National Taekwondo Black Belt Championships

On Saturday the 11th of Otober, I participated in the National Taekwondo Black Belt Championships. This was a very big competition. In my semi-final my opponent was from Christchurch. In this fight i was 4-1 down and I came back to win the fight 12-10. I fought my way into the finals and came up against someone from Auckland. This fight was going great because I was winning 7-3 until the last thrity seconds, when he got a head kick in and scored two points. Subsequently he got another point and there was ten seconds left and the score was 7-6 in my favour. In the end I won! This was also a selection for the Oceania Team and this is very good for my chances in getting into the team.

Judo camp.

This weekend I went to a judo camp. This camp was held at Sacred Heart College in Auckland. It is a male boarding school. It didn't start very well because I had forgotten some equipment I needed at home. But after this incident nothing bad happened. The aim of the camp was to give a chance to train with people from other clubs in other towns and cities, and also to prepare us for the National Championships in a few weeks. The camp was three days long and altogether we trained for ten and a half hours. We had a very extensive coaching line, and one of our coaches was brought in from Austria. She was an amazing Judo player, she had just come back from the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Her name was Sabrina Filsmoser. She was the 5 time European champion and world military champion. She had a tough training session but also very enjoyable. I look forward to next years camp and I had a great time this time.

My first week of the holidays

Well what can I say. Basically all I did was play video games, train then sleep, all from Monday until Friday. It was the most invigorating week of holiday I have ever had. Staying up until 2 o'clock every morning and waking up at about ten thirty to eleven did not take a toll on me. I was highly eneregised for my training session which were at five thirty 'till seven oclock. Of my many goals for the holidays was to complete watching every episode of Dragonball Z, plus the movies. In this week I completed seventy episodes. Good effort but it could have been better. The training was intense as we are preparing ourselves for the National Judo Championships in a few weeks time. Also i went to a couple of Taekwondo sessions in preparation for the National Black Belt Taekwondo Championships being held in Avondale College at the end of the holidays. This weekend I have a judo camp which is in Sacred Heart College. This is a boarding school in Glendale in Auckland. I hope it will be highly enjoyable. On the Friday Morning I had to go to the airport to pick up my sister and brother in law, who were returning from their trip in the South Island. It was all going good until we saw a sign saying 'Motorway closed, use highway 16'. We were not sure what was going on but it didn't seem good. After a while we were on the Waitakere motorway with a clear road until we saw a very long traffic jam. After listening to the radio we were informed that there was a digger that crashed into a bridge. Luckily, we made it to the airport on time. This was a pretty good week.

Tae Kwon Do Grading

On Friday 15th Of August I had my Taekwondo Grading. I was grading from 2nd Dan Black Belt to 3rd Dan Black Belt. This was a pretty hard grading and I passed with Merit. I thought you could only pass or fail but obviously not. I got the highest marks out of all the people who graded. For my grading i had to do my patterns, self defence , stick fighting, fighting two on one fighting, power testing and board breaking. The boards that i was breaking were 21mm thick. Twenty one millimeters sounds like a little but when you have to break them with your foot its not such an easy feat. The board was about this thick.
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To be updated...

Driving...

I've been driving for about 6 weeks now and it's alright. Of those 6 weeks I've driven every 6 of 7 days because I drive to and fro school, to and fro from my training and to and fro from my social activities. I'm not in love with driving, in fact, I would rather sit in the passengers seat and sleep or play with my phone or eat. Wow, how I miss those good old times.

I have driven with my whole family including my dad, my mom, both my sisters and my brother-in-law. All of them said that I'm a good driver.

There is nothing really in particular which I find hard about driving but I am working on my finer points now. The only thing which I need to brush up on is switching between my headlight to dip and from dip back to headlights. I get very annoyed when driving at night and the driver coming the opposite way forgets to dip their lights. But I know that they must be getting annoyed when I forget to do that as well.

Driving on the motorway isn't difficult, it's really much easier than driving in the town and in the city. Mainly because there is much more room to drive and it's mostly a straight drive and no sharp turns.

Hancock

In the holidays I went to see the movie Hancock. This movie starred Will Smith as John Hancock. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie because it was funny and had plenty of action. This movie is about a hero which everybody knows as Hancock. Hancock isn't the role-model type of person. He abuses alcahol and has anger-management issues. The story is based on Hancock becoming a better person which includes going to jail in the process. Along the way Hancock finds more about who he used to be as he could not remember anything since 80 years back due to amnesia. Hancock falls in love and becomes weak and then the bad guys kill him and then somehow he comes back alive and is a good person.

Logan Campbell

Logan Campbell is representing New Zealand at the 2008 Olympic Games being held in Beijing this year. The sport Logan Campbell represents us for is Tae Kwon Do. Logan is an extremely kind person and is fun to be around. I haven't spent much time with him, the most amount was when I went to a training session with him and he coached me. Logan just recently came back from Korea, where he was participating in The Korean Open. For anyone who doesn't know much about Tae Kwon Do, Korea are equivalent to America in Basketball or Australia in Cricket. So that means that they are flippin' good. Logan won this competition and is a very good preparation for the Olympics. I think Logan has an okay chance at the Olympics at medalling.

Whangaparaoa College vs Kaipara College

Unlike the last game, we won this one. This time the other team wanted to play more Rugby instead of trying to get into scraps. The final score was 27-5. Rory scored two tries! Now he is ahead on points over me AND Woody, the two people who were teasing him about not scoring any tries. The other try scorers were Taylor, Jordan and someone else who I can't remember at the moment. This was a great game for us because we are now well and truly out in front on the points table. I think our team has come a long way since we started at the start of the season. We have gelled together and we distribute the ball more to all the players in our team. We support each much more. And we can also count on one another to do their certain jobs that come with their position. Eg. We can count on JT to spread the ball wide, we can count on tommy to take down the wingers on the side and we can count on Woody to run it up hard at the defence.
The Starting lineup was:
1.Woody
2.Mat
3.Rory
4.Jacob
5.James
6.Logan
7.Vinay
8.James
9.JT
10.Corby
11.Eamon
12.Jordan
13.Jassie
14.TOmmy
15.Trent

Whangaparaoa College V Westlake Boys

Yes, I know we are in Division three and yes Westlake are the best at rugby. But no, we did not lose to them, why? Because they were Westlake Boys(3). The final score was 10-0 in our favour. Two tries were scored one by Taylor and one by James. Corby did not convert them.
The starting lineup was:
1.Woody
2.Mat
3.Rory
4.Jacob
5.James
6.Logan
7.Vinay
8.James
10.Corby
11.Eamon
12.Jordan
13.Jassie
14.Tommy
15.Trent

Taipei 101

The Taipei 101 is the biggest building in the world. The huge 509.2 metre establishment has one hundred and one floors hence the name Taipei 101. The Taipei 101 is located in Taipei in Taiwan which is east of China. It costed $1,076,000,000 to make. Currently, the Taipei 101 holds these records
• Ground to highest architectural structure (spire): 509.2 metres (1,670.60 ft). Previously held by the Petronas Towers 452 m (1,483 ft).
• Ground to roof: 449.2 m (1,473.75 ft). Formerly held by the Sears Tower 442 m (1,450 ft).
• Ground to highest occupied floor: 439.2 m (1,440.94 ft). Formerly held by the Sears Tower 412.4 m (1,353 ft).
• Fastest ascending elevator speed: 16.83 m/s (55.22 ft/s) (60.6 km/h, 37.7 mi/h).
• Largest countdown clock: On display every New Year's Eve

I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Taipei 101 in my trip to Taiwan earlier this year. Next to the Taipei 101 is a shopping multiplex, it would be considered massive in New Zealand but in Taiwan it wasn’t really because its juxtaposition with the Taipei 101.

Another awesome thing about the Taipei 101 is the elevator. It is the fastest elevator in the world. It goes 60 kilometres an hour. On your way up the building your ears pop because your getting higher and the speed that your going at.

At the top you can go outside and look at the city. Me being afraid of heights and all wasn’t helpful. When I was outside I was holding onto anything I could get my trembling hand on. It was very windy up there and if you had weak legs, you definitely would be toppled over. Another scary thing is that the tower moves around with a five metre radius.

Inside the Taipei 101 there is a photo place. Where there is a blank ‘Blue Screen’ where you can choose photo and ‘stand next to’ the tower. I got one done, it was a night shot of the tower and I stood adjacent to it and kicked it. The photo only costed NT$300 which is about NZD$12.