How much floor space does $300 of liquor take up?

So I got a few bottles of cognac today.

A few.

As in: three.

My Kung Fu master likes Cognac. And as a direct consequence of having met him, I've acquired a taste for it that I didn't possess before.

Anyhow, there's a big celebration and banquet coming up during which I happen to be one of three central figures. This is not a minor event, although very few people outside of thos who actually practice Kung Fu seem to realize just how non-minor it is. I'm being accepted as a disciple to an art which dates back 500 years. In short, it's been decided that I'm one day going to carry on the legacy and pass the knowledge I acquire on to someone else.

Yeah, this is a big deal.

So, traditionally, one gives the master a gift which he would enjoy. He has a great love of Cognac. Cognac, it turns out, is not cheap. Especially if you get very nice cognac. Cognac which has been aged many years to smooth it out; and if I'm going to be taught things that have only been taught to a select few throughout history, I'm not gonna cheap out on it.

Now, this cognac I got my hands on was not as expensive as some cognac out there (I saw a bottle which cost $7000), but it's not exactly a cheap acquisition, and it takes up less than a square foot of real estate on my floor.

Anyhow, I don't want to write about the price of cognac in Canada (title notwithstanding), but I guess I'm feeling a little introspective as the New Year has passed, and as I'm about to take a couple of big steps over the next few months. I'm becoming a disciple to a remarkable martial artist, I'm receiving my PhD. after four years of work. I'm taking my infinitely-better half to Europe for six weeks (a place neither of us has ever been). And throughout that time, I've had a constant companion in the martial arts.

I really wish I had the eloquence to explain what this means, but the truth is that I don't. The best way I know how is to say how it started.

Four years ago, I was in a bad place. Not that things weren't going well for me, mind you. I'd been accepted into a Master's program (the switch to PhD would come about a year later), my research was going well, but the bottom line is that I wasn't happy. A friendship had just ended under unpleasant circumstances, and I was dealing with it badly. I'm not generally prone to emotional outbursts, but frankly I spent about three months walking a very fine line between uncontrolled rage and deep depression. You'd be surprised how close together those two can be.

So I needed something to replace the hours that I was spending feeling sorry for myself. Hey, I'm not proud of it, but without going into detail (which I omit to protect the guilty), you can trust me that it warranted a little wallowing. I'd toyed with the idea of taking up a martial art before. I'd given Aikido a try while I was at UBish; a loooong time ago (picture a 12-year-old Drew in a white uniform and a green belt), I'd tried Tae Kwon Do; a mere few months before the events which lead up to this, I'd tried Kendo. All of which, it should be mentioned, are admirable martial arts. They just weren't for me. Tae Kwon Do, I'd done because I thought it was cool. Aikido, I took up because my significant other at the time had suggested it. Kendo, well, I don't know why I decided to try that one. It looked cool I guess.

The bottom line is that I was sick of feeling sorry for myself and decided I needed somewhere else to focus all that feeling-sorry-for-myself-energy, at least for a few months. Kung Fu seemed as good a place as any. One of the students I shared an office with ran a Kung Fu School; or rather he helped his brother run a Kung Fu school in his spare time, and three questions later, I was learning the White Tiger Style of Kung Fu, along with two buddies from High School.

My life improved rather sharply. I'm not sure to this day whether the two were related. But I was happier, I was healthier, I lost weight, and my endurance and strength increased beyond what I thought was possible. For the first time I could remember ever I realized that I could say that I was happy without a little voice in the back of my head saying no, you're not.

Some time after I came to that remarkable realization, I met April. To say that the two of us hit it right off would be both a cliche and an understatement. I'm not prone to romantic language, but in her I found a half of myself I didn't even realize was missing. Ugh, that sounds so... ugh. Not untrue, mind you. But... ugh.

Like I said, I'm feeling a little introspective, so bear with me.

So we're at now minus three years or so, and I'd been studying the White Tiger Style of Kung Fu for about eight months. I was learning a lot. I ascended quickly to the Blue sash level, and was working on the Green Sash forms and techniques. I managed to pass my test for the Blue sash while doped up on decongestants. An accomplishment I'm actually kinda proud of to this day. It had taken me almost two years to get to that point. I wasn't an asskicker by any description of the term, but I had learned a lot in those two years.

And somewhere in there, the completely unexpected happened. Suddenly, Kung Fu wasn't a crutch anymore. It wasn't something I did to smooth the wrinkles of my life. It wasn't something that made my life easier. It was just something that was there. It was something that just felt right. Like it belonged in that one spot in my life. Like it had always been there.

Keep in mind, when I'd started, I'd intended to keep with it for a few months at most. Now I was going on two years.

October, 2005.

The White Tiger school my two companions and I had been studying at was closing its doors. The young man I'd studied under directed me at a Grand Master of a different, but related style of Kung Fu, and that's where my pursuit of Bak Mei began.

I'm not going to go so far as to claim that it was a moment that changed my life, but I will say that it was a moment that I still use to describe it. It was one of those moments where we describe all the others as "before this," and "after this." This was one of those moments. I started learning this style of Kung fu in a cold basement in the middle of Chinatown. A tiny little building that I'd never have noticed if not for the fact that I needed to climb down into the basement three times a week to learn a style of Kung Fu that I'd never even heard of a month ago. I know, it's weird when I put it that way, but the fact is that for the last almost-three years, Bak Mei has been a dominant positive force in my life.

And I learned. Under the steady tutelage of a Chinese Grand Master and his two existing disciples, I learned the art. I learned to Lion Dance. I Taoist philosophy and somewhere, something was unlocked. Another piece of me that I didn't even realize was missing was added, and suddenly I found myself wondering how I ever managed without it.

Again, I draw your attention to my lack of eloquence. I don't want to say this sounding as if Kung Fu was just a crutch for me. The best way I can put it is that it's part of me. It isn't something I do anymore. It's part of who I am.

On March 10th, I take another step. I'm taking it with the same two companions that have been with me since the beginning. The people who shared the same journey. I'm taking it with April, and I take it surrounded by other students and by the man who got me started on it all.

There are worse ways to spend an evening.

The year of the pig

Okay, so every Chinese New Year, I do a whole pile o' lion dances all over Chinatown, and every year I end up pretty much immobilized by the Lion Dancing marathon that inevitably takes place every time we do it. Every year I swear that the next year, I'll take it a little easier, and every year, I make myself a liar.

Yeah, it's that time of the year again.

We started our hefty Lion Dancing schedule this weekend where we threw ourselves with hopeless abandon into the traditional Chinese lion dance at every store, every mall and every establishment and organization in Chinatown, and a few outside of Chinatown. We did a couple of Kung Fu demonstrations and, yes, we all ended up feeling pretty damn sore at the end of it.

Right now, non-steroidal Anti-inflammatory drugs are my friend. Ibuprofen, very good stuff. Without it my neck would be so stiff that my field of vision would be uncomfortably small.

I'm knee-deep in lion dances, Kung Fu demonstrations and Chinese food. I'm fed, I'm fed up; I'm sore, I'm stiff.

I'm loving it.

Welcome to the year of the pig.

Some things you have to be nuts to even try

Okay, so there are people out there who have very well-established comfort zones. Some have them so well-established that any attempt to step outside that comfort zone freaks them out, whether it's them stepping out of it, or someone else. Some people, for example, say that I'm completely nuts to go camping in the backcountry every so often when I have a perfectly nice house right here. It's not exactly an untenable position. Granted, they may be missing the point of going into the backcountry in the first place, but their point is nevertheless a valid one.

My comfort zone tends to be a little bit on the wider side. I like being in the middle of nowhere for days on end. I routinely face off with a guy who's bigger and stronger than me and end up getting pretty badly bruised for it.

So me and one of my long-time martial arts partners have taken it upon ourselves to learn a form which involves duking it out with shiny, pointy weapons, and trying not to kill each other in the process. I arm myself with a Chinese eagle spear, he arms himself with a nine-ringed halberd, and we promptly attempt to kill each other with them.

Okay, it's not as crazy as it sounds.

The halberd is made out of steel and is methodically hacked at my feet, my head, and my chest throughout the form. In return, I jab my spear, methodically, at his head, chest and feet. Each time, we duck, dodge, or move out of the way of the offending weapon before it has a chance to skewer or clobber us.

Again, let me emphasize my previous "not as crazy as it sounds" dictum.

It should be mentioned that the spear is blunted (it looks sharp, but it really isn't), and the halberd is unsharpened (pointy and heavy, but not sharp); but even these can do a lot of damage if they hit you hard enough. The halberd (the heavy metal end of which is repeatedly swung at my head) weighs in at about 10 lbs, give or take a little.

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, that's enough to leave a substantial bruise, or crush a finger quite nicely if it should happen to hit one.

I think you can see where this is going.

Making a long story short (which is actually kinda a necessity, since I'm trying to type this without use of my right index finger), my right index finger is now in a splint. They haven't x-rayed it, but at the very least, it needs to be immobilized until the swelling goes down.

The fact that a blunt weapon managed to draw a not insubstantial amount of blood should probably tell you something.

So, we'll see how long this takes to heal. Fortunately, I'm still able to do the lion dances over Chinese new year, but I don't know how functional my right hand is going to be for martial arts demonstrations.

Stay tuned.