My Victory Stance

Alfred Hsing Changquan Final Score 9.61
Alfred Hsing Jianshu Final Score 9.55
Alfred Hsing Taijiquan Final Score 9.28
Alfred Hsing Taijijian Final Score 9.33
Alfred Hsing Qiangshu Final Score 9.56

I took first (longfist), first (straight sword), second (taiji), second (taiji sword), and third (spear).

After wanting to make the team for 9 years (since I started preparing for team trials in 2001) I have finally accomplished one of my biggest dreams. All the time, money, sacrifices I’ve had to make from taking time off work to skipping out on partying with friends or sleeping in have paid off.

This goes back to the law of attraction theory – which is basically the more you want something and the more you already believe you will get it, the more it attracts itself to you. I’ve been wanting this since 2003 team trials, 2007 team trials, and finally 2009 team trials I got it. This past saturday when I placed first in longfist and straight sword.. it was one of the most incredible days of my life =) I kept asking people, “wait, is this real?”

I’ve always been a top level competitor aka winning CMAT all-around, taking golds in various tournaments and collegiates, and ranking top three in international competition, but I was never on the A team and that was something I wanted to achieve to prove to myself that I could be the best if I wanted to be. To be real, there is definitely politics and luck that people might say come in to play, but I wanted to prove that despite that you can still make it. In 2003 I was deducted .20 (not .02, but .2) for saluting at the end of my form. I was also deducted for taking 5 steps in my sword form when the competitor before me took 7 steps and was deducted.. and then after I competed they said they made a mistake and GAVE him his points back and then took away my points. In 2007, I lost .45 for under-rotating my 540 outside. I promised myself I would not make that same mistake this time. I also said that I wouldn’t give up. It’s actually in my July 2007 post.

I also want to deeply thank everyone that has given me words of encouragement, given me life pointers, wushu pointers, and my family and friends that actually picked me up from the airport on my trips to china, nor cal, east coast, etc. and supported me in many many other ways. I cant begin to tell you how much I appreciate it.. and without that added help I might not have nailed everything so thank you guys. It was funny. Last post, I posted about Damarques Johnson’s prayer before his fight. Before I walked out the door to my competition, my mom made a prayer for me and she said almost the exact same things – that we thank you for this opportunity and dont ask for victory, but that I just do my best. So either she watches UFC a lot or she has the same message that we should be happy with being able to perform at our best.

Alright, well I’m going to take a few weeks to rest and recover, but theres not much sleep for the hustling.. Wushu world games is in October, so I’ll have to hit up that training hard and shoot for my goal to medal at Worlds.

Wushu Carpet

It’s Thursday, 2 days before the competition, 1 day before drawing of lots. I am flying up north tonight. I am telling myself to focus on wushu, but if you know me by now I have a couple other things I have to do today. I figure I’m ready so there’s nothing else to think about. I’ll just do my best.

Anyways, here’s my Wed. recap:

Wushu
Warm up, light basics, longfist and straight sword form back to back no stop, then spear form. At the end of practice did my full tai chi form as well. I didn’t practice tai chi sword due to time. I made 0 mistakes nandu-wise on all 4 forms! THAT ROCKS!!
I planned on doing 2 full forms only, but Coach Rickie made everyone competing do 3 so I didn’t complain. 2 or 3 .. same thing. Monday and Tuesday I basically barely worked out so Wed I HAD A TON OF ENERGY!!! I felt a surge of power and wanted to do massive 720 butterfly twists across the gymnastic spring board carpet.

Clothing
Met up with pattern maker and explained the major revisions. Should be getting this back in 2 weeks. I like the guy and told him I have appreciated his work thus far because he has been relatively prompt and then he said ” REALLY?! Because I feel like I’ve been sorta slow and laggy”.. and that made me like his work ethic MORE! I guess since I work full time and have 2-3 other projects he feels pretty responsive. Maybe his other clients harrass him daily because that’s their sole task. For the record – I have 6 unofficial back orders for this product from the people I have shown the prototype to. Yay!

Tea
Label design is getting there, but now Im on revision 6. Hopefully by revision 8 It’ll be perfect.
Chocolate idea was unexpected, but the FIRST place I contacted seems to be EXTREMELY efficient and capabale so I like working with them already. They also make hand made chocolate for some very high end places. If things continue to work out smoothly I’m just going to continue and go ahead with them.. even though I was PLANNING on developing this later on. What the heck – might as well do it now since they can do basically everything I’m asking for. Waiting on some information in the mail from them now.

Beverage
My 2 partners on this have been in New York and flying around saving lives I guess so we have tentatively planned to talk next week (which is good cuz im busy this wknd). I bought up the domain name for the drink yesterday.

PokerBling/WushuKicks
Did some blog and online updates.
Suggested our facebook fan/profile pages to people I thought would be interested.

Random- In other news I re-installed ver 2.8 of wordpress and got the visual editor back! Woohoo! I dont know if this sounds nerdy. haha oh well.

To Do
Drop off bracelet shipment
Train at SCWA
Pack
Go to local real estate board to drop off paper work
Get logo over to pattern maker
Send out revision 7 to tea labeler
Kick ass on Saturday and Sunday

Congrats to everyone that competed and thanks to everyone who helped coordinate!

Now to my own little afterparty at cmat…

Typically every year after the CAL wushu tournament there is an afterparty to celebrate. Well this year.. I got a little head start on the afterparty a couple hours before the afterparty started.

So I drove with a couple (non-wushu) friends from LA to Berkeley and they had been watching a day of wushu since 8am and it was about 7pm… I had finished longfist, straight sword, and spear and just had one event left which didn’t count towards all-around— drunken straight sword… so someone had the idea of dropping by a bar to get some food and drinks. Since these guys had been with me the whole day it was only right for me to go get some food and drink with them.

Long story short: 5 shots later- 1-2 hrs later- this is me a few minutes before my turn to compete drunken straightsword.

Here we go..

..and

Then we had Alex and Matt B. by the ring getting me up ready to go.. saying.. “The H is O”… cuz.. The HEAT is ON! Alex even had to help me- apparently I was having difficulty getting my sweater off.

And here’s me competing..

I took gold in this event! Woohoo! =)

Thanks guys!!