This morning as I woke up to the news that Brisbane would be in for another lockdown (only 3 days this time), I was rather disappointed to say the least. Disappointed that our pre-planned kobudo training day up on the Sunshine Coast tomorrow had to be cancelled. It has been way too long that all members got together, trained, and simply sat down and had a good chat. Small things we often take for granted, is no more in the Covid-present era. So from today until the end of lock-down, my plan is to simply focus on my personal kobudo training and have a 3-day break from karate. Sometimes I feel that I don't spend as much time focusing on kobudo as I would like, in contrast with karate where I am trying to dissect every miniscule detail back to front and inside out.
So as I was waving around my ninja turtle weapons in the air this afternoon, I came to the realisation that I really don't know much, have a lot more questions than I do answers, but at the same time seem to be able to do kata in other's eyes quite competently. Maybe it's due to this kind of false pretense that our seniors have been bugging us for the past several years to finally take our next grading. Maybe our standards and expectation in karate is so much higher than theirs and hope for the same in our kobudo, that we don't believe there is a need or deserve to receive another certificate. The look and vibe on their face when we tell them we don't want to grade every time, I'm surprised we haven't copped a black eye from them yet!
The last time our kobudo sensei came out to Australia to visit/teach us, he stared at my grading certificate on the dojo wall with a confused look on his face. He thought I was a higher rank, double checked with me which I responded with I simply don't know nor remember... I think we must have graded for the same rank on numerous occasions or always too busy simply training with Sensei to care or even discuss about such topic. Gaja Sensei himself has always had a hard time remembering his own rank and for a long time, taught many students who were a higher dan level than he was - how does that even work? haha.
Training, training, and more training, will hopefully enable me to iron out any uncertainty present. These next 3 days as I lock myself in the dojo, if I can uncover and work out just one thing, that alone will be so much more rewarding than receiving any piece of paper with a cool logo and kanji on it.
Anyway, hopefully this Sunny Coast trip isn't postponed for too long, and come April, fingers and toes crossed our Perth trip all goes to plan too.
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