go, gai

Sadly today was the last day of an eight week course I took at a local thai Buddhist temple (wat) to learn thai. The course, held every Sunday from 1-4, introduced me to basic thai; grammar, pronunciation, reading, and writing. The course was taught by a very dynamic woman named Sunan who (from what I gathered) has been teaching at Wat Mongkol (the temple) for at least a decade. She was highly entertaining, and very cute, often imploring myself and others in the group to get thai girlfriends.
Today the class was typically tangential. When I arrived I came into the midst of a party of thai people eating. A small buffet of food was set up in the middle of the room and the thais were exchanging verbal quips. Many of their jokes involved puns on words or other wordplay that went a bit over my head. Mark, a white dude in his early 30s, had recently come back from a trip to thailand and talked to us about how expensive his hotel was. A thai woman then went on to talk about how expensive thai taxis were becoming in the bangkok area. After the small potluck we went over some of the alphabet and I got to practice my fledgling writing abilities on the board in front of the room.
When I got home I watched my sixth fight with a friend (I hope to post all the pacific ring fights on youtube within the week) and got my haircut.
I've started taking a dietary supplement which I guess really denotes my stepping into the world of professional fighting/body sculpting. The dietary supplement is called Carnitine which according to Regnier will get rid of the "excess fat" along my hip area and provide me more power when sprinting or engaging in explosive activities. Carnitine (also known as L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine) is an amino acid that is made in the liver and kidneys, it is also found in meat and dairy products, but there is very little found in plant foods. Carnitine is needed for the burning of most fats. Thus, carnitine supplements are promoted by supplement companies for weight loss.
Along with my new dietary regiment is a bit more of an intense work out. It looks like I have an amateur fight coming up next month which I'm very excited about.

Nak Muay

I was much more nervous for this fight than my fifth. I'm not exactly sure why but I can make some guesses: it was at a different gym, my opponent was more experienced, and I wasn't sure if I had trained enough or hard enough. My opponent had nine fights and an amateur fight at Strikeforce (which he lost unfortunately). The fight was pretty active although it was only two rounds. I was excited that every time he caught my kick I turned my knee over and grabbed the back of his head escaping his grasp. That was probably the highlight of the fight for me. It was a very active two rounds. The first round was composed primarily of knee sparring while the second round had us doing more punching and kicking. I slammed him twice with leg kicks that were not attached to any punch combinations which I thought was funny. Mike is always yelling at us to set up our leg kicks.
In other news I've recently finished my first personal zine in a very long time. Its called Nak Muay and is composed of journal entries about my first two fights and my training during that period. The zine was a bit brutal and tedious to make. Not only was the editing process annoying (evidently my ability to puncuate a sentence correctly is lacking) but the lay out was much more difficult than I initially expected. I've made 200 copies and will be mailing them out pretty soon. If anyone wants a copy please let me know.