Certified ass kicker

As usual, it's been days since my last post, even with exciting things happening I still didn't get around to posting.

But I'm here now, so there's that.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week I had a special gun training course run by two police officers (with a third as translator) in which I learnt proper safety and stance and generally how to shoot like a cop slash commando.

It was fairly expensive (I wont mention how much as I think they are going to make it a regular thing, and I might look like a dick if it's less than I paid) but when I broke the cost down in my head, your getting nine hours of instruction and testing, ammunition, gun rental, gun range time, it turns out to be a pretty good deal.

And something that would be a whole lot harder to do back home.

So the three days training was only three hours per day, run from 1pm to 4pm for the three days so that I wouldn't miss any weight loss training.  However since I didn't get back until 4pm, and having missed the lunch window I would go out for lunch and then end up missing the first half of the afternoon session, which I wasn't too worried about.

The first day was in the gym where the three guys laid out the guns (two Glock's, a Berretta and an M4 Assault Rifle) however I was only training on the Glock 19.

They went through the different parts, how to take it apart to clean and check for faults.

Then he asked me (via the third guy, a translator) to hand him the gun that was in my holster, to see what I would do, and I think to my credit I didn't just hand it to him.  

Turns out I had to remove the magazine, slide the slide back, lock it in place, inspect it being empty, then show it was empty before giving the gun over, but keeping the magazine for myself.

Same thing with the stance, he wanted to see how I thought I should stand, and then adjust to how I should stand.

This was the biggest change for me, as I expected a diagonal stance with the gun out in both hands but to my right so I could look down the sight with my right eye.

Turns out the way he teaches (and apparently the way cops and SWAT do it) is to hold the gun directly out in front and use both eyes and "feel" where it would go.

Legs shoulder width apart, slight bend in the knees, lean forward, lock your wrist and shoulders.

Was pretty interesting stuff.

Then we practised the standing, kneeling and sitting stances, and went through what we would be doing when there was actual ammo in the gun.  And the various moves and actions to take.

I picked it up fairly quickly and they seemed happy with my progress.

Got a few weird looks from the other camp people when they come into the gym area and there's me aiming a gun at a door, with two other cops with sidearms and machine guns lying around.

Thursday was the first shooting day, and I did fairly well.

My accuracy grew as we went on, with my best results I think coming from the kneeling position.

At the end I asked if I could shoot a few rounds with the M4 (Always wanted to do that) and they said yes.

Turns out it had been altered however to shoot smaller 22 rounds, rather than the 5.56 they normally do.

Still, I hit five bulls-eyes at 30 meters using the built in sight, which I was pretty stoked with.

On the third and final day we went out and did basically the same thing again, although this time it was timed.

So I had 6 seconds to accurately shoot 5 rounds at a target with my arms out front as normal.

Then 10 seconds to do the same, but this time returning the gun back to my chest each time, like a deadly push up.

I probably missed two in ten, and by missed I mean hit the 1 to 5 point rings on the target rather than the smaller 6 to 10 point area.

One however was accurate enough to sever the wire that was used to move the target holder back and forth.  So there's that.

In the end I got a rating of 90% (450 out of 500) and got a nice certificate that says "Gold Medal" on it, which being an attention loving Gen-Yer, I was very pleased to have.

So with the shooting all done, today was going to be back to normal, until my phone crashed overnight.  I tried to charge it, but it kept flashing a ominous red light at me.

In the end it started working, but then it was saying it was charging, but the battery was going down.

But that meant that my alarm didn't go off to wake me up in the morning, which meant that I could have possibly slept until the coming Apocalypse.

So I missed morning training and breakfast.

Despite a deep seeded desire to skip the afternoon training, I managed to crawl out into the heat and into the gym, where I was promptly reminded why I didn't want to come out.

I'm just over being hot, sweaty and sore.

But I've only got 12 days left, so I guess I have to man up right?

Since this is getting a bit long, I will say that in the Krav Maga session I got a palm strike to the nose, which made it tingle, but luckily didn't bleed, and then had a very salty lemon crusted fish for dinner, which was acceptable.

Sleep now, Krav Maga is on for Saturday morning... however Gerry mentioned there might be a non-camp guy coming in who is a bit.... enthusastic, so I think it's just bag smashing tomorrow... which will probably ruin my already sore wrist.

However speaking of wrists, turns out one of the boxers broke his wrist when he punched a guys head in sparring the other week and has been training with it.

And another guy crashed his scooter and broke his forearm.

So it's injuries all around... and I've got this little scratch on my leg, so we are all suffering.

Anyhoo, good night.

Oh wait, there is a few videos of me looking badass.

Everybody's looking forward to the weekend, weekend...

Monday update and I have suffered from Mondayitis yet again.
However for me it's a case of waking up on Sunday around 2pm, then not being able to sleep until 4am Monday morning, and then missing morning training.

However, rewinding back to Saturday, I had Krav Maga in the morning which was nice and fun as always and there was a few new people who didn't turn up today, so I think it was a one off.

The highlight of Saturday was two of the guys from the camp were going to have an organised fight in the same bar that the last guy fought it, down in Walking Street.
I wasn't to hyped about going, so I thought I would wing it and see where I ended up.

However on the way out to the bike to leave I see Barbara getting all geared up and I remembered she was having a sparring session in the ring, so I stop by and watch her get beaten up by another woman.

She holds her own, but the opponent figures out her tactics and throws a few good hits.  Three rounds and they are all done.

I get on the bike and head into the Thepprasit Rd Night Market, which I had read some good things about, plus it's only half way to Pattaya so I can bail and not be too far from home.

Weave the bike past dozens of people to the parking lot which is thoughtfully located on the other side of the market, requiring you to ride between stalls.  Genius.
I had earlier decided to grab dinner here, so I do a lap of the food stalls and scope out what's available.  And I settled on Spring Rolls, Corn fritters and Taro balls in a sweet sauce.
All in all, pretty meh.  Should have looked harder and found a classic Pad Thai or something.

After the food I go for a walk around the stalls, weaving through the hundreds of people and about half way in I conclude that there is only about five unique stalls, all copied fifty times.
The sunglasses stall, the knifes and lighters stall, the DVD stall, and so on.  With all blank space made up by women's clothes.

After I walked around the entire place I head back to the bike, scooter around the corner and head to Swensons for some dessert.
For those who don't know, it's an ice-cream shop similar to Pancake Pallor, with ice-cream instead of pancakes.
I get the Oreo Sundae and it was delicious.  Although after I ordered I saw the Oreo Waffle Sundae and slightly regretted my decision.

Checking the clock I see that it's about 10 minutes until the fight time, and I'm about 10 minutes away, so I figure that means I should go.
Back on the bike heading down the main road and taking what I hope to be the correct turn.  I've only done this trip once before, following someone, during the day, and it's now 9pm and quite dark.

Swing across the double lane road and park on the side of the road between hundreds of other scooters and walk down to the bar.  This time however I don't get the chorus of "hello sir" because I walk in like I know what I'm doing and where I'm going.
The two fighters and the third guy they hang out with are down the back so I go check on them, have  a chat, turns out since everything is run on Thailand time, they haven't even "checked in" yet.

I find the bar that another guy from the camp is at, get a Soda water and wait.
During this waiting time I lost 10 straight games of Connect Four.  I swear, it's like these bar girls do this for a living.

An hour and a half later the first fight with our guy starts.  The muscle bound New Zealander, shaved head, covered in tattoos (that also writes children's books) is in the ring all psyched up.
The bell sounds, the traditional Thai music kicks off through the ancient speakers and the fight starts.

And NZ comes out swinging.  The fight ends up being brutal.  Gloves, Elbows, Knee's, Kicks... damn.  I would have surrendered after one round.
Second round kicks off and the Thai must have been given his orders to win because his legs are kicking, but our guy is blocking really well.
Third and final round and NZ manages a good one two combo that lands to the jaw and drops the Thai fighter.
The entire bar who had been standing and cheering burst into cheers.  Was a great fight to watch.

The second fight from our guys is a straight up Western Boxing match and it's fairly sedate compared to the last one.  Lots of ducking and weaving, jabs and straights.
In the end it was announced a Draw, although the Ref and other fighter both told our guy he had won, however due to too many people betting on our guy, it was called a Draw so they didn't loose money.

For the Draw he get's $20, and NZ winner gets $40.  Not exactly a way to make a living out here.

After the end of the second match I bid my leave and decided to go for a walk and see if any of these shops were unique, or if they were all just copies of the Night Market... and take a guess.
Same lighters, same DVD's and same watches.
Then again, I guess people don't come to Pattaya for the knick knacks, they come for the knock knocks if you know what I mean.

Doubled back to the scooter and headed off home.  Got into the room around Midnight.
A pretty good night overall I guess... except for the shopping.
Surprise, no one is getting any gifts :(

Sunday was a down day.  Watching Arrested Development and sleeping, that's really the only things of note.

Today, well... I slept through the morning session, and managed the circuit training in the afternoon but before I started Muay Thai, I felt quite crampy in the stomach area, so called it a night on Muay Thai and returned to bed via a shower.

Felt better by the time Krav Maga came around so hopped out of bed for that, and it delivered good fun as always.  Bit of knife, bit of gun.  I did however get two thumbs to the right eye, and an elbow to the teeth.  That sucked...

Anyway, dinner was fish, water was consumed and now I'm here.
..... uummmm... good night I guess.

Miscalculation win

So as my Facebook friends would know, I weighed in on Thursday (or Wednesday, I don't know anymore... time has no dominion over me here) and I was an awesome 124.6kg.

And I was super happy with that, because I was under 125kg, which is a nice round number when counting down from 145.

But then, on the actual weigh in day (Changed to Friday after the revolution) I clocked in at 123kg.

How awesome is that?  Very lots indeed yes.

There was a time last week and the week before when I thought I wouldn't pass 125kg at all, which wasn't a very good feeling.
But somehow I managed to loose 5.2kg in a week, and here we are.

It's Mitko's last week, so I promised I would make it to all the Krav Maga sessions so that he wasn't stuck with any bag sessions, which can be hell on the hands and arms.  And promise kept.
Although now my right forearm hurts and has a few bruises, which matches well with my right shoulder, right Extensor carpi radialis longus muscle (boom, anatomy), and my right pinkie when punching... so pretty much my right arm hurts.

There is a fight in the same bar as last time tonight at 9pm, and I've told some people I'm going, but I really don't feel like it.
I don't like the hussle and bussle of Asia, it's all too impersonal and commercial and fake.
I was going to hit up the night market afterwards (which is an even more concentrated example of fake commercialness) to see if I could find some gifts, or maybe another Vincent van Gogh forgery for my art collection.

Another thing that's been on my mind for a while has been the smell.  The unique smell of south east Asia.  Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia all have the same few smells.

The smell of roadside food being cooked, be it roast chicken or duck, maybe a soup or a squid.  It almost always smells fantastic, so you take a deep breath in.

And then the wind changes and you get 'that' Asia smell.  The stale water and sewerage smell.  If you have been here, you know the smell.  Like salty poop that's been sitting in stagnant stale urine for days until the wind changed, picked it up from the entirely too well ventilated sewer system and threw it right down your nose.

The Ying and Yang of smell.  Food and Poop, the Ying and Yang of the digestive system.

That's my thought of the day.

Two final notes.  First up, I did a possibly stupid thing today.  I traded a weekend at a beach side resort (with buffet breakfast) for a three day training course in addition to my current training.
Mum was going to spot me a weekend at the same resort they stayed at so I could at least have some relaxation on my "holiday", however I traded that money in for a weapons training course.
Run by an ex-army police officer here, it's a one on one course that Christian organised for me on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday next week from 1 to 4 each day.

Not entirely sure what it will entail, but I know the first day is safety lessons, which I agree is very important when using guns.
So yeah, traded luxury for training, but hell, I can go to a resort in Australia, can't do this back home.

The other thing is I've been signed up for a small adventure race in August a few weeks after I get back.  I was signed up by a "friend" Jodi (Jody... I'm not entirely sure) who recently did a 24hr Enduro event.

Luckily this one is just a 5km night race with a bunch of obstacles like cargo nets, barb wire, ice baths... that kinda thing.  I'm going to embed the video below so you can get a preview of my future pain.

Alright, well, peace out y'all.

I was only nineteen......

Kilo's down that is... 126kg today, and as my pre-departure weight clocked in at 145kg, that makes me minus 19 kilograms.
I might hit 125kg yet....
I wonder who had that in the betting pool.

A mid-week update this time, just had lunch (chicken, surprise surprise) and waiting for the afternoon session which I will kick off with an interval jog.

I remembered something that happened last week that I should probably mention for all those prospective people coming over, Visa.

I had managed to get a 60 day tourist Visa before I came over, a very nice company VisaLink did all the hard work, I just gave them money and documents.  However, with my final date here being 85 days, I needed a short extension once I got here.

So, last Friday, with less than thirty days to go, I got on my bike and rode down to the Immigration Office at Jomthien. Arriving at 11:55am... forgetting that they close for lunch (and to clear their backlog of people waiting) from 12 to 1.

I got the one page form I had to fill in and went for a walk back up the alley to a place that does photos and photocopies and got the passport copied and my photo taken, and filled in the form.  Luckily remembering to grab the business card for Komat Group as I had to write out the address for where I was staying.

Still had some time to kill after that so I went and got a very good Thai massage which hurt like hell at the time, but felt good afterwards, and conveniently it takes an hour, which meant no wasted time sitting around.

Headed back to the office, was the second person called, gave them the paperwork, sat back down, waited maybe five minutes, got my passport back and bam, all done.
It was crazy easy, and only cost 1900 Baht (as printed on the form, so no "random fees" were required).

Other than that, I finally managed to record some Krav Maga gun disarms last night, which will be available just below.
So that's it really.

According to my new favorite website days.to/9-july/2015 I have 22 days left... three weeks and one day.
Really is getting to the pointy end.

War, war never changes

Another week down, and only twenty five days to go.

The weight loss wasn't very good this week,  To the point that I gained weight, however since it was muscle weight, I guess it's a good thing, but when society cares about flat numbers, it doesn't do much to motivate me.

I blame the baby fist sized Amino Acid tablets I've been choking on for the last little while.  Got to put it to them, they work... a little to well.

So my muscle soreness last less time which is good, and my body isn't consuming muscle for energy, which is also good, but it's been putting it on.  So I'm up 800g of muscle, which people will tell you is less mass than 800g of fat, because muscle is denser.

So, all things considered it was a "win" of a week, but not to much when I need to be less than 109kg to race in the same weight class as Josh and Karyn in Go-Karts.

I gave Krav Maga a skip this week as well.  I needed a break from the Radius bone shattering blocks we have been doing recently, and in skipping on Saturday morning session I condemned Mitko to a session of strikes on the bags, which is the hardest kinda boring thing you do in Krav, sorry.

But I will be back on board this coming week, starting tomorrow.  Back into the two to three session's a day, with a mix of Western Boxing and Muay Thai, with the Krav in the evenings on alternate nights.

Mum and Dad are safely home and regaling their friends with exotic stories of the orient, and to that end you can see the Championship Fight that we went and saw on YouTube, and you can spot us in the front(ish) row around the 1 minute mark, during the first fight highlights.

I'm already making on plans on how I'm going to change my social life for the better when I get home, and I think a slow cooker is in my future.

Ok, well even though it's our Sunday off, I'm going to do a short workout to get the blood flowing.

So a bit of a shorter post this week, as the title says... nothing has really changed.
Same same, but different.

The Twilight Zone

Picture if you will, a man standing at the corner of Pain Street and Thailand Boulevard.  He has spent his time in a six by nine cell tormented by his captors day after day, until one day the sky opens up and the fifth dimension leaks into every pore of his body.  He floats down the street in the way a brick would not, until he reaches the Resort Alley.  He has just entered - The Twilight Zone.

Normally when I wake up, I'm treated to an hour and a bit of training, and then an egg white omelet, however, in this weird Thailand I find myself in today, I wake to be treated to a buffet breakfast containing actual factual toast, and then a leisurely swim in a pool.  How crazy is that.

In the words of 4chan... "pic related".

Well it's been over a week since I posted and everything has been trucking along nicely.

Mum and Dad are in Thailand (hence being able to hang out at a resort on a Sunday) and they came by the Gym on Friday to see how everything is going, and I wasn't really able to put on a good show as I was feeling a bit unwell in the gut, so I only managed a meager two rounds of Muay Thai on the pads.

Did however have Krav Maga afterwards which made up for it a bit.

I went shooting again, this time at a different place, and I'm now confident that the first place wasn't using full loads in their bullets, as the .45 really had a kick in it this time.  Still managed to destroy a target or two, which is the fun part.

On the drive to the new place I saw a sign for yet a third shooting club, so I decided to check it out, compare and contrast and all that.  So I followed the roads, sometimes at an intersection with no sign I always managed to pick the right way, except for once, but I realised pretty quickly.  And after going for what felt like half an hour, the place was shut.

So I doubled back and went to the original choice.  They also had Archery, Rock Climbing, Fishing, Horse Riding, Water Zorbing... but I just wanted a gun.
They had some Smith and Wessons, and some Glocks.  Might try a 9mm before I come home.

Had a weigh in on Friday afternoon (as Barbara wasn't there Friday morning) and I was 500g up on my weight from the week before, however that was after breakfast and lunch, so I didn't pay much attention.
Instead I re-weighed in on Saturday morning before Krav and I was infact down from last week, but not by much.  And considering I had a few cheat meals (A day with Mum and Dad) I consider it a pretty good week.

Tonight we are heading to Max Muay Thai for a championship fight, which will be pretty awesome.  Mum and Dad haven't seen a proper fight before, so it will be something new for them.

I've started making a few lists of things I'm going to do when I get back.  Mainly things I'm going to buy, because what says "HORRAY I MADE IT!!!!" quite like spending a few thousand dollars on life's little extras.  I see a trip to IKEA in my future.

Have fun everyone.