Ian Benedict

The semester draws to its midpoint and so things start to get really hectic these days. Having a multitude of assignments and tests each week is stressful, but it tends to keep you on your toes.

Kendo-wise, practices are going really well this semester. There is an upcoming intercollegiate tournament at York University this weekend, and so I am very psyched about that. There is so much that you can learn from each of your practice matches that it is surreal. You learn a lot about yourself and your tendencies, in addition to your opponent’s. Even though I don’t have any high expectations for placing well in the tournament, just getting the notch on my belt and having that experience will be fruitful to my Kendo.

I haven’t really been playing playing many games due to not having the time. I may sometimes hop on Kongregate to do the latest card challenge for their Kongai collectible card game. One game I have just started playing, however, is Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for the Nintendo DS. It seems to be the typical Castlevania fare (2D platformer with vampire slaying goodness), but the game is much more difficult than its other DS counterparts. This is good as far as I’m concerned since I found the previous ones to be too easy.

Other than the above, I haven’t really been up to much lately. This should change once the midterms blows over.

I haven’t really had much of a chance to write anything now with school and work in full force.

I did have my Kendo grading a couple of weeks ago. I was granted the rank of 4th kyu (Yay!). This rank is basically one of the beginner ranks in Kendo, so it’s nothing to be too proud of. I’m just happy I can finally wear the armour now. Wearing it for the first time, I was really disoriented because the headpiece was on really tight and it also cuts off peripheral vision. Additionally, the gloves provide almost no protection for the wrists, so I last left practice with my right wrist in a shade of purple.

The guitar playing is going well. I’ve been playing around a lot with my ZOOM console and have been getting tones very close to some of my favourite bands. My bassist friend and I have finally starting jamming again this year, and with a drummer coming soon, we’ll be able to get some good play time going in the summer.

But yeah, other than that, I haven’t been doing much besides school and work. The mental fatigue has been setting in for a while now, so I tend to leave my Sundays free to sleep in the entire day. At least I’ll catch a little break this upcoming weekend when I head up to a cottage with some friends.

Alright, so exams are finally over (YAY!), however I start my full-time job next week (….) so there’s not that much room for relaxation. As well, I start summer classes the week after next, so I’ll probably be even more swamped with work in the summer than the past semester. As for plans for this week, I have a bunch of things that have been on my to do/play/watch list for a long while now.

I picked up this neat little ZOOM G7.1ut multi-effects console to spice up my guitar playing a bit. It also has a built-in USB interface to make connectivity with the PC a breeze. I’ve played around a bit with some of the settings and parameters during exam week, but nothing too much into detail. I figure that once I can play fairly well, I’ll at least have an outlet to record my playing and post it online.

Other than that, not really much has been going on. Kendo’s going well, with my grading coming up this Saturday. I did happen to catch Harold & Kumar 2 last week. It was pretty good, but I’m not sold on whether it was better than the first one. On that note, I’ll leave you with the hilarious poem Kumar recited to the girl he likes (I guess this would be a spoiler, so read at your own risk):

I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

- David Feinberg

Exam week has started. My first exam is this Wednesday, with the rest not far behind. Studying is going well, though I’ll admit I’ve had a lot on my mind and therefore the studying isn’t as efficient as it could be. As well, I have a Kendo grading coming up in a few weeks. If I pass, I’ll be granted the 5th kyu rank, which is the lowest one. Ah well, gotta start small I guess.

I finally got myself to create a Twitter account, which you can view here. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a micro-blogging service. Basically, you can post really bite-sized blog posts fairly quickly from any cell phone or computer. Some of the common uses for this service are to post things you’ve been doing on a daily basis and to keep in frequent touch with people that you are following as well as your own followers. This is what I intend to use it for, so I hope I can keep at it. You may also notice that there’s now a Twitter widget on the sidebar of this site. If you happen to have an account, please feel free to follow me (don’t worry, it’s not as stalker-ish as it sounds). For those who don’t, try it out!

Well, midterms are finally over and I have a bit of free time at last.

Kendo has been going well so far. I’ve been a bit disappointed with my lack of stamina during the last couple of practices, but I intend to rectify it quickly with a lot of cardiovascular exercise. As well, the skin has started peeling from under my feet, so I guess my initiation into Kendo is slowly beginning. Other than that, practices have been pretty fun so far. I’ve been contemplating whether to look into getting my Gi and Hakama around now or wait till the end of the semester.

Guitar practice is slowly coming along as well. I’ve decided to stop randomly playing riffs from different songs and work on mastering the basic techniques. Some of the techniques I’m working on include things like vibrato, legato, palm muting, etc. For the record, if you’re looking into learning to play the guitar, I highly recommend John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline DVD. It’s very good at putting you on the right track to becoming an expert guitar player.

In other news, it seems that Nine Inch Nails has released a new album called Ghosts I-IV. Now, I haven’t really heard much from them in the past but I’m fairly interested in this release. More specifically, I’m interested in how they’re releasing the album. They’ve decided that they’re going to release the first of the 4 CD set, which contains 9 tracks, for free for people to download and enjoy. If you are interested in buying the album, you can pay $5 and download all 4 discs containing 36 tracks in total. Both downloads come complete with album artwork and some extras like wallpapers and avatars. NIN isn’t the first to try this method of content delivery, with Radiohead being the innovators here with their album In Rainbows where they let you pay whatever you felt the album was worth, even if it meant you paid nothing. Personally, I think $5 is a steal for a full album and that NIN is definitely on the right track to finding the right balance for the cost of music.

The long and excruciating semester continues. However, I have managed to take some of my free time and dedicate it to a new interest which I’ve always wanted to pursue, Kendo.

First off, let me go into a little bit into Kendo. Kendo is a Japanese martial art. It is a fencing art, where each kendoka (Kendo practitioner) wields a shinai (bamboo sword) and attempts to strike the opposing kendoka in one of four target areas. These targets include the men (head), do (body), kote (hands) and tsuki (throat). They also wear the bogu (protective armour). Here is an image of what a standard kendoka looks like with the bogu and shinai, as well as the target areas which are marked off. This fencing style isn’t exactly the way samurai wield katanas in battle, rather it is a derived “sport” form from the actual technique known as Kenjutsu (much like how the sport of fencing was derived from older fencing techniques).

So how do Kendo competitions work? In a shiai (competition), the first kendoka to reach two ippon (points) is considered the winner. An ippon is awarded by not only a valid cut to one of the target areas, but also by a kendoka’s display of intention and control during the cut.

I’ve signed up to my university’s Kendo club for the semester to try it out and see if it’s something I’d like to pursue. So far I am enjoying the training and the drills. I even went so far as to buy a practice shinai of my own after the second class because I was so enamoured with it.

Well, other than Kendo, I’ve been up to pretty much nothing else but studying and strength training. I’m considering getting back into tennis, but that will have to wait for now. I’ll leave you now with a nice video that pretty much sums up Kendo.