I am so bad at blogging.

It has been awhile since I've written anything.  And now I will document my life before I forget and lose this chapter of my life completely.

My Wushu Club, West Coast Chinese Martial Arts has finally opened up a permanent location in Richmond, BC, Canada.  In 11 years this is the first time we have a place to call our own (not to mention hanging things up on the walls).  We have been renovating it for the last 2 months, most of it being cleaning (vacant for years), and it is a garage that we're warping into a gym.

The first time I saw the place, most of the walls were covered in cobwebs.  One wall was several inches thick in it.  We purchased a shop vac only to clog it several times.  Some of the wood structuring hollowed out by carpenter ants.  Several nests/ant hills in different rooms and millions of spider eggs.  This was truly a "fixer upper".  I was pulling down cobwebs and killing ants the first few weeks and even though we've cleaned the place bottom to top (even smashed through the ceiling to get between floors), we still find many spiders and ants.

This was during the construction of the extra layer of drywall.

This is after we killed the majority of the bugs.  We took down the walls and ceiling in this corner to find thousands more.  I am not exaggerating when I say I say on a ladder sucking ants with the vacuum for 10 minutes as they rushed out of their hideout dozens at a time (after spraying).

Same room once we painted the walls and put some hardwood floor in.

We've done a lot of sanding, priming, painting, building, smashing, killing, cleaning.  Everything.  My coach Bruce Fontaine has been basically living there the whole time trying to get everything done.  And we're just about done.  We may be able to open next week.

As for the rest of my life.  I have been injured since December from a number of injuries mostly being between my ankles, shins and knees.  It has slowly gotten better and I am back in training without some of the moves that require good joints.  Going into Sanshou, which is a lot of fun.  I just had a sparring session with some of the other Vancouver clubs (I'll post videos when I get them).  I am still planning to go to Brazil in July to compete at the Pan-American games.

The film industry has been very slow here during the last few months.  Very few auditions compared to previous years although it has been getting much better this last month.  I have gotten much better at auditions, and have gotten callbacks for every audition I've been to this year (about a dozen).  Short listed many times but always just short.  This surprises me and in some ways frustrating because I was starting to get very good at accepting being rejected.  I feel like I've learned an incredible amount about the industry this year and it feels like I was completely clueless before even though I've been involved for so many years.

I have been planning to make a short film with several of my friends interested in pursuing careers in the industry.  It has been in the making since December (my injury), and I keep finding ways to postpone it.  Not all bad though since the reasons have always been to make it better.  Hopefully we'll be able to get around to doing it soon.

That's about all I can remember of the last few months.

Life's hard.  High pressure brings out the diamond in me.