Wanna know me? Part 2: COMICS. Specifically, Batman.

So yeah, I am a comic book fanatic. I read comic books every time I have the chance. My preferred comic book publisher would be DC comics. I love the stories of DC and their heroes. If you ask me, I'll choose DC over Marvel any day of  the week. But my comic book fandom revolves more around Batman. Why? Because he's the best! Well, to me of course. Batman is the epitome of justice. He doesn't let someone go unpunished. But his brand of punishment doesn't go too far, unlike others. He believes that everyone deserves a second chance to change their ways and to become better. He doesn't kill them off, its not that easy. The Dark Knight shows the world that killing is never the option. He doesn't have the right to kill, no one does. You are not above anyone else to have the right to kill, even if you're someone from the government. 

I can't really buy comics because here in Iloilo, you rarely find good DC comics. So, I usually download and use a Comic Book Reader. If I don't read comics, I usually research in the internet about them. That's it for this post. So byeeeeeeeeeeee! 

Wanna know me? Part 1: Gaming

You want to know stuff about me? Well, I'm not an interesting person. I'm just your average teenage boy living his life the way he wants. But what do I do  in that certain "life"? For starters, I'm a gamer. I enjoy playing games. Gaming became a big part of my life. Its like I can't live a day without gaming. I only play games with a good story and if its online where I can enjoy playing it with my friends. People say too much playing of video games is bad. It probably is, but I can control myself... Well, sort of... 

 So yeah, you can call me an addict for I care. I'm me, and gaming is a part of ME. 

So yeah, my friend here, Junvi de Ramos decided to take a selfie while I was playing.

From White to Yellow

More blogs. Yey! So for this blog, I'm going to talk about my promotion, from white belt to yellow belt.
So my promotion day was 3 days after the Mangahan Tournament. We had little time to prepare of the promotion but the good thing was, that I was a white belt, and the promotion from white to yellow is very easy compared to higher belts. So our forms, or Poomsae in Korean, was pretty basic.

In the picture above, I was practicing with my friends, Nikolai Valera from SVFS (Now in San Augustine) and Zachary Pijuan from Westbridge. I forget to mention about Zach representing Westbridge in my last blog.

The promotion day was on May 21, 2014. It was held by one of the gyms owned by the head instructor of the Taekwondo team in WVSU, Sir Richard Gabayoyo, in Buenavista, Guimaras. Our proctor was Sir Jun Diasnes. Our gym instructor, Lawrence Diasnes, told us stories on how strict Sir Jun can be. So I was frightened to actually confront Sir Jun, but when it was the promotion day itself, he looked kind, he was even making jokes. I didn't expect that from him.

When we began the promotion, I thought I was going to be scared. But for the first time, I was actually calm. Hell, I even felt confident. I knew I was ready for the promotion, so I had nothing to worry about. Though, I did make a mistake in one of my forms, but I guess it wasn't a big mistake because even Sir Jun commented that my forms was great during our interview. Speaking of which, during the interview that is where I got scared. I actually had to study a bit about Taekwondo to be prepared. I was expecting hard, unanswerable questions, but what I got were easy ones. He simply asked for the 5 tenets of Taekwondo, reasons why I joined, and he told me that my forms were "very good". I was happy to hear what he said. My friends told me not to worry, they told me that no fails the first promotion test, so I felt reassured. At the end of the promotion, Sir Jun announced that all of us passed, we all cheered and gave praise to ourselves after hearing that.

After the promotion, we all went back to the port and rode a pump boat home. It was tiring yet fulfilling day for all of us.

My First Fight

Yey! Another blog! Okay, I'm not really fond of making blogs but for this blog, I'm going to talk about my first Taekwondo match. 

May 19. 2014, tournament day. Our team entered the 1st Mangahan Taekwondo Tournament, which was held in San Miguel, Jordan, Guimaras. To me, this was the most frightening experience of my life. I was still new to the whole match thing and I didn't know if I was ready. There were a lot of contestants that entered that tournament. Players that came from different Taekwondo gyms all over Panay, well, not really. But there was a team from Boracay and I think it was also their first match.

And yeah, my brother decided to take a photo of me eating a hard boiled egg. I waited a very, very, VERY long time. It took them 6 hours to announce my name for the next match. During the waiting time I felt a little relaxed, until my name was called up, and I felt like my soul just went out of my body. What shocking to me is when I realized I was matched up with my teammate from our summer class. I actually felt comfortable, knowing that he would be my opponent since we've been practicing the whole summer. We always had sparring sessions, so I sort of knew what his game style was. I felt confident, I believed in myself and my own skills. I set it in my head that I CAN win this fight, unfortunately I lost. But it was not in vain. My friends told me for a beginner, I was pretty good. They said I had potential, and I was very happy to hear all the positive feed backs. Especially from my opponent. He was pretty impressed himself.

After the tournament, we ended the day by exploring a bit. Bought some mango flavored treats, mango themed souvenirs and ate pizza topped with mangoes. That day was one of the happiest days in my life and I don't plan of forgetting everything that had happened that day.

Taekwondo: Way of the Hand and Foot

Okay, I started playing Taekwondo, like what, 3 years ago? Anyway in that span of 3 years I STOPPED. I got bored, it wasn't really my "type" of sport back then. But, I was recruited by Daniella Agacer this summer to join the team. So I said to myself, why not? So I gave it a try. At first I felt socially awkward. I didn't know anyone around me, they were complete strangers to me. WERE. As time went by, I got close to them, I started to slowly consider them as, somewhat, another family. I got so attached to them, that when school was about to start, I became really bummed. Its been 3 months since the last time I saw them, and I am DYING to see them again. Our summer team was composed of different schools. We had players from West Visayas State University, Saint Vincent Ferrer Seminary, Hua Siong, Ateneo de Iloilo, and of course Assumption Iloilo. These people, from these different schools, eventually became family to me. 

The Taekwondo Family.