Perfect Pratice Makes Perfect

It never seems enough for me. All that piano playing, scuba diving, kayaking, horse riding, shopping, snoring at home, no, they don’t seem to be fulfilling my time enough.

I have been playing piano too much. And eating and sleeping too much too. It’s not that I’m not passionate with the piano anymore. I still love ‘caressing’ those white and black keys. They give me sweet music (only if I hit the right keys and the play the right notes… he he he). But I need something that makes me work out. 

One day, I watched the Company’s GTF Tae Kwon Do students do their moves. All that punching and kicking and gruelling exercises, kind of beckoning me to join them there and then. It looked rough. They were tough. And I liked it!

Tae Kwon Do (also written as t’aegwondo) is a modern martial art originating from Korea and characterised by its fast, high and spinning kicks. The coloured belt system was introduced to represent the progression of a student from white, the innocence of a beginner, into the maturity of the black belt, who is impervious to darkness and fear (the sequence is as shown below). 

Kup	GTF Belt Color
10th	White Belt
9th	White with Yellow Stripe
8th	Yellow Belt
7th	Yellow with Green Stripe
6th	Green Belt
5th	Green with Blue Stripe
4th	Blue Belt
3rd	Blue with Red Stripe
2nd	Red Belt
1st	Red with Black stripe

Generally, a dan is used to represent the progression of the black belt holders. A dan is either an unadorned black belt (the same for all ranks), or has a stripe across the tip for each rank (usually gold, silver, red or white). If I am not mistaken, in the GTF, the maximum rank is 9th Dan.

During the classes I learn some Korean commands such as charyot which means attention, kyong ye for bow, baro for return and joonbi for steady. There are more Korean commands actually but I can’t quite make out what they are.

I’m just a beginner and I don’t feel enlivened by that white belt. The black one seems to be perfect on me, hehehe… But like what the sifus, Sir Sharifudin and Sir Faizal, always say, practice makes perfect and a whole lot of training can change the colour of your belt. So I have to be patient, pratise a lot more and kick harder.