hopefully it will get better soon, although all the walking I did over the past week hasn't been too kind to my healing ligaments. >_<
Last night, we were invited to a celebratory dinner with the UCLA and UCSD teams, and Brian, Daera and I sat with two of the UCLA team members and chatted about kendo and college life. It was quite pleasant, which was unusual since I don't normally do so well with strangers. The service was unusually bad, and the food we ordered didn't turn out to be enough, which embarrassed me since we were at Koreana and I'd taken charge of the ordering. ::sighs:: But it was a nice way to end the tournament weekend.
I thought that this year, since Daera was no longer managing the tournament (well, not officially, anyway) that we wouldn't be the last ones to leave like we were last year, but once again, we stayed back to clean up after everyone. Well, some of the freshmen had to stay late too, so I guess it's still better than last year. We ended up cleaning out the closet because I put my foot down and refused to store the scoreboards in my room. (Instead, the trophy's staying here instead.) Ah well, I suppose I should just resign myself to being one of the cleanup crew until I graduate. >_>
I've been skimming pretty rapidly through the friends list, so apologies for the lack of comments on fics. I'm also outlining the drabble requests, but I probably won't finish them until next week, due to the Looming Term Paper of Doom (TM). Well, unless I give into temptation and write fic instead of doing work, which is quite possible because the drabble requests are really interesting, particularly
sub_divided's Death Note request. I also wanted to write something for May 5th (informally known as Hikago Day), but at the rate things are going, it's unlikely.Yours &c.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-26 04:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-26 08:06 am (UTC)hahaha, you guys are totally the kiddies' aunts! so cute! also, on saturday, i was talking to the grad students...we were saying that they can't really be "my babies" since they're like, my age and all that. so we decided that they're the third-world kids who i send like five bucks a month in order to pay for their education. helps that we've got grad representation from brazil and slovakia...hahaha, so offensive.
omg, i can't wait for you to kill things next year.