Perfect Moments Photography | A Rene Pallesen Journal

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.

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.
These are also antique pieces in a good state of preservation! Swords, even if they are in such good condition, belong in the museum. You have to take a look at the Malaysia Sword Museum! They are great specimen
One would have to analyze the material metal wood winding fibers would certainly be very interesting! You don't see such a bundle every day
The handle on the smaller sword is made from wound rattan fibres.
The larger sword is made from silver and wound silver threading (I believe it is the typical not so pure silver/tin that was used).

This means that it is likely that the swords are up towards 250 years old and that the long one belonged to someone of a high status.

The area they are from is a place that has been ravaged by war for several hundred years right from the wards beween Burma and Siam (Thailand), conquer by the English empire, the Second World War, the Chinese civil war through to the Laos Civil/Vietnam war.

It is highly likely that the swords have seen some action. Although a bit rusty, the swords are still very sharp. Given that the blade on the longer sword is narrower at the hilt it is likely that it has been sharpened several times through history. Again this probably means that it had a practical use/purpose and wasn't just for display.

Between Christmas and New year we made a trip to Newcastle with the family.

They had this beautiful little animal park that is maintained by the council and is free to visit.

Just outside Newcastle is fighterworld, which is an aircraft museum next to an active air strip.

Newcastle museum was also worth a visit on a rainy day.

One evening we went to the games arcade...no idea how Aiden managed to get a first place in racing.

Karate during 2020 was challenging to say the least.

I was devastated when everything moved online. I love the partner work and couldn't see how this was going to work through video conferencing.

The boys and Kim were okay with the new format and I hung in there. I was so happy once we were able to get back in the dojo again.

Just before the lockdown I had purchased a punching bag, so at least we were able to do some outdoor contact punching.

During the lockdown there was a kata competition and other programs, and we did get a few prices.

...but dojo definitely rules...

We have managed to go to gradings...

And I have kept all the grading certificated we have gotton...

Another encouragement award for Aiden. This time in Tennis...

2020 was definitely a bit different because of Covid.

Australia managed to get through with very few outbreaks because of very early and sever lockdowns.

This let people to panic buy. We spent the time to chill out and solve lots of puzzles in the evenings, do lots of exercise in the parks (which was still allowed), Karate online and work moving fully to conference calls.

The last couple of years has been super challenging for Aiden all around.

He is struggling all around and this photo tells it all.

For myself I have been struggling equally, and had it not been for the release of karate I don't know where things would have been at. I often wish I had my own bucket to hide under. I don't think this year will be any easier unfortunately...

Keeping with tradition we did another family photoshoot this year.

This time we wanted to try something a bit more ambitious with a boxed setup where the individual boxes tell a bit more of a story.

I couldn't find an existing box that was big enough to fit me as well as the boys together, so I had to build one myself. I decided on the dimensions 90x90cm (as this was one of the dimensions that I could buy and also transport). I then had to cut it, paint it and nail it together. I had to do all this inside the house as the box is too big to fit through a door.

For Christmas the boys got new bikes from us and my dad (bedstefar).

The old were getting too small, so needed something bigger....

One evening we were invited on a double date with one of Kims friends.

The theme was painting and we were to make an abstract painting of eachother.

Next day the boys tried to draw their versions.

Every year I do a family photo. This year we decided to use the gingerbread village and the tree as a backdrop.

Merry Christmas.

Over the Christmas period Aiden and I have been building a Gingerbread village.

It has been good fun for me to put the houses together and for Aiden to help with sticking on the kandy.

Tonight I did some more photos...

The plan was to get a photo of Lucas and Aiden together wrapped in christmas lights. It turned out to be impossible to get especially Lucas to sit still, so we eventually gave up and tried to do some individual shots...the photos below are the best of the lot...not great but will have to do. To be honest the best shot of the evening is the one above of Aiden which I took after we gave up with the chain.

Lucas is growing up really fast and him and Aiden are now best mates doing almost everything together (including fighting).

The other day I found this in our garage.

I had to look it up...but it turned up to be a blue tongue lizard but without the stumpy tail we normally see.

I asked Kim if the kids could keep it...but she screamed and said no, so I released it into our garden.

You can tell that Christmas is approaching when Banana's in Pyjamas is wearing a Christmas hat...oh and then there is the cute Santa's helper.

Yesterday it was Kims dads Birthday and we celebrated with a big lunch party with cake and good food.

And Kim was beautiful as ever and Lucas was very handsome...

Christmas is approaching fast. The Christmas tree is up and Kim is busy shopping for presents for the various people.

The other night I managed to slot in 10 minutes for the first set of Christmas photos of Aiden and Lucas.

I was shooting these with a 50mm f1.4 lens to get the nice blurry Christmas tree lights. This also meant that I didn't have much room to play with when it came to focus...almost impossible with two moving kids whily trying to get the right mood with facial expressions, tantrums etc. Aiden couldn't sit still and Lucas refused to wear his hat. What do they say...never photograph wild animals and children!

The other day it was Aiden and Lucas Christmas concert with their daycare centre.

This year they were supposed to dress up in some country's national clothes.

We borrowed some Chinese clothes from KC and they looked very cute in it.