The incomplete circle of goals, success, and progress.

So it's midterm season, and I'm doing quite well so far. However, one of the main downers was last weekend when I went to competition. I didn't do badly in the round-robin matches, but my elimination round, I was practically a target dummy to my opponent and for the first time in my fencing career, defeated in less than 3 minutes.

So one of the first things that I was thinking about was just how well I applied, the different styles I learned. It works on slow people, and on dumb people that react. However, what about average people and the intelligent adversaries? We never tried things out on them, in other words we never tried things out in reality.

I realized that and was quite concerned with a more general theme where my colleagues are content with the results we got from just the people we tried it on, and just the people we were around. One of them even blinds himself to saying he's expanding it by teaching it to people in the club. I applaud his effort, but he fails to be capable of having things spread beyond him. I'll ask him later, why he doesn't compete. Why doesn't he show the larger community that actually counts and will make a difference in changing the face of fencing? I believe he stopped being competitive was because he mentioned that the competitive community is stubborn, and arrogant and not accepting. Which isn't true considering things are still changing in the community.

So I was disappointed about our lack of progress and blindness to what progress really is. We set the goals, we succeeded in achieving them, so in conclusions we made some progress. That's great, but we stopped now.

So my busy life continued, and next up came archery. 1 of the members there, she's been practicing since the start of the club, but has only begun to consistently hit the target. She was happy, we all cheered/teased. Today though I was giving pointers on things to look out for. Something to check when she's next in practice. She didn't quite understand. So when I did finish explaining it was relatively labourous. I tried something different then. Trying to get her to understand, the variability that skews an archer's aim. If she understands the difficulties, she can understand what can be fixed. What she can work on, without relying on the coach to give her a foreign concept to learn and work at.

She got royally pissed at me for being tedius, and that I should "you tell the student THIS IS wrong, you do it that way." I personally don't teach this way because

a) it insults the students frequently and not everyone can take it.
b) it spoon feeds the learning material. The student will never learn unless the coach is there.
c) Kind of a corallary to b), is that the student will never learn to think independently.

We moved on from that subject, and I warned her not to get comfortable with her achievement on monday. She can be happy, but she has to remember to not stop and keep going. It was a warning, and she took it as my assumption that she is. So she became angry again, and with all the dramatics to follow. I was consistently trying to correct her misunderstanding and apologize for my incoherence.

She became very emotional, and I gave up on trying to reason with her.

Different case, similar problem,

We set goals, we progress and achieve them, shouldn't we look towards more progress, better and higher achievements besides our immediate little world?

Like that Desjardin commercial. "Just because something's invented, does it mean we stop there? No, we knew we could do better. "

So I'm sacrificing precious sleep, for a post. This post I'd say is relatively important in my life.

I've actually become indifferent to the yelling and screaming, and anger that my Dad shows towards anything I do against him. This is different in that I usually take it personally, that I'm a failure, that I'm a loser, that I'm a dreamer. Plus all his arguments to corner me into admitting defeat. Usually I just get all depressed and well like last time I think that happened, I wanted to kill myself.

So what's different about today? Well let's recount the day's events shall we?


I woke up on time, but I didn't prepare the night before (Fencing blades, Bow, laptop, notes, textbook), so I became horribly late, and missed my English class. I went to my labs, had no trouble there, and I actually stayed relatively awake during lecture, when the teacher has less knowledge about polymers than I do. The subunits of a polymer are called "Monomers" not "mers ..."

Bussed it back to York, talked to Kendo, watched Defying Gravity (not sure I want to continue, because there were things I wanted to ask about. Such as why would someone tell a story about their experience with an alien object instead of explaining detailed specifics of it during a Mission Briefing?) on his laptop since he offered, and then went to go teach fencing.

Made an awful mistake during footwork by asking Jeff (during the practice instead of off practice) what he thought of the new suicidal maneuver that Fred was teaching. Eventually, though Fred explained to me why he was showing it, and that his emphasis was on recognition and adaptation, and not usage. Simple enough, got complaints from Fred that Jeff is teaching stuff that students aren't capable of. I was teaching 1 student that was asking for help in certain maneuvers, and then before I knew it, 3 hours flew by like nothing. Strained my right ankle a little, but other than that I'm fine physically.

Archery practice was cancelled to my dismay, got fencers to sign up and check off a preferred day, and got 1 old member to come back. Talked to Suke about the area, how it functions, and he was amused, but already committed to fencing. "Not a problem" I said and thought. Packed up, and well marched my way home for the last leg of my Journey (with a lot of gear) for the day. March as in a light leisure but rhythmic walk.

I get home, and dad is cleaning a spill he made in the oven. Basically he was making roast beef with a roast too big for the dish and it spilled everywhere in the oven when it fell over. Oh well, it happens when we're unprepared, and he cleaned it up. He went to talk to me about all the options there are to eating food, in orders, in whatever. He saw the monitor box, and asked what it was. I told him the plain truth, he raged, he yelled, he insulted. I simply understood what he was saying, or commanding, did the switch back to my old one, and well ... it just hit me after the storm.

I didn't feel bad. I knew it was coming, I knew I couldn't explain circumstances (last one in stock, it was cheap, its from FactoryDirect). I just let him rage, leave, and I continued to do what I was doing, made the fix.

Indifference is what I felt. I didn't care about most of his rant. Simply did what he asked, and went on my way. I know it's a bad thing, especially because he's my biological father that did take care of me. I've been told that Indifference is the opposite of love. It's something my dad expressed to my mom awhile back when the first charade fell, and that big fat nuclear bomb exploded known as divorce. Neither of them are going to, they care too much about something that we have now to risk breaking it.

However, when your kids start having the same indifferent feeling for their parents. Isn't that dangerous too? My parents are more foreign to me than my acquaitances and friends. I think I might just drift away, dissociate from them like I do people I don't spend the effort to see anymore.

It's different from the conflicts of my relatives. They all ran away from a significantly large conflict. Dad and grandpa for career conflicts, aunt and cousin because of some big argument and she simply picked up and left. Those are the only 2 circumstances I can think of right now. Otherwise, the families have been together for the most part. Dad and sister though keep our family from heading to outings with the rest of the family. I know it's because those 2 fight everyone else, and the extended family. It usually comes down to what my sister portrays as jealousy, my dad as attitude, and well I think is just their stubbornness.

As Cherry told me while I write this,
"i think there are some fundamental differences in thinking and you've tried to explain to them and it didn't work and u tried again and it still didn't work no choice but to let them be sometimes"

You know what, I think I started a bit of that today.

Lacking sleep sucks,

I'm grumpy, and a little more frustrated than I usually feel.

a) Info about OSAP for first timers I didn't know money was being wired to my account. I thought it's just being mailed like tax credits. I'm glad I came prepared though.

b) High tension with parents because that happy dandy last post was a facade, which collapsed really badly. Now they're putting up obvious acts and charades to each other so they don't get on each other's nerves with their real selves.

c) My teacher for Chinese sword is biased towards his "realistic" fighting for survival context vs the sport fencing context. I tried speaking to him about the good things that have come about by introducing some of the techniques of his training that worked in sport training. Worked so well, the fencers enjoyed it and voluntarily decided to work on it for themselves. Even though they still view fencing as a sport or as for fun, he scoffs them off as being people he can't help, and that they're warping the "true" ("spirit" was my interpretation) meaning of the techniques. I was appalled that he didn't have anything good to say about their growth. It's all because of the arrogance of "I do this to survive" vs "I do this for fun. " I don't think I'm going to use a sword in a prepared combat situation, I think my pistol and rifle training have more application than that.

d) explaining to my brother the way things are, vs the way things are ideally suppose to be. Also explaining the idea that people think differently, have different perspectives, they don't think like him, they believe in different things. I'm annoyed that his mind is so very narrow that he can't fathom or understand why a person wouldn't believe in God. Or our ability to identify with characters from let's say an anime. He criticized so much about the differences between the anime's reality of physics and astronomy compared to our reality of physics and astronomy (of which a lot of his babble on astronomy I keep reminding him is JUST THEORY, and not confirmed). IT'S A PIECE OF ART! YOU'RE GOING FOR LIBERAL ARTS AND YOU CAN'T understand that it is fiction and it has been made different from our world to add that fantasy element of "hmmm I wish I could fix my clock with just some scribbles on the ground and a clap of my hands? "

Anyways my babble is done, sleep is good!