And now, another post for Blog 'Til You Drop Sunday.
March 5th through the 11th was Filipino Week at the Big Red School on the Hill. I wormed my way out of work early on the day they had an FMA workshop conducted by a very respected and well-known instructor.
To him, I was probably just some random Filipino until he picked me to demonstrate some empty hand disarms. He stripped my stick away, went to hand it back to me and then realized, "Oooh...he's got his own sticks. And they're not mine!" I'm thinking: Great, he probably thinks I'm from some rival school and now he's gonna beat on me.
So he takes two seconds, stops the demo and asks me, "We've never met? I don't know you, do I?" I smiled, said "No, sir" and it all seemed cool from there. He let me help demo knife disarms as well as some of the arrest/restraint techniques he teaches to military and LEO-types.
It was a fun couple of hours, sort of reminiscent of the old Fight Club. You had the mix of utter newbies in awe (read: gross overestimation) of my "mad skillz" (someone said, "You must be a pro," to which I quickly and loudly replied, "Oh, no I'm not!"), senior students who, while nice, were saying to themselves, "Yeah, I can take him" and the experienced martial artists who decided that since I "didn't start none, there wasn't gonna be none."
But it makes me wonder: Am I forever doomed to make Caucasian FMA instructors look at me with raised eyebrows when we first meet?
March 5th through the 11th was Filipino Week at the Big Red School on the Hill. I wormed my way out of work early on the day they had an FMA workshop conducted by a very respected and well-known instructor.
To him, I was probably just some random Filipino until he picked me to demonstrate some empty hand disarms. He stripped my stick away, went to hand it back to me and then realized, "Oooh...he's got his own sticks. And they're not mine!" I'm thinking: Great, he probably thinks I'm from some rival school and now he's gonna beat on me.
So he takes two seconds, stops the demo and asks me, "We've never met? I don't know you, do I?" I smiled, said "No, sir" and it all seemed cool from there. He let me help demo knife disarms as well as some of the arrest/restraint techniques he teaches to military and LEO-types.
It was a fun couple of hours, sort of reminiscent of the old Fight Club. You had the mix of utter newbies in awe (read: gross overestimation) of my "mad skillz" (someone said, "You must be a pro," to which I quickly and loudly replied, "Oh, no I'm not!"), senior students who, while nice, were saying to themselves, "Yeah, I can take him" and the experienced martial artists who decided that since I "didn't start none, there wasn't gonna be none."
But it makes me wonder: Am I forever doomed to make Caucasian FMA instructors look at me with raised eyebrows when we first meet?
