I hate it...

When people nominate me along with a whole group of people to reveal stuff about myself. In this case, Nettie's to blame...

So, five things I can't live without? Ummmm...Let's see...

1. Lip balm. I know I don't drink anywhere near enough water as I should be doing. But lip balm helps keep my lips from feeling all disgustingly dry, at least. Plus you can get lots of different flavours! I've currently got at least 7 that are scattered in various places - four pots from the Body Shop in watermelon, strawberry, vanilla spice and cranberry, one Blistex tube of undetermined flavour, a tube of Bonne Bell in vanilla, and a tube of Benefit lip balm.

2. My dragons. After all, if I didn't have my dragons, I couldn't be known as the dragon lady. Although the dragon I'd feel most lost without is my Attack dragon. The Attack dragon is a stirling silver charm that I wear on a chain around my left wrist. I might not wear it all the time at home, but it's a must-have item to wear when I'm going out. I feel rather exposed without it. I guess it's also because I see it as a sort-of good-luck charm.

I always remember the one day when I hadn't actually put the dragon on, but had stuck it in my jacket pocket. I ended up having a bit of trouble with a contact lense, which ended up popping out unexpectedly and falling to some unkown location. After panicking for about five minutes, I ended up putting my hand in the pocket that was holding the dragon for luck purposes, and lo and behold! There was an unscathed (if rather dry) contact lense!

3. MoH (especially the people on MoH) - Well, how else would I've met such a wonderful bunch of people? And how else am I supposed to keep up with what you're all doing? And I don't think I would've started a blog if it weren't for you lot, either.

4. Contact lenses* - I'm afraid I'm a tad vain. I've had to wear some form of visual aid since I was 11, and was very eager to be allowed to wear contact lenses.

5. Books - I love reading. There's nothing I like doing more on a morning when I don't have to get up than to curl up in bed with a cup of tea and a good book. Admittedly, I'm a huge fan of sci-fi/fantasy, but I don't mind dipping into other genres at times.

And I think that's about it. Sadly, after checking everyone else's blogs, you've all pinged each other. I'm only left with about four people who I know who have blogs, but don't update them, and three of them I'm not even sure read my blog - or at least not regularly.

* At the moment, this one may be debateable. I've been having a lot of trouble trying to get a new pair of lenses, but I think that deserves another post of it's own, if you could stand the rant. ;-)

I never want to do that again

"That" being Tai Chi competitions. As a competitor, I had to be at the venue an hour before the competition started. And the venue's located a 30 minute drive from mean. So that meant a comparitively early start for a Sunday morning for me. Driving there wasn't much fun, as for half the journey was driving east, and the sun was in my eyes. Same with driving home, most of it driving late afternoon, and heading west!

Once we got there, we hung around for an hour, waiting for everyone to get themselves sorted. The competition finally started around 9:30 - I couldn't tell the time exactly, what with not wearing a watch, and dodgy contacts meaning I couldn't clearly see the clock at the other end of the hall. Even then, I was still standing round for most of the morning. There were about 10 competitors for tai chi. The majority of them doing different styles from me. And I was the second-last competitor for the round. So I stood/sat round, feeling increasingly more nervous, and cold. Finally, it was my turn to get up there. As soon as I stepped out into the ring, my legs turned to jelly. Which is really bad, when you have to put all your weight on one or the other of them and transfer smoothly between the two. I managed to get through it with only losing my balance once (and not too drastically, either). Ended up with a score of 8.55/10. We then broke for lunch, and went and did the weapons afterwards.

This was the officials table for the Tai Chi. Three people sitting at that table were from my Academy. A large number of the judges (or so it seemed) for the Tai Chi were also from our Academy - including Mr No-one-asks-me-about-competitions.

Fortunately after lunch, I'd calmed down a little, and now knew what to expect. It was still nerve-wracking to get up and perform the sword form infront of all those people I'd considered my superiors in this. Especially when all the judges went into a group huddle to discuss it afterwards. I did better in the sword, although I do feel as though I wasn't putting enough effort in to it - I was too relaxed! However, the judges were impressed, and gave me 8.58 for it.

Me doing what I do best - standing on one leg and waving a sword around!

Sabre followed sword pretty quickly. And ended up being the best round at 8.60. I felt really happy about that - I've never been confident of my sabre form, and have always preferred sword.

Once the weapons were done, we had to hang around, waiting for the Kung fu and Wushu parts of the competition to finish. Which meant about two hours sitting round, doing nothing. Although watching the other schools competiting was interesting. The Wushu kids were very acrobatic - it put a number of my friends and myself in mind of the Shaolin. They were also very vocal - constantly cheering each other on.

Eventually, they finished, and we then had to hang around while they cleared up, totalled up the scores, and worked out who were the winners for each category. Eventually, we got to the medal & trophy presentation. Funnily enough, as I was the only competitor in all the events I did, I ended up with three gold medals.

However, as there was one other adult female competing in three tai chi events, I wasn't quite good enough to come out with the State Champion title.

To show how interested we were in the rest of the medal presentation, above is a photo of Julius (in yellow) and myself looking at our shiny new ornaments. Although that was before the State Championship presentation for Tai Chi - Julius won the mens title.

And here's myself, Grand Master Fu, Julius and Mark all displaying our winnings.

I'm so glad it's over!