I was at the dojo today, and weighed myself with my gi and shoes on. 66 kg. Thats 145 pounds.

It seems that since the last time I weighed myself, I've lost about ten pounds of fat, which is no small thing. I can actually see my abs again, lol. 145 was my leanest "fighting weight" back in my kickboxing prime.

Despite that I'm getting tossed around, and I have a long way to go, I feel I have my health and my fighting spirit. I am in a good place.

I wonder what it would take for me to make a scene more often.

On Sydney (Australian) busses, there's an area at the front of them with about 6 reserved seats.  They're clearly marked-- the seats are red instead of blue, and they can fold up to make space for child prams (baby strollers to people in North Am-- at least, I never knew what a "pram" was until I got here) and wheelchairs, and that sort of thing.

There were these two ABCs ("Australian Born Chinese"... not to be confused with "American Born Chinese") sitting in seats 1 and 3 of one side of the reserved seats, leaving seat 2 empty.  They were talking about all this social justtice stuff-- having a debate about who the true libertarians were, who the conservatives were, and where on this spectrum they fit on.  One of them called himself an "economic pramatist," and that at the end of the day, that meant being realistic about economic matters, but being willing to bend the rules to help the people, where everything at the end of the day was rooted in.  Then they went on to basically denounce the rich and say how the working man is where it's all at-- they talked about family values and all that.

The whole time, I was standing next to them with about 70 dollars worth of groceries (probably about 25 kilos, or about 60 pounds) in a mobile carrier.  Now, I'm 30 years old, and I'm tough, so I didn't really make a big deal of it-- I can stand.  I really don't care.  I didn't say, "pardon me, why not turn your noses away from your intellectually stimulating debate of the human condition, and be a bit observant of the humans around you? get the fuck out of the reserved area if there are tons of seats in the back of the bus."

Not even for me.  But then an old lady got on the bus, and then a mother and her child-- and they held on to their seats.

The mother, rather loudly, said "it's okay baby, there's no seats up front, lets just find something in the back."

Not even a flinch from Aristotle and company in the front.

Just a general note to everyone reading.  I have very high standards of what "good humans" do, and I don't pretend to be one myself.  But you really have to make some sort of connection between the bullshit that comes out of your mouth and the beef that you're supposed to have on your person-- have some character, have some class!  How can you talk about the world while being so oblivious to it?  Get the fuck out of the reserved section!  Just because they're free, you shouldn't be asking if that next lady getting on the bus might need that seat-- you should be asking yourself if you're living a life so difficult that you couldn't possibly muster the energy and inconvenience of standing 10 minutes to do something nice for someone else.

My nice thing of the day was not saying anything.

But the thing was, I think I was especially pissed off at these two guys for a few reasons, despite that there were another 3 reserved seats across from them, also being taken up by people who didn't need them.  If I wanted to start a scene, in effect, I'd have to tell off 5 people, not just two, and it would have been on behalf of a mom who clearly couldn't care less and was resigned that young stupid people would not understand what reserved seats were for.  Should I stick my neck out and be the guy who is being too pedantic? It's probably just an excuse, but I'm consciously aware that I'm another Asian guy on the bus, and me having a shouting match with some partisan undergrads isn't really going to set the world straight.

Anyway, the reason why I was particularly peeved by these two guys:

• They're Chinese.  And Chinese people need to pay attention to their surroundings and learn the social conventions, because we already get a terrible rep for not having manners or common courtesy in public.  Yes, you can argue "common courtesy" is relative-- but this is not China or Hong Kong, and the rudness that your parents is not native to this place.  I am somewhat reluctant to say it, but learn how the polite white people do it.  Step up your game a bit, you god damned farmers!
• They were talking like intellectuals, but one of them didn't know how to speak without using the word "like" after every 4 words.  And he didn't know how to take a breath.  Sherlock Holmes would deduce based on that, they way he dressed, and his mannerisms that he was at a stage in his life where he was still studying all of this in class, but had no sense of what the real working world was (because nobody would hire someone who talked like that).  Am I discriminating based on class or education?  You bet I am-- if you're lucky enough to be born poor and uneducated, it's a golden opportunity to learn humility, politeness, and courtesy.  So if you're low class but don't have high class manners and a basic sense of respect, you're damned right that I discriminate against you-- because then, you truly have nothing.
• Why are Chinese people on busses so fucking LOUD?

I wonder though... usually I do nothing.  Does that make me part of the problem?

I had a nightmare yesterday night.  Partly, it had to do with me spending 50$ worth of Playstation Plus credit, only to realise that I'd spent it all on Plants versus Zombies.  The second part was that I had this presentation coming up on the same day that I had an exam, for which I was trying to study, but nothing was sticking.  To quote XCKD-- 10 years from now, you will still be having this dream.  I woke up, cold and afraid.

On Saturday, I went to a judo session.  I normally go on Mondays and Thursdays, which are just "beginners' technical" classes.  I once went on a Friday, which is "advanced technical" and I was completely lost.  I can barely pull off a throw against an opponent who isn't resisiting me-- trying to teach me sacrifice throws is way out of my league.

Saturdays though are randori (sparring) days, and that was definitely fun.  Very tiresome however.  For the next day my whole body just felt exhausted from the hour and a half of being tossed around like a rag doll.  At one point, I remember looking down at my feet, only to notice that between my feet were ceiling lights.  There's is an insane amount of difference between a black belt throw and an orange belt throw-- I guess it's to be expected.  I have never sparred with a blackbelt before, but on saturday, I had the rare chance of going against three of them.

On one hand, it was awe inspiring.  The throws that I was subjected to were so crisp and perfectly timed that I felt like they were doing everything effortlessly.  One of the black belts, when I was trying to offbalance him by pulling him towards me, let me pull him straight to the wall.  He then "bounced" me off the wall, fell under me, and sacrifice threw me (that "lie down on your back and kick the guy over your head" move that is so popular in 80s and 90s movies) and I flew  pretty damn far.  I mean, it all happened so suddenly that I literally felt as if I was bouncing off the wall and throwing myself across the room. I thought I was being clever by being backed into a wall, because then I couldn't be tackled backwards.

But you know how it is-- a white belt always thinks he's clever if he just plays with other white belts.

On the other hand, it was extremely frustrating.  Some of them were allowing me to try things-- they were allowing me to offbalance them to a certain extent.  But there was such a huge skill difference that, during the sparring, unless I actually asked them to teach me something and they were walking me through it, I just couldn't do anything.  I mean, I know in theory how to do a throw-- but if the opponent's arms are instinctively (I don't think they even know they're doing it) passively blocking my attempts to get in to their space, I can't even try.  So what it all turns out to being is a dance of me trying to find openings, not being able to feel any.  Inevitably, they patiently take their time and crowbar open any openings (and there are many) in my current position.

There is one guy there, who I will call [Blueb] (he wears a blue belt) who I didn't like from my first day there.  Mostly because he's loud and arrogant-- but, seeing him sparring seriously against the upper classes on saturday, I have a newfound respect for the guy's skills.   In truth, it turns out this guy works harder than most other people at the club-- he's probably there 6 days a week.  No matter what day of the week I go, he's always there-- so when I think he's lazy by skimping on the warmup routines (which are quite intense), in truth, maybe I'd be pretty damn tired too if I had to do that everyday.

He told me at the last beginners' technical class that he felt that my 'style' was puzzling-- it seemed as if I had some sense of judo, but just enough to be confused about certain things, which leads to me putting myself in some very bad situations consistently.  "It's like you're good at some things, but like, really bad at most."  Gee thanks.  To be fair-- I think what he's picking up on is the inapporpriate clinching reflexes which I have from kickboxing and MMA.  While some of the techniques cross over, the distances and the way that you "score" in judo are completely different.

On the plus side, he and a few other seniors in the class complimented me on saturday for being the only white belt brave enough to attend, and still be standing at the end of the day.  "At least you know how to take falls, and you keep getting up."

... but, sigh.  That'd be the equivalent of saying that a kickboxer was a good punching bag, if nothing else.

All in due time I suppose-- it's just a matter of training.

On the plus side, I haven't played a human opponent face to face at Baduk for the past 3 months or so.  I've only been playing computer AI games on my mobile devices and tablet.  Win some, lose some... but the nice thing about a computer AI is that it always plays the same way.  It doesn't really learn (unless you select a different level) so you can really experiment with fine tuning certain techniques.  When I went back online to KGS, suddenly, I was actually stronger-- I'm now a 6 kyu player.  Wheras, in the past, I was stuck at 7kyu for the longest time.  Training with the Machine has apparently made me stronger!

I wish there were some such method of training in judo on my own.

A few weeks ago, the governments of Canada, United States and Australia, whether coincidentally or not, announced that they were going to impletement new, taxpayer-funded initiatives to fight cyberterrorism.

I was just thinking of this in terms of the company I work for, for whom I handle banking account reconciliation.  I log onto our online banking website regularly, using what is, in my opinion, a very unsecure password.  And across workplaces, you'll see a lot of the same bad habits all over the place-- passwords written on post-it notes, passwords saved in web browsers.  Those are the easy "rubber hose decryption" liabilities.  On the more technical side, I've used computers with adminstrator accounts auto-logged in, with no firewalls, and unsecured wifi routers.

"Cyberterrorism" most relevantly pertains to the normal person as something a lot less dramatic than anything with the word "terrorism" in it-- in most cases, its simply stealing your money.  Maybe "Cybercrime" is more relevant.  It's not meant to terrorize you any more than a mugging in the street is.  The "terror" part is incidental to the "getting your money" part, which is why I don't really agree with the way the campaign is spinning it the way it is.

If what they mean by cyberterrorism has to do with Wikileaks related stuff, that's a different story--  If the governments are trying to make a big deal out of deffending government property, why are they telling the people about it?  That's never been our business.  Conspiracy theory: they're telling us about it because the word "terror" has a lot of emotional baggage for us.  At the end of the day, it's a word that's used to make us feel a bit safer to be a citizen in country X, because out government is looking out for us.
  Convenient how here in Australia, this plan against cyberterrorism comes up a bit before an election-- and how despite the declaration, defense budgets have been cut by craploads in the last year.  So where is the money going to come from; what really are they trying to do; and just how are they going to do it?

If we're not talking about terrorism, and we're talking about crime, it's a different story.

One of the first things you learn about law when you're a law student is that the law is a pretty blunt and ill-adjusted tool to preventing bad behavior.  You can make laws, and impose pentalties, sanctions and punishments on those who break them.  But you can only do all that to the ones who are caught-- and by that time, the wrong has already been done.

Corporate law is on a completely different scale from criminal law altogether-- it's much easier to ask forgiveness (if caught) or, alternativly, pay fines, than it is to ask permission.

Cybercrime?  Like a lot of bad things that happen in the world, it is facilitated by a combination of things that retaliatory policies cannot fix.

Like a lot of crime, the cybercrime has a social root.  People turn to crime when there is a certain ratio between the probability of being caught and the quantity of personal advancement.

The probability of being caught is much lower if the general computing education of the population is low.  Passwords.  Firewalls.  Basic "street sense."  An understanding of some basic security concepts.  How many people do you know go into an absolute panic when they can't find their phone, because it's not password protected somehow, and it's a gateway to all sorts of personal accounts?

The personal advancement angle is a social one.  Basically, if you encourage a class divide, if you don't make more effort to making citizens respect people as people, if you don't give them education, jobs, and a sense of self worth, then they have very little to lose by commiting a crime.

While it's true that crime is a choice, there is a much thinner divide between those who actually become "criminals" and "normal" law-abiding citizens than you might think.

So what am I saying we should do?

Well, first of all, it'd be nice for a change if I heard that our tax dollars were being spent on social programs, especially education.  That is the only way that the "trickle down" theory will ever work.

Getting tough on cybercrime?  Getting tough on terrorism?  That's just a government trying to sound like it should be given pat on the head, when really, all it's doing is learning to clean up it's own shit after shitting in the wrong place in the first place.

No, I'm not saying that government leads to terrorism-- but what I'm saying is that terrorism, is a reaction, and counter-terrorism is a reaction to a reaction.  If we're already two degrees behind, perhaps we should reallocate the budgets to the roots of the problem, rather than the symptoms that we create.

Go out today, and do something nice for your country-- go to your parents' or grandparents' computers, and turn on their firewalls.  Put a password on their WiFi.  Explain to them what Paypal scams look like.  Put a password on your phone, and for bonus points, enable a remote memory-wipe feature.

At the very least, don't save your password on your work computer?

In any proceedings— a certificate purporting to be under the seal of the Commission and certifying that at a date or during a period specified in the certificate an association, or no association (as the case may be), was incorporated under this Act or the repealed Act, by a name specified in the certificate, is to be accepted, in the absence of proof to the contrary, as proof of the matters so certified; and a certificate purporting to be under the seal of the Commission and certifying that an incorporated association has, or has not, complied with a requirement of this Act as to the filing or lodging of any document or return or the giving of any notice is to be accepted, in the absence of proof to the contrary, as proof of the matters so certified; and a certificate purporting to be under the seal of the Commission and certifying that a specified incorporated association has altered its name in the manner specified in the certificate, including the dates on which the alterations were registered by the Commission, is to be accepted, in the absence of proof to the contrary, as proof of the matters so certified; and a certificate purporting to be under the seal of the Commission and certifying that a specified incorporated association has been or is being wound up, including the date on which the winding up commenced and (if relevant) the date on which the association was dissolved, is to be accepted, in the absence of proof to the contrary, as proof of the matters so certified; and a certificate purporting to be under the seal of the Commission and certifying that specified incorporated associations amalgamated to form an incorporated association specified in the certificate, including the date of incorporation of the amalgamated association, is to be accepted, in the absence of proof to the contrary, as proof of the matters so certified.

South Australia Associations Incorporation Act 198, section 63(6)

It's almost as if Viginia Woolf wrote the legislation.

2012 was a trying year.

I entered in a kickboxing tournament at the university, and forieted due to injury during my first match. I guess it was the luck of the draw that I was against the club's vice president and he was two weight classes heavier than me-- but I had it in the bag.  I fought one round even and one round with a point advantage.  In the third round, I messed up my game of hit and run, took a few in the face, and was bleeding so much that I called it quits.  In the end, he was actually more hurt than I was.  The experience left me feeling old, and more than a little past my prime.

One of my cousins was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor.  He's a young kid-- just finished med school, and couldn't get a break getting a residency, so that timing was pretty bad.  Before I left Canada, the last conversation I had had with him was on a cruise ship somewhere in the Pacific, where he was asking me if dating was worse the trouble.  He was wondering if he was the kind of guy who could ever really be good to a girl, and he wondered if all the headache and heartache of the process was worth going after when things never really worked out for him.  I felt bad because, well, I wanted to be useful at a time like that.  I've never had cancer myself, but I've known many people have had it-- more than most people my age for sure.  I felt that such experiences were a burden to me-- they made me feel old.  Things that I had experienced, I could never un-experienced-- and selfishly, I thought maybe that this would be the opportunity to be useful.  To feel some sort of "payoff" for all those losses.  To have something good come out of where everything else had just been eventual loss.

I sent a slew of applications out for clerkship applications.  In the end, of my study group of three, I was the only one who didn't get a placement.  I wanted it really badly-- if I had gotten a clerkship, that would have made life much easier for [CM] and I, because our futures in Australia would have been secured.  I think I'm okay with [DilligentB] getting a spot-- but I was jealous of [CaptainK], because I felt that when it came to law school, I just had him beat.  I worked harder and knew things better inside out. I  managed stress better.  But, among other things, I don't have his social skills and his natural friendliness.  It left me feeling spiteful and a bit dead ended, knowing that I'd have to stay at the top of the game for another year to hopefully secure a spot in another year.

My grandmother passed away in October of 2012.  It hit me hard.  Despite all my experiences in working with life and death and everything in between, I don't think it was easy on me.  The distance from home at such a time made me miserable-- it made me feel guilty for leaving behind family at a time when I was really and truly coming into adulthood.  I felt that at that time, I was supposed to be a  full fledged member of the family, responsible for others.

Despite all this, in retrospect, I think 2012 was a big year for me in terms of growth.  Quite frankly, I feel a bit more... everything... one year later.

With reagards to kickboxing, the reason why I forfeit was because I actually had a reason to look out for my own health.  It's a lot easier to try and be a great fighter if you don't have anyone to go home to.  That's probably why the most intense years of training for dueling were when I was single, and young.  It's not that one can't train to be a better fighter if they're not single-- it's just that things are different when someone worries whether or not I'll someday have brain damage, or if I might lose an eye or something.  It comes down to a question of how much you want to sacrifice in order to getting better at fighting-- and in looking at my life, by 2012, I was very much certain that coming home to CM was more important than pursuing my lofty ideals of martial arts.  It's not that I've given up my pride as a martial artist-- but, I think I'm reaching a stage where it is now so integral to my life that I can handle it like any other responsibility, and not as something new and as urgent.  Sort of like how the first time you get a job and make money, or fill out your taxes, it's a big deal-- later on, it just becomes one thing that you always do because you have more important things to make you happy.

I am doing judo now, and that's a big step for me.  It is taking me completely outside of my comfort zone, back to the "white belt" where I am failing, scrimping and struggling at the very basics.  Psychologically as well as physically, I think that rebooting my training in something completely different has been very good for me, not least because it has reminded me that I'm still truly capable of learning truly new things.

Being able to learn things that are completely new to me is an ability I've always prided myself on, but it wasn't until I started judo that I really had to test what I was made of.  Usually, when I start something "new," it's not really new-- I've got a lot of experience in a lot of different things, so there's always a starting point that's not quite zero.  There's always a little bit here or there that crosses over from the experience of other activities.   Judo is not one of those events.  While being in a dojo might not be a surprise to me, starting up judo is marginally a bit more intuitive to me than salsa dancing or ballet-- I'm really that bad at it.

Which makes me wonder how, when I was younger, I ever started anything new.  I think the difference was that back then, I started things with friends-- we were bad together, so we grew up in the activity together.  It's no surprise that pretty much everyone I keep in touch with has roots in some activity with me, whether it was martial arts, music, or writing.

This time around? Judo is different-- because I haven't taken the time to make friends.  I am, for all intensive purposes, alone, training in a void, with everyone as just training partners first and human beings second.

Isolation was one of the themes of 2012 for me.  Thankfully, my cousin recovered from his cancer and is now living a healthy life.  Walking away from something like that has probably changed him significantly-- and I wonder what it will be like the next time we get the chance to speak face to face.  My grandmother did not recover from her cancer, and her passing left me feeling very angry and confused.

Isolation is a state in which a lot of important, life changing events happen.  There are a lot of different ways that I tend to go about it, without really chosing.  Sometimes, I feel that in the end, I am only answering to myself-- and there are some things that, simply, no one can help me with.  It can make me cynical and even more of a hermit than I already am.  On the other side, usually after a lot of though, upon my return to the social world, the bout of isolation is a good counterweight to better appreciate social life.

Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger they say.  There's a lot of ways to really refute that-- you can be crippled by some events, or become so jaded that the 'strength' that you get is a hardness of a sort that makes it difficult to love and connect.  But on the whole, for all the dissapointments, I feel good.

[Zanshin] had his wedding last year.  That was nice.  It was good to have a really happy thing in the middle of life.  It is not the only thing to be thankful for.  Despite failing to secure a clerkship last year, I got appointed for office within the university Law Society, I got a job paralegaling at a lawfirm, and I've been asked to participate at board meetings for the NCYLC.  That's going to make me a real killer contender next rounds along.

But I suppose the most subtle of ways in which 2012 is an improvement is because I'm feeling really at home now, and that is connected simply to living with CM.  It's true, this is just a basement apartment that we probably won't stay in for another year-- but our home is on our backs, and we carry it together.  I find that because of that, small things, like assembling a shelf, or even vacuuming, becomes one of my zen moments of calm.

I didn't make any new year's resolutions, as has been my tradition for several years now-- one day at a time, I always say.  Conquer what we see, and look a bit further every day.

... I don't think economics is a science. No more than philosophy or law is.

Studying competition law is pretty interesting. The professors are boring as sin, but the stuff I'm reading in cases across Europe, North America and Oceania open up a lot of ideas to me that can be applied outside of economic problems.

For example, one of the key difficulties the courts face is "focus". No matter what laws you have, and no matter how carefully worded, the whole reason why we have courts and judges is to apply that law to real life situations. Whoever writes the laws envisions one thing... But how it's actually applied will depend on how people interpreted your communication of that ideal.

So aside from problems of definition, there are also problems of scale and focus.

Sounds a lot like the difficulties people have in deciding where they want to go with their life, and trying to resolve situations where their personal values conflict with one another.

I'm filling out my Australian income taxes return.  On the whole, it's less complicated than the way things are done back home-- I don't have to file a provincial and federal return, and the forms are easier.  It's just a bit confusing, because a lot of the terminology is different from back home.  For example, the RRSPs (registered retirement savings plans) are called Super (Supperannuation).  Small things that can throw one off.  It's tedious, and it's like... 8 months late (I didn't realise I could have filed as early as last june) but it's finally getting done.  I like how the online system walks you through everything, step by step.  Much better to have this all in hypertext than in a bunch of paper manuals like back home.  I mean, yes, you could file online in Quebec, but you had to pay for specialised software-- here, it's free!

More work I do on my "day off."