#wpjjc

It's hard to imagine but so much can really change in a week. I've had a lot of influential milestones in my jiu jitsu journey but if I had to pick out an important milestone (for now) I would say that the WPJJC 2012 experience is definitely the apex of my milestones.

While I was there I really felt like a small town girl who just came to the big city. The scene is so small in my country with only a handful of girls training and only 4 female blue belts in the entire country. Everything at the WPJJC is just so much larger than life. The WPJJC is my first international comp I've ever attended and definitely the largest.

Since coming back to Malaysia I've noticed a difference in my approach to jiu jitsu and also in my demeanor at training.

I guess being around so many BJJ legends and heroes was just so inspiring. I would say it was the 4 days before the competition that were the most valuable for me. For me the WPJJC matches is just the icing on the cake. To get up close in person with them, to actually roll with others and to actually train with a few? Priceless.

Talking and observing them gave me an insight into the mind of a competitor and how you can't accept anything less than perfection. I actually know someone who wasn't happy with their bronze and proceeded to throw it away because it wasn't gold. I see the fire in the bellies and the hunger in their eyes and how literally jiu jitsu is their life.

So how does that cascade down towards me? I don't do this full time and will probably never do it full time. Someone told me how everyone wants to train BJJ full time but actually they really don't because it's so damn hard there are days that you wake up and just want to throw everything away.

But then I also talked to people who don't do BJJ full time but train just as hard and do pretty well at the World Pros (ok granted they are blues and purples but...)

So here's the most important thing I've learnt in my time during Abu Dhabi, mat time is important for sure but the focus and the mindset towards jiu jitsu and during training is even more important. The focus and mindset is what sets apart all those competitors in Abu Dhabi (full time or not).

The purple belt in my gym gives me hope because he doesn't train full time (he works in a bank) but his jiu jitsu is just really really world class level sick. Whenever he comes to train, he gives 200%. Even when he's resting in between rolls I see him observing others and for him jiu-jitsu is always on his mind... off and on the mats, all the time just like the champions I saw at Abu Dhabi. So although he doesn't train full time like 6 hours a day, 2 or 3 times day... it's his attitude in training that really sets him apart from the rest in my gym and also why he's so frickin good.

Rolling with the best not only showed me how far I've come but also how far I really need to go. I've got some really really big jiu-jitsu plans for the 2nd half of this year and I feel that this is the right time to do so (where age and career and family aren't too big of problems). And while I don't train full time... I'm going to make the most of whatever little time I have by changing my mindset towards training and with added focus.

And while I honestly didn't do well in my rolls against a lot of the higher level girls in Abu Dhabi, it did give me a good yardstick on what I'm good at and what I really need to work on. So (and this is a 100% stolen from Monstrinha) instead of saying I can't do it and that I can't hang with these world class blues, for now I'm going to say I can't.... yet.

But you bet I'm going to train my butt off so I can...

Train hard, Train more and Train always!

Thursday was honestly quite slow because it's the day before the tournament and many of the competitors were resting so the mat room was quite empty.

Saw posters and signs advertising the WPJJC in the hotel:  

Hey look the Malaysian flag's on the poster! :) (it's the last flag on the right)

Woke Shane and Tommy up for breakfast, then discussed what to do for the rest of the day. As for me, my plan for the day was to go to the beach!!!! I knew I had to visit Coniche beach one last time. There were a couple of people who were interested in going to the beach but because they're competing (and are of fair skin) they were afraid of getting sun burnt. That's such a strange concept for me, not to visit the beach the day before a competition for fear of getting sun burnt... I guess it's because I tan easily (thanks to the South East Asian genes from my Mum's side baby!!!), I personally have never experienced sunburn in my entire life (not even tanning under 12pm sun in Malaysia weather with just SPF4). I guess rolling in a gi with sunburn must hurt really bad.

During the conversation a sand storm hit us! Shane and I ran back to our rooms cause we had left our Gis to dry outside on the balcony. Lucky for us the balcony was facing away from the storm and was quite protected. I was honestly afraid our Gis would have been blown away! The sand storm was quite epic so I had to wait for a bit before I could head out to the beach.

So anyway after the sand storm subsided, I went to Coniche beach by myself to work on my tan. The weather wasn't as nice as it was on Monday as it was cloudy and very windy. Was there for about 2 hours before another sand storm hit Abu Dhabi and let me tell you, being at a beach during a sandstorm is NO FUN AT ALL. The sand kept getting EVERYWHERE and the life guards eventually ushered us off the beach and into the protected areas. I was stuck in the toilet for about 40 minutes before we were allowed outside again. Well at least the toilets had air condition (I know wtf? air condition in the public toilets!!!! Only in Abu Dhabi man).

It was 3pm by the time I got back so I had lunch and caught up with Monstrinha. She was interested in chilling at the open mat area to see people roll even though she wasn't training so I tagged along. There we saw some members of Team Llyod Irvine training as well as JT and Jared who were photographing a technique for Jiu Jitsu Style Magazine.   

  After that we headed back to our room to rest before the rules meeting at 7pm. On our way back we got harassed by our Brazilian room neighbors, it was funny at first then it got really annoying. -_- First they blocked our path going back to our room by sitting on the hallway forcing us to talk to them. They introduced themselves (I can't remember their names) and asked if we wanted to join them to sit outside in the hallway. We said no and thought that was the end of that. Heck no, 5 minutes later I hear this tapping on the balcony and realized that one of them was sitting on the barrier wall that separated our balcony from theirs and was furiously tapping on it to get our attention. He then made birdy tweeting sounds after we ignore the tapping. Then the other Brazilian dude knocks on our door! At this point Monstrinha and I felt that our privacy was getting invaded and it was really annoying. We figured if we stayed in our room and ignored them they would stop it. Oh no.... they proceed to CALL OUR FRICKIN PHONE except they can't speak English at all so it was mostly "blah blah blah Portuguese MAKE FRIENDS WITH US" now I guess it's pretty funny looking back but I was getting pretty jumpy and pretty annoyed at the time. I told Monstrinha I couldn't stand this anymore and when they started knocking out balcony wall again, I used that opportunity to get out of the room since I wouldn't have to meet them at the front door. Monstrinha on the other hand was sleepy so she unhooked the phone and went to sleep. 

Alone I headed to the open mat area, talked to a bunch of people and saw some people roll. It was around 6pm and since the sauna and steam area was right downstairs and the rules meeting was only at 7pm, figured I'd go there to kill time since I didn't want to return to my room to face the Brazilians again. There I met in the sauna Sunny and Leyla (from Australia and NZ) as well as Teresa from Brazil. Had a conversation with them about what it's like living in a Muslim country and the whole nudity issue in saunas and steam rooms. 

After that at 7pm was time for the rules meeting. Finally met the head organizers and thanked them profusely for getting Tommy's ticket in time.  

Had dinner with the rest of Team Malaysia. Now we've been signing nicknames rather than our actual signatures from Wednesday onwards (I think Jordan started the trend). I know we're retarded that way:  

Shane's East Side, Jordan's West Side, Monstrinha is Whatever, I'm North Side and Tommy's Dirty South (I know it says Side but that's a mistake!). Heheheh :P

After that I bumped into Luanna and asked her how her workshop was and told her that we had really wanted to attend but got the location all wrong :(  

We bumped into Thiago Braga from Roots Australia and he was feeling very ill (down with the flu) so I gave him some of my paracetamol tables to reduce his fever.

After that Monstrinha and I headed to the supermarket (Carrefour) to get some supplies like bananas and snacks for the tournament and headed early to bed.

OMG Friday it is here!

Woke up in the morning feeling super dehydrated thanks to the food poisoning but was happy that the runs have stopped, I wasn't nauseated and that my fever had broke. Yay!

Got a phonecall at around 8am letting me know that Tommy Yang was in the house! Phew! Right before weighs in too... I was so worried because we hadn't heard from the abu dhabi organizers about his ticket till late Tuesday and was panicking till F texts me to say that "Tommy has left Malaysia for Abu Dhabi". Thank God!!!!! I guess they really made me work for my organizer's ticket huh ;)

This guy Ahmed totally deserves a shout out for making it happen! Thank you so much Ahmed and sorry for giving you a royal headache about Tommy. T_T  

Since it was the morning of the weighs ins, many of the competitors (my team included) were seen hanging around the sauna and steam rooms to cut down the last kilos of water weight. As for me, I stayed in the room nursing my dehydration from the food poisoning.

Monstrinha got to connect with some of the ladies in the sauna room. One of them being Luanna Alzuigar who is so nice and so humble! After shedding some water weight, Monstrinha returns and we head to the venue at 9:30am.

The waiting was really terrible as they only allowed 5 people in the weigh in hall at any one time which is a little silly because the people in the weigh in hall weren't really all that busy and they could have accommodated at least 10 people at any one time. 

We bumped into Allen and Adrian from BJJ Borneo our affiliate school in Kota Kinabalu and Arlene Lim from Evolve SG. It was nice to see familiar faces :)   

Met also the Checkmat girls who we trained with in yesterday's session. They treated us like family since we're part of Checkmat too and are so nice! I love that they have girly Checkmat apparel and I'm so tempted to ask Janni if she wouldn't mind sending me a t-shirt and rashguard. Would gladly pay for it! :)

Lira from Paraguay, myself, Janni from Sweden, Monstrinha and Shanti from Denmark. We were missing Mile from Denmark in this picture! (picture taken by Kinya Hashimoto)

Lira was unfortunately nursing a really strange swelling on her foot so I offered to do some Chinese massage (where you try to massage the 'wind' out of the swelling) and also some Reiki healing. I think a lot of people were quite intrigued by the concept of massaging the wind/angin out and also the Reiki I was doing. She seemed to feel better after the Reiki so that's good! 

I also met Andre Galvao and his wife Angelica Galvao. Didn't take a picture with Andre though cause he was so busy cause everyone else wanted a pic with him, as for me I was super happy with my picture with Angelica. Man she's super fit with her paper thin skin and vascularity that's off the charts!  

It was late afternoon by the time we got back to the hotel so we had a late lunch and met JT Torres who's a super nice guy. We bonded together with the Lloyd Irvine team after they found out that Monstrinha lived in Baltimore for 7 years for school. That kinda earned their respect since Baltimore is quite a ghettotastic city.

Then we headed to the evening training session since Luanna was giving a seminar at 7pm. Arlene Lim from Evolve Singapore joined us too! 

  Unfortunately we didn't realize there were 2 mat locations until it was too late and that Luanna was giving her seminar at the other mat area! DANG, was so disappointed that we totally missed out her seminar. :( But at least we got to train with some of the people in the common room like the Checkmat girls and the Checkmat BB's like Nicolini and Shanti. Also met Team Korea who despite language barriers were very warm and friendly! 

I think Nicolini was a bit horrified that all of us were doing the cutesy Asian thing lol. But it's fun! *peace!!*

Me with Junior and Gabby

Monstrinha with Junior and Gabby

Then we called it a day after the evening's session, went to see what Shane was up to and had dinner together.

Onward to Thursday baby!