What did the test entail?

One hundred punches, twice. Except I messed up once, so I actually did 298 punches. I breezed through the first hundred, and then after the next 20, I realized that they were making me more tired than I expected, so I slowed it down.

Then 100 pushups (hoping against hope he wasn't going to make me do those), but I could only do 50. So I got up, did a bunch of kicks, then did 20 more pushups, then more kicks, then 15 more pushups, then more kicks, then the last 15. I was told that at the last 15, a look of despair washed over my face. I think that's because I lost count and thought I only had five left.

Anyhoo, I survived the pushups, then had to do continuous kicking up and down the room. Thankfully it was only for 2.5 lengths.

Then I had to do ALL my forms, from tae guk 1 to tae guk 8, and koryo.

Then I had to spar one person for about 2 minutes.

Then, sake!

This is a picture of the belt my friend had embroidered for me. Yeay!

WOMEN HAVE SEEN IT ALL ON SUBWAY, UNWILLINGLY
By Anemona Harticollis
New York Times, 6/24/06

It is a hidden reality of the New York City subway system, and perhaps mass transit systems everywhere since the first trolley car took to the tracks. It begins with a pinch or a shove, someone standing too close. But it can be much worse.

This week, as the Police Department announced the arrest of 13 men charged with groping and flashing women in the subways, women around the city nodded. Yes, they said, this had happened to them. Yesterday. Last month. Last fall. Twenty years ago.

"Every girl I know has at least one story," said Barbara Vencebi, 23, a studio photographer standing outside the No. 6 train station at 116th Street in East Harlem yesterday.

It is a crime abetted by the peculiar landscape of the underworld that is the subway system, by the anonymity of a crowded car where everybody is avoiding eye contact. And by the opportunity for a quick escape at the next stop, to disappear behind a pillar, into a tunnel, up an escalator.

An impromptu survey of riders during the morning rush yesterday found that, for many women who have experienced it, the worst part of the crime is the sense of helplessness. What is the right way to react to a humiliating, but not life-threatening, situation? Should you announce to an entire car of strangers that you have just been violated?

Most of the time, the women said, they seethe inwardly but say nothing.

"I looked back and I couldn't do anything because a lot of people were behind me," said Suany Baca, 32, a waitress who was going up the stairs at 86th Street in the No. 6 train station last November, when she was groped by a man who passed her going down.

"I pretended like it didn't happen," she said. "I don't know what they get out of it."

Those who single out women on the subways do not care about race, if yesterday's interviews were any indication — black, Asian, Hispanic and white women all had stories to tell. But they do seem to discriminate by age.

Most of the women who reported recent incidents were in their 20's and younger. But the experience, women said, is so universal, and so scarring, that they continue to feel paranoid and to put on their body armor — the big bag, the bad face — no matter how old they get.

Women know the drill. Just as some men reflexively check to see if they have their wallets on a crowded train, women check their bodies.

Pull in your backside and your front. Wedge a large bag for protection between yourself and the nearest anonymous male rider, who might, just might, be planning something. Put on your fiercest face, and brace yourself for contact that seems too deliberate to be accidental, too prolonged to be random.

( Read more... )

There is a lot of construction going on in my neighborhood.  This means that every morning, essentially the first thing that happens to me is I walk by a lot of construction workers.  Thankfully they're not the catcalling kind of construction workers, but testosteroney construction workers nonetheless.  It's a bit of a strain on my self-confidence first thing in the morning before my coffee*.  But maybe it prepares me for the office.  Actually, my office has a lot of women, which is nice.

I suppose the construction workers are better than the students I have to dodge every morning during the school year.  Those aspiring hipsters with their cigarettes dangling here and there and waving in the air.  Now, my self-confidence recovers by the next block.  Cigarette burns are another story.  

* "A medium iced hazelnut coffee with skim milk, please."