Lost and Found

Did you ever have something you really liked when you were much, much younger,like a favorite toy or book or movie, and after a while, parted with it and never saw it again?

Did you then, after a good number of years, when you least expected it, reunited with the said object of your obsessions?

It's happened to me with a number of objects: I was able to buy the Sonic Collection CD (Sonic 3 and Knuckles on PC) after pining for it for a year, I was able to buy a good number of books that I have enjoyed many years back in the library as a child, and with the recent progression in technology, I had been able to re-watch some of my childhood TV shows on Youtube.

And this is such a cheesy buildup to what I was going to say, but this feeling applies to people too.

Recently I have found my childhood friend after 12 years. And not just any friend - she was, quoting my nine-year-old self, "the bestest friend in the whole world" in my elementary school years.

We were pretty much inseparable during those two and a half years - we were always up for adventure and had relatively similar interests. I saw her as spontaneous, fun, and cool.
She could come up with the most wacky and fun things to do, such as making paper ties and selling them at her parents' company barbecue party (we never got to), having a secret hideout under pine trees, and performing a magic show, the list goes on.

When it was decided that my family was moving to Beijing, I was hanging out with her and I remember looking at her face long and hard as she was mindlessly gazing out into the distance; I was trying to keep her face forever in my memory. I wondered, am I ever going to see her again? Will this be my last time seeing her? How can I live without my bestest friend in the world?

This being a time before Internet and e-mail (it wasn't that they didn't exist, just that only the computer-savvier families had them at that point, and my family didn't have Internet yet), I had no way to contact her after I left. And I missed her so. I missed her in Beijing. I missed her in Korea. I might even add that thinking about her was one of the things that kept me sane during the rougher times in my Korean school.

But you get the point.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, I find her on Facebook and we actually exchanged e-mails. Asides from a year in a Korean middle school, she had stayed in Shanghai till the end of high school. She told me more about her life, I told her more about mine. But most importantly, she missed me too.

I don't know, it's an amazing feeling. Over the years I had kind of given up on the fact that I'd ever hear from her again. As more time went on I thought it would just remain a sweet memory from an earlier part of my life. I didn't think we'd actually find each other again.

So yeah.

Wisconsin Kendo Tournament

I wanted to write a post about the Wisconsin Kendo tournament, but somehow, I didn't really feel up to writing one entire post about it, I'm bound to talk far too long. So a short blurb it is.

To sum it up, the tournament went well for me personally. I won two matches, and I passed the 1-kyu promotion exam (while still messing up on a lot of stuff. I'm guessing the judges were generous enough to chalk everything up as nervousness). While I was up against people of similar rank when I beat them, it was the first time that I felt that I could get into the arena and feel that I possibly had a chance against someone at all. I could feel a difference in fighting compared to the past tournaments.

I also really enjoyed my final match against the Detroit team. I really don't want to sound like bragging but I had gotten two points for our team, and also won my individual match. Funnily enough, I actually don't remember much of the match - everything was a blur of adrenaline, kiai, and the red and white flags of the judges going up when my opponent and I scored points. People commented that the match was "beastly" - and I felt it, too. I could safely say that this was the most that I had ever put into a match. When I fight, I say that I put my 100%, but wondered if I really did afterwards; for this match, I felt that I actually had put everything on the line.

After struggling with kendo for so long and feeling like crap every time a member advances in rank while I stay the same, I feel that finally, I have seen a little bump in my skill level. I had never been athletic, and I know that in sports, it always takes years for me to achieve what others do in months. But it feels great to finally feel a little more competent.