Picture (c) Peter Jensen
Displayed with Permission

OK, on friday night Abhishek, Sunil and Madhur (all from IIT-G) came to my house. We dined at Madras Sarvana and watched the movie, "The Shining" at my house. Technically not really my house but then I consider Gandhi's house as mine only. "The Shining" is a brilliant example of what direction can do for a movie. Virtually without any story, the director has managed to make a really good horror movie out of almost nothing. Kudos to the director Stanley Kubrick for that.

On saturday, we went to Battle of Atlanta, the Taekwondo tournament held at the Hyatt Hotel. People came from all over to participate. Dave Wooden from our GT taekwondo club was participating. He is a black belt and is darn good. So anyway, a party of 20 people including Dr. Speyer, our instructor went there to support him. We watched only the black belt performances. First there were forms and then there was sparring.

Let me tell you something. I have never seen either forms or sparring like this before. In the sparring, there was this african-american black belt dude and he was GOOD. Did I mention he was good? Well he did his whole form in a very slick, fluid manner and every single thing he did was perfect. Perfect kicks, perfect landings, perfect stances, well once again everything was perfect. Most of the other contestants were pretty darn good, but he was like a head ahead of everyone else. Of course he got the first prize, but he deserved it through and through.

Even in the sparring(fighting), the contestants were pretty good. Even Dr. Speyer got excited a couple of times. Again the same African-American dude fought quite well though he lost. Another student from his academy claimed the first prize.

Overally, a day quite well spent. Not very fruitful in terms of persuit of study or something, but well spent nevertheless.