I'm a jock... at 25

It’s actually amusing. At the age of 25 I have just received my first ever medal for sport. I guess I better watch out now in case some jealous, deranged geek gets upset and pulls out their semi automatic pistols to go all Counter-Strike on my ass…:-)

The 2nd Africa Cup Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Championship was held on Saturday at Gateway, with our “host” club Novagen competing against clubs from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg.

The event ran a lot smoother and faster than last year, with some very exciting fights as a bonus. Paul and myself were score keepers for the event, which included kids’ divisions, a women’s division and assorted weight divisions for the men – from Under 65kg, to Over 95kg, and an Open Weight section, in which any of the guys could compete again.

There were only 3 women at the event on the day – Lara and myself from Novagen (both Under 65kg) and then a girl from P.E (who should have been in an Over 65kg division if there had been more competitors). So, yeah, just by pitching up, we were guaranteed a medal.

Anyway, Lara defeated the P.E. girl on points, so in the final is was Lara vs. myself. Lara got 2 points for a take down (I ended up on the floor on my back), but I was able to sweep her onto her back, and then mount her to clock up some points. At that point I went for a cross-choke variant – one of my staple techniques – and got a victory by submission when Lara tapped on me to stop the fight.

I don’t have any photos of me receiving my gold medal and USN hamper, for first place, but here’s a pic my sister took of me starting to set up the choke from mount position.


The event ran till around 6pm or so, after which a group of us went to Thai Panda for dinner. The food (Thai, Chinese and Sushi) was very tasty, but the service was horribly slow – not helped by our group’s size – and it sounded like there was some kind of fight / screaming match going on in the kitchen.

On Sunday – our one true day of weekend – we really just took it easy. While the sun was shining, the wind was too brisk and cold to sit outside. So I baked banana bread while Paul cooked his famous ham pie.

After watching the hilarious World of Warcraft episode of South Park on Friday evening, we were keen to finally start playing the MMORPG. But with something like a Gig of patches to download, we left the download running and caught up with 3 episodes of Rome instead.


I was in the mood for some gentle puzzle-solving, with no reflex requirements, but my copy of 2003 serial killer adventure In Memoriam/Missing wouldn’t install. Well, it wouldn’t let me connect to the Internet to register online so I could receive e-mail from characters. I’m waiting for a response now from Ubisoft support staff, but I do think my problem is a negative example of integrating the Internet into gameplay. A few years down the line, if servers are changed, or online support dropped, the game just doesn’t work anymore. And that’s amn frustrating.

We rounded off the weekend by watching the Samurai Jack movie – the animated equivalent of 300, I suppose. Just pure stylised beauty. With yet another buff, sword-wielding hero :)