Betty's Blog

Friday, September 28, 2007

Shaolin Warriors at Pacific Coliseum, PNE

Ray and I went and saw the Shaolin monks performing at Pacific Coliseum. I was just blown away by their gymnastics ability to be so flexible with their bodies. They were all trained in their childhood and were given extensive training in kung fu martial arts. From the show, there were two kids performing with the rest of the adults and even those two kids already mastered the various kinds of kung fu martial art forms. There was also an incredible martial art form called Qigong meaning guidance, inhale and exhale meditation. It is a technique where you accumulate the inner power from all the muscles into one area so that when you are poked or pricked, you won't be punctured. The performance last night demonstrated this Qigong technique where the shaolin monk was actually placed on a board of 3 swords on the bottom and a board of hundreds of nails on the top of his body with another person on top of him and then to top it up with a huge concrete board that probably weighed about 300lbs (I think). I hope you can picture this because it seemed like "pain" to me! This is not it. Lastly, another person was holding a big sledgehammer to hit this concrete into half! All I can think off at this point was this person at the very bottom was probably in pain and maybe have 3 sword marks on the back of his body. Sure enough, they were fine and just a little mark from the sword, no blood dripping or anything. This shows how well-trained they are and that they have a life-long commitment to keep training for shaolin kung fu.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Grouse Grind Mountain Run

Another year zipped by so fast and here we are again doing the Grind Race for the 3rd year. This year, we formed a team with Ray, William, Betty and Ethan and called ourselves "Live Free or Die Hard". I like the name. The Grind is so much like in the movie if you know what I mean. Anyway, it was a beautiful morning at the base of the mountain but foggy and cold at the top. Regardless of what the weather was, there were still about 450 participants in this race. What a good turnout! This race is sure getting popular every year. Lots of spectator too including my parents, Sylvester, Irene, Yun, Lydia and Nathan that came out to cheer our team. What a great support group, eh?!! Alright, here are the race results posted on the Raceheadquarters website. Our team was so good that we came first in the Co-ed category. I will start with Ray first because he was like a cheetah, so fast! He finished with a PB time of 37:22mins and came in 64th overall out of 450, 56th out of 304 for males and 16th out of 88 in his age group. As for me, I am very proud of myself because I didn't expect to get a PB of 52:27mins with an improved time of 4mins from last year's race! Ray also improved his time by 5mins! Kudos to both of us! I came in 265th overall out of 450, 63rd out of 146 for females and 13th out of 37 in my age group. Next is William, my brother. Let's see how he did. He came in with a time of 48:30mins at 219th overall, 174th for males and 46th for his age group. Not bad...Keep up the good work! Now, the next person is Ethan, my nephew who is only 9 years old and beat me by 2mins! He is so light-weight and so fast that he got a time of 50:31mins. His parents were so proud of him. I am too even though he beat me :) He came in 242nd overall, 190th for males and 7th out of 10 in his age group. Nicely done! He had so much fun doing this race that he can't wait for next year. Hopefully, he can keep training before next year's race. That goes the same for me. I am determined to aim for sub-50mins for next year. I hope I don't kill myself. Wish me luck!!

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Keith Urban Concert

What an amazing performance put out by Keith Urban tonight at GM Place! My girlfriend, Monica and I went and saw him on tour to promote his new album called "Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy World" and we were definitely impressed by him. As you all know, he is married to a very famous celebrity and she is of course none other than Nicole Kidman. At one point of the concert, he actually mentioned her by saying, "Of course I wouldn't want to forget my lovely wife, Nicole Kidman who has been there for me by giving me the love and support and here's a song for her." So the song that he dedicated to her was "Tonight I wanna cry". It sure made me cry and he almost was in tears too. He was thanking Canada for buying his album that puts him in the No.1 spot in the top of the chart. What a nice guy!

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