Time Formatting, Karate

I actually forgot to out-and-out say yesterday that Thursday was not a good time for this employer, so he asked to do it Friday. Well, turns out, while there are buses that run every hour and sometimes every half-hour, there isn't a 10:00 or 11:00, and the 12:00 wouldn't get me there in time. I asked all my Torontonian contacts and all my Guelphite contacts, but everybody was... you know... working that day.

So... I had to ask to do it next week. That really hurt, but he seemed fine with it. Me and this guy have exchanged messages 14 times now.

I was so stressed out that after all the options were expended and I was forced to reschedule, that I just fell asleep. The reason I'm up now, at 3:00 AM isn't because I'm up late. It's because I'm up early. I found dinner waiting for me in the kitchen, Mom and Duncan having both gone to bed, and me having slept through dinner. Delicious chicken, broccoli, and zucchini stir fry on rice!

Last Wednesday, in karate, another dojo came in to do a class for us. The students from that dojo also came and practiced. Remember how I said I'd missed out on experiencing this, awhile back, and that I would have been interested in seeing the product of another dojo?

Well, it was interesting. Apparently different karate dojos do different curriculums, but not every dojo is unique. There are like... several curriculums, and the individual dojo chooses which it wants to do. So like, if I did wind up living in Toronto, it's not unrealistic to think I could find a dojo with the same curriculum as the one I'm in now, but not every dojo would have it.

This other dojo does a different curriculum, and we did a variety of different drills and he taught us some fairly universal self-defenses. Our head sensei took over partway through, so I guess that means the students from the other dojo had a similar privilege in being taught by the sensei of another school.

I wanted to compare skill levels between the students of the two schools, but this other place only had advanced ranks, while we only had one advanced rank in our class. From what I could tell, there wasn't a huge difference in ability.

As far as the class went, it's true the drills and stretches were a bit different, but it all amounted to about the same in the end, I think. The head sensei from the other school seemed capable both as a martial artist and as a teacher, but it's not like he showed up ours, either. Both schools seemed to be overall equal.

What is interesting is that the two blackbelts from the other dojos were wearing whitebelts. Huh? It had a black stripe through the middle like an advanced green or advanced brown has a black stripe through the center. Or how a junior blackbelt has a white stripe through the centre.

It's stripe was frayed, though, like the belt had just been worn out so much that it had lost most of it's colour around the edges?

And in referencing a person with a lot of strength that class my head sensei said, "I don't care if you're a ninth degree, tenth degree whitebelt..."

Um... degrees are only given to blackbelts, right? And there's only three degrees... right?

Aw, man, I don't want to become super awesome, then revert to the title I started with!