Not a regular taekwondo training session

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Half a year in a roll of film

I have a film camera, a delightful little semi-automatic SLR with manual aperture and focus controls.


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Every now and then, I will persuade myself that this function/ event I’m going to is going to be great and I should bring my camera… my FILM camera. But when I get there there’s not so much going on that justifies squeezing off a RM 0.65 shot so I usually end up with a photo or two, sometimes 5. The small number of photos and my boring social calendar means it takes about 6 months for a roll of film to be used, by then I’m a bit jaded by the hassle and lack of instant-ness of film.


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I get the roll developed and scanned, and immediately get stunned by the vividness of it. The dynamic range is fantastic – there simply are no blown-out areas, and the tonal gradients look rather pleasing.


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It also helps with my composition that I take extra care to squeeze the trigger when RM 0.65 is on the line, so I end up with a higher proportion number of better photos.

I should... will take the film camera out more.

The World Taekwondo Hanmadang 2011

3 months ago, I was in Korea for a taekwondo competition, and by golly was it an eye opener. The quality of the taekwondo competition was unbelievable (it’s one thing to see a video of an awesome one-off performance, but when you see team after team after team of consistently excellent performance, you wonder about the statistics), I saw a changing room full of naked boys, then I saw a changing room full of naked men…

The competition in question was the World Taekwondo Hanmadang 2011, with a very strong focus on the art form and no sparring at all. The event list was significant, with:
-Fist breaking
-Knife hand breaking
-Foot breaking
-Jumping kick breaking for height (highest jumping kick that breaks a light plank)
-Jumping kick breaking for distance (furthest jumping kick that breaks a light plank)
-Spinning kick breaking (most number of spinning kicks executed in a fixed duration)
-Combination breaking (break as many planks as desired, using as fancy/difficult techniques as desired)
-Team pattern
-Mixed doubles pattern
-Team demonstration (mixed event of 9 members to perform pattern, breaking, jumping kicks, weapons self defense)

Courtesy of the generosity of Air Asia X, our team of 15 flew into Korea at partially sponsored fares. Lower fares = more spending money.



Obligatory group photo at the venue. Note the slick (sponsored) team uniform

The first thing that caught our attention was the Korean teams' synchronisation. The top teams were perfect- stopwatch perfect. The coordination of both timing and techniques were impeccable. Then we realise that many Korean universities have taekwondo departments alongside their engineering and economics faculties. That explains a lot.

Fortunately for us foreign competitors, we were in a ‘foreign’ category of our own. It is a win-win situation: the foreigners don’t get steam-rolled by the Korean teams, and the Korean teams are not exposed to the slight risk that they may be embarrassed by a foreigner.

Not to say it made life much easier. In my age category, 19-30 years old, competition was extremely stiff as most athletes reach their peak at this age. We amateurs were up against very strong national teams consisting of professional athletes. Our two teams finished 8th and 9th from a pool of 14 teams. Not too shameful for first-timers.

This was the winning team, Indonesia.


And right at the end, you can see one of the Malaysia PTC teams coming in 5th place (at that time) with 7.95 points.


The mixed-doubles 19-30 years old winners from Spain looked even better, partly because a smaller team is easier to synchronise.



The under-18 group was not as heavily fortified with national teams. With the firepower of our team’s under-18 mixed-doubles pair of Monica and Brandon, a bronze medal was secured for Malaysia.



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In the breaking events, Kalaiselvan in the 50-59 years old foot breaking won a silver medal. He nominated a conservatives 4 planks to be loaded on the racks, and broke them easily. Many others were ambitious and requested more, but the tight packing of the planks meant that if the kick was insufficient to break through everything, none broke.

For the 19-29 years old fist breaking, Albert punched through 4 roof tiles but was outperformed by many. This was due to a minor mistake resulting in sub-optimal momentum transfer to the targets.



Medal winners Brandon, Kalaiselvan and Monica with our head coach Zul

The organisers had a welcome banquet for foreign competitors, which went OK. It was a buffet, and the variety of food was commendable.



That's just a bottle of soft drink




To be continued…

Yesterday I saw a magnificently disgusting event at the toilet.

Most Muslim men will use a bit of water to wash their penis after peeing. In some nice urinals, the flush has a spout that has water coming out so that they can use their hands to scoop the water to wash their snake. However, many urinals don’t have that spout so people have to make do.

In this factory, the urinal is not a nice ceramic one. It’s like the ones in schools and government offices- a stainless steel common wall, drain at the bottom and some nozzles at the top. These nozzles spray water directly on the wall to form a thin film of running water for flushing the wall. Usually, the factory workers will use their hand to collect some water at the nozzle outlet and wipe their snakes with their wet fingers.

Yesterday was different.

While I was doing my business with my snake at one end of the urinal, a construction worker did his thing with his own snake at the other end. When he was done he pulled the flush, leaned forward, and instead of reaching his hand out for the water nozzle, he used his arm to brace himself against the cement wall above the urinal, and leaned forward towards the stainless steel wall of the urinal. With his hips thrust towards the urinal, he used his hands to help rub the tip of his presumably circumcised snake against the stainless steel wall several times to get it rinsed with water. The stainless steel wall of a urinal, at a height which many people will urinate directly on to*.

Oh golly, that was nasty.

*If one did a bacteria count of water from a urinal nozzle that was collected on a hand, and compared the result with a swab taken from a urinal wall, the difference would probably be negligible. However, the ick-factor would be greatly different.

Programming types would say, "Hello world!"

Several months ago, I made the decision to give up looking for a job in Australia and return to Malaya. Working in Australia had its benefits- high purchasing power, excellent working hours, the possibility of relying on public transport and maybe easy access to good coffee.

The key word in the above sentence is ‘working’. For a good half year, I was as good as jobless, relying on a reasonably well-paying* freelance contract to keep me occupied and my finances in the black. The field in which I was experienced was small and slow moving at that time, and it was surprisingly difficult to find employment.

Being jobless can be rather unsettling, the most obvious reason being the lack of secure income. Also, one ends up with too much time on one’s hands. I did try to occupy myself, but things still do slip after a while. There was no drama with emotional instability, I would like to think, but I think I did have too little to do with my time.

The situation did not look like it was improving in the near term but the clock kept ticking. If I continue bumming for much longer my employability will decay and I might just end up in some dead end alley.


So here I am, back in sunny Malaya and employed within a month of returning. The pay is nothing to shout home about, the cost of living seems to get scarier as I learn more about living, the traffic can be a total tosser and good cheap coffee is rare. But it’s not all doom and gloom; on the contrary I’m quite glad I’m home. The family is here, the extended family is within arm’s length, the close friends are still here, good affordable food is easily available, the pace of life is more interesting and I have a promising job.

Now and then, I’d wonder how would things have turned out if I managed to find decent work in Australia. IF.

I might be living in a smallish apartment near the city centre, working rather civilised hours and accumulating some savings. In the end I’d still return to Malaya, so the only difference is a few more years Australian lifestyle and a little heap of accumulated savings.


Things didn’t turn out as I’d have liked them to, but it’s not the end of the world. Here, it’s much easier to plan and coordinate our wedding.


* this contract was with a Malaysia company, so what was originally lucrative became less substantial once converted to Australia Dollars.