21. March 2021 13:03
by Rene Pallesen
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I reached a significant milestone in karate this week. I graded for my 3rd Kyu (Brown belt) and at the same Kim graded for her 5th Kyu (Blue belt).
On the occation I treated myself to a new dogi (karate uniform).
I was so nervous and tense - and screwed up a few places. There is now a lot of hard work ahead to get to the 2nd Kyu which is at least another half a year away.
Here are some photos from the grading. The ones from the dojo are a bit blurry because they weren't taken from my camera and I don't have the full resolution photos.
20. March 2021 14:03
by Rene Pallesen
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Last year was a tough year with Karate.
First the lockdown meant that we had to go online for training, but even in the dojo I managed to get a lot of injuries.
Some of them visible and some of them not so visible...I have a whole stack of scans and x-rays as souvenirs from this year.
Some could have been avoided, but most are just part of the training.
I even earned an award for it...
The worst one was a kick to my chin. I dont have any photos of it, but I do have the indentation it made on my mouth guard I was wearing at the time. If it hadn't been for the mouthguard I am certain that I would have lost some teeth. This injury could have been avoided.
I have now gone out to buy a new and way cooler mouthguard (I created the design myself). It is thors hammer in the middle surrounded by the Fenrir wolf and Midgaards Serpent.
Even Kim got a few bruises.
13. March 2021 18:03
by Rene Pallesen
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Back in the late 90's I visited Laos. In the northern corner of Laos I acquired two old swords from a local.
Through some forums I have tried to find out as much as I can about them and this is what I have been told:
- The swords are of a Burmese style called Dha (Means sword in Burmese).
- They are of museum worthy pieces
- I should NOT EVER attempt to restore them. This would degrade their value significantly.
- The flower script design on the swords are reserved for the rulers and officers of those days.
- အဲဒီဓားတွေကငါတို့ရဲ့ဗမာဓားတွေပဲလာအိုဆိုတာအရင်ကဇင်းမယ်လို့ခေါ်တယ်အင်းဝခေတ်မှာမြန်မာတွေတက်သိမ်းခဲ့တဲ့နိုင်ငံပဲဓားကိုငှက်ကြီးတောင်ဓားလို့ခေါ်တယ်ဓားကဓားကောင်းပဲ အခုငါပြတဲ့ဓားဟာလည်းသမိုင်းဝင်ဓားပဲငှက်ကြီးတောင်ဓားပေါ့ (Translation: These swords are our Burmese swords. Laos was formerly called Zin Mae, a country that was conquered by the Burmese during the Inwa period. The sword is called the Sword of the Bird. The sword is a good sword.).
- It's
a Ngat kyee daung Dah the sword that was once used by Burmese warriors
and Thai during the dark age of Konbaung (1765–1767).
- This
Burmese Empire was destroyed during the English colonized to the East
and totally wiped out by the English cannons kind of like a scene from
the last samurai movie in the end! They were like charging to the enemy
where they were being shot at.
-
Perfect Moments Photography | A Rene Pallesen Journal