As you may or may not be wondering what the title of this blog means, I will force you to view the answer to this non-question (even if only from your peripheral vision). K-1 was a kickboxing league of sorts in Japan (it is no longer). The fights would be aired on television much like boxing matches in the US before pay-per-view stole all the fun. These matches were quite popular when I first moved to Japan in 2002. That's the end of the preamble...now on the story.
I lived in the prefectural teacher housing in a small 1-bedroom apartment on the first floor, but that is, of course, another story. Several other foreign ALTs (Assitant Language Teachers) lived in the same housing development, in the same building, and in the same stairwell as I did. The guy who lived above me was a Kiwi named Pike, who is a really great guy and still a good mate of mine. In about my second month in Japan, I entered a Judo tournament and wound up getting tossed on just shy of my head, which would be my right shoulder. For my efforts, I was carried away in true VIP style with flashing lights and sirens. The result of my one and only Judo tournament was a permanent trophy that took its shape in the form of a dislocated collar bone. To showcase my trophy, I walked around with my arm in a sling for about a month.
Around the same time, Pike injured his hand playing basketball and had to wear a brace of some sort. One evening after work, I went up to visit my mate, Pike, and as I knocked on his door, I noticed that his apartment number was 204. Even thought I had looked at his apartment number numerous times before this one, I had a eurethra moment. His apartment number was 204, and since I lived below him, mine was 104! Now for those of you not familiar with Chinese and Japanese culture, the last few sentences have no meaning at all, so I will explain it to you. In China and Japan, the word for the number 4 sounds like the word for death; therefore, it is a very unlucky number and most apartments and buildings do not have any floors or rooms with the number 4 in them. Back to the story, so I had a eurethra moment and shared my new discovery with Pike while exclaiming that this must be the reason that the two of us had been inured. Upon sharing this information with him, he looked up at me, grinned and said, "Yep. It's a long, hard road on the path to becoming a K-1 fighter."
As both of us were also studying Okinawan karate at the time, his statement had a unique significance and humor, and it has stuck with me ever since. We're all on our own individual paths to becoming K-1 fighters, or experts in our fields of choice, and every experience that finds us helps to shape, train and push us one step closer to that ultimate destination. These experiences, or our everyday lives, are the path, and how we walk it is seen in our reactions and the choices we make.
Unfortunately for you, the reader, this blog is mainly focused on my path, so you may or may not find it of interest, unless of course you are on the path to becoming a K-1 fighter.
Friday, February 13, 2015
The Meaning of Life, or This Blog, At Least
Monday, February 23, 2009
The Greatest...Video?
Well, the video submission deadline has come and gone, and I got mine in just under the wire. I had a couple of iterations at the developmental stage of the video concept. At first, I thought I would start off with my qualifications, in bullet point format, and no name and then cut to a video from my high school football days (that's American football for anyone outside the US and Canada). In the video in question, our team was kicking off, and I sped down the field and made a flying tackle of the ball carrier. Just after the tackle, the cameraman said, "Is that Fabrizio? Fabriziooooooooo!!" I thought it would have been an interesting way to start off the video, a real attention getter. The main issue with that concept was getting the video from VHS to digital format. I only had access to one VCR, and it was hungry.
After that fell through, I re-read the application requirements: must be entertaining and engaging, tell why you're the best person for the job, and demonstrate your knowledge of the islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Ever since I was in uni (university for North Americans), my roommate and I would sing along to songs and change the lyrics to reference people in the room or situations at the time. When I moved to Japan, I found my true calling in the karaoke bars. There was no mistaking the lyrics at these places. I could sing whatever I wanted, and there was no annoying musician reminding everyone that what I was saying was not exactly the original. While I was in Miyako, I wrote a tribute to the island to the tune of Kokomo by the Beach Boys. I call it Miyakomo. If you want to know how it goes, you will have to sneak in to a karaoke session with me sometime. Anyway, I was trying to think of something that would be entertaining and engaging for the audience, and I thought that the creativity of Miyakomo would work well. The only problem was that Miyakomo really didn't have any relevance to Hamilton Island or Queensland. On the night that I re-read the application requirements, I went to bed straight after reading them, so I couldn't sleep because I kept trying to think of a new concept. That's when it hit me. I wanted something about Queensland, and I remembered a song by Dada called Dizz Knee Land. The chorus of the song is "I'm going to Dizz Knee Land!" I quickly realized that this could easily be changed to "I'm going to Queensland!" The tune was catchy enough, so all I needed to do was come up with the verse. I also tweaked the chorus a bit to make it more appealing, "Let's go to Queensland!" After that, I went right to sleep. The next day, I did some research and chose some key places and sights in Queensland and the Whitsundays. I reckoned that I could start the song from the broad perspective of the state of Queensland and then zoom in to the Whitsundays and Hamilton Island. If you're curious, the lyrics are below:
Brisbane, Gold Coast, Great Barrier Reef
Let's go to Queensland!
74 islands in the Coral Sea
Let's go to Queensland!
Diving, turtle, bird, and whale watching
Let's go to Queensland!
Heart Reef, Hill Inlet, White Haven Beach!
Let's go to Queensland!
Here's a brief breakdown of why I chose these lyrics. Brisbane is the capital of Queensland, so it's an obvious starter. The Gold Coast isn't exactly near the Whitsundays, but it's not far off, so it shows movement from Brisbane toward the Whitsundays, which are on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). That's the first verse.
The Whitsundays are a group of 74 islands in the Coral Sea, enough said.
Being on the GBR, diving is a given, and there are quite a few opportunities to see turtles on the GBR. I saw several when I went diving off of Cairns a few years back. The portion of Hamilton Island that is a National Park, which takes up about 70% of the island, is great for bird watching. Whales also migrate through the area in mid-winter, which is exactly the time the position starts. Whales migrate past Miyako-jima in winter as well. I never got to go out on a boat to look for them, but I saw them from the shore once. That's one thing I would have liked to have done while I lived there. Anyway, since July is when the job starts and is the ideal time for whale watching, I decided it was also the ideal addition to the verse.
The last verse is a smattering of famous sites in the Whitsundays: the heart-shaped reef, Hill Inlet and White Haven go together as Hill Inlet is at the northern end of White Haven Beach, and no trip to the Whitsundays would really be complete without visiting White Haven Beach as it is most likely one of the most famous beaches in Australia, or at least in the Whitsundays.
That's the explanation of the lyrics. I won't bore you with the details of the 20+ takes on the recording of the audio for the video, but it was all done right here on my laptop using the microphone in my headpiece for talking on Skype. I shot the video completely on my own which meant doing several takes to make sure that my head wasn't cut off during filming, and then I edited, cut, spliced, and overlaid the audio on my mom's desktop using the software that came with her video camera. It turned out alright, but I would have liked to have the sound match with the movement of my lips and hands a bit more.
Well, I hope you enjoyed my Queensland music video. If you haven't seen it yet, you can check it out here.
