The PLPB Novice

First competitions can be scary things. Scarier even, than first trips to the dentist. Think back. Your very first dentist trip was when you didn't know what to expect. Perhaps it was the smell that warned you, or the description of a dentist (a tooth doctor ... doctors do painful things, don't they?). It is the 2nd trip that you start to cringe and cry and hold on to your seat, to lengthen the simple act of getting out of your car and walking, knowing soon you will be seated with nothing to save you from the metallic taste of pain.

But no.

Competitions are different.

Competitions test your mettle, they whittle you down to your core. Who are you, really? How will you handle the stress, the fear, the different kind of pain of disappointment? How will you interact with your fellow competitors, the friends who are not your friends? They wish you the best and then attack you.

The mental struggle is delightful. And frightening.

I saw all of this at the morning of the PLPB novice. Nobody said it out loud, of course, but the tension was there. It is electric, hidden behind friendly faces and illustrated in the tiny changes to the competitors. Soft people are softer. Loud people are louder. They all joke, become quiet, joke again.

The red and white belts help differentiate competitors in the heat of a match.

Beautiful morning, really. Tay picked Gary up, then came over to pick me. The sky was a brilliant blue. We stopped by the dojo to wait for the rest - we were going to PLPB via carpool and most of us had not the foggiest where that was.

Charlton looking sexy.

I followed Malcolm. That turned out to be a big mistake.

Malcolm the transporter. Not.

We squeezed into his car, playing with handphones, and I felt an odd, uncomfortable sensation as Malcolm zipped out of the parking lot. It wasn't that he was not competent - he kept close to the Isuzu Bighorn leading the way, and nipped in and out of lanes with the confidence of a chimpanzee crashing through the rainforest.

Then we hit the highway, and Tay overtook us, and Malcolm hit 90. We passed the new bridge, paid the toll, and he let out a raucous peal of laughter as he overtook Tay again. The laughter was free. Crazy. And was usually followed with a firm foot on the accelerator.

Hunting Tay down.

Oh. My. God. We did not travel at speeds slower than 70 after that.

WAKAKAKA!

Wobbly knees after we reached the campus.

Red tatami. Nice, yes?

Tay, Gary and the rest of the competitors changed into gis. I taped the referee's seats, and then was resigned to the role of photographer. With a big, fat DSLR. Oohlala.

Gary and Tay warming up.

No, seriously.

Honest!

Urgh.

Oh, and this is Tim. He's only been playing for only 4 months, and he can already throw me. I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that he is a left hander (and I can't fight left very well), but he trains. A lot. We expect him to win the whole competition off the bat.

Tim. Uchimata.

Tay's first match was cacated. He didn't dare to attack, and I knew the things going through his head, though that fear was a matter that he will have to overcome by himself. His footsweeps were static (which means they have no chance of working), and he didn't dare to reach out in any big throw apart from Taiotoshi (which is the hardest to pull off, really). But I think he did pretty well, considering. I'd performed far worse than him in my first competition.

I probably looked like this (the flying guy) back then.

Gary Tay had previous competition experience (Sarawak wushu), and this helped. The first match saw him like this:

Gary was the one flying. A beautiful, beautiful Osotogari.

But he won his second with an Osotogari counter. The Thomians cheered for him, and Tim in particular helped by yelling out advice from the sidelines.

Tim was the one that surprised all of us. He defeated Tay in the first match with a clean kosotogari, won the second by a pin, and then lost the third to a white belter. I hit the shutter the precise second Tim fell - too late. I got a picture of him on the ground. It was deashibarai! A footsweep so fast most of us only saw the results of the throw, and not the throw itself.

Deashibarai is a timing throw. You sweep one of your uke's feet from the outside, as he is coming foward, and then he falls down upon himself. It is very, very hard to do that against an opponent of equal ability. And a white belter! God!

Tim won in the end, of course. But by a very narrow margin. Gary got 2nd place in the lightweights. And the girls? Heh. There were only 3 of them, so everyone walked back with a prize. Ern Chee at 1st, Siat Ying at 2nd, June at 3rd. They banged their heads while fighting. The dojo erupted into hearty laughter. Sensei closed, I took pictures, everyone was glad it was over. The guys changed out of their gis, talking and pushing each other around. We told Malcolm he blew the ending whistle like a sissy. He told us he was falling asleep. And we all ganged up on Tim and shook our heads and made tutting noises.

Too soon the trip back: into the car with Malcolm, and the horror again.